The Cloister Walk

One difficulty that people seeking to modernize hymnals and the language of worship inevitably run into is that contemporaries are never the best judges of what works and what doesn’t.

as if the purpose of poetry is to provide boring exercises for English class. The metaphorical intelligence that has pulled disparate elements together to make the poem is of no consequence.

Gail Ramshaw has said, “Christianity requires metaphoric thinking,”

This psalm functions as a cautionary tale: such a desire, left unchecked, whether buried under “niceness” or violently acted out, can lead to a bitterness so consuming that even the innocent are not spared.

“he recognized that the purpose of individual growth is to share with others.”

the tendency in America to insist that everything be self-discovery.

temptations are, as well as our gifts—not that we might better “know ourselves,” or in modern parlance, “feel good about ourselves,” but in order that we might become instruments of divine grace for other people, and eventually return to God.

It counters our tendency to see individual experience as sufficient for formulating a vision of the world.

To make the poem of our faith, we must learn not to settle for a false certitude but to embrace ambiguity and mystery.

what went wrong for me in my Christian upbringing is centered in the belief that one had to be dressed up, both outwardly and inwardly, to meet God, the insidious notion that I need be a firm and even cheerful believer before I dare show my face in “His” church. Such