Like millions of people, our family was hooked on the Artemis II mission to the moon. We watched the launch, the live broadcast of the splashdown, and all sorts of videos about the astronauts, their training, and their brief life in space. Though I will never understand their experiences, I resonated with this sentiment that commander Reid Wiseman shared about his experience in the hours after returning to earth:

“I’m not really a religious person, but there was just no other avenue for me to explain anything or to experience anything, so I asked for the chaplain on the Navy ship to just come to visit us for a minute. And when that man walked in—I’d never met him before in my life—but I saw the cross on his collar and I just, I broke down in tears. It’s very hard to fully grasp what we just went through.”

I remember my own sense of overwhelming awe as a teenager on the shores of Bass Lake, California as I looked up at the star-slathered night sky—for once not polluted by Los Angeles lights—and listened to a youth pastor preach on a simple yet profound truth: that the God who made the universe also made me, knew me intimately—my name, every hair on my head—and was inviting me into a relationship with Him.

This poem is my monument to that moment of awakened awe and gratitude that forever marked me and led me to get baptized in Bass Lake that same week. Over the two decades since then, my understanding of God’s salvation and shalom has deepened and widened far beyond the gospel of individual salvation I stepped into that week—but my awe at God’s creation and God’s love for us has only grown. I am learning, slowly, to slow down and attend to wonder—following the example of my late grandma Jean, to whom I dedicate this poem.

The Shallows

     In memory of Jean Stalcup (1927-2009)

When I drink in the stars and upward sink
     into the theater your words have wrought,
I touch unfelt immensity and think—
     like Grandma used to pause in patient thought
before an ordinary flower, awed
     by intricacies hidden in plain view,
then say, “You didn’t have to do that, God!”—
     surely a smaller universe would do!
 
But you have walled us in with open seas
     unconquerable, wild with distant shores
whose raging dawns are but your filigree
     across our vaulted skies. This art of yours, 
what Grandma held and I behold—these flames
frame truth which awes us more: You know our names.

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About the Art

The image above is a microscopic close-up of a ceramic glaze (fired at 1,235° Celsius) from my friend, ceramic artist Tim Mills, photographed with the help of science teacher and microscopy lover Daryl Holst. Ever since Tim first showed me this image, I have loved how this tiny speck of God’s (and Tim’s) creation paradoxically looks like a vista of enormous galaxies and nebulas. These galaxies in glaze remind me that the infinite beauty of God’s creativity bridges both the macro and the micro, from the unfathomable universe to every “ordinary” flower (or glazed ceramic mug) we hold in our hand.

You can check out Tim’s incredibly beautiful, thoughtful ceramic work here; it’s stunning at a non-microscopic level too!

As for my poem, I’ve picked up over the years that the second stanza is quite dense for many readers! So for anyone confused, I’m leaning further into the space imagery here: “open seas unconquerable” refers to the vastness of space, the “distant shores” are far-off planets whose “raging dawns” (their own intensely-burning suns) appear to us like a “filigree” (intricate metalwork) of bright beads woven across our sky. I hope that helps!

Two Opportunities: A Good Book and A Good Community

My friend Kristin T. Lee (a Spirit & Scribe and PAX Fellowship alumna!) just published her refreshingly honest, deeply thoughtful, and beautifully written book We Mend with Gold: An Immigrant Daughter’s Reckoning with American Christianity. It’s a hybrid of memoir and theological reflection that is one of the best books I’ve read this year. The book also includes “Deconstruction,” a new sonnet of mine that I’m really proud of. Go order this amazing book for yourself and please help spread the word!

Speaking of the PAX Fellowship, registration for my Writing as Spiritual Formation Cohort is open now through June 15, 2026. I can’t wait to journey with a community of writers as we seek to know God and grow together. You can learn more and apply here. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions!

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Thank you to Ekstasis Magazine for originally publishing “The Shallows.” And thank you for reading, subscribing, and commenting to let me know your thoughts. I always love hearing back from you.

