"The double question we must always ask is, 'How does faith inform art?' and 'How can art animate faith?'"

Imagination, appreciation of beauty, creativity: all of these qualities have been given to us by God. For the Christian artist, the drive to create something wonderful is also a means to glorify and better understand our Lord. Using excerpts from her own works as well as those of writers who have gone before her--Emily Dickinson, Annie Dillard, C.S. Lewis, and others--poet and writer Luci Shaw proves that symbolism and metaphor provide ways for humans to experience God in new and powerful ways.

Shaw offers a rich and thought-provoking exploration of art, creativity, and faith. Believing that art emanates from God, she shows how imagination and spirituality "work in tandem, each feeding on and nourishing the other." Faith informs art and art enhances faith. They both, for each other, are "breath for the bones."

Provocative, enlightening, and above all, inspiring, "Breath for the Bones" will help readers discover the artist within, and bring them further along the path to God Himself.

Include s Discussion Questions and Writing Exercises

Generations of children have been captivated by the exploits of Jemima Puddle-Duck, Squirrel Nutkin, Peter Rabbit and the host of other characters conjured up by Beatrix Potter. Packed with original artwork, Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature, looks at secrets to her success and celebrates her wider life and legacy - her passions and accomplishments - that stretch far beyond the pages of her storybooks. Charting her life, from her childhood in South Kensington, London to her later years in the Lake District, Annemarie Bilclough and Emma Laws show how Potter's exceptional affinity with nature from an early age ensured the success of her stories - underneath the costumes were real, believable, animals. Sara Glenn highlights Potter's entrepreneurial talents whilst Lucy Shaw takes readers on a Victorian holiday. Contributions from Richard Fortey and James Rebanks reveal her work in the field of mycology and transformation into a farmer, and Liz Hunter MacFarlane discusses her profound impact on the preservation of the Lake District landscape. Naturalist, creative pioneer, storyteller, determined entrepreneur - Potter has been described as 'a many-sided genius' and Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature allows readers a tantalising glimpse into the life of this extraordinary woman.

Food - how it's grown, how it's shared - makes us who we are. This issue traces the connections between farm and food, between humus and human. According to the first book of the Bible, tending the earth was humankind's first task: "The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed" (Gen. 2:8). The desire to get one's hands dirty raising one's own food, then, doesn't just come from modern romanticism, but is built into human nature. The title, "The Welcome Table," comes from a spiritual first sung by enslaved African-Americans. The song refers to the Bible's closing scene, the wedding feast of the Lamb described in the Book of Revelation, to which every race, tribe, and tongue are invited - a divine pledge of a day of freedom and freely shared plenty, of earth renewed and humanity restored. In the case of food, the symbol is the substance. Every meal, if shared generously and with radical hospitality, is already now a taste of the feast to come. Also in this issue: poetry by Luci Shaw; reviews of books by Julia Child, Robert Farrar Capon, Peter Mayle, Albert Woodfox, and Maria von Trapp; and art by Michael Naples, Sieger Koeder, Carl Juste, Andre Chung, Angel Bracho, Winslow Homer, Raymond Logan, Sybil Andrews, Cameron Davidson, and Jason Landsel. Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus' message into practice and find common cause with others.

A daily devotional reader to guide lovers of the Word through the forty days of Lent and Easter, rich with spiritual insight from leading Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox writers Explore the meaning of Lent, its importance in spiritual formation, its significance in the preparation for Easter, and throughout the holy season of Christ's Resurrection. Leading North American spiritual writers reflect on what one theologian has called the "bright sadness" of Lent: that it is not about feeling broken and lost, but about cleansing the palate so we can taste and live life more fully. During Lent and Easter, we encounter the God who in all of life is for us-for our liberation, for our healing, for our wholeness. Even in death we can find resurrection. In God For Us readers will find: - Daily readings with scriptures, meditations, and prayers, beautiful edited by Greg Pennoyer and Gregory Wolfe - One beloved spiritual writer featured each week Introduction: Fr. Ronald Rolheiser, OMI Shrove Tuesday and the First Week of Lent: Richard Rohr, OFM Second Week of Lent: Lauren F. Winner Third Week of Lent: Scott Cairns Fourth Week of Lent: James Schaap Fifth Week of Lent: Luci Shaw Holy Week and Easter: Kathleen Norris - Studies throughout the forty days on "The Feasts and Fasts of Lent" by Beth Bevis

What do an orangutan, an ostrich, an orange, and the ocean all have in common? They all begin with the letter O! But other words also have an O-words like mouth or moon or wow, and even the word hope. Combining a joyful poem from the much-celebrated poet Luci Shaw with playful cut-paper art created by Ned Bustard, The O in Hope helps us experience the goodness of God's gifts of hope and love. This delightful book can be enjoyed by children and the adults who read with them. Also included is a note from the author to encourage further conversation about the content. Discover IVP Kids and share with children the things that matter to God!

