Poems For Ephesians

from The Missionary

…Protected by salvation’s helm,
Shielded by faith–with truth begirt,
To smile when trials seek to whelm
And stand ‘mid testing fires unhurt!
Hurling hell’s strongest bulwarks down,
Even when the last pang thrills my breast,
When Death bestows the Martyr’s crown,
And calls me into Jesus’ rest.
Then for my ultimate reward–
Then for the world-rejoicing word–
The voice from Father–Spirit–Son:
“Servant of God, well hast thou done!”

Charlotte Brontë (1816―1855) is the eldest of the three famous Brontë sisters. She is best remembered as the author of the novel Jane Eyre (1847). This is the conclusion of a 159-line poem, “The Missionary, which celebrates those on foreign fields, and includes lines clearly inspired by Ephesians 6:14-16.

Posted: 27 May 2020

The Predestined

Dear, we might have known you were
To die young—and were we blind
To the light on face and hair?
Dear, so simple and so kind.

You were clean as your own sword
And as straight too and steel true.
In the Army of the Lord
What promotion waits for you!

I can see you where you stand,
Knightly soul, so clean, so brave.
With a new sword in your hand
Where the lilied banners wave.

Flower of simple chivalry,
Marked for honour and for grace;
It was very plain to see
The clear shining of your face.

You are gone now: it’s turned cold:
Very good you were and dear.
Wear the looks you wore of old
When we meet, —some other year.

Katharine Tynan (1859—1931) is the most prominent female writer associated with the Irish Revival which began in the 1880s. “The Predestined” demonstrates her confidence in Paul’s words from Ephesians 1:5.

Posted: 20 May 2020

from The Second Nun’s Tale (Lines 169―210)

Cecile answered immediately in this manner:
“If you wish, you shall see the angel,
Provided that you believe in Christ and have yourself baptized.
Go forth to the Appian Way,” said she,
“That from this town stands no more than three miles,
And to the poor folks that dwell there,
Say to them exactly thus, which I shall tell you.

“Tell them that I, Cecile, sent you to them
To show you the good Urban the old,
For secret needs and for a good purpose.
And when you have beheld Saint Urban,
Tell him the words which I told to you;
And when he has cleansed you of sin (by baptism),
Then you shall see that angel, ere you depart.”

Valerian has gone to the place,
And just as he was taught by his learning (from Cecilie),
He immediately found this holy old Urban
In hiding among the saints’ burial places.
And he immediately without delay
Said his message; and when he told it,
Urban for joy did hold up his hands.

He let the tears fall from his eyes.
“Almighty Lord, O Jesus Christ,” said he,
“Sower of chaste counsel, shepherd of us all,
The fruit of that same seed of chastity
That thou hast sown in Cecile, take to thee!
Lo, like a busy bee, without guile,
Always thine own servant Cecile serves Thee.

“For that same spouse that she took just now
Very like a fierce lion, she sends here,
As meek as ever was any lamb, to you!”
And with that word anon there did appear
An old man, clad in clear white clothes,
Who had in hand a book with lettering of gold ,
And did stand before Valerian.

Valerian as if dead fell down for fear
When he saw him, and the old man picked him up then,
And from his book right thus he began to read:
“One Lord, one faith, one God, without more,
One baptism, and Father of all also,
Above all and over all everywhere.”
These words were written all with gold.

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340―1400) included “The Second Nun’s Tale” in his collection The Canterbury Tales. It tells the legend of Saint Cecilia (Cecile). She revealed to her new Roman husband that an angel guarded her virginity. To see the angel, Valerian, had to declare faith in Christ, and seek out Urban who would baptise him. The passage Urban reads to Valerian is from Ephesians 4:6.

Posted: 13 May 2020

Clear Evening

I signal over stretched silence,
a shared road, the social distance
that should save us:
Are you well?
And neighbours wave back,
we all try to keep the far
near.

This morning was dark
with the latest death counts.
This evening I sat watching reflections
through glass, our dislocated world.
I didn’t expect much from a flock of grackles
arrested in a beech tree. They shone
with the separate lights that were leaving
small streams, their neck feathers rippling,
indistinct like itinerant waves.

I looked away and almost missed the moment
when they rose as one
uprooted river flinging something distinct
in iridescent ink across a bleached sky.

Who is ever prepared to catch grace
and hold a rare flourish?

Paul in prison, staring into absence,
writing to the Ephesians,
stopped sometimes, wordless,
startled by light so quickly drying
to afterlife in a mind.
He closed his eyes,
refused to look back or ahead
but just sat there to find
light coursing, present still.

Mary Willis lives in London, Ontario. Her poems have appeared in Canadian Literature, The Fiddlehead, and Faith Today. Her work has been included in anthologies, most recently in In a Strange Land: Introducing Ten Kingdom Poets (Poiema Poetry Series, 2019). She has also published three chapbooks through Fiddlehead Poetry Books.

Posted: 06 May 2020

Ambassador

Though my position is disguised
by my ordinary appearance
I am a diplomat
of the King of Kings.

Though my embassy is a simple house
on an obscure street
it is a dispatch station for communiqués
from the Lord of the Universe.

Though I have lived in this land all my life
and furloughs are never granted
my real citizenship is in another place
and someday I shall be called home.

Until then I remain
an Ambassador of the Kingdom of Heaven
proclaiming to hungry, thirsty, bruised and broken
“Asylum-seekers welcome!”

Violet Nesdoly is a poet, writer, and visual artist living in Langley, British Columbia. She has written extensively: articles, devotionals, poetry, and fiction; her novel Destiny’s Hands appeared in 2012. This poem’s image arises from Ephesians 6:20, where Paul refers to himself as an “ambassador in chains.”

Posted: 29 April 2020

Sonnet #43

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) wrote this ever-so-famous love sonnet, to her husband, Robert Browning. In 1846 the couple eloped and moved to Italy because of her ill health. She uses the same language here in speaking of her love for him, as Paul uses in Ephesians 3:18 to describe the love of Christ. This is not a secularizing of scripture, for as can be seen at the poem’s end, she willingly submits their love to God’s will.

Posted: 22 April 2020

from Henry IV Part 1 ― Act 1, Scene 2

I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humour of your idleness:
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonder’d at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But when they seldom come, they wish’d for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
So, when this loose behaviour I throw off
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes;
And like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glittering o’er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I’ll so offend, to make offence a skill;
Redeeming time when men think least I will.

William Shakespeare (1564―1616) “Reading further in Ephesians with the Henry IV plays in mind amply confirms [the allusion in the final line of this soliloquy to Ephesians 5:15-16 and] almost gives one the illusion that Shakespeare set out to confirm St. Paul’s epistle.” (Shakespeare scholar, J.A. Bryant Jr. ― “Prince Hal and the Ephesians” in Hippolyta’s View: Some Christian Aspects of Shakespeare’s Plays)

Posted: 15 April 2020

The Word[s]

———We are his workmanship, his poetry
———― After Ephesians 2:10

You are the Word and speak
of stories made flesh
——————and bone, lines
breaking like a poem;
——————your skin, pierced
by our unholiness.

One body of work,
coherent, harmonious, clear
as your soul, not fragmented
like mine.

You created all things
by your word, including me.
I am your workmanship, your poem,
———which I messed up
———with a sloppy rewrite.

I repent and I am desperate
for your revision.

———I worship you,

yet before the ink of those words
has dried, I blot my soul with disgrace.

I should decrease,
so you can increase.
That will give me new
literary depth. I would be
less self-aware, know
you more.

You knew me
before I entered
my mother’s womb.

You know the words of me,
the syllables, my very letters
knitted together in my DNA.
And your name is written there, too.
You signed me, your workmanship,
as yours.

Revise me, O Lord, into a new song,

a new poem.

John C. Mannone is the author of three poetry collections, including the forthcoming Flux Lines (2020, Linnet’s Wings Press), and is the president of the Chattanooga Writers’ Guild. He is a retired physics professor, living in Tennessee. His poetry won the 2020 Impressions of Appalachia Creative Arts Contest.

Posted: 08 April 2020

Her Little Parasol to Lift (Poem 1038)

Her little Parasol to lift
And once to let it down
Her whole Responsibility –
To imitate be Mine.

A Summer further I must wear,
Content if Nature’s Drawer
Present me from sepulchral Crease
As blemishless, as Her.

Emily Dickinson (1830―1886) is early-America’s great poet of faith and questioning. In this poem she speaks of the morning glory that opens in the morning and closes in the afternoon. She desires to be content to live her life, and then when she’s raised to heaven to be blemishless ― as the church will be in glory according to Ephesians 5:27 ― and as the morning glory is.

Posted: 01 April 2020

Redeemed

Redeemed—how I love to proclaim it!
Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb;
Redeemed through His infinite mercy,
His child, and forever, I am.

Redeemed, redeemed,
Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb;
Redeemed, redeemed,
His child, and forever, I am.

Redeemed and so happy in Jesus,
No language my rapture can tell;
I know that the light of His presence
With me doth continually dwell.

I think of my blessed Redeemer,
I think of Him all the day long;
I sing, for I cannot be silent;
His love is the theme of my song.

I know I shall see in His beauty
The King in whose way I delight;
Who lovingly guardeth my footsteps,
And giveth me songs in the night.

Fanny J. Crosby (1820—1915) is a poet who published four collections, and the writer of more than 9,000 hymns and gospel songs. She was blind from six years of age. This well-known hymn is drawn from scriptures such as Ephesians 1:7.

Posted: 25 March 2020

from The Person

IV

Let verity
Be thy delight; let me esteem
True wealth far more than toys:
Let sacred riches be,
While falser treasures only seem,
My real joys.
For golden chains and bracelets are
But gilded manacles, whereby
Old Satan doth ensnare,
Allure, bewitch the eye.
Thy gifts, O God, alone I’ll prize,
My tongue, my eyes,
My cheeks, my lips, my ears, my hands, my feet;
Their harmony is far more sweet;
Their beauty true. And these in all my ways
Shall themes become and organs of Thy praise.

Thomas Traherne (1637—1674) is an English metaphysical poet whose work was largely not discovered until 200 years after his death. The words “far more” are common in Traherne, and allude to Ephesians 3:20 ― praising “him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think”.

Posted: 18 March 2020

His Power that is at Work Within Us

God’s power works through all things:
in the lowering of the casket
and the rising of the sun,
in the unimaginable
birthing of a dying earth:
the autumn trees’ beauty beyond describing,
aflame with memories
along fields gleamed bare,
their counterparts burning
with branches yearning,
rooted deep within my being:
flare!

The infant clutch of my forefinger
rivals any mystery of the vastest cosmos.
Daylight slips behind the white-haired head
I kiss in the hospital bed, and from the same
immeasurable darkness now, stars spill
sifting over
moonlit waters
shifting to fill me to the measure of all the fulness of God.

I cannot bear the weight of such glory and live:
bleeding through this crowd of daily distractions –
I cannot open my eyes to such shining –
remembering is the most I can carry, and even then, I stumble …
from my knees, I grasp for the hem …
and somehow, surpassingly,
understand in the grazing of such grace
this reaching –
this touch is
enough.

Carolyn Weber has served as faculty at Oxford University, Seattle University, University of San Francisco and Westmont College, and was the first female dean of St. Peter’s College, Oxford. She currently teaches at Heritage College and Seminary, and at Brescia University College (both in Ontario). Her first memoir, Surprised by Oxford, won among other distinctions the Grace Irwin Award, the largest award for Christian writing in Canada. This poem was inspired by Ephesians 4:6.