Seeking shalom,
Michael

Keyhole

But then in that impenetrable door
   which darkens full the end of history’s hall
was carved a keyhole cast of dust and lore
   that casts the stroke of dawn upon the wall.

Now staring at the sight, we see a man
   set bright against death’s dark finality;
and peering through the light we spy his plan:
   our world set right for all eternity.

His body shows the life that we can know
   beyond that door, mysteriously new;
his words are truth who told us long ago:
   he is the only way to enter through.

He lights our path whom darkness cannot hold:
Christ is the keyhole—glimpse and gate twofold.

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About the Poem and Painting

My love for John Donne’s sonnets, particularly his use of extended metaphors (called “conceits”), comes through in this very visual metaphysical sonnet. I had fun opening out several different facets of the metaphor of Jesus’ risen body as the keyhole in death’s door, letting in a sliver of light from the new creation. I also enjoyed weaving John 14:6 (“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”) into the third stanza.

I chose this painting by Korean artist Shin Young-Hun partly because it subtly evokes for me the poem’s playful visual link between Christ’s risen body and the shape of a keyhole. But more than that, I love the brilliant “theology in paint” going on here. Victoria Emily Jones, author of the excellent Art & Theology blog, writes:

“I believe that the pointing figure in the middle ground is a second manifestation of Jesus. Whereas in the foreground he brings under and fills up, here he sends out; he points to the vast needs that still exist just across the way. … Drawing on a representational cliché—Jesus with open arms—Shin Young-Hun suggests that the gospel doesn’t just beckon the individual into one great big warm bear hug with Jesus, just you and him; rather, it compels us to reach out to others with the love we’ve experienced in Christ.”

Amen!

Notes

Thanks to Ekstasis Magazine for originally publishing this poem. And thank you for reading, sharing, and commenting. I’m always so encouraged by you all!

For an even more playful Easter poem, check out my one-word poem “Resurrection.”

Happy Easter! He is risen!

I have been slowly working for years on a series of sonnets meditating on the cross of Christ from different angles, from the deep lament of last month’s “The Cross and the Lynching Tree” to the exultant celebration (in a still-unpublished sonnet) of the cross as a work of art, “the greatest symphony ever composed.”

For this Good Friday, I offer one of the most hopeful sonnets from near the end of the sequence, “A Mystery,” which ends with a nod to C. S. Lewis’ The Last Battle. You can read the poem beneath this sculpture + painting by Taiwanese artist Yu Yu Yang.

A Mystery

For all the metaphors you give in Scripture
   and all the vast theologies we’ve penned,
our highest thoughts are never more than pictures
   of mysteries we cannot comprehend.
 
“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?”
   you questioned Job. You call us higher still:
to marvel at the ground of new creation
   you laid upon that God-forsaken hill.
 
We do not grasp the heights of what you’ve done
   or what it will be like to see your face
and to explore, in ages yet to come,
   the bright and boundless vistas of your grace.
 
For now, we know in part, our joys still dim
compared to further up and further in.

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Notes

I’ll be back with one more sonnet for Easter Sunday. In the meantime, you can find all of my published Holy Week poems here.

If you enjoy these poems, please consider sharing these posts. Also feel free to use any of these poems with your church or small group (with credit).

Applications for the PAX Fellowship Writing as Spiritual Formation Cohort I’m leading are open through June 15. Consider joining and/or helping to spread the word!

Thanks to Ekstasis Magazine for originally publishing “A Mystery.” And thank you for reading! I would love to hear how today’s poem or visual art connected with you.

The next night, Jesus told his disciples during the Passover dinner, “One of you will betray me.” He then handed Judas the bread dipped in wine and told him, “What you are about to do, do quickly.” Judas, literally and spiritually, left the fellowship of the Upper Room and went out “into the night” (John 13:21-30).

But in between these two dark moments, Judas had to endure one last act of love from Jesus, who “loved his disciples… to the very end” (John 13:1-5)—the washing of his feet.

