I woke, and all the kingless world was bleak. I slept, and earth was governed by the meek.
I woke, and there was roaring from the south. I slept, and children stopped the lion’s mouth.
I woke, and saw the locust eat the wheat. I slept, and wept before the mercy seat.
I know I sojourn in the land of seem. But which is real, my God? And which the dream?
From The Locust Years (Wiseblood, 2025). Used by permission of the publisher.
Adolph Gottlieb (American, 1903–1974), Duet, 1962. Oil on canvas, 84 × 90 in. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.
In his succinct poem “The Dream,” Paul J. Pastor reflects on the dissonance between our earthbound reality—marked by misrule, violence, and famine—and the new-earthly reality that awaits us when Christ returns. Which is truer, more ultimately solid? This present bleakness, or the long-dreamt-of future that we see glimpses of throughout the scriptures, in the visions of prophets and the words and deeds of Jesus?
The poem reminds me of these lines from George MacDonald’s Diary of an Old Soul:
Lord, in the land of things that swell and seem, Help me to walk by the other light supreme, Which shows thy facts behind man’s vaguely hinting dream.
And Samwise Gamgee’s oft-quoted question from Tolkien’s Return of the King, which Christian eschatology answers in the affirmative: “Is everything sad going to come untrue?”
“The Dream” comes from Pastor’s latest collection, The Locust Years, most of which was written from 2020 to 2024, a time of pandemic, increasingly intense political polarization in the US, and, as Pastor mentions in the opening, for him, personal grief. The book’s title is a reference to Joel 2:25, where God promises his people, “I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten . . .”
Paul J. Pastor is a poet, writer, and editor whose work uncovers the inner life of the world as experienced in nature, literature, and the rich traditions of historic Christian spirituality. In addition to two volumes of poetry—The Locust Years and Bower Lodge—he is also the author of A Kids Book About God, The Listening Day, and The Face of the Deep. He is an executive editor for Nelson Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, and he lives in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge with his wife and three children.
PODCAST: Poetry for All, hosted by Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen:Poetry for All “is for those who already love poetry and for those who know very little about it. In this podcast, we read a poem, discuss it, see what makes it tick, learn how it works, grow from it, and then read it one more time.” I’ve consistently enjoyed this podcast since its launch in 2020, having learned about it through cohost Abram Van Engen [previously], an academic who often writes and speaks about poetry for general Christian audiences. Here are some of my favorite episodes of the ninety-seven that have been released to date:
Three haiku by Kobayashi Issa, translated from the Japanese by Robert Hass: The first: “The snow is melting / and the village is flooded / with children.” Learn the characteristics of what Joanne Diaz calls “the perfect poetic form.”
“spring song” by Lucille Clifton: One of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets. “This joyful poem caps a sequence of sixteen poems called ‘some jesus,’ which walks through biblical characters (beginning with Adam and Eve) and ends on four poems for Holy Week and Easter. [Clifton] wrote other poems on the Bible as well, including ‘john’ and ‘my dream about the second coming,’ which reimagine a way into biblical characters to make their stories fresh.”
“Elegy for My Mother’s Mind” by Laura Van Prooyen: This episode is unique in that it has the poet herself on to read and discuss the poem, which in this case navigates the complexities of memory, loss, and familial relationships.
“View but This Tulip” by Hester Pulter: Ashamedly, I had never heard of this seventeenth-century female poet before listening to this episode, so I’m grateful to guest Wendy Wall, cocreator of the award-winning Pulter Project website, for introducing me to her! “In this episode we discuss [Pulter’s] work with emblems, her scientific chemistry experiment with flowers, and her wonderment (both worried and confident, doubtful and awestruck) about the resurrection of the body and its reunification with the soul after death.”
“From Blossoms” by Li-Young Lee: A much-anthologized poem ostensibly about eating summer peaches, but more deeply, it’s about joy. “One of the things that draws me to this poem,” says Van Engen, “is that joy is actually very hard to write about . . . without it sounding naive or sentimental or withdrawn or unaware.”