Posted: 11 March 2020

from Kairos and Logos

I

Around them boomed the rhetoric of time,
The smells and furniture of the known world
Where conscience worshipped an aesthetic order
And what was unsuccessful was condemned;
And, at the centre of its vast self-love,
The emperor and his pleasures, dreading death.

In lovely verse that military order,
Transferring its obsession onto time,
Besieged the body and cuckolded love;
Puzzling the boys of an athletic world,
These only feared another kind of Death
To which the time-obsessed are all condemned.

Night and the rivers sang a cationic love,
Destroyer of cities and the daylight order,
But seemed to them weak arguments for death;
The apple tree that cannot measure time
Might taste the apple yet not be condemned;
They, to enjoy it, must renounce the world.

Friendly to what the sensual call death,
Placing their lives below the dogs who love
Their fallen masters and are not condemned,
They came to life within a dying order;
Outside the sunshine of its civil world
The savage waited their appointed time.

Its brilliant self-assertions were condemned
To interest the forest and draw death
On aqueducts and learning; yet the world,
Through them, had witnessed, when predestined love
Fell like a daring meteor into time,
The condescension of eternal order.

So, sown in little clumps about the world,
The fair, the faithful and the uncondemned
Broke out spontaneously all over time,
Setting against the random facts of death
A ground and possibility of order,
Against defeat the certainty of love.

And never, like its own, condemned the world
Or hated time, but sang until their death:
“O Thou who lovest, set its love in order.”

W.H. Auden (1907—1973) is an important British poet who moved to the United States in 1939. He received the 1948 Pulitzer Prize, The Bollingen Prize (1953) and the National Book Award (1956). This poem relates to Paul’s concerns in Ephesians 5:16 ― “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” The selection’s final quotation is from Francis of Assisi’s “Cantica ― Our Lord Christ: of order”

Posted: 04 March 2020

Celestial Bodies

——–Ephesians 1:18 &19

My weary eyes need reminders to
view the galaxies aright. Focused on
the sliver of moon, they forget an
entire orb hides in the dark.
I gaze at dull concrete, traipse
around the observatory, past
an entrance where God stands in the
doorway beckoning me to peer,
Galileo-like, past roofs, across
trees, into velvet sky.

As feet pause on sure ground,
a whisper beckons to dream
above, beyond to distant beauty.
Consider the immeasurable
heavens inside, reckon my
need as I’m handed a telescope.

Brightened eyes rest and remember.

Jody Collins is a Seattle-area writer, speaker and retreat facilitator. She is the author of Living the Season Well: Reclaiming Christmas (2017, Newport Press). Her essays and poetry have appeared in such publications as The High Calling, and Grace Table. Visit her website: www.jodyleecollins.com

Posted: 26 February 2020

A Prayer

I Bow my knee to God on high,
Father of Filial Deity,
To whom the blessed owe their birth,
Inhabiting or heaven or earth,
That from his gracious glories He
Would dart one pardoning ray on me:
That by his Holy Spirit’s aid,
My soul may be his temple made:
That He by faith may in me dwell,
And all terrestrial joys expel:
That I in love may deeply root;
And may with all the saints compute
All measures, length, breadth, depth, and height,
Of his benign, all-saving might;
That I his loves may comprehend,
Which intellectual force transcend,
Filled with all plenitude divine,
Derivable from Godhead Trine.

Thomas Ken (1637―1711) served as Royal Chaplain to Charles II, and later as the Bishop of Bath. This poem is a reworking of Paul’s prayer for the believers, in Ephesians 3:14-19, into rhyming couplets and iambic tetrameter.

Posted: 19 February 2020

To Live in the Mercy of God

To lie back under the tallest
oldest trees. How far the stems
rise, rise
———–before ribs of shelter
——————————–open!

To live in the mercy of God. The complete
sentence too adequate, has no give.
Awe, not comfort. Stone, elbows of
stony wood beneath lenient
moss bed.

And awe suddenly
passing beyond itself. Becomes
a form of comfort.
—————–Becomes the steady
air you glide on, arms
stretched like the wings of flying foxes.
To hear the multiple silence
of trees, the rainy
forest depths of their listening.

To float, upheld,
————as salt water
————would hold you,
——————————once you dared.

To live in the mercy of God.

To feel vibrate the enraptured

waterfall flinging itself
unabating down and down
———————–to clenched fists of rock.
Swiftness of plunge,
hour after year after century,
————————————-O or Ah
uninterrupted, voice
many-stranded.
———————–To breathe
spray. The smoke of it.
———————–Arcs
of steelwhite foam, glissades
of fugitive jade barely perceptible. Such passion—
rage or joy?
———————–Thus, not mild, not temperate,
God’s love for the world. Vast
flood of mercy
——————flung on resistance.

Denise Levertov (1923―1997) is a British-born American poet who authored more than two dozen collections. Across her career, her gradual progression from agnosticism to Christian faith is evident. This poem is from her collection Sands from the Well. (1996, New Directions), and relates well to Paul’s theme in Ephesians 2:4 and 5.

Posted: 12 February 2020

Round Trip

—–“He that descended is the same
—–also that ascended…” Ephesians 4:8-10

And the descending and the rising
was three days, and it was good.

And the descending to the not-good—
where the rising and the conquering
were proclaimed throughout Hades—
was good.

Or
the descending to the good-gone-
before-Him was very good, and
the proclaiming was their rising, too.

And His rising was their rising,
and their rising was ours.
And the descending and the rising
was three days of proclaiming good.
And it was eternity. And it was very good.

Marjorie Maddox is professor of English at Loch Haven University in Pennsylvania, the director of their Creative Writing Program, and the author of True, False, None of the Above (Poiema/Cascade). This poem, which first appeared in Anglican Theological Review, is her second poem at Poems For Ephesians.

Posted: 05 February 2020

One Flesh

Lying apart now, each in a separate bed,
He with a book, keeping the light on late,
She like a girl dreaming of childhood,
All men elsewhere ― it is as if they wait
Some new event: the book he holds unread,
Her eyes fixed on the shadows overhead.

Tossed up like flotsam from a former passion,
How cool they lie. They hardly ever touch,
Or if they do, it is like a confession
Of having little feeling ― or too much.
Chastity faces them, a destination
For which their whole lives were a preparation.

Strangely apart, yet strangely close together,
Silence between them like a thread to hold
And not wind in. And time itself’s a feather
Touching them gently. Do they know they’re old,
These two who are my father and my mother
Whose fire from which I came, has now grown cold?

Elizabeth Jennings (1926―2001) is an Oxford poet. She received a C.B.E. (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 1992. This poem strikes me as a sad backspin on the truth spoken in Genesis 2 ― and echoed in Ephesians 5:31 ― of husband and wife becoming “one flesh.”

Posted: 29 January 2020

Ephesus

Rev: 2:1-7

i.
Here’s where a thing gets turned on its head in the mind
of a man self-named a sinner. He deciphers titles
inscribed on gates to the Agora: Son of Caesar. High Priest.
Lord. Titles claimed by VIPs of empire. Divinity a thing
to be grasped. Gloated on. Devotion wrought by drawn swords,
glint of steel helmets, great snorting horses.

The apostle, unconvinced, squints at the flattery
carved on gates designed and built by slaves once chained
to masters they served with loyalty, intelligence,
engineering skills. Qualities they possessed in measure
greater than those who owned them. The slaves,
set free, paid the debt of gratitude they did not owe. In Paul’s mind

honor belongs to a man he never sat at table with
yet knows by heart. A victim of empire, arrested, taunted,
executed. Who with his last breath said to a sinner:
Today you will be with me in paradise.
Friends around the table call him master, priest, prince.
They believe his kingdom has begun to turn
the whole damned empire upside down.

ii.
Wisdom, in the book of Proverbs, stands like any shameless woman
at the entrance to the city, raises her voice in the street:
instructions to the simple, precepts for pilgrims, the hungry
ushered to a table set with meat and drink. In Ephesus

Sophia stands restored between two pillars,
shoulders wrapped in a stone shawl, stone eyes fixed
on the unstoppable tsunami: tourists and time
stream past the excavated, reconstructed Celsus library,

empty of books. A ghost-filled haven.
Croesus who had gold enough to fund construction of a temple
honoring Artemis. Demetrius the silversmith
made money making shrines for her.

The wise know speech is silver, silence, gold
and those with ears can hear wind blowing in the streets
of Ephesus. Dust fills the air. Cypress trees are shaken.
Leaves on the tree of life glow green.

Sarah Klassen is a Winnipeg-based writer who’s won numerous awards, including The Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry for her collection A Curious Beatitude. Her eighth and most-recent collection is Monstrance (2012, Turnstone Press). This is the second post here about Sarah Klassen. These poems first appeared in Image.

Posted: 22 January 2020

A Prayer for Setting the Table

In memory of Annabelle Black

“…praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints…” Eph 6:17-18

As the tablecloth unfurls like an altar linen—
as napkins are folded and cups are placed
with the dishes of ordinary time—
we pray for you, to be like you.
It isn’t always in words.

Sometimes, the motion of our fingers is the prayer
leafing through the hymnal of daily tasks—
smoothing folds of fabric, scraping pots,
singing kitchen psalms.

You know the way a room breathes—
as bowls are taken out and put away?
You lived this well, the daily push of it all—
doing, serving, pursuing, moving.
Yet you were our table, and we sat around you.

So now, as our tablecloth unfurls like an altar linen,
as napkins are folded and cups are placed
with the dishes of ordinary time—
We pray to nourish others the way you nourished us:

May we always have as much.
May our tables welcome,
May our food sustain,
may we have enough for the guests we do not expect—

May we supplicate. May we persevere.
May we keep watch for saints.
May our words anoint like oil.
We pray for you, to be like you. It isn’t always in words.

Annabelle Moseley is an award-winning poet and an author of ten books, most recently Sacred Braille (En Route, 2019). She has served as the Writer-in-Residence of the Walt Whitman Birthplace in New York and 2014 Long Island Poet of the Year. Twelve of her poems are included in the anthology Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse. Her work as a poet of faith is featured in the documentary film, Masterpieces, now available to view on Amazon Prime.

Posted: 15 January 2020

For the Unknown Sculptor

I have imagined the body of Christ
in the presence of the Venus de Milo
in a sanctuary jammed with self-devoted pilgrims.

I have considered the glorious conception
abused by time, cold. Abused by antagonisms.

Raised on her plinth above the throng, she
stands where we can regard her irenic sobriety,
her face unmoved by the beauty of her form.

What gifts of God might possibly survive our obsessions
with nakedness, with celebrity, with self-righteousness?

She leans forward as if to embrace those who seek.
Before we leave, in turn, we would beg her blessing,
were she able, now, to raise her arms in peace.

James A. Zoller is Professor of Writing and Literature at Houghton College in New York State. His most recent poetry collection is Ash & Embers (2018, Poiema/Cascade). Among other passages in the epistle, Ephesians 1:22,23; and 4:16, have influenced this poem.

Posted: 08 January 2020

Disciples

———-after Ephesians 1:13-14; 6:15

Apprentices to the master
of wood and nails

they follow him to the corners
of the world lacing their sandals

for the journey. Dressed in red
banners, christened with

birth certificates signed by
a whirling wind that whispers

as soft as smoldering embers–
they go forth, fishermen

without boats, unlevying
publicans, dismounted

cameleers, a tentmaker folding
spools of haircloth away.

Twelve first, then seventy
all with tongues on fire now

to spread the light to cold
hollow bones. Across the centuries

when a famine of faith struck,
these gifted garners filled empty souls

from a storehouse of God’s plenty.
When the night terrors descended

they hid themselves in his blood
and thorns until they too

were ready to fare toward
that world without end.

