Poems and readings to reflect on and shape your faith
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Faith-shaping Poets
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Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) – Faith Shaper
Academically brilliant as an Oxford University student, in 1866 Gerard Manley Hopkins left the Anglican Church, to which both of his parents were deeply committed, to become a convinced Roman Catholic. Following his personal ‘conversion’, he obeyed an inner ‘call’ to...
Our Father: Hallowed on Earth as in Heaven
Recovered Greenness
How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean Are thy returns! ev’n as the flowers of spring; To which, beside their own demean, The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring. Grief melts away Like snow in May, As if there were no such thing. Who would have thought my...
Waiting for Jesus
On the outskirts of Jerusalem the donkey waited. Not especially brave, or filled with understanding, he stood and waited. How horses, turned out into the meadow, leap with delight! How doves, released from their cages, clatter away, splashed with sunlight. But the...
Converted
'A wolf is not only turned into a sheep, but doth also take to himself a shepherd's nature. It is as if Christ should bring forth with his hand some angel sent from heaven.' John Calvin (1509-64), Commentary, (Acts 9:1-5).
Longing!
Under the dark trees, there he stands, there he stands; shall he not draw my eyes? I thought I knew a little how he compels, beyond all things, but now he stands there in the shadows. It will be Oh, such a daybreak, such bright morning, when I shall wake to see him as...
The Bible: Bestowed Word of God
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The rare herb of silence: and the Word comes
When the doors of the house are shut, Eyes lidded, mouth closed, nose and ears Doing their best to idle, fingers allowed out Only on parole; when the lovely holy distractions, Safe scaffolding of much loved formulae, Have been rubbed away; then the plant Begins to...
Jesus Christ: Crucified God in Person
We need a suffering God
When this world’s pleasures for my soul sufficed, Ere my heart’s plummet sounded depths of pain, I called on reason to control my brain, And scoffed at that old story of the Christ. But when o’er burning wastes my feet had trod, And all my life was desolate with...
Jesus of the Scars
If we have never sought, we seek Thee now; Thine eyes burn through the dark, our only stars; We must have sight of thorn-pricks on Thy brow, We must have Thee, O Jesus of the Scars. The heavens frighten us; they are too calm; In all the universe we have no place....
The tree of salvation for me
Christ died for God and me Upon the crucifixion tree For God a spoken word For me a sword For God a hymn of praise For me eternal days For God an explanation For me salvation. Stevie Smith (1902-71),...
In Our Hands
No wife, kids, home; No money sense. Unemployable. Friends, yes. But the wrong sort - The workshy, women, wogs, Petty infringers of the law... ... his end? I think we will make it Public, prolonged and painful. Right, said the baby. That was roughly What we had...
Humankind: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless
Set me Free!
Hear me, O God! A broken heart Is my best prayer; Use still thy rod That I may prove Therein thy love. If thou hadst not Been stern to me, But left me free, I had forgot Myself and Thee. For sin’s so sweet, As minds ill bent Rarely repent, Until they meet Their...
I am a stately palace
My God, I heard this day, That none doth build a stately habitation, But he that means to dwell therein. What house more stately hath there been, Or can be, then is Man? To whose creation All things are in decay. For man is ev’ry thing, And more…. Since then, my...
Leaving Eden
The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and providence their guide: They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way. John Milton (1608-74), Paradise Lost.
A no-where Person
There is no-where in you, a paradise that is no-place and there you do not enter, except without a story. To enter there is to become unnameable. Whoever is there is homeless for he has no door, no identity with which to go out and to come in. Whoever is...
The Grace of God: Justifying and Converting
Thank you, Lord
… if all the world Should in a pet of temperance feed on pulse, Drink the clear stream and nothing wear but freize, The all-giver would be unthanked, would be unpraised, Not half his riches known, and yet despised; And we should serve him as a grudging master, As a...
Affluence or temperance
Imposter! Do not charge most innocent Nature, As if she would her children should be riotous With her abundance. She, good cateress, Means her provision only to the good, That live according to her sober laws, And holy dictate of spare Temperance. If every just man...
Deep repentance
Look on him whom they pierced, and mourn; Strike, mighty Grace, my flinty soul Till melting waters flow, And deep repentance drowns mine eyes In undissembled woe. Isaac Watts (1674-1748).
I will lament and love
Ah my dear angry Lord, Since thou dost love, yet strike; Cast down, yet help afford; Sure I will do the like. I will complain, yet praise; I will bewail, approve; And all my sour sweet days I will lament, and love. George Herbert (1593-1633),. Bitter...
Christ-likeness: Progressive Christian Living
Faces of sunflowers follow the sun
Come with me into the field of sunflowers. Their faces are burnished disks, their dry spines creak like ship masts, their green leaves, So heavy and many, fill all the day with the sticky sugars of the sun. Come with me to visit the...
God knows what he’s about
When God wants to drill a man, And thrill a man, and skill a man, When God wants to mould a man To play the noblest part; When he yearns with all his heart To create so great and bold a man That all the world shall be amazed, Watch his methods, watch his ways; How...
Member of the fellowship of the unashamed
I’m part of the fellowship of the unashamed, I have stepped over the line. The decision has been made. I’m a disciple of Jesus Christ. I won’t look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still. My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, My future is secure. I’m...