“Primary Care” by Rafael Campo: Dr. Rafael Campo is both a poet and a practicing physician. Here he uses blank verse to explore the experience of illness and suffering.
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POEMS:
>> “For V. the Bag Lady, Great in the Kingdom of Heaven,” “Damascus Road,” “The Sower,” and “Crosses” by Paul J. Pastor: The Rabbit Room received permission to reproduce four poems from Paul J. Pastor’s [previously] new poetry collection, The Locust Years, which “explores a world of mystery and sorrow, desolation and love. Rooted in the Pacific Northwest, these poems offer readers an invitation to walk along a path pebbled with profound joy and deep loss.” I’ll be sharing another on the blog next week, courtesy of Wiseblood Books.
>>“Undone”by Michael Stalcup: The rise of blogging in the aughts and its descendant, Substacking, in the last few years has meant that poets and other writers can share their work directly with their reading publics and give them insight into their creative process if they wish. On his Substack, the Thai American poet Michael Stalcup [previously] recently shared one of his new poems that’s based on the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8:1–11. He explains how the poem’s form, a blend of the Petrarchan sonnet and the chiasmus, contributes to its meaning.
Nalini Jayasuriya (Sri Lankan, 1927–2014), Go, Sin No More, 2004. Mixed media on cloth, 23 × 19 in. Published in The Christian Story: Five Asian Artists Today, ed. Patricia C. Pongracz, Volker Küster, and John W. Cook (Museum of Biblical Art, 2007), p. 119.
Blessed be the paps which Thou hast sucked. —Luke 11:27
Suppose he had been Tabled at thy Teats, Thy hunger feels not what he eats: He’ll have his Teat ere long (a bloody one). The Mother then must suck the Son.
Scholar Kimberly Johnson [previously] unpacks these four lines about the body of Christ, who as an infant drank milk from his mother’s breast, and whose sacrificial death opened up his own breast whence flows the blood that nourishes us all. Johnson teases out the overlap of physical and spiritual in the poem, highlighting the maternal sharing of one’s own substance that links both couplets. At the eucharistic table, we are bidden to come and eat; or, in the stark metaphorical language of Crashaw, come and suck Christ’s bloody teat.
I plan to write an essay sometime about Christ as a nursing mother, as I’ve seen the image pop up in medieval writings and some visual art, including from Kongo and Ethiopia. In the meantime, here’s an illumination of the sixth vision in part 2 of Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias (Know the Ways), painted under the supervision of Hildy herself. It shows the crucified Christ feeding Ecclesia (his bride, the church) with blood from his breast.
“The Crucifixion and the Eucharist,” from Scivias (Know the Ways) II.6, Rupertsberg Abbey, Germany, before 1179. Rupertsberg Codex, fol. 86r, Hildegard Abbey, Eibingen, Germany. The original manuscript from Hildegard’s lifetime was lost in 1945, but a faithful copy was made in 1927–33, which is the source of the color reproductions now available.
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ESSAY: “Only One Heart: The Poetry of Franz Wright as Emblem of God’s Grace” by Bonnie Rubrecht, Curator: “Are You / just a word? // Are we beheld, or am I all alone?” These three lines typify the poetry of Franz Wright (1953–2015), the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Walking to Martha’s Vineyard, God’s Silence, and other collections. “Wright’s work is often described as confessional, colored by irony and humor. His irreverence, juxtaposed with honesty and humility, make his poetic voice unique in addressing God. Writers and poets often traffic in spiritual themes, but few modern poets echo the prophetic Old Testament tradition of crying out, approaching God with the concision and raw emotion that Wright does. He excels in voicing the concerns and ruminations of the human experience of suffering, while simultaneously shifting towards his own embodiment of grace.”