Judas in the Upper Room

	“He sends rain on the just and the unjust.” —Matthew 5:45
 
Incessantly, the water poured and poured
   over my calloused feet. The dappled silence
stretched long and dead like trees across a gorge,
   the fallout of some rot or hidden violence.
 
Then Jesus took my feet and our eyes met.
   He stared at me, I feared, as if to say
he knew the paths my feet had walked, the debt
   I owed—but no: he smiled. I looked away
 
and felt: the working of a servant’s rag—
   his promised revolution’s timid thorns—
the thirty silver daggers in my bag—
   the man that could have been—my patience worn

until the task was done. He set me free
and welcomed me to join him at his feast.

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Notes

I will be sharing two more sonnets for Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Until then, you can explore all of my published Holy Week poems—whether to read personally or to freely use (with credit, please) with your small group or church as you find helpful.

Applications are now open (through June 15) for the PAX Fellowship, including the Writing as Spiritual Formation cohort I’ll be leading. Check it out and help spread the word to any Christians of color (ages 25-45) who might be interested. Thanks!

Thank you for reading! Please reply or comment with any thoughts; I am always encouraged by hearing your reflections. May God soften our hearts this Holy Week to experience the passion of Jesus with fresh wonder, sorrow, and gratitude.

(This poem was originally published in Ekstasis Magazine.)

This month’s poem is inspired by one of the most explosive and theologically significant books I have ever read, James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Cone confronts the hypocrisy of white Christians proclaiming faith in a crucified Jesus while gathering in crowds to perpetuate the crucifixion’s most obvious modern-day parallel: lynching. “The lynching tree—so strikingly similar to the cross on Golgotha—should have a prominent place in American images of Jesus’ death. But it does not,” Cone writes. His diagnosis:

“Until we can see the cross and the lynching tree together, until we can identify Christ with a ‘recrucified’ black body hanging from a lynching tree, there can be no genuine understanding of Christian identity in America, and no deliverance from the brutal legacy of slavery and white supremacy.”

The poem of lament below speaks equally to these two horrors—the crucifixion of Jesus and the lynching of African Americans (and its modern-day manifestations)—with a single set of words, holding the two together. Ultimately, it is a prayer of confession for our individual and collective failure to truly love, stand up for, and suffer with our brothers and sisters whom we rightly honor and learn from during this Black History Month.

You can read and listen to the poem below this linocut print by Bethany Tobin, inspired by Jesus’ sobering words: “The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire” (Mt. 3:10). May we all, by God’s grace, become more soft-hearted—ready to lament, confess, and repent—bearing good fruit as the Spirit leads us toward God’s vision of the beloved community.

The Cross and the Lynching Tree

We shudder at the inhumanity,
the crafted cruelness of that sickening show:
the stripped humiliation, blasphemy
of beaten flesh, death’s agonies stretched slow
by fellow men created in God’s image,
turned terrorists, enslaved to sin’s strange fruit.
How could they mock the marred and lifeless visage
of God’s own child? His axe is at the root!

We tremble more: If we were in that crowd,
would we have spoken up? or wept? or cared?
Would we have stood against those winds or bowed?
Or did we lead the mocking? “Were you there…?”
the Negro spiritual demands—and, trying,
we answer “no,” but know that we are lying.

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Further Reading

As I share this intense poem of lament during Black History Month, I am well aware of the counterbalancing need for poems celebrating Black life, decentering oppression, and basking in beauty. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Amena Brown - “She Said How Do You Know When You’re Hearing From God”

• Lucia Mae Pitts - “This Is My Vow”

• Marilyn Nelson - “Cover Photograph” (on page 4)

Abel Meeropol’s protest poem/song “Strange Fruit,” famously recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939, is hardly celebratory, but certainly worth revisiting. I reference it in my poem, where the phrase simultaneously alludes to the forbidden fruit of Genesis 3.

