Category: Poetry
A Christmas Carol, by GK Chesterton
The Christ-child lay on Mary’s lap, His hair was like a light. (O weary, weary were the world, But here is all aright.) The Christ-child lay on Mary’s breast, His hair was like a star. (O stern and cunning are...
Have a Good Friday
TS Eliot, from Four Quartets: “The wounded surgeon plies the steel That quesions the distempered part; Beneath the bleeding hands we feel The sharp compassion of the healer’s art Resolving the enigma of the fever chart. Our only health is...
Simple but Lovely Poem on the Nature of Daily Work
I think this poem goes along well with Dorothy Sayers’ “Why Work?” and is a clear statement of the Christian understanding of work. The author is Henry Van Dyke, American poet and writer of that famous hymn, “Joyful, Joyful.” WORK...
Why did God create? a poem
This question has puzzled theists for millenia, and its atheistic equivalent, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” has puzzled everyone else for equally as long. Augustine says, “But why did God choose then to create the heavens and earth...
Flirting with Christianity
Faith, it drives me away But it turns me on Like a strangers love -Muse With regard to a Jewish agnostic friend of ours, Matt Anderson once remarked that he is “flirting with Christianity.” This friend of ours is a...
Ash Wednesday
Update: the rather humorous spelling error is fixed. Thanks, Jim! Today is Ash Wednesday, one of my favorite days in the church calendar. When I turned twenty-four this January, I joked with my students about having a “third-of-life crisis.” As...
“Life” by George Herbert
I had a birthday last week, and, as a part of the evening celebration, took a moment to “zoom out” on my life. The psalmist reminds us that human life is like grass, or clouds. It is brief and passes...
The Love of God
From Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s The Seraphim: Ador: Weep? Weep blood, All women, all men! He sweated it, He, For your pale womanhood And base manhood. Agree That these water-tears, then, Are vain, mocking like laughter: Weep blood! This Sunday I...
An abstract and somewhat poetic post
I was talking to Matt at his fiance’s house, conversing on the nature of talk. I said nothing not brought to discussion is ever remembered or well understood. “No,” he said, “there’s something to be said, not for talk, but...