Philip C. Kolin is the author of several poetry collections, most-recently Reaching Forever (2018, Poiema/Cascade). He is the Distinguished Professor of English (Emeritus) at the University of Southern Mississippi. This is his second poem to appear at Poems For Ephesians.

Posted: 01 January 2020

O Holy Night

———-Ephesians 4:31 – Let all bitterness and wrath
——————–and anger…be put away from you…

In the easement,
stripped trees daven apathetically
under a skull-cap sky.
——————–Oh, Child,
are you sure? This world?
This bleak winter?
These unconscionable times?

The last of the day’s feeble sun
steeps the holly,
staining its berries a rich
——————–crimson
as bright and slick
as a seasoned trickster, then
slips off the edge of the earth,

leaving to us this night,
first among too many nights
we’ve marked
——————–and mean,
every year, to find holy.
It’s getting old, this act.
Or maybe it’s me. Lately,

I’m all lapse and misstep.
And yet, love’s tiny fist seeks out
my heart with the old entreaty,
———————and yearly
I somehow let in love enough
to try again: to call our people
decent, our planet worthy.

Marjorie Stelmach is the author of five poetry collections, including Falter (Poiema Poetry Series). She is the winner of the Chad Walsh Prize, and has had poems appear in Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse, and in The Turning Aside: The Kingdom Poets Book of Contemporary Christian Poetry. She lives in Manchester, Missouri, and has served as director of the Howard Nemerov Writing Scholars Program at Washington University.

Posted: 25 December 2019

Dear Christians, One and All, Rejoice

Dear Christians, one and all, rejoice,
With exultation springing,
And, with united heart and voice
And holy rapture singing,
Proclaim the wonders God hath done,
How His right arm the victory won;
Right dearly it hath cost Him.

Fast bound in Satan’s chains I lay,
Death brooded darkly o’er me,
Sin was my torment night and day,
In sin my mother bore me;
Yea, deep and deeper still I fell,
Life had become a living hell,
So firmly sin possessed me.

My own good works availed me naught,
No merit they attaining;
Free will against God’s judgment fought,
Dead to all good remaining.
My fears increased till sheer despair
Left naught but death to be my share;
The pangs of hell I suffered.

But God beheld my wretched state
Before the world’s foundation,
And, mindful of His mercies great,
He planned my soul’s salvation.
A father’s heart He turned to me,
Sought my redemption fervently:
He gave His dearest Treasure.

He spoke to His beloved Son:
‘Tis time to have compassion.
Then go, bright Jewel of My crown,
And bring to man salvation;
From sin and sorrow set him free,
Slay bitter death for him that he
May live with Thee forever.

This Son obeyed His Father’s will,
Was born of virgin mother,
And God’s good pleasure to fulfill,
He came to be my Brother.
No garb of pomp or power He wore,
A servant’s form, like mine, He bore,
To lead the devil captive.

To me He spake: Hold fast to Me,
I am thy Rock and Castle;
Thy Ransom I Myself will be,
For thee I strive and wrestle;
For I am with thee, I am thine,
And evermore thou shalt be Mine;
The Foe shall not divide us.

The Foe shall shed My precious blood,
Me of My life bereaving.
All this I suffer for thy good;
Be steadfast and believing.
Life shall from death the victory win,
My innocence shall bear thy sin;
So art thou blest forever.

Now to My Father I depart,
The Holy Spirit sending
And, heavenly wisdom to impart,
My help to thee extending.
He shall in trouble comfort thee,
Teach thee to know and follow Me,
And in all truth shall guide thee.

What I have done and taught, teach thou,
My ways forsake thou never;
So shall My kingdom flourish now
And God be praised forever.
Take heed lest men with base alloy
The heavenly treasure should destroy;
This counsel I bequeath thee.

Martin Luther (1483―1546) inadvertently started the Protestant Reformation when he posted 95 theses on the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church for debate. This hymn, translated by Richard Massie, relates to many scriptures, including Ephesians 1: 7-10; consider the hymn’s fifth and sixth verses, which fit well, too, with our celebrations of Christmas.

Posted: 18 December 2019

Before Creation

We are the fruit of ancient longing;
before night and day were created
the founding father had a cunning plan:
His Word would love into being
the very image of the lover
made afresh and free in every soul.

My womb felt the unfolding
of sons before their earthly birth,
the aching of making after love;
God chose the cherishing
to bubble along for billions of years
before I appeared in history.

After such a long gestation
am I doing it right,
am I what you hoped,
when you sent the Son
to blaze a path home?

Carved from the great yearning
we recently populated the world;
it was a free entry.
We can walk away to death,
fall as woodshavings to the sculptor’s floor,
but I scramble towards life,
to seize the crown of the truly known
in the humble place made for me,
who was thought of so long ago,
before star dust ever blew into God’s eye.

Joanne Newbery is a Creative Writing student at Australia’s Southern Cross University. Her work has appeared in such Australian journals as Quadrant and Verity La. “Before Creation” was inspired by Ephesians 1:4, 5 and 11.

Posted: 11 December 2019

Ephesus

Thus saith the Lord to Ephesus,
And thus he speaks to some of us;
Amidst my churches, lo, I stand,
And hold the pastors in my hand.

Thy works, to me, are fully known,
Thy patience, and thy toil, I own;
Thy views of gospel truth are clear,
Nor canst thou other doctrine bear.

Yet I must blame while I approve,
Where is thy first, thy fervent love?
Dost thou forget my love to thee,
That thine is grown so faint to me?

Recall to mind the happy days
When thou wast filled with joy and praise;
Repent, thy former works renew,
Then I’ll restore thy comforts too.

Return at once, when I reprove,
Lest I thy candlestick remove;
And thou, too late, thy loss lament;
I warn before I strike, Repent.

Hearken to what the Spirit saith,
To him that overcomes by faith;
The fruit of life’s unfading tree,
In paradise his food shall be.

John Newton (1725—1807) is the author of perhaps the best-known hymn in English — “Amazing Grace”. This poem is based on Revelation 2:1-7, where John is instructed to write these things to the angel of the church in Ephesus.

Posted: 04 December 2019

Sonnet of Thanksgiving

giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father – Ephesians 5:20

I wake, draw the curtains and am suddenly aware
that He is profligate, our God, giving us more
than we need, more than we ever dream to ask for.
Through the window on this winter morning, there

beside my house, the forest is faint with mist.
The white trees are like women standing half-seen
in a sauna. The bushes where the spiders have been
are strewn with ornaments for throat and wrist:

necklaces, bracelets, strung with diamonds. A stark
and startling wealth, this jewellery the women
have put off. They stand in silent communion:
unadorned, white, bar the occasional birthmark.

And then in the stillness, the whiteness, the swirl,
a lone bird call: it hangs on the ear like a pearl.

Andrew Lansdown was called Australia’s greatest Christian poet, by the late Les Murray. He has published more than a dozen poetry collections, including Far from Home: poems of faith, grief and gladness (2010, Wombat Books) from which this poem is taken. His poetry has appeared in the McMaster Journal of Theology & Ministry and in The Turning Aside: The Kingdom Poets Book of Contemporary Christian Poetry.

Posted: 27 November 2019

Person

Sheepfold and hill lie
under open sky.

This door that is ‘I AM’
seemed to seal my tomb
my ceilinged cell
(not enclosed earth, or hill)

there was no knob, or hinge.
A skied stonehenge
unroofed the prison?
and lo its walls uprising,
very stone drawing breath?

They closed again. Beneath
steel tiers, all walled, I lay
barred every way.

‘I am.’ The door
was flesh; was there.

No hinges swing, no latch
lifts. Nothing moves. But such
is love, the captive may
in blindness find the way:

In all his heaviness, he passes through.

So drenched with Being and created new
the flock is folded close, and free
to feed ― His cropping clay, His earth ―
and to the woolly, willing bunt-head, forth
shining, unseen, draws near
the Morning Star.

Margaret Avison (1918―2007) is a Toronto poet, an officer of the Order of Canada, and a two-time winner of the Governor General’s Award. This poem relates primarily to John 10, but also includes the thought of the “captive” only being able to be rescued by Christ (Ephesians 2: 8 & 9; 4:8; etc).

Posted: 20 November 2019

St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, Lent

At the word fornicators, I roll my eyes.
Not to live in the passions of the flesh―
how grim and arid the light we’re promised,
as if all the earth were bleak midwinter.
Meanwhile, Paul, plum trees are bruising
the church parking lot, cherry trees readying
their exuberant and joyful climax of pink,
the palest pink, nipple pink, pink of my dry
(I licked them) lips, of my amoral animal body.
Not easily have I obeyed the commandments.
For I love that keen, painful twisting of desire,
the tight bud of it straining against its husk.

Anya Krugovoy Silver (1968―2018) is the author of four poetry collections, including Second Bloom (2017, Poiema/Cascade) and from nothing (2016, LSU Press) from which this poem is taken. She taught English at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. The honest, wrestling response in this poem is to a perceived judgemental tone in Ephesians 5:5.

Posted: 13 November 2019

Poem for November

———-Ephesians 5: 8-20.

Many trees are mere stencils now,
but some still dazzle, those with light
in their yellow leaves, this even
as November skies stretch mute
and somber.

It is easy this time of year
to dwell on losses and the world
so shattered, even watching this translucent
yellow tree, whose light one could read by,
this blaze against the dimming season.

And we are gathered, each one of us,
in this autumn dilemma,
both anchored and adrift.

Like Eve reaching for Adam’s hand
as they stand, stunned,
outside the gates.

Or that child, Mary, who in the silence
after Gabriel’s startling news,
wonders, “Should I say yes?”

Or Paul, the persecutor, eyes scaled,
his mouth a thin, straight
line, his heart in its first
ever motion of turning over.

Or two thousand years later
those rabbis at Auschwitz
who put God on trial,
convicted him,
then turned to evening prayer.

Or the aging professor
who said that when he cannot
forgive, he simply acts as if he had.

These images may seem splinters,
fragments scattered and aimless.
But we are not so twisted
that we cannot see the cross’s
change from torture into bliss,
from blood and slivers
into the gleam of polished
planks for Christ, arms
raised in victory.

So here we gather
in all of our imperfections,
waiting for song to blaze into the dark
corners, as this year races
toward both finalés and preludes.

Listen. Soon one clear voice will blend
with another. Anchored by the rush
of melody we will catch hold
of the whole breath and timbre
of the moment and together
in this world so prone to drift,
we will see by the cross,
the tree of light, pure music.

Jill Peláez Baumgaertner is the Poetry Editor for Christian Century. Her most-recent poetry collection What Cannot Be Fixed appears as part of the Poiema Poetry Series from Cascade Books. She is Professor of English Emerita at Wheaton College.

Posted: 06 November 2019

Believe Not Those Who Say

Believe not those who say
The upward path is smooth,
Lest thou should stumble in the way,
And faint before the truth.

It is the only road
Unto the realms of joy;
But he who seeks that blest abode
Must all his powers employ.

To labour and to love,
To pardon and endure,
To lift thy heart to God above,
And keep thy conscience pure.

Be this thy constant aim,
Thy hope, thy chief delight,
What matter who should whisper blame
Or who should scorn or slight.

What matters—if God approve,
And if within thy breast,
Thou feel the comfort of His love,
The earnest of His rest?

Anne Brontë (1820―1849) was the youngest of the famous Brontë sisters. This poem, written in 1848, was called “The Narrow Way” by Charlotte in her 1850 edition. The final line echoes the King James translation of Ephesians 1:14, where the Holy Spirit is referred to as “…the earnest [that is the pledge] of our inheritance.”