Finally, this poem is part of a series of sonnets I am writing reflecting on different aspects of Jesus’ death on the cross.

Thank You

Thank you to Sojourners for originally publishing this poem and to Bethany Tobin (previously) for letting me feature her linocut print, one of her recent series of seven.

And as always, thank you so much for reading and sharing. I would be grateful to hear your thoughts or comments.

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”

How do we discern (as artists, pastors, businesspeople, or whoever we are) whether our actions are coming from selfish ambition or godly ambition? These are complex and worthwhile questions that, for me, cannot be resolved by dogmatic rules or formulas, but only through a living relationship with God, who knows and guides each of us on our journeys.

One great help to me on my own journey has been John Wesley’s Covenant Prayer (and its modern version), a beautiful prayer of surrender which challenges my pride and comfort with lines like “Let me be… brought low for you” but also forces me to face my insecurities and fears with lines like “Let me be… exalted for you.”

Several years ago, I adapted Wesley’s prayer into a Shakespearian sonnet whose words continue to challenge me and center me in Christ. You can read and listen to my poem below this painting by Bangladeshi artist Nikhil Halder. I pray these offerings of prayer, painting, and poetry are a blessing to you as you begin this new year.

Covenant Prayer

	after John Wesley

I am no longer mine but wholly yours,
so wield me as you will: assign my rank
among the great or small; fling wide the doors
to honor or humiliation, thanks
or accusation—take my hand and lead
me through; permit me influence and fame
or have me follow you unseen and freed
from weights I cannot bear—but let your name
be glorified; spare me from suffering
or let it shape me; bless or break my plans;
extend my days or martyr me; I bring
my life into your scarred and sovereign hands.
     Whatever comes, my heart will rest content
     for you are mine—your blood my covenant.

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Writing as Spiritual Formation Cohort

I’m excited to be leading a new cohort, Writing as Spiritual Formation, for the 2026-2027 PAX Fellowship for Christians of color ages 25-45. We will cover everything from journaling and creative rhythms to pitching and publishing. More details to come!

For now, join the waitlist to be eligible for early registration which opens February 16. Please share this with any writers of color you know who might be interested!

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Thank you

Special thanks to First Things’ former poetry editor A. M. Juster for giving me constructive feedback on an earlier (worse) version of this poem that I had submitted to him—a rare and generous gift from any poetry editor. I followed his advice: spent a full month revising the poem, ran it by other poets (thanks Rattle community!), then sent him the version above, which he published.

Finally, thank you for reading! Please reply or comment with any thoughts. I always appreciate hearing back from you.

For this final week of Advent, I leave you with a poetic meditation on snow. Having lived most of my life in California and Bangkok, snow still awakens a fresh sense of awe and delight whenever I encounter it. It reminds me, if I let it, of how all of creation is magical—full of unimaginable gifts that I’ve come to take for granted. I love what G.K. Chesterton writes in his book Orthodoxy:

[Fairy] tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.

How much more, then, do we need stories, songs, poems, paintings, and all kinds of art to reawaken our wonder of the most unimaginable event in human history, the incarnation of Jesus!

The Heavens Draped in Sackcloth Sigh

You can listen to the audio below or watch a video version (a slower reading of the poem) that my friends Mark Cooprider and Gersom de Koning made with me a few years ago.

The heavens draped in sackcloth sigh
   and, heavy-hearted, say goodbye
to closest family, dearest kin,
   as frozen tears well up within.
Then, gazing at the barren earth,
   the skies release with mingled mirth
their very own to journey down
   and wreath the world with winter’s crown.
 
Created part of nature’s flow,
   yet always new creations grow
where snow descends from clouds above—
   a quiet word, an artist’s love—
and painting with a single hue,
   it colors in the world anew:
The rocks on plains are summits high,
   now peaking through a cloudy sky,
and dark-barked craggy lifeless trees
   are bursting forth with brightest leaves.
 
