Dear Partner in Preaching, While reading this passage, I kept thinking of Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall” and, in particular, it’s most famous line: “Good walls make good neighbors.” While that line is perhaps well known to many of us, it’s easy to forget that the whole of Frost’s poem is written to challenge that assertion. Two farmers are out for their spring ritual of replacing stones that have fallen from the wall separating their two properties. One, the voice of the poet, keeps wondering why they need walls at all: “My apple trees will never get across / And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.” To which...
A Poem in Spring
posted by DJL
I’ve seen two church signs in the last week that, instead of announcing this week’s sermon or offering a biblical word of encouragement, read simply and pointedly: “Whoever is praying for snow, please stop!” In that spirit – and knowing that across at least the north half of the U.S....
The Gift Outright
posted by DJL
Robert Frost was the first poet I really enjoyed while in school. That’s probably not surprising. Not being by nature inclined to poetry, I found that Frost’s lyricism – and his popularity – made him more accessible to me. So I, like many, many others, knew him through beloved poems...
Nothing Gold Can Sta...
posted by DJL
The leaves are turning in our neck of the woods. There’s something so gloriously alive about the fall, and yet a tinge of sadness as well. Which is probably what put me in mind of Robert Frost’s familiar Nothing Gold Can Stay. I don’t know that Frost had this at all in mind, but it...
Desert Places –...
posted by DJL
What I appreciate about Robert Frost’s poetry is the “rhythmic logic” that always seems to yield a kind of desperately honest beauty. Here is comes especially in two places. “And lonely as it is that loneliness / Will be more lonely ere it will be less” and...