"Rejoice, readers, as you receive the generosity of Luci Shaw's 76 new grace-infused parable poems. Autobiography once more merges with theology as these poems illuminate in splendored natural detail how the seasons of creation parallel and explain the seasons of her life as a poet. Again and again, these poems shower us with glorious epiphanies from the natural world as it reflects God's generosity at work such as "spring's impossible news of green." These poems confirm that in poetry as in faith "ripeness is all." Like Wordsworth, Luci is celebrated for being a highly gifted landscape poet whose works are rich in imagery from the physical world-meadows filled with seeds, flowers, and also poems which are like "shoots" in Luci's writing life. Animals, too, great and small (beetles, cricket, and voles to bears and whales) play a major role in Luci's poetics of creation; God is likened to a great bear who leaves paw tracks for us to follow. In their deep faith and vibrant colors and designs, the poems in Generosity might be considered Luci's Book of Kells. We need to be like Luci's father who carried her poems in his briefcase to show his friends." -Philip C. Kolin, Author, Reaching Forever: Poems; Distinguished Professor of English (Emeritus), University of Southern Mississippi

"Writing the River traces the steps of a writer who cocks her ear to listen for spiritual reality. The book is a record of her search into everything - rivers and bread and closets - and sometimes, as if by miracle, she finds what she is looking for. And whether she tells about the search or the finding, she writes with utter clarity." -Jeanne Murray Walker, poet, author of Coming Into History "In Writing the River and elsewhere, Luci Shaw's poems provide us with sudden, surprising images and metaphors infused with spiritual significance even when purely about the natural world, and profoundly human and natural even when about a clearly religious subject. Her language is sensuous and musical and highly visual. All who value poetry that includes the spiritual dimension of experience will value hers." -Robert Siegel, poet, author of In a Pig's Eye Luci Shaw is author of eight volumes of poetry, among them Listen to the Green, Water Lines, and Polishing the Petoskey Stone. Her other books include Water My Soul and God in the Dark: Through Grief and Beyond. Since 1988 Shaw has been adjunct faculty member and Writer in Residence at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Luci Shaw is now 90 years old. The author of more than 35 collections of poetry and creative non-fiction over the last five decades, she describes her dedication to this art as a burden to "speak into a culture that finds it hard to listen." This collection of new poems-all composed over the last two years-is in many ways the culmination of a stunning career. The joy and responsibility of the poet is to focus on particulars within the universe, finding fragments of meaning that speak to the imagination. Ordinary things may reveal the extraordinary for those willing to take time to investigate and ponder. In this fresh collection of poems, Luci Shaw practices the art of seeing, and then writing what she sees, realizing that beauty is often focused in the Eye of the Beholder. Eye of the Beholder is meant to awaken in readers awareness of the extraordinary in the ordinary. They will find in this collection a focus for meditation and be excited into their own imaginative writing.

Holy books, including the Bible, support the power of The Law of Attraction by admonishing us to "Be Not Anxious," especially before praying. But HOW do you get rid of fear, anxiety, guilt, shame, or blame, calm down and think with clarity? Imagine the results you could achieve in your life if you weren't mired in negative emotions, if all your thoughts were positive, if all were "acceptable in His sight?" What if we had a tool for easily programming our consciousness with positive thoughts to create positive actions? This book links the science of Energy Medicine and the wisdom of the Bible using compassionate, down to earth examples of the ways Christians get tripped up in their prayer life by negative thinking and emoting. Lucy takes the self-help tool of Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and bravely demonstrates how it can be used to remove the obstacles to successful prayer by challenging our limiting beliefs. She takes some of the positive and negative emotions talked about in Napoleon Hill's classic, Think and Grow Rich, to bring a fresh approach to controlling the negative and using the positive. Each chapter is supported with scripture and accompanied by self-help "tapping sequences" that provide instant relief to some of our most common fears and blocks to success in our pursuit of a bigger, better spiritual and physical experience.

In arid coastal areas of South America, locals hang rags outside until they're saturated with fog. They wring out this water, all year long, as a means of survival. They call it "harvesting fog." And that, writes LUCI SHAW, is a lot like writing poems. In her poems, Shaw observes and contemplates nature and humanity: "I'm merely a floater in the eye of God." "Behold the fleck of ant... If by observation, we become part of an insect's life, is he aware of us?" Shaw's poems invite us to awaken the spirit of loving and giving: "The tide that outward ebbs, turns then and inward flows, And what I offer you, you'll multiply to me." Shaw's 10th volume of poetry satisfies a thirsty imagination. Shaw turns the details of our lives, the droplets, into the music of possibility. PRAISE for HARVESTING FOG: Luci Shaw sees in the natural world a dynamic incarnation of God's love. Luminous poems, of faith richly woven into the fabric of daily life and change, full of surprises and moments of delicious holy mischief.--Betsy Sholl Intensely personal, her poems also draw deeply on the legacy she has embraced as an heir to Herbert, Hopkins, Dickinson, and others whose shadows fall gently across her lines, giving them texture and adding to their quiet contemporary beauty.--Marilyn McEntyre Envision a long life through imaginative changes of lens. Light becomes a bookish beetle, the Infant Jesus is "a small sack of God," and idea is "a glitter of ash" to be flung over the ocean.--Jeanine Hathaway One might argue with Heidegger that only in poetry can Being achieve adequate articulation, find a "local habitation and a name," become known. For Shaw, whose poems so brilliantly and movingly locate authentic Being in the forms and processes of nature, the lyric impulse often approaches the incarnational.--B.H.Fairchild Sacramental poems offer nourishment for the starving soul with a topping of delightful whimsy, a "bowlful of cool" in the face.--Paul Willis