And down below, the silent sea:
   a blanket of serenity,
yet welcoming the playful sounds
   of footsteps laughing through the mounds
of playful powder—hills and plains
   where children bound and angels deign
to leave their evanescent marks
   in snow unmelted by the sparks
of nascent creativity
   and brushes of divinity.
 
While gazing from a windowsill,
   a wizened man can wonder still:
rain, fog, and hail—but why this snow?
   For beauty such, who do we owe
our gratitude, our silent awe,
   our disappointment at its thaw?
Who ever could have thought up snow?
   And could it offer hints to know?

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About the Artwork

This week’s painting comes from a “progressive altarpiece” that Tim Joyner created for Trinity Church in Bolton, Massachusetts. The altarpiece, titled Unless a Grain of Wheat, “examined different aspects of the paradoxical nature of the Gospel through the framework of the Church year.”1 As with his painting Incarnation, which I shared last year, Joyner used a fascinating array of foraged pigments to create rich, layered textures that the detail shot below can only hint at.2

A Door of Hope is the altarpiece’s “Advent iteration” and takes its title from Hosea 2:15, in which God promises to “make the valley of trouble a door of hope.” It is a promise ultimately fulfilled in Jesus—the One who descended from heaven to transform the troubled landscape of our human history, declaring, “I am the Door.”

Thank You!

Thanks to Tim Joyner for letting me include his amazing artwork and to Ekstasis Magazine for originally publishing my poem.

Finally, thank you for reading! I hope you’ve enjoyed this Advent series and I wish you a blessed end to Advent and a Merry Christmas!

Both are from The Soil and the Seed Project’s new Matthew: Gospel Collection, a collection of songs, liturgies, prints, and poems, all available for free (physically and/or digitally). Here are both pieces, followed by a few brief notes.

Heaven’s Stair

Since Babel we have built our way toward heaven,
   ascending up our stairs of chiseled stone,
      up flights of fame, up steps of dead religion,
         determined we can reach you on our own.
      We never make it. Dust returns to dust.
   Our best accomplishments cannot atone
for pride—when what you seek is humble trust.

But what we could not climb, you have descended
   by fashioning yourself in human form,
      uniting us with you—your life extended
         by grace to us, that we might be transformed:
      to cease our striving, rest in your renown,
   and sojourn with your Spirit who conforms
our lives to yours—the God who journeyed down.

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About the Art

Bangkok-based artist Bethany Tobin’s Immediately Jesus Reached Out His Hand and Caught Him (inspired by Matthew 14:31) is one of seven linocut prints she created inspired by the gospel of Matthew. I asked if she could share a bit about the art and here’s what she said:

For this series of work, I’ve zoomed in on sacred moments in the gospel of Matthew, moments often described in just one, short, poignant verse. It’s an intimate close-up, framed with a halo around the activity or interaction. In this story of rescue, I am struck by the words “Immediately, Jesus reached out his hand and caught him.” That phrase is a sermon in itself. We are drowning in a churning sea, and Jesus’s hand shoots out and takes ours in a tight grip.

I’ll add that the photos here fail to capture the incredible way that light plays off these prints’ diverse, layered textures in real life. If you like this image or any in the series, I highly recommend buying a unique, original print to hang in your home or church!

My poem “Heaven’s Stair” is yet another twist on the sonnet, this time dividing the fourteen lines into two seven-line stanzas rather than the classic division into eight and six lines. As in “His Hand,” the indentation (which might be muddled if you’re reading vertically on a phone) helps to tell the story, embodying the content of the words.

Thank You!

Thanks to Bethany Tobin for being an incredible friend and a truly inspiring artist; to The Soil and the Seed Project for inviting us to be a part of this big and beautiful collaboration; and to my very talented friend Verity Tan for the photo of Bethany.

Finally, thank you for reading! We made this art to be shared, so please feel free to use it (crediting the artists) with family, friends, or your church during this Advent season. For more Advent art, check out Bethany’s 2023 Advent series and my own. Blessings!

