Showcase: Assorted Treats

  • Paradigm Questions +

    Paradigm Questions To which of the following commands of Christ’s do you only pay only lip service? Love your enemies Read More
  • July 27 Devotional: FB Meyer +

    He suffered thee to hunger. Deuteronomy 8:3 Read More
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sun_clouds3_500Speaking to the Heart: 100 Favorite Poems chosen and introduced by Sister Wendy Beckett, fulfills a long-felt need of mine: a book of poetry that deals with topics related to the Christian faith without being saccharine on the one hand or ungodly on the other. Instead, to quote Sister Wendy,

what we have here is a spiritual sense, something far wider and more elemental. There is religious poetry, with its defining religious vocabulary, but not much of it here. Just as I have always felt the essence of great painting was its spirituality, and that this applies as much to Degas’s ballet dancers as it does to Fra Angelico’s virgins, so is it true of poetry.
If the poet is not speaking from his own emotional depths to our own sense of freedom and strength of spirit, then this is not poetry to which I am attracted. (page 3)

Thankfully, she fulfills this requirement with much the same candor and depth that she did with her BBC television series on art. The book is divided into poems of Longing, Wonder, A Lighter Spirit, The Heavy Heart, Courage, Sorrow, Faith, Hope, Love, and Prayer. While all the poems are great, and will inspire on different occasions, there are a few that stand out for me after a first reading. Under Courage is Door by Robert Pinsky. While perhaps this is a sideways nod to Aldous Huxley’s famous book, Doors of Perception, it nonetheless covers interesting ground, as most Pinsky poetry does. One stanza in particular captures the way doors function as a metaphor for salvation.

Its four panels form a cross—the rood
Sign of suffering and redemption

A Broken Image, Thomas Blackburn’s poem in the section on Faith, is about a couple coming across a broken cross while hiking in the Alps, and how they take it home with them. The profound meaning of the cross, a symbol of salvation for humanity, and its representation of the love God has for each of us, is explored by the poet, as represented by the lines

This image explains nothing away,
And just by gazing into darkness
Is able to mean more than words can say.

Finally, there is Prayer, by John Burnside, ends the collection. Its line “Gold in the seams of my hands” effectively sums up the nature of the collection, our relationship with God, and the subject of the poem.

There are many others that are worth noting: Nativity Poem by Joseph Brodsky, The Snow Village by Glyn Maxwell, This Lunar Beauty by W. H. Auden. At $3.99, I encourage you to invest in poems whose “significance does not have to be puzzled out, but comes to us with an immediacy and a power that are the ultimate proof of what poetry can be.”

Reflections to Consider

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Publications

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Music

  • Jesus be the centre

    Center is a song that speaks of the essence of our life in Christ, and echoes the words the Christ Read More
  • I Lift My Hands

    A powerful hymn of adoration and praise Arkansas Gospel Mass Choir. This succinctly captures the joy of knowing our savior. Read More
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Audio & Video

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Favorites

  • Transforming this World: The Hope of Glory by NT Wright +

    Wright confronts the perspective that this world doesn’t matter, and that we live only to be in heaven. He shows Read More
  • What is Good in a World that Defies Hope: a talk by NT Wright +

    This is the second part of three talks by NT Wright at Harvard University in November, 2008 on the topic Read More
  • The Stream, the Lake and the River: NT Wright +

      Acts 2.1-21; John 7.37-39; a sermon at the Eucharist on the Feast of Pentecost, 11 May 2008, by the Read More
  • Jesus in the Perfect Storm by NT Wright +

    Zechariah 9.9-17; Luke 19.28-48; A sermon for Palm Sunday, April 17, 2011, In the University Chapel of St Salvator, St Read More
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Hidden Blessings

  • Christ is a Great Savior: a review of the movie Amazing Grace +

    Amazing Grace is a historical drama about William Wilberforce who was elected to British Parliament at the age of 21 Read More
  • Wilberforce, Hollywood's Amazing Grace, Charlotte Allen +

    William Wilberforce's relentless campaign eventually led the British Parliament to ban the slave trade, in 1807, and to pass a Read More
  • Making Beauty out of Ugly Things: Grace by U2 +

    Grace, she takes the blame She covers the shame Removes the stain It could be her name Grace, she carries Read More
  • The True Nature of Grace and Love: a movie review of the Soloist +

    The 2009 movie The Soloist is based on a book by the same name, written by Los Angeles Times columnist Read More
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