Posted: 30 October 2019

Gary

holding the lifeless boy
i tell his mother
he is
beautiful

his large hands promised
greatness
the mention of which
is a mystery
but with it
peace
enters the
room

unfulfilled promise is better
remembered
than none
at all

his tiny body deceivingly heavy
wiggling makes
living things
lighter

cold to the touch
the warmth
has left his
blanket

dressed in blue
his body lovingly washed
nurtured
from
day one

loved from the beginning
she loves him
to the end

you will help me let him go
she said
but when I arrive
it is
too late

I cradle his body
dead to the world
he is alive
to God

and in that moment
my own life
leaves
me

The Rev. Dr. William J. Danaher Jr. is an Episcopal Priest serving as Rector of Christ Church Cranbrook in Metro Detroit. He received his PhD from Yale University. He and his wife, Claire, have two daughters, Phoebe and Rose. This poem connects Ephesians 2:14 to an experience he had as a hospital chaplain in Washington, D.C.

Posted: 23 October 2019

Looking for Mt. Monadnock

———-She flowed into a foaming wave;
———-She stood Monadnoc’s head.
———-―Emerson, “The Sphinx”

We see the sign, “Monadnock State Park”
as it flashes by, after a mile or two

decide to go back, “We can’t pass by Monadnock
without seeing it,” I say, turning around.

We head down the side road―“Monadnock Realty,”
“Monadnock Pottery,” “Monadnock Designs,”

but no Monadnock. Then the signs fall away―
nothing but trees and the darkening afternoon.

We don’t speak, pass a clearing, and you say,
“I think I saw it, or part of it―a bald rock?”

Miles and miles more. Finally, I pull over
and we consult a map. “Monadnock’s right there.”

“Or just back a bit there.” “But we should see it―we’re
practically on top of it.” And driving back

we look―trees, a flash of clearing, purple rock―
but we are, it seems, too close to see it:

It is here. We are on it. It is under us.

Robert Siegel (1939―2012) shared this poem with Eugene Peterson, when it was first written. In a chapter on Ephesians 1 in Practice Resurrection, Peterson shares the poem and says, “This practice-resurrection life, this growing-up-in-Christ life…is a Mt. Monadnock kind of life. We read the words, we see the signs…pray the prayers…But we never see what we expect to see.” This poem appears in Robert Siegel’s final collection ― Within This Tree of Bones: New & Selected Poems (2013, Poiema Poetry Series/Cascade Books).

Posted: 16 October 2019

To My Dear and Loving Husband

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay;
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let’s so persever,
That when we live no more we may live ever.

Anne Bradstreet (1612—1672) was a Puritan who emigrated to America in 1630, along with her parents and her husband — whom she had married when she was just sixteen. She was the first American woman to have a book published, and is considered by many to be America’s first poet. The opening sentence in this poem references Ephesians 5:31.

Posted: 09 October 2019

Drawn

———-Ephesians 2:4-5

Even when we were dead you reached
us with your fiery fingers even deep in the dark

nether landscape, the flame at last catching, etching.
Not an easy thing to awaken to this burning, yet we turn

into the blistering luster of it, eager for the mistakes
to erase in smoke. Twice I have seen the walls of my home

glow orange. The first, an inferno of wildfire reflected
its destructive image there, an unnatural midnight sun flickering

over a drawing of you (a penciled desire of a drawing of you),
your eyes closed in prayer. The second, persimmons alight

in the dying autumn rays tinted the whole interior, a seeming
pastoral until I considered the still life of a body letting go

in bright-dappled yield. Both blazes revealed your consuming
mercy. Our wings home to it, our antennae prick

to the warm swelling updraft of it, the scoring and scorching
of the terrible approach, the blood-red falling away

of our transgressions. The likeness inside leaps to greet,
rushes to be brought to life, moths trembling into your

magnetic heat as you render us in love.

Laura Reece Hogan is the award-winning author of the poetry chapbook O, Garden Dweller (2017, Finishing Line) and the nonfiction book I Live, No Longer I: Paul’s Spirituality of Suffering, Transformation, and Joy (2017, Wipf & Stock). She is one of the poets featured in the new collection In A Strange Land: Introducing Ten Kingdom Poets (2019, Cascade). Her poems have appeared in such publications as America, Christian Century and Anglican Theological Review. She lives with her family in Southern California.

Posted: 02 October 2019

Width, Length, Height, Depth

———-—Jenny’s Canyon, Snow Canyon State Park, Utah
———-—Eph. 3:18

There is something small
about the love of God.

I clamber up a few rocks,
walk a hundred yards

through pink sand,
then feel the canyon walls

converge on my shoulders.
Just skin, hawk song,

my blood pounding
against fossils in the dark,

my only movements my hands
channeling the marrow

of sandstone. I can look nowhere
but up the sheer red walls

pocked and hallowed
by chronicles of rain,

forever closing
but never touching,

in the gap
the whole sky caught.

Poems For Ephesians has now accumulated a year’s worth of weekly poems. Like the inaugural Ephesians poem of one year ago, this poem is by Tania Runyan and is from her poetry collection Second Sky (2013, Poiema Poetry Series). This poem first appeared in The Other Journal. She and her family live in northern Illinois.

Posted: 25 September 2019

from The Faerie Queene — Book I, Canto I

i
A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine,
Y cladd in mightie armes and silver shielde,
Wherein old dints of deepe wounds did remaine,
The cruell markes of many a bloudy fielde;
Yet armes till that time did he never wield:
His angry steede did chide his foming bitt,
As much disdayning to the curbe to yield:
Full jolly knight he seemd, and faire did sitt,
As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt.

ii
But on his brest a bloudie Crosse he bore,
The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,
For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead as living ever him ador’d:
Upon his shield the like was also scor’d,
For soveraine hope, which in his helpe he had:
Right faithfull true he was in deede and word,
But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad;
Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.

The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser (c.1552—1599) is one of the longest poems in the English language. Here Spenser writes of knights, as a way of speaking allegorically of different virtues. Paul’s description of “the armour of God” is clearly an influence for the poem.

Posted: 18 September 2019

Feet Shod

———-Ephesians 6:15

Shoes laced up as if it’s the first time you’ve done so,
leather and synthetics suffering your soles.

Toes wiggle around to see what room is available
and then a quick securing of knots—

twins yawn in their blankets, ancestral phrases whispered
in morning light, shades of quiet anticipate breeze or storm.

Just a moment of balance, then ballast settles in
against the barbs that may or may not come

to knock you sidelong or push you off such a narrow,
level path, even when you speak armistice,

goodwill, peace, the kind that offers a coat
to the soldier accusing you of heresy, the kind

that bids serene elation—silent and jubilant—
causing you to rise amid threats

wheeling about your helmet, breastplate, and shield. No fear,
now, even though you know what it means to stand.

Mark D. Bennion is professor of English at BYU-Idaho. His poetry collections include Psalm & Selah (2009, Bentley Enterprises) and Forsythia (2013, Aldrich Press). His poems have appeared in The Cresset, Dappled Things, The Penwood Review, Spiritus, Windhover, and other literary journals. He lives with his wife and their five children in the Upper Snake River Valley.

Posted: 10 September 2019

Conductor

When it comes down, it comes down
Out of the dark heart of the nimbus
I can never see it coming,
Until I can see nothing else.

It finds my outstretched fingers
Travels down my reaching arms
To turn my bones to filaments
And makes my heart to burn.

I should be obliterated
Made so mortal a conductor
Of so furious a light
But he grounded me before he struck

And being struck, I glow.

Mike Bonikowsky is a professional caregiver and unprofessional stay-at-home dad. His poems have appeared in Love Is Moving, Ekstasis, Nations Magazine, and the Journal of Disability and Religion. In 2017 he released his chapbook Cormorant Lord and Other Poems. He lives in Melancthon Township, Ontario, with his wife and two small children. “Conductor” comes from Ephesians 3:17-19.

Posted: 04 September 2019

At Table

Infinitesimal and of no consequence
but for the daft valuation of divine love —

by whom a body is made no larger,
no more visible from the ridge opposite,

yet through whom a body is seated
in the heavenlies, where — this, a mystery —

it offers no service at that high table.
And so a body is free of need to set for itself

a place at any earthly table, free indeed
to stand aside and, in the grace of

such a love, wait on all reclined around it.
Which is, of course, absurd — the very

idea of transcending value — even desperate.
To the praise of God: a body, nonsensical.

Brad Davis is the author of eight collections, including Still Working It Out (Poiema Poetry Series) and is the Poetry Editor for The Mockingbird. He and his wife now live in Putnam, Connecticut. His poems have appeared in such journals as Poetry, Image, Paris Review, Ruminate, Connecticut Review, and Spiritus, and online at VerseDaily and Kingdom Poets. This poem was inspired by Ephesians 2:6.

Posted: 28 August 2019

Longsuffering

The prisoner wants the only window’s
horizontal iron bars to rust, the raindrops
strung before the gray day after rain,
these unspendable coins purchasing
light and air, these upside-down opals
lined up like the pure eyes of guards
who have never witnessed battle.
The sun comes through, and his mind drifts
to some painter studying, tracing shadows
of outdoor plants on a piece of paper.

Outside, little piles of dirt or ash
may seem the only audience, but leaves
break forth from them in time, little proverbs
with their green and silver sides.
For example—The fear of the Lord
is the beginning of wisdom.
On a bench near the wall listening
for the beauty in slow truth, a book
open to a beautiful sentence
almost sings of freedom
the same way the prisoner used to gentle
his horse, repeating her name, stroking
her silky ears because, after all,
he made her who she is, didn’t he?

John Poch is the author six collections of poetry, two which were published this year: Texases (WordFarm) and Between Two Rivers (TTU Press—with photographer Jerod Foster). His work has been published in Poetry, Paris Review, the Nation, Yale Review, and other journals. He teaches at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. This poem first appeared in Image.

Posted: 21 August 2019

The Ephesians Declaration

To the divine family
Bonded by love’s gracious eternal power and wisdom
How blessed are you, shall you ask why

See how you are drawn (out) by grace
From darkness and doom
Because you hold it at appearance, at sight
Hold it still
Hold it in meekness and reverence
By the voiceful tide of the precious blood
You will never sink

By the mystery of the lamb
You are brought into the fold
Look on and live
The kingdom is not for you alone
Love!
Don’t grope and groan in the selfish dark
Let us keep on the light of charity

And for battles without,
Your king is the greatest
Stay and walk with him
You will not go down forever

Emmanuel Chukwuebuka Akaolisa, is an Igbo by tribe who resides in Kaduna state in northern Nigeria. He has a BSc in political science and a Masters in International Affairs and Diplomacy, both from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna. Although he wants to resume his studies, local violence has been a problem — including having his place of business burned. He self-published Sometimes a Poet and the Peace of Wisdom in 2015.

Posted: 14 August 2019

Morning Liturgy

Good morning again,
child of God.
Beloved of the Father,
as in the Son.
Wholly lived in holy hope,
weariness undone.
Unfinished, re-created,
crushed, crashed-crimson,
affliction abated.
Sustained assuagement,
inspirited allayment,
trust-sown: persuaded.
Worship-rested,
wreck-ready yet washed
in dawn’s drawn animation.

Good morning, good morning.
Let light lay large upon your face.
May failure focus the works
of your hands-feet-heart-mind.
Little children, dear friends,
the last hour is here.
Escape the choke-hold of night.
Hold fast terminal healing,
cling to love incomprehensible, unyielding.
Lowly transcendence,
sordid modesty,
redeemed incitement
of radiant coronation.