Our Family Tree

You came to us descended from Tamar,
from Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba—names and scars
on proud display upon your family tree,
showing the kind of Savior you would be:

Emmanuel, you stood with the exploited,
the outcasts, immigrants, abused—avoided
by those who claimed your genealogy,
forgetting who you raised us all to be:

those blessed to be a blessing to the nations,
inviting folks from every generation
to come just as they are and be restored,
finding their true identity in yours—

that, grafted in by grace, not cast aside,
we’d share your Spirit’s fruit as we abide.

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About the Art

C. Terry Saul (1921–1976) was a Chickasaw/Choctaw painter who blended traditional Native American and contemporary Western art styles. In Tree of Jesse, we see Mary and Jesus growing out of their human lineage and fulfilling the scarlet thread of God’s ancient promise, which culminates in the (Christmas star-shaped) cross. The Holy Spirit, the rising doves suggest, has been energetically at work throughout long generations bringing God’s promise (which rises neither in front of nor behind the tree, but through its very branches) to fruition.

While Saul’s depiction of women elders in the family tree is likely unremarkable in his matrilineal Chickasaw and Choctaw cultures, it recalls for me Matthew’s very conspicuous, countercultural inclusion (in his patriarchal Jewish culture) of women in Jesus’ genealogy—and not just any women, but foreign women and women whose stories (my goodness!) speak volumes about men, about power, and about redemption.

I am struck by the curvature of Saul’s tree representing humanity. It is emphatically bent. And aren’t we? We need only consider the United States’ oppression of Native Americans like the Chickasaw and Choctaw—or our own personal failures to care for people who are “exploited… outcasts, immigrants, abused”—to confess how different our comings are from Jesus’ coming, marked by humility, patience, and love.

This Advent, may we invite God to graciously but firmly bend us back toward Jesus, the plumbline of true humanity and the world’s true shalom—that we might represent Emmanuel well and, by God’s grace, welcome others into God’s beloved community.

Thank You!

Thanks to The Soil and the Seed Project for publishing “Our Family Tree” in their brand new (free!) Matthew: Gospel Collection, which I’ll share more about next week.

And thank you for reading! Please reply or leave a comment with any thoughts. It’s always a gift to hear back from you.

For more, check out the rest of my 2024 and 2025 Advent series of poems and visual art.

His Hand

	after a painting by Emily Knowles

          Then, hovering above the formless deep,
     he plunged his hand in, shattering the seas
          with brushstrokes of volcanic flame, the leap
     of islands, dolphins, ages, symphonies
and heartbeats rising, prismed out from light
     unbreakable—his creativity
unbound, and bound, our story set to write.
 
               But we ignored him—hoarded all he gave.
               He offered us his hand—we chose the grave.
 
          And so the one who birthed the universe
     conceived to paint himself, unformed, within
          one woman’s womb—to crown and cry and nurse,
     his fingers gripping tight her tender skin—
and grow until the day his wood-worn hands
     would rebuild lives destroyed by sickness, sin,
despair, and death—helping the lowly stand.
 
               But we betrayed him—killed him like a slave.
               We pierced the hands of Love for all they gave.
 
          I wonder sometimes what his hands were like
     when Thomas touched those wounds, somehow untouched
          by even resurrection’s healing light—
     and how those hands that hued the world and clutched
his mother’s breast will always bear the scars
     of love poured out, ignored, rejected, crushed,
that we might hold the hand that holds the stars.

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About the Poem

While this poem’s scope goes far beyond Advent, the incarnation lies at its center. My following Advent newsletters will be much briefer, but this week I want to share the story of how I experienced God’s hand at work in the making of this poem.

I wrote this poem for the Art & Words Show, a collaborative art exhibit in which ten writers and ten visual artists created works inspired by each other’s art, resulting in twenty pairs of “Art & Words.”1 I prayerfully considered the visual art options and chose Emily Knowles’ painting His Hand. “I don’t know what grabbed me about it,” I told the show’s curator, “but I will find out in time.”