Since her childhood in Toronto, celebrated poet Luci Shaw has announced Advent greetings to her friends and family with a poem and original artwork. What began as a simple childhood craft has now become beloved annual tradition encompassing not only her poetry, but the work of well-known artists.

In "Accompanied by Angels" these annual poems are collected together for the first time. Beginning with the joy, terror and wonder of the annunciation, Shaw leads the reader on a poetic journey through the birth, life and death of the Jesus the Christ, and finally to the joyous and unexpected wonder of his resurrection. Her subjects run from the mundane to the sublime encompassing birds in flight and waiting old men to fiery angels and storm-ravaged ridges.

The latest work in her illustrious catalog, "Accompanied by Angels" will be loved not only by Luci's many enthusiasts, but also by those who reflect deeply on the incarnational mystery that lies at the center of Christian faith.

Life has a way of slipping away while we're not looking. And many of us are so numbed by mundane routine that we hardly miss its passing. Keeping a journal can bring it all back . . . * Those timeless moments when the mists part and you catch a glimpse of a loving Father. * Those rare insights where you suddenly see your life from a new perspective. * those welcome moments when the pain subsides and the healing begins. "Life Path will be a delight equally to inveterate journal keepers like me, and to those who've often thought they might like to keep a journal, but haven't known how to go about it." - Madeleine L'Engle Luci Shaw is author of eight volumes of poetry, among them Listen to the Green, Water Lines, and Polishing the Petoskey Stone. Her other books include Water My Soul and God in the Dark: Through Grief and Beyond. Since 1988 she has been adjunct faculty member and Writer in Residence at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Have a cup of coffee and put a log on the fire, settle info a comforable chair and enjoy a winter's day with the writings of novelist Madeleine L'Engle and poet Luci Shaw. Participate in the winter season: the wonder, the solemnity, the power, and the miracles. These readings reflect on the winter world around us, drawing joy from winter days, hope from Christmas celebrations, and promise for the New Year. This elegant collection is the natural outflow of the long-standing friendship between Madeleine L'Engle and Luci Shaw. Sharing similar themes and a reflective style of writing, they combine their two rich literary worlds. Newbery Award Winner Madeleine L'Engle is widely known for her children's books, and adult fiction and nonfiction. Her most recent book is Live Coal in the Sea. Renowned poet Luci Shaw's most recent book is The Green Earth: Poems of Creation. Both women are widely known throughout the United States and Canada for their workshops on writing and journaling, lectures, and retreats.

"Luci Shaw is someone who knows the world-the oldest definition of a poet. Her animating intelligence descends into the concrete facts of our existence to discover the divine force that shapes the world and maintains its being. Her poetry recapitulates that intimate naming by which man defines himself-the first role God assigned to the human creature." Harold Fickett, author of The Holy Fool "Longtime readers of these poems will renew old acquaintances and pick up a sheaf of new friends besides. New readers will welcome her gifts of Word-crafted icons by which we behold the Glory, see the Holy." Eugene H. Peterson "Polishing the Petoskey Stone is a wonderful compilation of many of the richest of Luci Shaw's poems, both old and new. It's wonderful to see growth in her understanding of the joys and tragedies of life as they can be expressed in poetry. I sense a new, and perhaps harsher, view of reality which is always redeemed by the never failing love of God." Madeleine L'Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time Luci Shaw is the author of many books, including God in the Dark, Listen to the Green, and Writing the River. A speaker, teacher, poet, editor, and writer, she lives in Bellingham, Washington.

Poet and author Luci Shaw guides you into a deeper understanding of how to cultivate the life of the soul in relationship to God. Water My Soul speaks of the interior life in images of garden and wilderness, seed and soil, watering and waiting-metaphors for the process that leads to the spouting of the seed, the greening of the leaf, and the eventual harvest of flower and fruit. This book speaks straight to the heart, helping you enjoy a lifelong partnership with God as you cultivate a rich inner life-a life characterized by growth in wisdom and godliness. "Luci Shaw is one of our best writers. Read this wonderful book, and for heaven's sake pick up some copies for your friends " -Annie Dillard "Water My Soul is a profoundly rooted book that reminds us all to slow down, breathe deeply, and experience God at work. Luci Shaw displays the wisdom of a woman who has lived well and the child-like wonder of a believer who continues to discover new reasons to believe. This book will be a classic-a volume to be reread whenever life seems to spin out of control." -Dale Hanson Burke Publisher, Religion News Service