Consecrated illumination!
Sanctified sunrise in
abject approbation!
Daybreak fulfills
twilight’s renunciation.
Night recedent.
Silent lands baptised in gold.
Awaken, forebear sleep, rise up.
Good morning, again.
Dan Baker’s poetry has appeared in Altarwork, Portage Magazine, and Tipton Poetry Journal. He is a regular contributor to the film criticism site CinemaFaith.com. He grew up among the cornfields of rural Wisconsin, but now lives with his family in Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point neighbourhood. This poem was inspired by Ephesians 5:8-14.

Posted: 07 August 2019

The Showing

———-Ephesians 5:14

From a dead sleep—-I turned
at three o’clock—-when

You showed me—-your manly heart
how bold—-how brave—-it beat

amorous as any other
lover’s—-its rise and fall

that swelling surge of—-Love-
blood pumped—-burning clean through

arteries and veins—-till
every cell sang—-breathlessly

exposed—-I asked You—-then aloud
come Lord

and you came—-so sharply
I cried out—-in praise

to You
in me.

Margo Swiss teaches English and Creative Writing at York University. Her books include: The Hatching of the Heart (2015, Poiema Poetry Series) and the anthology, Poetry As Liturgy (2007, The St, Thomas Poetry Series). She and her husband, David Kent, live in Toronto.

Posted: 31 July 2019

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844—1889) is one of the 19th century’s most influential poets. In this sonnet, Hopkins reflects on how creation lives according to God’s desire, but that God works out his justice and grace in redeemed people as their wills merge with God’s will. Two of the passages Hopkins had been reflecting on in this are Ephesians 3:16-19, and Ephesians 2:10.

Posted: 24 July 2019

By Grace Are Ye Saved

It’s a Saturday. I am practicing scales on the piano
when the doorbell rings—and I’m glad
to have a reason to stop. A huddle of strangers,
all in black, looms through the panel of wavy glass.

“Mom?” I call. She limps from the kitchen,
opens the door, stands firm. “Good morning,”
they say, chorus-like, men and women—skirts, ties.
“Are you sure of your salvation when the end cometh?”

says one of the men. He holds out what looks to me
like a comic book. The Watchtower. My mother recoils.
“May we come inside?” says one of the women.
My mother keeps hold of the door. “I’m sorry,” she says.

And then, like the girl she was in Sunday School,
rattling off her memory verse: “For by grace are ye saved
through faith: and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
Not of works, lest any man should boast.” Her face has gone

a little red. “Ephesians 2:8-9,” she adds apologetically.
And she quietly shuts the door in their faces. She turns
to me then—me, watching from the piano bench. She is
trembling. And I know that, somehow, I have been saved.

Paul J. Willis is the author of six poetry collections, including Say This Prayer Into The Past (2013, Poiema Poetry Series) and Little Rhymes For Lowly Plants (2019, White Violet Press). He has been a professor at Westmont College for thirty years, and is the former Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara, California.

Posted: 17 July 2019

Where Is Ephesus? Where, the Ephesians?

(To ‘αγιοις, sanctis, the Holy Ones at Ephesus)

Keep in mind always the riches of glory
———-his inheritance among the holy ones

Things to know before you go
How hot it is—–How little shade—–Challenging
For the differently abled—–Watch uneven stone surfaces

For he is our peace making all peoples one
———-breaking down the walls of enmity

A must-see for history and archaeology buffs
UNESCO wonder—–World Heritage site
Rise and demise of cultures—–Diorama in real time

When the plan of mystery is brought to light
———-that which has been hidden from ages past

Here, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
Temple of Artemis—–Even pillaging Xerxes had mercy
Look for the single column which remains—–Rubble

With the armor of God, hold your ground, stand fast
———-your feet shod in readiness for peace

A city century-challenged to save its silt-filled harbor
Dredging—–Building—–Moving
A non-city now—–Eight kilometers to the sea

Maryanne Hannan has published poems in many journals and anthologies, including Windhover, Cresset, Christianity and Literature, and The World Is Charged: Poetic Engagements with Gerard Manley Hopkins. A former Latin teacher, she lives in upstate New York. “Where Is Ephesus? Where, the Ephesians?” emerged from a tourist visit to Ephesus many years ago. Her book Rocking like It’s All Intermezzo: 21st Century Psalms Responsorials will soon appear from Resource Publications.

Posted: 10 July 2019

The Word

My father was one of just a
few white ministers in northern
Oklahoma in the sixties willing
to preach in Black churches to
even go inside Black churches

It gave him joy on top of joy
The Word he said The Word
is what we need wherever we
are and whoever we’re with
The Word is all we need

His funeral in the mid-eighties
was one of the largest in our town’s
history and it was a diverse group of
people who merged into a line of
mourners and The Word was there

Bill McCloud finds many connections between his poem and Ephesians (1:10; 2:14; 4:5; 4:25; and 6:24). In 2017 The Smell of the Light, his poetry collection dealing with his own first-hand experience of the Vietnam War, appeared from Balkan Press. He teaches U.S. History at Rogers State University and lives in Pryor, Oklahoma.

Posted: 03 July 2019

Ephesians with Coffee

The unsearchable riches of Christ… Ephesians 3:8

This letter; this truth packed fine and tight
like a new brick of coffee in the morning.
A pause on the edge. A deep, pacifying breath.

A decision. To move in
an incision, an awkward tear,
grit showered in every direction.

Such truth, such depth, such wild,
uncountable grains; such unruly
shower of sparks to set us reeling.

This is truth unsearchable. Though
we are swimming in it, we cannot grasp it;
it eludes us and slips through our fingers.

Yet. Everything that is illuminated
becomes a light. Pause again,
regather scattered grains to a heap,

pack down. Let crystal clear water
filter through, cup the perfumed stream.
It is enough to know there is glory, and breathe.

Emma Kemp lives and writes in Coventry, England, where she is active in the local poetry scene. She won the 2018 Theatre Absolute Pillar Poetry competition with her poem Phoenix, a call to action about the choice between the collapse and redemption of a city. Her work tends to focus on the natural world and finding hope in dark places.

Posted: 26 June 2019

Jesus, The Very Thought of Thee

Jesus, the very thought of thee
with sweetness fills the breast;
but sweeter far thy face to see,
and in thy presence rest.

O hope of every contrite heart,
O joy of all the meek,
to those who fall, how kind thou art!
How good to those who seek!

But what to those who find? Ah, this
nor tongue nor pen can show;
the love of Jesus, what it is,
none but his loved ones know.

Jesus, our only joy be thou,
as thou our prize wilt be;
Jesus, be thou our glory now,
and through eternity.

This hymn is believed to have been written by Bernard of Clairvaux (1090—1153), and relates to Ephesians 3:19 — “and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” The hymn was translated by Edward Caswall. For more information, and a fifteen stanza version of this poem, visit http://kingdompoets.blogspot.com/2015/11/bernard-of-clairvaux.html

Posted: 19 June 2019

Husbands

What if, instead of focusing our thoughts
upon the speck that’s in our sister’s eye,
teaching “submit,” we do what Jesus taught?
Submit ourselves to Scripture—dare to climb
that Everest: “Husbands, love your wives as Christ
has loved the church.” Men, stop and linger there
before his love, before his sacrifice,
his dreams laid down, his agonizing prayer.
He, worthy of all worship, washed our feet.
He, never wrong, yet chose the way of loss.
He, King of Kings, embraced humility,
gave up his rights—submitted to the cross.
He modeled how we men should lead: he died.
The greatest is a servant to his bride.

Michael Stalcup is a campus missionary in Bangkok, Thailand, who serves with Thai Christian Students. His poems have appeared in Ekstasis Magazine, Faithfully Magazine, Inheritance Magazine, Poets Reading the News, and Visible Poetry Project. You can find more of his poetry at www.michaelstalcup.com. He and his wife have three young children.

Posted: 12 June 2019

The Shard Lodged Under A Rib

Ephesians 2:22 — In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.

———-Dear God
I assume a lodging has been hollowed out
———-For you
Behind breastbone or lung
———-A grotto
———-Where collarbones meet
———-Pointing toward
An ancient and forgotten chamber of the heart
———-A haven for the Ghost himself
———-My God
Could it be
———-A boat
———-In all this blood
Riding the torrent that moves to save
———-Tendon and gristle
———-Gliding guiding the squall
Of doubt and argument
———-Where the two sides of my face leak vowels
———-Curdled and peevish
When I call to you and hear
———-Gibberish
———-It’s so hard to know
How you get around
———-Emptiness that is full
———-Of snot and pride
You of all things
———-Comingling
———-Shame and…

The prayer ends here
———-Eyes flicker open
———-Then close

To what can never be known
———-Small ripples
———-Dance down the spine

Susan Cowger of Cheney, Washington, is the author of the poetry chapbook Scarab Hiding from Finishing Line Press. She also received honorable mention in The MacGuffin 2015 National Poet Hunt Contest. She is one of the founding editors of Rock & Sling. Her poetry has been selected for In A Strange Land: Introducing Ten Kingdom Poets (Poiema Poetry Series).

Posted: 05 June 2019

Rich in Mercy

The gift of the Son of Man is free.
Salvation springs up around our feet,
given without our asking,
growing though we’re not deserving,
sprouting like grain from the earth.
The harvest of every man’s land, this grace,
pushes up through soil like golden braids—
bread of life, for you.

But my brethren:
You must pick it up.
You must bend your knees,
fall to the ground, reap what is free,
take redemption into your hands,
thresh it, grind it, bake it, bless it.
This is heavy work, but it is good work.

Theresa Monteiro is a student in the M.F.A. program at the University of New Hampshire. She has had poems published in Good Fat Poetry and Silver Needle Press. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and six children. “Rich in Mercy” reflects on Ephesians 2:4.

Posted: 29 May 2019

Resuscitation

But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when
we were dead through our trespasses – made us alive together with Christ (Eph. 2: 4 – 5a)

It’s difficult when others don’t know you are dead,
—–for they might treat you differently if they did:
perhaps a slight easing of the expectations
—–around lateness and poor attendance,
———-not to mention personal grooming;
a noticeable toning down of sarcasm over
—–unfinished projects, or misplaced keys.

And maybe, the admission
—–your heart has stopped beating,
is not just a poor excuse
—–to avoid scraping egg off the plate,
———-or practicing minor scales,
but has freed you to gasp, slack-jawed, at love
—–surging from the lungs of God.

Glen Soderholm is pastor of Two Rivers Church a church plant in downtown Guelph, Ontario. He is a singer/songwriter/recording artist who also directs Moveable Feast Resources, an organization that offers encouragement to the church in the areas of worship and missional church. He is married to Sharon and has two daughters Danielle and Julia.

Posted: 22 May 2019

Full Flower Moon

The moon tonight smells like linen,
clean & pressed, spreading
its blue fabric over not just May’s fields

but the willow by the pond,
the hens in the one-window coop,
the Lab on the lawn,

poking her nose into the myrtle.
The sky tastes like a mug of tea,
warm & smooth with cream,

served at a welcoming table.
Should God suddenly speak,
the phlox would not be flummoxed

or the red-tailed fox baffled.
After all, green already
pulses through everything,

its rhythm in sync with this full
flower moon & the worm
below, writing a new word in dirt.

Would it really be so strange
if the still, small voice broke open
like a bulb beneath the earth,

then aired something sensible
as the strong stem lifting high
its lit lantern, signaling us

to join in, do what we were made to do?