I printed out the painting and returned to it over the weeks and months, wondering why God had nudged me to choose it (so I felt) and what I would write in response to this somewhat abstract painting. The deadline loomed. I prayed for help.

One day I asked my daughters what they saw in the painting. “A colorful island floating in the water,” said my then-five-year-old. “Fish swimming together,” said her seven-year-old sister. I had already felt that the hand in the painting was God’s, and my daughter’s oceanic visions washed over my imagination, calling to mind God “hovering” over the “formless… deep” in Genesis 1:2. It was then that I drafted what became the poem’s opening lines—which, through all the poem’s revisions, held onto my daughter’s “islands” and “dolphins” (okay, dolphins aren’t fish, but close enough).

As I continued to pray for inspiration and meditate on the role of God’s hands in Scripture, the poem grew from a sonnet about creation to a poem with five stanzas encompassing the creation, fall, incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection—all viewed through the lens of God’s hands. (For the poetry nerd-out, see this footnote2).

I had no idea how people (especially Emily!) would react when I read this very Christian poem at this (not Christian) event. Did Emily even believe in God? Whose hand had she meant to paint? But I had done my faithful best, and all I could do was pray that God would open peoples’ hearts to receive the poem well.

When I read the poem at the show, the response was very positive—but what blew me away was what Emily told me after my reading. She told me that she too had invited God into her creative process as she painted, that she had indeed meant to paint God’s hand, and that my poem’s words and images “were the ones I was thinking about while painting and after. So many of your images were in my mind.”

I left in awe of God’s hand still at work—through Emily’s brush, my pen, and my daughter’s little fingers pointing out imagined islands—welcoming us all to join the ongoing, orchestrated creativity of the Holy Spirit. I’ll never know how God touched people through our art that day, but the experience deepened my sense of prayer’s crucial role in every stage of our artmaking—and reminded me that we do not labor alone, but as part of a community of saints who are all cared for, inspired, and guided by His hand.

May God bless you to encounter afresh the unimaginable wonder of Advent—that “the one who birthed the universe / conceived to paint himself, unformed, within / one woman’s womb” in order that we might see and touch and know the living God.

Notes

Special thanks to Emily Knowles for her beautiful painting and for the unseen prayers and hours behind it. Thanks also to Made for PAX for originally publishing this poem.

This poem and painting will be featured in the Lausanne Movement’s 2025 Advent Devotional. Sign up to receive global Advent art in your inbox starting December 1.

I’ll be back next weekend with another poem and painting for Advent. In the meantime, feel free to check out my Advent series from last year.

Thank you so much for reading. I would love to hear any thoughts or questions!

“Appled Things” is my playful response to Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “Pied Beauty,” which begins, “Glory be to God for dappled things….” In his poem, Hopkins (whom I am named after—my middle name is Manley!) celebrates dappled things from “finches’ wings” to “landscape plotted and pieced.” For my poem, I change “dappled” to “appled” and let the apple-ication of this poetically-modified seed change the core (okay I’ll stop!) of the poem.

Like “Pied Beauty,” my poem uses Hopkins’ curtal sonnet form, which compresses the already-compact sonnet to ¾ its normal size (more nerdy info in the footnote1).

Beyond the clear first line reference (“Glory be to God for appled things”), I play around with “Pied Beauty” in a few other spots, especially the line “for family’s faces—gathered, pied, and peaced.” Hopkins uses both “pied” and “pieced” in his poem, but in different (more normal) ways, whereas I use their homonyms to evoke that post-Thanksgiving food-coma scene where a family is sitting around the table, perhaps with bits of pie crumb still around their mouths, deeply at peace—so, pied and peaced!

For all the lighthearted wordplay, the final lines subtly reframe the whole poem toward something deeper. All of these glorious things, from warm, delectable desserts to the warmth of families in all their “pied” diversity,2 are only a foretaste of God’s goodness—“small sips of cider from the coming feast” of the new creation. Praise him!