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) was a primarily German-language lyric poet, playwright, and short story writer. Born of Catholic parents in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, he came to reject church dogma as an adult, though he maintained a lifelong fascination with Christian imagery and biblical stories. His volumes of poetry include Das Stunden-Buch (The Book of Hours) (1899–1903), about the search for God; Das Buch der Bilder (The Book of Images) (1902–6); Das Marienleben (The Life of Mary) (1913), a thirteen-poem cycle about the Virgin; the Duineser Elegien (Duino Elegies) (1922), which weigh beauty and existential suffering; and Sonette an Orpheus (Sonnets to Orpheus) (1922). After Rilke’s death from leukemia, a young mentee of his, Franz Xaver Kappus, compiled ten of the letters Rilke had written to him about creativity, the poetic vocation, and the inner life; published as Briefe an einen jungen Dichter (Letters to a Young Poet) (1929), this correspondence has influenced generations of writers and other artists.
Anita Barrows (born 1947) is a clinical psychologist, political activist, poet, and translator from German, French, and Italian. She lives in the Bay Area of California.
Joanna Macy (1929–2025) was a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. A respected voice in movements for peace, justice, and environmentalism, she wove her scholarship with decades of activism.
FREE E-BOOK: Seeing the Unseen: Launching and Managing a Church Art Gallery by Sandra Bowden and Marianne Lettieri: I own a copy of the original 2015 edition of this book written by two wise, experienced friends of mine and published by the now-defunct Christians in the Visual Arts; this revised edition, published this year by Square Halo Books, includes all-new images and other updates. It’s an excellent resource for churches looking to start an art gallery, covering the logistics of defining the gallery program, designing the gallery space, funding the gallery, organizing exhibits and juried shows, handling art, engaging viewers, and more. The authors and publisher are generously making it available for free download!
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New this summer, the popular artist Laura James [previously], who frequently paints biblical subjects, now has a simple form on her website through which you can license digital image files of hers for use in publications, presentations, or websites: https://shop.laurajamesart.com/product/image-licensing/.
Screenshot from laurajamesart.com: Laura James (American, 1971–), 5000 Fed, 1999
Also, folks often ask me where they can purchase affordable art: Check out James’s online store, as she sells giclée prints of many of her paintings.
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ESSAY: “Toward a Genuine Dialogue between the Bible and Art” by J. Cheryl Exum: J. Cheryl Exum (1946–2024) was a Hebrew Bible scholar renowned for her work on the Song of Songs, feminist biblical studies, and the reception of the Bible in culture and art history. In much of her writing and teaching she staged a dialogue between biblical texts and biblical art, the latter of which, she said, constitutes a form of exegesis. She argued “for adding visual criticism to other criticisms (historical, literary, form, rhetorical, etc.) in the exegete’s toolbox—for making visual criticism part of the exegetical process, so that, in biblical interpretation, we do not just look at the text and the commentaries on the text but also at art as commentary.” More than simply enhancing our appreciation of a biblical text, art “can point to problematic aspects of the text and help us ‘see’ things about the text we might have overlooked, or enable us to see things differently.”
In this paper from 2012, Exum examines two episodes from the life of Hagar: the Expulsion of Hagar and Ishamel (Gen. 21:8–14), and Sarah Presenting Hagar to Abraham (Gen. 16:3–4). I found the second section particularly illuminating in how it addresses a narrative gap in Genesis 16, which is Hagar’s being raped (made to have sex without her consent) by Abraham at Sarah’s behest. Customary in many ancient patriarchal societies, the use of slaves to bear children for one’s family line is what is dramatized in the popular novel-turned-TV series The Handmaid’s Tale. Exum looks at six seventeenth-century paintings of Sarah leading a reluctant and sometimes humiliated Hagar, who tries in vain to cover her nakedness, into Abraham’s bed. “These paintings,” Exum writes, “require us to consider what assumptions about women and slaves and their rights to their bodies lie behind the biblical narrator’s simple ‘he went in to her and she conceived’, assumptions commentators too readily ignore.”
Salomon de Bray (Dutch, 1597–1664), Hagar Brought to Abraham by Sarah, 1650. Oil on panel, 31.2 × 23.5 cm. Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario.
