Tess Lockhart
  • God Poetry
    • A Preacher's Prayer
    • Advent
    • Advent Watch
    • Ordinary Advent Time
    • First Christmas Post Husband Mortem
    • Christmas Bread
    • Ding Dong Dung
    • Christmas Credo
    • Incarnation Narrative
    • Starlings in Epiphany Snow
    • Evensong in Bleak Midwinter
    • Imposition of Ashes
    • Lenten Ruth
    • Langston Hughes on Maundy Thursday
    • Maundy Thursday's Scattering
    • Good Friday Tenebrae
    • Gardening Holy Saturday
    • Mourning, Holy Saturday
    • A Little Hilaritas What If
    • Milton on Easter Monday
    • Pentecost Invitation
    • For All the Saints
    • Winter Solstice
    • Evening Prayer for the Beloved
    • Incarnation's Repair
    • The News Was Not Good
    • Just Jump Already
    • Job's Modern Lament
    • Uncle!
    • Worship
    • St. Valentine
    • Response to a Dr.'s Rhetorical Question
    • A Prayer of Praise
    • Renunciation and Adherence
  • Marriage Poetry
    • A River of Words
    • Beloved Baptism
    • Anniversary Gift
    • Aching Pain
    • Disappointment for Nothing
    • A Lament of Recognition
    • A Marital Parable Revealed
    • Kissing Death
    • Grief
    • Extinguished
    • Not Exactly Thecla
    • Rectify
    • Love Beyond Terror
    • St. Valentine
    • Divorce
    • Marital Haiku
    • A Mockingbird
    • All for Love
    • Love's Transubstantiation
    • Enough of Love's Ideal Poems
    • My Lie
  • Healing Poetry
    • A Child Abuse Victim
    • At Grandma's Funeral
    • Confronting Nothing
    • For Want of a Ritual
    • Gardening Widow's Weeds
    • Ghost Whisperer Grief Obsession
    • Grief Drought
    • Swimming with Grief's Fear
    • Five Years Post Mortem
    • Middle-Aged Dating
    • Fire and Water
    • Canoe Wrecked
    • Desire Beyond Reason
    • A Survivor's Haiku
    • Baptismal Renewal
    • Of Children, Pigs, and Priests
    • Sometimes
    • The Trickiness of Doors
    • Tenured Otherwise
    • Turtle Soup
  • Quotidian Poetry
    • Cookies for Dragons
    • Leaving My Daughter at College
    • To Mom on Her Birthday
    • On the Third Day
    • Ode to Bermuda Grass
    • Mundane Revelation
    • Sorry White People
    • Truculent Ode to Poetry
    • Twisted
    • DeFuniak Springs

God Poetry 

According to the Bible, the first thing to know about God is divine creativity and  the beneficence of humans being created in this image.  We are created to create in the image of God the divine Poet who conjures a world with just a word.  

Following God at work remaking our broken world, these poems are poesis, a creative way of using language to make a world of meaning that can remake our physical world.  I contend, though, that w
e don't make meaning as much as discover it, as Heidegger suggests. Then, using a poetic form, we testify in language as to what has emerged for our attention.  It could be said that poetry travels the trace of God's passing through the world.  As the prophets knew, poetry is the best form of witness to the Creative Divine Word that "happens" to us. And, through accommodating grace, God uses our words, to continue the process of divine poesis.        

Like Jacob, though, we have to wrestle meaning out of our murky human experience.

Much of this poetry traces the struggle to find God in the midst of it all.  Issues of theodicy figure prominently, and at times it is angry, blunt, profane.  But always it is struggling to name the Ineffable and give chase in praise. 

Beware: not all Christians will find this faithful.  The agnostic, however, may find hope in knowing that all of us have to tangle with a God who doesn't conform to the poetic sentimentality of a Hallmark card.   



Click on "God Poetry" on the left column to see a list of poems.  You may have to scroll down on the pop-up menu to see them all.  Or you can click on the links below to open a new window.

                                        Poems on the Church Year: 

                                                                                       Imposition of Ashes
Advent                                                                          Lenten Ruth
Advent Watch                                                             Langston Hughes on Maundy Thursday
Ordinary Advent Time                                             Good Friday Tenebrae                                      
​First Christmas Post Husband Mortem               Gardening Holy Saturday
Christmas Bread                                                        Mourning, Holy Saturday 
Christmas Credo                                                        A Little Hilaritas What If
Incarnation Narrative                                               Milton on Easter Monday              
Starlings in Epiphany Snow                                    A Pentecost Invitation
Evensong in Bleak Midwinter                                 For All the Saints



                                          Theological Reverberations:
A Preacher's Prayer                                                   Uncle!
Just Jump Already                                                     Worship
Swimming with Grief's Fear                                     St. Valentine
Job's Modern Lament                                                Response to a Dr.'s Rhetorical Question


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