Julie L. Moore is Professor of English at Taylor University. “Full Flower Moon” (one of the traditional names for May’s full moon) is from her most recent poetry collection Full Worm Moon (2018, Poiema Poetry Series). It is inspired by Ephesians 2:10 (as is the title of the poetry series!)

Posted: 15 May 2019

I Sang in Darkness

—–On the occasion of a special birthday

The bathroom light
flickers out. I bathe
in darkness, hot water
spraying all over my body,
my unclean skin. Steam
engulfs me, my thoughts
on the inside search
for holy water. Baptized
in darkness for so long
before I felt the slant
of light lavishly pour
into my soul—
but today I remember.

~~~

I’m alone
in a restaurant booth,
but you are here
so my heart
is not troubled.

I order a Pinot noir
to toast to you,
and the basket
of bread on the table
makes me remember
your holy words.

I lift my voice
as I break
bread, bless wine,
thank you
for your sacrifice.
I sing in the light of praise,
in shadows of the cross.

John C. Mannone is the author of three poetry collections, including the forthcoming Flux Lines (Linnet’s Wings Press), and is the president of the Chattanooga Writers’ Guild. He is a retired physics professor, living in Tennessee. This poem relates to Paul’s words in Ephesians 5:8.

Posted: 08 May 2019

Astrophysics

Eph. 4:10

When Jesus ascended to heaven —
his scruffy band staring skyward,
slack-mouthed, crick-necked —

did he corkscrew into a wormhole
and Bigbang out the other end,
Light in whom we see light,

Morning Star,
exploding into Godglory
to fuse again with the Fatherforce

with the propulsive power
of a billion flaring supernovae
flinging stardust

across a million galaxies?
Who says Love cannot be
both particle and wave?

Patricia L. Hamilton is a professor of English at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. She won the Rash Award in Poetry in both 2015 and 2017, and has received 3 Pushcart nominations. Her first collection, The Distance to Nightfall, was published by Main Street Rag (2014).

Posted: 01 May 2019

God Moves In A Mysterious Way

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs
And works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err
And scan His work in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.

William Cowper (1731—1800) is best known for the hymns he wrote, such as “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood.” His first poetry collection — Poems by William Cowper, of the Inner Temple — was published in 1782. This poem intertwines well with Ephesians 1:9 “Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself…”

Posted: 24 April 2019

The Plan

Ephesians 2:10

In the beginning,

his blueprint unfurled across the stars.
He dreamed, then spoke life into the silence,
and called it Good.

His workshop full of fingerprints,
he scripts names and dates with light,
dictates plans for minutes and lifetimes.

His breath calls cells to assemble.
Each molecule pulsates with possibility.
He measures the length of our days across his palm.

He fashions our gifts as his tools,
in the room of his thoughts of us
that has no walls and no ceiling.

As we live, he still crafts.
He turns the clay within his fingers
thoughtfully, deliberately,

until the shape is just so.

Until our eyes notice others.
Until the heart can measure choice
in the scale of the mind.

Until we realize his work has been placed
in our palms.

Amy L. George is an English professor at Southwestern Assemblies of God University in Waxahachie, Texas. Her poetry collections include The Stopping Places (2018), and Desideratum (2013) both from Finishing Line Press, and The Fragrance of Memory (2009, Amsterdam Press).

Posted: 17 April 2019

Ephesians— To the Glory

Someone wrote them for me.
But they are my letters.
If not hand-writ by me— written by another through me.

To the praise of the glory of his grace.——————————(Eph. 1:6,12,14)

A letter to believers—
that they would succumb to the grace I tell them of—
that they might know the habitation of God— its breadth,
length, depth, height.——————————————— ——–(Eph. 3:18)

Christ descending and ascending————————————(Eph. 4:9)
ordered with reason.

A pleading is there— Awake——————————————–(Eph. 5:14)
An admonition—
that in the dispensation of the fullness of times
he might gather together in one
all things in Christ,
both which are in heaven, and which are on earth.———–(Eph. 1:10)

Pray the utterance might be given—
that I may open my mouth boldly to make known
the mystery of the gospel———————————————–(Eph. 6:19)
to the praise of the glory of his grace.

Diane Glancy has written extensively as a poet, novelist, playwright, and nonfiction writer. Her most recent book is the poetry collection The Book of Bearings — the most-recent title in the Poiema Poetry Series from Cascade Books. As a poet she has published twenty titles — including both chapbooks and full-length collections. Glancy has received many awards including a Minnesota Book Award, an American Book Award, the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and an Oklahoma Book Award.

Posted: 10 April 2019

Story of the One Man (Ephesians 2:11-19)

When I was a boy of thirteen
they milled about the gate
on the wall’s other side,
their eyes cast down
by our sidewise gaze
as we set out for home after worship,
Abba and me.

One boy my age dared look me in the eye.
His father had the lightened face of forgiven penitence
and his murmured prayer in uncouth Latin syllables
of caesars and soldiers
had the earnest ring of reality
I sometimes heard in my father’s.
But I knew those lawless and uncircumcised,
their longing notwithstanding,
had God’s love less.
You’ve no business here,
I felt like saying;
your unclean idol prayers will not be heard.
But I only scowled and spit.
He scuffed dung-flecked dust in our general direction
with the toe of his sandal.

No way that wall could fall,
Abba had said,
let alone be rebuilt in three days.

But at thirty, at night on my bed,
I knew.
Not all the blood of bulls and turtledoves
tithes
recited psalms
or prayers
would erase that writ.

That all seems like another, long-ago life.
We worship now in a Temple not made by hands
—One without a wall.
Gaius and I are forty.
In pale dawn
on the Day of Remembering the Rising,
we sit down side by side,
sip wine,
hand round hunks of holy bread
and sing.

Debbie Sawczak’s poems have appeared in Crux, Writual, the U.C. Review, McMaster Journal of Theology and Ministry, and in the anthology Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse. Debbie’s work as a bookseller and professional editor gives her additional pathways into the beloved and stimulating world of text. She and her husband live in Georgetown, Ontario; they have three adult sons. Her poetry has been selected for In A Strange Land: Introducing Ten Kingdom Poets (Poiema Poetry Series).

Posted: 03 April 2019

Walking in Love

(And) walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us… — Ephesians 5:1–2

What would you do to walk in Christ’s steps?
So many confront us on the way.
Knock on doors until someone lets you in.

What would you give up?
Shed anger like a snake sheds its skin.
Whatever remains will be a new song.

How far would you travel?
No one will toss palm leaves
where you walk to cushion your feet.

Who would you not love?
Be a fisherman casting a net
to find new friends.

Are you ready to prostrate yourself?
It is hard to walk in love.

Martin Willitts Jr is the author of 24 chapbooks and 14 full-length collections including The Uncertain Lover (Dos Madres Press, 2018), and Home Coming Celebration (FutureCycle Press, 2019). He has won such awards as the 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Award, and the Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018. He is a poetry editor for Comstock Review.

Posted: 27 March 2019

Detail of a Peacock

Nestling in the niche between the chapel’s crumbling
arches, his long blue neck plucks nibbles of tessera.

He wanders through mosaic parables like something risen
out of time, wearing fashion all wrong for Byzantium—

a jaunty tri-plume hat in an age of halos. You presume
at first this must have been a gold-leaf sermon contra

vanity, or like those tapestry-arrested unicorns, an
attempt to tame our lusts of flesh. His sumptuous blue

feathers with their knowing eyes seem destined
for a harem girl’s accessory, so what are they doing here?

What Augustine wrote at Carthage, though, unveils
the peacock’s changing reputation, that before

its current turn as vain pretender, or the empty suit,
the Church discovered peacock flesh does not decay.

So poke at any early Christian tomb and there
they preen, depictions of life that does not die, the

incorruption of brief bodies made eternal. How every
year a feather’s molt returns brighter and more beautiful.

This long-necked fellow settles into tessellation,
his plumage not quite all unfurled

so not to draw too much attention, but whispers that
he’s hiding here for now, a creature caught

in colored bits of glass, waiting till these ruins
are restored to make his move.

Jen Stewart Fueston has taught writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and in Hungary, Turkey, and Lithuania. “Detail of a Peacock,” which first appeared in The Cresset, draws on early church imagery, and echoes Ephesians 1:18, and 2:6 & 7. Her two chapbooks are: Visitations (2015) and Latch (2019, River Glass Books). Her poetry has been selected for In A Strange Land: Introducing Ten Kingdom Poets (Poiema Poetry Series).

Posted: 20 March 2019

Prison

They put Paul in a prison
———-And they clapped him in a chain;
The devil thought, “I’ve got him,
———-And he’ll never serve again”.
Did Paul become despondent
———-Or did he make a fuss?
He just sat and wrote the epistle
———-To the saints in Ephesus.

David C. Brown was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and has lived there or in its neighbourhood most of his life. He has published privately through www.lulu.com, and on his blog, https://dcbverse.blogspot.com/ . He has been writing verse in varying styles for about fifty years now, while working as a minor civil servant, trusting it is to the glory of God. He is fond of stravaiging in the Scottish hills.

Posted: 13 March 2019

Sonnet XVI

Father, part of his double interest
Unto thy kingdom, thy Son gives to me,
His jointure in the knotty Trinity
He keeps, and gives to me his death’s conquest.
This Lamb, whose death, with life the world hath blessed,
Was from the world’s beginning slain, and he
Hath made two wills, which with the legacy
Of his and thy kingdom, do thy sons invest.
Yet such are thy laws, that men argue yet
Whether a man those statutes can fulfill;
None doth, but thy all-healing grace and Spirit
Revive again what law and letter kill.
Thy law’s abridgement, and thy last command
Is all but love; oh let that last will stand!

John Donne (1572—1631) is perhaps the most influential Christian poet of the 17 century. He was dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London for the last decade of his life. This poem — one of his Holy Sonnets — rejoices in the central Biblical truth, that God gives us all things; every spiritual blessing in Christ (Romans 8:32; Ephesians 1:3).

Posted: 06 March 2019

Dawning

He came into my home
Not as a storm
Beating open doors and shutters
But as gentle light
Filtering around door frames
———-Piercing cracks
———-Lighting thinning curtains
Illuminating my deep darkness
Somber shadows stabbed
With gentle light.

Where light touched
———-Boards became boughs
———-Lintels leaves
———-Cellar posts rooted the earth
New limbs reached for the sun
———-Upward, upward, upward.

The Tree of Life.

Peter Kazmaier of Mississauga, Ontario is primarily known as a novelist of Speculative Fiction – particularly as the author of The Halcyon Dislocation (2012) and its sequels. The third instalment in the cycle, Descent into Abaddon, is soon to appear in 2019. “Dawning” arose from his reading of Ephesians 3:14-19.

Posted: 27 February 2019

A Poem About the Body of Christ

My steps up the carpeted aisle
feel like another man’s steps.
The soft amen
when the gentle old lady holds up the host
feels like another man’s amen.
The tongue is mine, though.
I lay the host atop it.
What I mean is that didn’t have to be me.
It didn’t have to be me held and loved by my mother and father as a baby.
It didn’t have to be me held and loved by Cristina next to me in the pew.
But it was. It is.
I thank you, God. I don’t understand.

Cristina’s dark brown hair is tinged with red.
When I watch it shot through with sunlight
I can see the auburn glow.
As she sleeps I touch her beautiful, broad nose.
I lay the thoughts in my mind
on the bed beside us. They sing softly