In the final section of the paper, Exum considers a disturbing verse in the Song of Songs that has stumped commentators but that the artist Gustave Moreau chose to visually interpret.
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POEM: “He Who Sees Hagar”by Michelle Chin: “She buys me for my birth canal / but beats me for the birth. / I despise her . . .” Published in Reformed Journal.
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VIDEO SERIES: Dramatic Encounters (proof of concept pilot), created by Martin J. Young: Martin J. Young, a UK-based speaker, writer, and mentor to church leaders and creatives, is developing a film series with writer-director Ethan Milner of Cedar Creative that explores people’s dramatic encounters with Jesus in John’s Gospel. Inspired in part by David Ford’s The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary (Baker Academic, 2021), the series will adapt particular gospel stories to screen and, uniquely, will include a documentary component that highlights the creative process from start to finish.
Each episode will consist of four primary elements (expanded from the three showcased in the pilot):
The Roundtable, a conversation with theologians, pastors, and artists about the given gospel story, examining its form, meaning, themes, and interpretations
The Rehearsal, in which the actors, informed by the roundtable discussion, work out how to perform the story, choosing facial expressions, postures and movements, vocal tones and inflections
Behind-the-Scenes, exploring the various cinematographic choices made by Milner and his filmmaking team (e.g., sets, lighting, framing, editing, scoring)
The Film, a roughly ten-minute drama that brings the gospel story to life
The proof of concept pilot episode below is based on John 12:1–8, in which Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus with expensive perfume, much to Judas’s chagrin. The short starts at 24:13. I’m impressed by the quality! And the “voyage of discovery” approach of the overall episode—wrestling with scripture in preparation for inhabiting its characters, and translating it into a filmic narrative—pays off, as viewers are granted insight into the crafts of acting, filmmaking, and literary adaptation.
Young is seeking funding to produce and distribute a season of eight to ten episodes. (None have been made yet.) If you’re interested in helping out financially, visit https://www.cedarcreative.net/encounters, and click “Donate Today.” Explore more at https://this-is-that.com/.
Watercolor illustration by Lisbeth Zwerger, from Stories from the Bible (NorthSouth Books, 2016)
Hush my mother’s infant lusty hush my fear-born brother nigh rock you still in paper’s cradle cry you not, or you will die
Rushes taller than your manhood hide you now from club and sword neighbours’ howls forget, and slumber on the swaying water-sward
Rose a king who knew not Joseph feared our numbers, feared our poise feared our strength within his nation spoke the killing of our boys
Cunning she who bore you quietly cunning midwife I must be cunning now to rock you, rock you on the river tenderly
Hush, and hear not my heart beating for the story that’s to come mist-enfolded seeps toward me in a howl that must be dumb
Silent children, silent women silent men and silent bones silent shoes in piles unnumbered silent dust among the stones –
Here’s the woman with her women with her barren sorrow bowed jewels, gold and slaves unnumbered cannot soothe her field unploughed
Cunning I, my mother’s daughter cannot hush you, but can save but can lift you from the water king’s son make from son of slave
Running now to fetch my mother running now to lose the sight of the silent dust unslumbered mist-encroaching through my flight
Mother, Mother, run and feed him – of his origins be dumb – close your ears against the howling of the mothers still to come
This poem, inspired by Exodus 1–2, is published in The Poetic Bible, ed. Colin Duriez (Hendrickson, 2001).
Alison Leonard (born 1944) is a writer from the UK whose works include children’s and adult fiction, stage and (BBC) radio plays, poetry, and spiritual nonfiction. She is a Quaker and is deeply committed to interfaith dialogue and learning.
ONLINE COURSE: The Good, the True, the Beautiful: Reading Literature to Restore the Soul with Karen Swallow Prior, October 29–December 17, 2025: Offered through the Free to Be Faithful initiative of the Institute of Christian Studies in Toronto, this eight-week online course taught by literature scholar Karen Swallow Prior (author of On Reading Well and other books) “invites students into the sacred act of reading—exploring how classic and contemporary works of fiction and poetry can reawaken moral imagination, deepen empathy, and cultivate spiritual resilience. Together we will reflect on the formative power of beauty and goodness through the written word, guided by voices both timeless and timely.”
