Oliver and Whyte have poems about running toward fire, an unsettling metaphor during this fire season but thematically sound.
Tag Archives: John the Baptist
Running into the Fire
The Call To Step into That River
Luke, Milton and Malcolm Guite are all enthralled with the moment when Jesus, at the moment of his baptism, fully realizes that he–and all of us–are God’s belovèd and delight.
Salomé, the Morning After
In which I look at some literary versions of the story of Salomé, including an Carol Ann Duffy poem.
What I Heard Was My Whole Self
Spiritual Sunday Today’s Gospel reading concerns Jesus’s awakening as he was being baptized by John. That moment was his own epiphany, when the membrane between the sacred and the profane was penetrated and he realized that God dwells within us (Luke 3:21-22): Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been […]
Salomé, a Female Revenge Fantasy?
Spiritual Sunday The salacious story of Salomé (a.k.a. Herod and Herodias’s daughter) is today’s Gospel reading so here’s a strange and unsettling poem written by Anne Killigrew in the late 17th century. I can’t decide whether it is a feminist revenge fantasy or a drama of sexual frustration. If John the Baptist has been admonishing […]
Yet Mine It Was To Call
A lovely poem about John the Baptist by an obscure poet speaks up for those who serve in anonymity.
God’s Word, the Ultimate Poetry
Poet Jeanne Walker riffs off the opening passage of the Book of John to compare poetic creation to the coming of new truth.
What in Me Is Dark Illumine
An epiphany is the moment when something divine enters the human realm. During the Epiphany season, Christians celebrate such moments. In the famous opening of “Paradise Lost,” Milton notes that the Holy Spirit is his muse and connects his own inspiration with a number of famous visitations of the Holy Spirit throughout Biblical history.
This House Is Filling with Light
Tim Winton’s novel “That Eye, the Sky” finds spiritual resonance in difficult circumstances.