for the breaking of the day.

Zach Czaia is a poet, editor, and playwright living and working in Chicago. His first collection of poetry, Saint Paul Lives Here (In Minnesota) was published in 2015 with Wipf & Stock. His poems have appeared in such places as The Other Journal and Sojourners. This poem is drawn from reflections upon Ephesians 4:1-16.

Posted: 20 February 2019

Voices Raised

—–Ephesians 2:19

No longer strangers and foreigners,
we’re fellow citizens with the saints—

native and naturalized jointly
inhabitants of the ethereal,

mercy in perpetuity—
a claim so strange it rewrites

all requirements of residency,
every psyche’s by-laws.

No longer partitioned off
by sin, by regret, by self-righteousness;

on reservations, on street corners;
behind walls; behind barbed wire;

behind preconceived Hallelujahs & Amens;
flat blessings and fat curses

of who, what, where, when, why
we are; behind and for all, yes

we sing acapella & instrumental,
harmony & melody;

we sing citizenship & pledge;
throughout the holy household,

with our off-key, shrill, and wobbly
human notes, by God we sing!

Marjorie Maddox is a professor of English at Loch Haven University in Pennsylvania, and director of the Creative Writing Program there. She is the author of several poetry collections — including most-recently True, False, None of the Above (Poiema Poetry Series) which is an Illumination Book Award Medalist.

Posted: 13 February 2019

Tychicus

“Tychicus, dear brother, will tell you everything. I am sending him.” Ephesians 6:21

I am the messenger
He remembers the disciples
The misty walk down Harbor Street
The baptisms by the river
“Grasp the width of the love”

Paul the Apostle
He knows by heart
The columns of the lecture hall
The miracle of handkerchief healing
“Grasp the length of the love”

To the saints
His closed eyes and chained arms
Still know the form of Artemis
The shouts from the theater
“Grasp the height of the love”

Grace and peace
He keeps in his heart
The farewell by the ship
The elders weeping and praying
“Grasp the depth of the love”

I am the messenger
Paul the apostle
To the saints
Grace and peace
“Grasp and know the love to be filled to fullness”

Jean Schreur of Hudsonville, Michigan, enjoys writing about Biblical characters and places. Several poems were published in the recent anthology Adam, Eve, and the Riders of the Apocalypse (Poiema Poetry Series). She is a retired nurse and lives with her husband on the family celery farm.

Posted: 06 February 2019

Dirty Jeans on a Kid in Ephesus

As a college student, did you learn to do laundry
before you left home?

As a college student did you realize you’d need
a roll of quarters to get the job done?

But quarters are hard to come by, so
jeans are worn two, three, or a pressing four times.

And by the fifth, going home is a better option
than walking around smelling like ramen

Spilled, stirred with sweat from your pick up
basketball game, where you ripped a hole

In the knee and bled a little. As a college student
did you forget that there are people who

Really do want to help you succeed; who
want to help sew those holes in your

Armor; bandage you;
Feed you some meat and potatoes; and

Help you wash that laundry?
Just show up on Sunday and find out.

Bugg Davis is originally from Mississippi where she completed a degree in English with a concentration in Philosophy. She has been published in a number of literary journals in the Southern United States. Recently, she moved to Hamilton, Ontario, to pursue a degree in Business and Marketing and is working as a Barista.

Posted: 30 January 2019

Ephesians 4:30. Grieve Not the Holy Spirit, Etc.

And art thou grieved, sweet and sacred Dove,
—————When I am sour,
—————And cross thy love?
Grieved for me? the God of strength and power
—————Grieved for a worm, which when I tread,
—————I pass away and leave it dead?

Then weep mine eyes, the God of love doth grieve:
—————Weep foolish heart,
—————And weeping live:
For death is dry as dust. Yet if ye part,
—————End as the night, whose sable hue
—————Your sins express; melt into dew.

When saucy mirth shall knock or call at door,
—————Cry out, Get hence,
—————Or cry no more.
Almighty God doth grieve, he puts on sense:
—————I sin not to my grief alone,
—————But to my God’s too; he doth groan.

O take thy lute, and tune it to a strain,
—————Which may with thee
—————All day complain.
There can no discord but in ceasing be.
—————Marbles can weep; and surely strings
—————More bowels have, than such hard things.

Lord, I adjudge myself to tears and grief,
—————Ev’n endless tears
—————Without relief.
If a clear spring for me no time forbears,
—————But runs, although I be not dry;
—————I am no Crystal, what shall I?

Yet if I wail not still, since still to wail
—————Nature denies;
—————And flesh would fail,
If my deserts were masters of mine eyes:
—————Lord, pardon, for thy son makes good
—————My want of tears with store of blood.

George Herbert (1593—1633) is famous for his devotional poetry which was posthumously published in his book The Temple. He served as an Anglican Priest, rector of the small parish of St Andrews Church, Lower Bemerton, Salisbury. In 1632 he also wrote A Priest to the Temple, which expresses his ideals of what a pastor should be.

Posted: 23 January 2019

The Unvoiceable Ever

Ephesians 2: 3-7

Mercy, please note
—every ragged corona
——our prayers generate: the lone
—blue eye of a pilot light,
the bonfire crowning a hill.

Help us welcome the kindly
—eclipse and crumble of ego,
——knowing the planet of self
—winks out, only
to rally. On again. Off . . .

a pulse like the tide,
—prone to turn, the stoic
——glacier, called to calve—
—each tipping point seen, loved,
unvoiceably nudged.

Amid the long seam of night
—our desires are rogue stars,
——riddled with black holes,
—laden with dark matter,
still unexplained.

O Mercy with colored dust,
—re-belt us, all our hopes
——fixed anew, within your realm
—where nothing is lost,
but all is covered.

Laurie Klein of Deer Park, Washington, is the author of the poetry collection Where The Sky Opens (2015, Poiema Poetry Series). She calls herself, “a contemplative writer, musician and artist, who helps distracted, heart-weary people refocus on God in creative ways that spark hope and wholeness.”

Posted: 16 January 2019

To Do More Than Hide

Ephesians 4:24

They
Made coverings of leaves
To sheath the bloody weapons they made of their bodies
The garments hardly holding
To soft skin
Scraped ‘til red
Ashamed of the defiled image they now carried in their carcasses
Unable to cover it
They hide
Their father comes and finds
And covers their skin in skin
And they begin
To be able to do more than hide
Seed of Eve

Second Adam
Comes to me while I cower
While naked
Pathetically making insufficient coverings
And he hands me my new self
Made of himself
And I put him on like wedding white
And I am made able
To do more than hide

David J. Busuttil lives with his loving wife Katie in Hornby, Ontario. He won the 2017 In The Beginning Award from The Word Guild. His poetry regularly appears in the magazines Love Is Moving and Ekstasis. David is active in poetry performances in the Greater Toronto Area. His original play Within a Play launched at Georgetown Little Theatre in June of 2018.

Posted: 09 January 2019

Epistle to the Ostensible Church

Isaak, latecomer to the way, sometime
schmoozer among the diverse and sundry
heretics, and admittedly a little judge-y,
a little cranky concerning the ubiquitous,
blithe, and widespread ignorance unduly
tolerated among slacker Xians whose glib
disinterest in the actual fullness of their
own inheritance leaves me blinking, open
mouthed—and increasingly cranky—as each
week seems to bring yet another earnest
attempt to reinvent the wheel. I write
to all y’all who labor in your separate
enclaves to puzzle out why your long-pared
faith so seldom satisfies the enormity
of your God-obsessive hunger. Peace.

That we are all of us adopted and appallingly
co-opted into the holiness of Jesus is a simple
given, and a certainty. So relax. His good
pleasure will surely accommodate at some
future end of time our patent sloth and habitual
dim wittedness. Meantime, have a stretch.
The faith you hold is not so much a grip
of propositions—nor even, nor especially
that queer array of anxious propositions you
have preferred to what the fathers taught; such
a paring keeps the body blind, and deaf, more
than a little dumb. A far more efficacious grip
would be the one that gathers at the supper
of the Body and the Blood. The cup is not
so much a good idea, but is your living portion
poured into your hungry gut, the animating
spirit joined unto an elemental, and a bright
reconstitution, joining your sad persons
to the joy investing all and everything
with theanthropic agency. Remember
to love one another, and please forgive
your cranky Isaak, whose love for you
may yet prove—please God—incorruptible.

Scott Cairns is the author of eight poetry collections, including: Slow Pilgrim: The Collected Poems (2015, Paraclete Press). He is Professor of Poetry and Director of the MFA in Creative Writing at Seattle Pacific University. His poems have appeared in The Atlantic, Poetry, and The McMaster Review of Theology and Ministry.

Posted: 02 January 2019

God’s Lavishness

the unexpected snow
clusters weighting
the small evergreen branches
like multiple hands extended, pressed
organ keyboards, Bach Cantatas—
with orchestra, choir, rich-voiced
soloists—a triplesauce on an entrée in a French
restaurant on play-full
Broadway, local bookstores,
cafes, all manner
of things—like melons;
the return of health,
a friend’s assisting
lepers in Uganda, the churches’ gathered
shoe boxes of gifts delivered
to children around the world,
children themselves, parents’ love, the iconic
snow-covered car in the driveway—
and she, of all days, minus a brush—
mysteriously cleaned off,
a day’s dawn,
a birth in dark Bethlehem,
sheep afoot on a hillside, their tangled
wool, Angel voice upon voice,
the soft arrival
of gold, myrrh, and frankincense,
the Christ Child in a makeshift cradle
asleep in his own Bright Nursery—
Grace.

Sandra Duguid is the author of Pails Scrubbed Silver (2013, North Star Press). Her poems have also appeared in the recent anthology Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse (Poiema Poetry Series). She and her husband live in New Jersey. This poem is drawn from several passages, including Ephesians 1:7-10.

Posted: 26 December 2018

Daily Grace

Theologically and philosophically
I rejoice in my salvation. But,
practically speaking,
I am carried
by little salvations
that buffer my bumps
and colour my days…
offer of a lift in driving rain,
patch of shade in smothering sun,
a ticket for Handel’s Messiah, reminder
of a bountiful gift that gives anew,
groceries on sale when I need them,
sunset display, exuberant from my window
is subdued the next street over, my private showing,
the extra dimension of a thin place after
a long time of walking by faith alone,
flat back tire in my driveway, not on the highway,
words of a Celtic prayer make
translucent and malleable
the granite wall of my cave,
comfort of flame
on a bitter winter night.

Ears to hear,
eyes to see,
a heart to receive
and give
love.

Bonnie Beldan-Thomson of Pickering, Ontario, wrote this poem in response to the opening verses of Ephesians. She is part of Adonai Creative Arts, through Forest Brook Community Church, where she helps facilitate The Writing Room — a place of spiritual care and creativity. She received the E.J. Pratt Medal in Poetry from the University of Toronto.

Posted: 19 December 2018

My Father’s Place

Forgive me if I behave as if I’ve lived
somewhere else, was someone else.
I was
an orphan at the gate, waiting, wondering
until he came and chose this unlikely child
gave me a new name, gave me gifts in profusion:
hope to hold, peace to pass on, grace to grow
See this signature?
It’s his insignia, inheritance guaranteed.

So now I live here, where largesse is norm
where rooms open into other rooms,
where colours celebrate shame’s downfall
and hues of blue blanket grey:
indigo, cobalt, azure
reassure,
a palette of reds speaks bold words:
scarlet, crimson, carmine,
all call, “No fear!”

Yet, l do confess,
love like this frightens me.
How difficult to fathom its dimensions:
the length, the breath, the depth, the height,
it takes a lifetime to fill a fatherless heart
full,
to displace doubts, to replace the broken seal.
How fortunate that we have forever…

Vilma Blenman has published a poetry chapbook First Flight, plus stories and poems in the Canadian Hot Apple Cider anthology series. She lives with her family in Pickering, Ontario. “My Father’s Place” is influenced by Ephesians 3:18, but also Ephesians 1:13 and 14.