The class will meet Wednesdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. ET and will include lectures and discussion. The cost for first-time ICS students, not for credit, is $289 USD. (To take it for credit costs about $1,110 USD.) Read the ICS’s course introduction on Substack, and view additional course offerings at https://f2bf.icscanada.edu/#courses.
This March, Walker launched Versed~, “a space where the serious love and study of poetry is available beyond the paywalls of the universities—a place where readers can talk about books, make friends, compare notes, and share their writings with other readers.” He continues:
Our meetings blend the rigor of the classroom with the warmth of a living room. . . . Versed offers a wide range of learning opportunities, including live classes, a library of past courses, exclusive access to unpublished courses, and resources designed for everyone from beginners to advanced readers. At Versed, students can sharpen their literary skills, master various techniques in the art of close reading, and encounter works of great literature with other readers. Here, you’ll find all the insight of a university course, without the pressure, just good books and better company.
You can join for just $20/month.
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PODCAST EPISODES:
These are both available for listening wherever you get your podcasts.
>> “How to Read a Poem” with Ben Myers, The Artistic Vision, July 15, 2025: Dr. Benjamin Myers [previously], the 2015/16 poet laureate of Oklahoma and author of four books of poetry, kicks off a new “how to” lecture-style series for The Artistic Vision, providing tips on how to read (and listen to) poetry. “The purpose of poetry is the cultivation of attention,” he says. He urges readers to resist the temptation to try to “solve” the poem, and emphasizes the role of beauty and sound in enhancing the poetic experience. For consideration, he highlights the poems “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos William, “The Song of Wandering Aengus” by William Butler Yeats, “Birches” by Robert Frost, and “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by William Butler Yeats. For those who want to learn more, he heartily recommends How to Read a Poem by Tania Runyan.
ARTICLE: “Christians in the Movies: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” by Mike Frost: “Hollywood movies are full of religious nuts. . . . But it’s not all bad news. Mainstream cinema has presented us with some powerful, complex, and authentic depictions of devout Christians,” writes Mike Frost, a minister from Australia. He gives ten examples.
Augustus Vincent Tack (American, 1870–1949), Dawn, 1934–36. Oil on canvas mounted on hardboard, 23 3/4 × 24 3/4 in. (60.3 × 62.9 cm). Phillips Collection, Washington, DC.
Darkness as black as your eyelid, poketricks of stars, the yellow mouth, the smell of a stranger, dawn coming up, dark blue, no stars, the smell of a lover, warmer now as authentic as soap, wave after wave of lightness and the birds in their chains going mad with throat noises, the birds in their tracks yelling into their cheeks like clowns, lighter, lighter, the stars gone, the trees appearing in their green hoods, the house appearing across the way, the road and its sad macadam, the rock walls losing their cotton, lighter, lighter, letting the dog out and seeing fog lift by her legs, a gauze dance, lighter, lighter, yellow, blue at the tops of trees, more God, more God everywhere, lighter, lighter, more world everywhere, sheets bent back for people, the strange heads of love and breakfast, that sacrament, lighter, yellower, like the yolk of eggs, the flies gathering at the windowpane, the dog inside whining for food and the day commencing, not to die, not to die, as in the last day breaking, a final day digesting itself, lighter, lighter, the endless colors, the same old trees stepping toward me, the rock unpacking its crevices, breakfast like a dream, and the whole day to live through, steadfast, deep, interior. After the death, after the black of black, this lightness— not to die, not to die— that God begot.
“The Fury of Sunrises” is the last of fifteen poems from Anne Sexton’s “The Furies” cycle, published in The Death Notebooks (Houghton Mifflin, 1974).Copyright is held by the Estate of Anne Sexton, represented by Sterling Lord Literistic.