Lasting friendship
Such love I cannot analyse; It does not rest in lips or eyes, Neither in kisses nor caress. Partly, I know, it’s gentleness And understanding in one word Or in brief letters. It’s preserved By trust and by respect and awe, These are the words I’m feeling for....
Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience
In the beginning was the word
We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time. T.S. Eliot (1888-1965).
A birth, and our death?
… were we led all that way for Birth or death? There was a Birth certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places,...
Within myself I lose, or win
Not in the clamour of the crowded street, Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, But in ourselves are triumph and defeat. Henry W. Longfellow (1807-82).
Open to surprise
Sometimes a light surprises The Christian while he sings; It is the Lord, who rises with healing in his wings; when comforts are declining, he grants the soul again a season of clear shining, to cheer it after rain. William Cowper...
Believers: Assured, Called and Prayerful
Sing Without Need of Reply
Sing a new song to the Lord, sing through the skin of your teeth, sing in the code of your blood, sing with a throat full of earth, sing to the quick of your nails, sing from the knots of your lungs, sing like a dancer on coals, sing as a madman in tongues,...
Twisted Religion
I have pretended long, in loyalty. I had a childhood hurt for five harsh years, I let it wound my good fragility And over decades I've shed many tears And sometimes wished that I were wholly free Of faith because it was to me all fears, Unhappiness and, yes,...
Unwrap our Darkness
We can scarcely believe it, God, this story of your birth in the world. We rationalize and reason, we read the headlines and we doubt, and still, we hope, desperately, that it just might be true. If we have lost faith in the promise of change, unwrap our doubt to make...
Caged Skylark?
As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells - That bird beyond the remembering his free fells, This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.... Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest -...
The Church: Provisional but Necessary
To see God only, I go out of sight
Seal then this bill of my divorce to all On whom those fainter beams of love did fall; Marry those loves which in youth scattered be On Fame, Wit, Hopes (false mistresses), to thee. Churches are best for prayer, that have least light: To see God only, I go out of...
The tree of life in the garden with Christ
Our Lord into his Garden comes, Well pleas’d to smell our poor Perfumes, And calls us to a feast divine, Sweeter than honey, milk or wine. Eat of the Tree of Life, my Friends, The Blessings that my Father sends; Your Taste shall all my dainties prove, And drink...
Have I forgotten the church somewhere?
Sometimes a man rises from the supper table and goes outside. And he keeps on going because somewhere to the east there’s a church. His children bless his name as if he were dead. Another man stays at home until he dies, stays with plates and glasses. So, then...
Religion is over
The last quarter of the moon of Jesus gives way to the dark... Religion is over and what will emerge from the body of the new moon, no one can say. But a voice sounds in my ear: Why so fast, mortal? These very seas are baptized. The parish has a saint's name...
The Mission of God
The call-out from our comfort
From our low seat beside the fire, Where we have dozed and dreamed And watched the glow Or raked the ashes, stopping so We scarcely saw the sun and rain above Or looked higher Than this same quiet red or burned out fire Tonight we heard a call. And so we cannot sit...
Not my feet, Lord
Swift, tired, true, headstrong, tender, merciless – your feet have more persona than your head: born for earth that you may be freed for sky – Does anything that serves you serve like this? So why should someone say, ‘Not my feet, Lord – far rather wash my hands or...
Buy me a home in a perfect hell
I would buy me a perfect island home, Sweet set in a southern sea, And there I would build me a paradise For the heart o’ my Love and me. I would plant me a perfect garden there, The one that my dream soul knows, And the years would flow as the petals grow, That...
God’s secretary
of all the creatures both in sea and land Only to man hast thou made known thy ways, And put the pen alone into his hand, And made him secretary of thy praise. Beasts fain would sing; birds dittie to their notes; Trees would be tuning on their native lute To...
Moral Justice: a Vision of God’s Kingdom
No voice of mourning
What passing bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries for them from prayers or bells, Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, The shrill,...
Blind. Does it matter?
Does it matter? Losing your sight? There’s such a splendid work for the blind: And people will always be kind, As you sit on the terrace remembering, And turning your face to the light. Siegfrid Sassoon (1886-1967), 1918.
We share our wound
Less passionate, the long war throws Its burning thorn about all men, Caught in one grief, we share one wound, And cry one dialect of pain. We have forgot who fired the house, Whose easy mischief spilt first blood; Under one roof we lie; The fault no longer...
Too close to the shore?
Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true, because we have dreamed too little, when we have arrived safely, because we sailed too close to the shore....
Glory: Now and Then, Here and There
In heaven and on earth, our Father
…my soul was stirred and once again you came, a passing vision, a glimmer of beauty pure. In fullness beats my heart, feeling once again the resurrection of divinity, and inspiration, and life, and tears, and love. Alexander Pushkin...
Timeless serenity
God grant me the serenity, To accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking, as...
Build your ship of death
Have you built your ship of death? O, have you? O, build your ship of death, for you will need it. D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930).
Together truth and beauty are one
I died for beauty, but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When one who died for truth was lain In an adjoining room. He questioned softly why I failed? ‘For beauty,’ I replied. ‘And I for truth, - the two are one; We brethren are,’ he said. And so, as...