Posted: 12 December 2018

 Sundown

Ephesians 4:26

In pre-marriage counseling they told us to never
let the sun go down on our anger.
Whimsy notwithstanding,

the warning seemed quaint
since electricity has deemed our clocks
the arbiters of time,

and sailors now watch weather.com,
having jettisoned their nursery rhymes
about red skies.

But in the wake of our disagreement,
with the sky so overcast
(I circled the same point;

turning, you drifted off),
I just stared into the clouded night, wondering
how we might navigate to common ground.

Ryan Apple is a Music Professor at Great Lakes Christian College in Lansing, Michigan — where he and his wife live with their six children. His guitar music is available at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/go/606553867. His poetry has appeared in the anthology Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse (2017, Cascade Books).

Posted: 05 December 2018

The Architecture of Prayer

I hardly recall now the place, the view:
stars burning light years off
like tongues of fire snapping softly
in a vacant house,
winter branches with their hieroglyphs,
birds clenched on twigs like frozen buds—
all that language of the dispossessed.

I know I’d picked up fuzzy suns
of peaches, late glowing apples
and shelved them in my darkest closet—
seasoned proofs, potential food for afterthought?
And long before of course
I hunted out the spring,
stored earliest recorded light,
his words, which I drew on
interceding for family or friends,
but not too often, pulling back
from draining the source
with appeals for anything specific or routine . . .

until I stumbled on a promise
hidden there boldly in plain sight:
exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.
Extravagantly upsized, straining
our reasonable dimensions of space and time?

Not according to the blueprint of the mystery.
Translated by the working hand,
it clearly says our house is,
its foundation laid,
saving us from lostness.
Windows, though yet to be set,
are framed and open for intimate speech,
silent music between ear and Ear.

Mary Willis lives in London, Ontario. Her poems have appeared in Canadian Literature and other journals and anthologies. She has also published three chapbooks through Fiddlehead Poetry Books, including: Earth’s Only Light. “The Architecture of Prayer” is built on Ephesians 3:20.

Posted: 28 November 2018

Sonnet From The Ephesians

——-Ephesians 1:16

I do not cease to give thanks, especially in November
even as we lose an hour of light, drawing
the curtains at 4:30 to keep out the cold. To remember
you are dust seems appropriate now. Crows are cawing

black elegies in the bare trees. Just past the Day of the Dead,
and I’m thankful for every friend who has blessed
my life, gold coins in a wooden chest. Who said
no man is an island? We’re all peninsulas, I guess,

joined to the mainland, part of the shore. We’re the sticks
in the bundle that can’t be broken. Even if
it doesn’t seem that way, the bickering of politics,
the blather on the nightly news. Maybe we speak in hieroglyphs,
unclear, always missing the mark? So let me be plain.
I’m grateful for the days of sun. I’m grateful for the rain.

Barbara Crooker is the author of seven poetry collections. Her eighth, The Book of Kells, will appear from the Poiema Poetry Series early in 2019. She and her husband live in Fogelsville, Pennsylvania. Her poems have been featured many times on The Writer’s Almanac as read by Garrison Keillor.

Posted: 21 November 2018

Adoption

Not very many know what it’s like
to be weightless, cut off from a home,
any home of familiar welcoming,
like Cheers, like the court of the Sanhedrin,
like a synagogue in any Roman outpost,
and perhaps even with the brothers of the Way
who cannot let go of the finality
of the dying cries of Stephen.

Not many know what it’s like
to be weightless, grasping for a foothold
of decency and grace, in a mosh pit of gods
and goddesses nastily scrambling about
round and round on the circumference
of perhaps a Greek vase, or a sad Roman copy
which can’t really hide the humanness
of engineered bullying from Rome.

Not many know what it’s like
to be weightless, hung out in space
hung between heaven and earth, sold out
by friends and foes, orphaned by everything
that fathered you into this world
save perhaps for wounds and a thorn
now woven into certificates of adoption
for children of immeasurable belonging.

For Mark

James Tughan has been called “one of the world’s foremost pastel artists.” He has served on the faculty of Tyndale University, Redeemer University, and Sheridan College. Even so, Tughan has immersed himself in course work at McMaster Divinity College. One of the many influences on his poem “Adoption” is Ephesians 1:5.

Posted: 14 November 2018

The Misuse of Scripture

——-So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the
——-truth to our neighbors,
——-for we are members of one another.
——-–Ephesians 4:25

The truth is, neighbor, your lawn is looking rather shabby.
(I tell you this in a spirit of Christian kindness.)
And yesterday you seemed a little crabby:
(Love may be blind, but that’s different than blindness.)

So, let us shun falsehood and speak the truth:
I see your sins and…Joshua judges Ruth.
I stand firm in faith and shall not be budged.
And if you judge me…ye shall be judged.

Daniel Klawitter of Denver, Colorado has published three full-length poetry collections – most recently Quiet Insurrections (2018, White Violet Press). His children’s poetry chapbook Put On Your Silly Pants received an honourable mention in the 2017 Dragonfly Book Awards for Children’s Poetry.

Posted: 07 November 2018

Ephesus

——-To everyone who conquers
——-I will give permission to eat from the tree of life
——-that is in the paradise of God. Rev.2:7.

Now as then we are dismayed when business falters,
baffled when rains fail,
alarmed when another riot erupts in our city.

Now as then we have among us the hungry. Also
the scrupulous. We have those
who regularly bow and bend and those who don’t.

We know a house must have a sure foundation,
a solid cornerstone. We know, though we keep building them,
dividing walls must fall. How else

can the stranger and the alien enter? We do not know
why the lovely bird of peace nests over there
while here at home the vultures flap their hostile wings.

Now as then noise streams from the market place,
applause from the crowded theatre.
The hungry lions roar. On quiet evenings

you can hear, above the drone of time,
the whisper of leaves
on the tree of life.

Sarah Klassen is a Winnipeg-based writer who’s won numerous awards, including The Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry for her collection A Curious Beatitude. Her eighth and most-recent collection is Monstrance (2012, Turnstone Press). Her poems have appeared in many journals, including The McMaster Journal of Theology & Ministry.

Posted: 31 October 2018

The Ordering of Time

The road to Ephesus was flat and open-aired,
a lined mixture of blue and earth, mounded cairns
rising from the open fields, like bee-hives a man

could walk into and disappear. And why travel there
but for a heritage of history? Native people still
tilling the biblical earth, airing their laundry on lines,

the empty forms of their bodies waving in air.
Land by itself always appears primitive
until we encounter on the threaded paths there

a rise of buildings, an ordering of the times
when they are complete. We pilgrimage to Ephesus
to witness the past and measure the present.

For a place to sense the saints of perseverance,
we leave our too-civilised countries to experience
a land, a field, a time in its journey. We leave our lives

and go to read the earth, to remember any small heritage
of who came before us and who long brought us here.
The dusty road to Ephesus was a boat, a bus,

and walking, was blue hours of water and earth,
was winding and tiring, but worth the beautiful ruins,
a true word, a lasting witness, travel the first-fruit

of our heritage. In the ancient shell of Ephesus,
beyond the resting amphitheater, the cell of Saint Paul,
the best building standing remains the whitened library.

Nicholas Samaras is the author of two poetry collections – Hands of the Saddlemaker, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, and the extensive American Psalm, World Psalm (2014, Ashland Poetry Press) which contains 150 poems to emulate the Biblical psalms. His poetry also appears in The Turning Aside: The Kingdom Poets Book of Contemporary Christian Poetry. He lives with his family in West Nyack, New York.

Posted: 24 October 2018

He Also Descended

On Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut, Christ Descending into Hell, from Ephesians 4

Dürer’s gouge flings gates from hinges,
stretches a lean arm to snap prisoners’ chains.
He tastes pearwood dust,
cuts a body, blood trickled out
and stilled on Skull Hill,
a living man whose standard rides
the blaze from demon horns.

We shuffle past the woodcut,
hear a flapping overhead
and smell smoke
but miss the gates
wide open
the throng rushing out.

Laurel Eshelman of Elizabeth, Illinois (population 700) works a few blocks from home with her husband at Eshelman Pottery. Her chapbook, The Red Mercy, was a semifinalist in the 2014 Palettes and Quills Chapbook Contest. She was one of the participants in D.S. Martin’s festival circle group at the Festival of Faith & Writing 2018, in Grand Rapids.

Posted: 17 October 2018

Seating Plan

first day of school…
———–the bell rings,
thirty children
———–rummage
to find their seats,
determined by the teacher’s
———–seating plan

the twinkling of an eye.
the trumpet sounds!

and there,
engraved by lightning laser
on a clear white stone,
I find my name
and gladly take my seat
among the galaxies.

Neil Paul – of Caledonia, Ontario – is a retired English teacher who has been taking courses at McMaster Divinity College. I met him last year in Gus Konkel’s insightful class on the Psalms. He has self-published two books of verse. This poem was inspired by Ephesians 2:6.

Posted: 10 October 2018

A Prisoner of Christ

for Father Donald Francis Derivaux
A Gethsemane monk, psalming
an honorarium of prayer, work, plainsong,
he interceded for those who fed
on empty words from the kingdom of air.

He shared raven’s bread with Merton
and letters brined with tears over
black souls shorn of dignity.
But the sounds of Trappist silence
contained too many echoes for him.

He longed for the life away
anchored in the most quiet dwelling–himself—
moment by moment seeking eternity;
he lived alone with the Alone

until he was called to be a prisoner of Christ
in a different kind of hermitage
salving souls in cells at Parchman Penitentiary
teaching unschooled monks in striped habits
to sigh the name of Jesus.

Philip C. Kolin is the Distinguished Professor of English (Emeritus) at the University of Southern Mississippi. The title of this poem alludes to Paul’s reference to himself as the prisoner of (or for) Christ (Eph. 3:1 and 4:1). This poem will be included in Kolin’s forthcoming poetry collection Reaching Forever (Poiema Poetry Series) which is edited by D.S. Martin.

Posted: 03 October 2018

Approach With Boldness

                        —Yellowstone National Park
                        —Eph. 3:12

We creak on boardwalks above geothermal pools—
Black Opal, Morning Glory, Emerald Spring.
Clear and bright as cups of Easter dye,
they sputter and hiss to remind us that we stand
atop a caldera heaving molten rock.

Each path begins with the illustrated warning:
a boy in a baseball cap breaks through the surface,
parboiling his feet. I hear the story about the 9-year-old
who lost himself in the steam and plunged into Crested Pool.
They recovered just eight pounds of his body.

Or the man who swan-dived into Celestine Pool
after a yelping dog, emerging with blanched irises.
That was dumb, he mumbled for his last words,
skin peeling in sheets. Thousands of years ago
the first hunter to wander into this basin

must have thought he discovered a second sky
breaking through the ground, a miracle of sorts,
if he knew about those, radiating in the snow.
He laughed, bent his face over the rising steam,
and thought nothing of reaching in.

This poem by Tania Runyan is from her poetry collection Second Sky (2013, Poiema Poetry Series), which is a book of poems inspired by the life and writings of the apostle Paul. Her new collection What Will Soon Take Place (2017, Paraclete Press) is inspired by the Book of Revelation. Her poems are also included in the anthology The Turning Aside: The Kingdom Poets Book of Contemporary Christian Poetry. She and her family live in northern Illinois.

Posted: 26 September 2018