Anne Sexton (1928–1974) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning confessional poet from New England who wrote in starkly personal terms about her psychiatric struggles (she suffered from bipolar disorder and died by suicide), sexuality, and other taboo subjects. Much of her poetry expresses a yearning for the ecstatic and sublime and explores religious questions, referencing God and faith—even though she characterized herself, in a 1968 BBC interview, as an atheist, albeit one who was “rather attracted to Catholicism.”
Lê Phổ (Vietnamese, 1907–2001), Composition, 1969. Oil on canvas, 23 3/4 × 29 in. (60.3 × 73.7 cm).
Phil. 2:13
Thou sayest, “Fit me, fashion me for Thee.” Stretch forth thine empty hands, and be thou still; O restless soul, thou dost but hinder Me By valiant purpose and by steadfast will.
Behold the summer flowers beneath the sun: In stillness his great glory they behold; And sweetly thus his mighty work is done, And resting in his gladness they unfold.
So are the sweetness and the joy divine Thine, O beloved, and the work is Mine.
Translated from the German by Frances Bevan, 1894
In this poem God speaks to his beloved, urging her to cease her anxious striving to please him and to simply be present, soft, and open—to receive his love and its attendant sweetness and joy. The epigraph cites the apostle Paul’s encouragement to the church at Philippi that “it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure,” but the title is taken from Psalm 136:8: “O give thanks unto the LORD . . . to him that made . . . the sun to rule by day: for his mercy endureth for ever.”
The second stanza is also a biblical allusion, pointing to Matthew 6:27–29, in which Jesus asks rhetorically, “Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
As we rest in God, he shines his face on us and gladly grows us, beauties all.
Gerhard Tersteegen (1697–1769) was a German Pietist preacher, writer, humanitarian, and hymnist. Self-taught in religious studies, as a young man he gave up a successful career as a merchant to live a simple life of personal devotion and public ministry. Known as “the physician of the poor and forsaken,” he opened his home in Mülhern—it became known as Pilgrim’s Hut—to all manner of needy folks, leading prayer services and dispensing food, medicine, and spiritual counsel. He also traveled the region preaching the gospel. His writings include the hymn collection Das geistliche Blumengärtlein (The Spiritual Flower Garden) (1729), a volume of Gebete (prayers) and another of Briefe (letters), and translations of the French mystics and Julian of Norwich. He is sometimes classified as a mystic himself because of his emphasis on intimacy with God.
In anticipation of the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist on June 24, I offer this tender poem by Sister Maura Eichner in which the elderly Elizabeth speaks to her son, John, while he’s still in utero. She senses his life will end early and wishes to keep him safe forever, away from the burdens and perils of a prophetic vocation, away from Herod’s order of imprisonment, away from the lethal spite of Herodias and her daughter-pawn, Salome, whose dancing trophy of choice is John’s head on a platter.
Elizabeth is faithful to God and God’s will—just yesterday, in the company of her also-pregnant cousin Mary, she praised God for the coming Messiah whom even the fetal John recognized, leaping. But as great an honor as it is that her son has been chosen to herald the Messiah, her maternal instinct is to shield and protect him. In the dark of midnight, while her husband, Zechariah, is asleep, she whispers her fears rolled up in a charge, instructing John to savor the shelter of her womb while he still can, as soon he will enter the world’s wilderness and eventually preach himself to a martyr’s death.
For scripture texts that inform Sister Maura’s “Dialogue at Midnight,” see Luke 1 and Matthew 14:1–12.
Sister Maura Eichner, SSND (1915–2009), was a Catholic nun, poet, and professor of literature and creative writing. Born Catherine Alice Eichner in Brooklyn, New York, she took vows with the School Sisters of Notre Dame in 1933 at age eighteen. In 1943 she was assigned to teach in the English Department at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland (now Notre Dame of Maryland University) in Baltimore, where she continued until 1992, serving also as department chair. She published ten books of poetry during her lifetime, including The Word Is Love (1958) and Hope Is a Blind Bard (1989), and maintained correspondence with such writers as Flannery O’Connor, Richard Wilbur, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty. She experimented with a diversity of poetic forms and subject matter and disliked religious poetry that is redolent of “thin piety” and “decoratively sweet nosegays,” she told The New York Times in a 1959 interview.
Here are three sung invocations of the Holy Spirit, seeking his power, liberation, comfort, light, and renewal.
>> “Holy Spirit, Come with Power”: This hymn was written by Anne Neufeld Rupp in 1970, who set it to a Sacred Harp tune from 1844 attributed to B. F. White. It’s performed here by the Bel Canto Singers from Hesston College in Kansas, featuring Gretchen Priest-May on fiddle and Tim May on acoustic guitar.
I was introduced to this hymn through the Voices Together Mennonite hymnal, where it appears in both English and Spanish as no. 57.
>> “Mweya Mutsvene” (Holy Spirit, Take Your Place) by Joshua Mtima and The Unveiled:The Unveiled is a collective of Christian musicians from Harare, Zimbabwe, founded by Joshua Mtima in 2020. Here they sing one of their songs in Shona. An English translation is provided onscreen. [HT: Global Christian Worship]
>> “Ven Espíritu Divino (Secuencia de Pentecostés)” (Come, Spirit Divine) by Pablo Coloma, performed by Chiara Bellucci: The Spanish lyrics of this contemporary Christian song from the Latin American Catholic tradition are in the YouTube video description. They ask the Holy Spirit, “sweet guest of our souls,” to come bringing healing, regeneration, growth, joy, and charisms.
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SUBSTACK POST: “Veni Creator Spiritus: A Lush Middle English Hymn” by Grace Hamman, Medievalish: Dr. Grace Hamman shares Friar William Herebert’s (ca. 1270–ca. 1333) Middle English translation of the classic Latin Pentecost hymn attributed to Rabanus Maurus (ca. 780–856), “Veni Creator Spiritus” [previously]. Herebert uses words like vor-speker (for-speaker; i.e., intercessor), lodes-mon (lodesman; i.e., journeyman or navigator), and shuppere (shaper) as titles for the Holy Spirit.
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ORGAN WORK: “Improvisation on Veni Creator Spiritus” by Alfred V. Fedak: “Your congregation will hear the rushing of the Holy Spirit in this improvisatory prelude (taken from Fedak’s and Carl P. Daw’s oratorio The Glories of God’s Grace),” writes Selah Publishing. “Fedak effectively uses sweeping whole-tone scale passages and arpeggios to indicate the Spirit’s presence, while the pedal plays phrases of the hymn tune,” a medieval plainchant. The publisher has posted the following performance of the piece (audio only), by the composer himself, along with a selection of Pentecost art from the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries. [HT: Global Christian Worship]
There are many other works on organ (fantasias, partitas, fugues) based on the “Veni Creator Spiritus” tune; view a select list on Wikipedia.
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POEM:“Book of Hours”by Kimberly Johnson: “A pentecost of bloom: all the furred tongues / awag in the iris patch, windrush through the fireflower.” So opens the poem “Book of Hours” by Kimberly Johnson [previously], from her collection Uncommon Prayer (Persea, 2014). A book of hours is a genre of medieval prayer-book used by laypeople, which arranges prayers, scripture, and other devotional texts for reading at prescribed times of the day. Johnson’s “Book of Hours” draws on the fields of codicology (the study of manuscripts as physical objects) and botany to consider how God’s Spirit moves through and enlivens the material world, be it the irises, fire lilies, alyssum, and paperwhite narcissus in her garden, or the ink and natural pigments on calfskin—green verdigris, red cochineal, yellow curcumin—in the rare manuscripts library where she examines a book of hours whose embellished Latin text she can’t quite make out but whose beauty enraptures her nonetheless. These are but two untranslatable experiences of sensual, embodied communion with God that Johnson narrates in the collection, the paint flakes on her lips and the pollen on her wrist a chrism and a prayer.
Art & Theology 