Appled Things

	after Gerard Manley Hopkins
 
Glory be to God for appled things—
   for gardens dappled rich with reds and greens;
      for brimming baskets; memories of Fall;
for still life paintings; banquets set for kings;
   kids’ lunches; teachers’ desktops; sundry screens;
      and gravity, taught by a sphere so small.
 
For strudels, crumbles, cakes, and all things sweet,
   the air alive with aromatic heat;
      for family’s faces—gathered, pied, and peaced;
small sips of cider from the coming feast:
                                Praise him.

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About the Artwork

The illustration above is by my friend Asia Miles, the endlessly creative leader of the Bangna Arts Community here in Bangkok, a group of artists that meets to create together, encourage each other, and reflect on the creative process.

Asia’s illustration Pied and Peaced was inspired by “Appled Things,” and we got to exhibit the two pieces together last year, which was super fun. And then Asia (who I’ve dubbed the Colored Pencil Queen) surprised me by drawing a completely new and improved version of the piece for this newsletter. Thanks Asia!

You can check out more of Asia’s work at www.asiarayemiles.com.

Thank you to Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry for originally publishing “Appled Things” in their 2022 issue.

Finally, thank you for reading! Please reply or comment below with any thoughts or questions about the poem, the illustration, or anything else. I’d love to hear from you!

Let my words

become a sieve that sifts the soil, prepares
     it for the seed, the sower; let them be
     an inn with fire and food and company
for tired travelers on their way; a stair,

even a single step, by which you climb
    down, drawing near to whisper, Do not fear;
    a darkling thrush whose hallowed song cuts clear
across the bleak expanse of hollowed time

where water never turns to wine. Lord, take
    these jars and speak again, transfiguring
my words to wine that only you can make,
    something divine, a holy offering—

that wild and weary, lost and longing hearts
would taste the Word, revive, and play their parts.

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About the Poem

With five metaphors, this poem is meant to offer its gifts over time and through repeated prayers, so I won’t even attempt to discuss the whole thing. Instead, on the theme of our words inspiring others to play their parts, I want to offer three glimpses into this sonnet’s many debts to other people’s words.

The opening metaphor—“Let my words / become a sieve that sifts the soil, prepares / it for the seed, the sower”—is inspired by a quote from Irish poet Micheal O’Siadhail: “Just as I turn over my garden soil and shake it in a griddle to make it more kindly to the seed, so I hope that poetry might jostle the soil of the imagination, so that, when the sower [Christ] goes out to sow, the seed might fall on good ground.”1 There are so many ways our words can prepare people’s hearts and minds to be good soil for Jesus.

My poem’s fourth metaphor—let my words become “a darkling thrush…”—is inspired by Thomas Hardy’s famous poem “The Darkling Thrush,” in which Hardy contrasts his own “bleak” and “fervourless” experience of a dying world with the “full-hearted evensong” of a nearby thrush (a songbird). Even though the bird is “aged… frail, gaunt, and small,” it sings with such defiant joy that Hardy (an atheist) thinks it must know “Some blessed Hope” of which he is “unaware.”2 Likewise, I pray in my poem that God might make our words into “hallowed” instruments that awaken people from the “hollowed” and hopeless world they experience without God—a world where there are no miracles, “where water never turns to wine.”

This reference to Jesus’ miracle at the wedding in Cana leads into the poem’s culminating metaphor. I love how in this story Jesus doesn’t just make wine; he makes six huge jars full of “choice” wine, “the best” wine (John 2:10)—wine so good that the wine-lovers were surely waxing poetic trying to express its exquisite notes of “black fruit, leather, spices and earthiness.”3 Just as Jesus revealed his glory by turning everyday water into breathtaking wine, this poem-prayer asks God to transform our everyday words into “something divine, a holy offering” that reaches people where they are and helps them to taste, and respond to, the beauty and glory of God.

Even these few lines of this poem are indebted to the words of so many: Jesus, the four evangelists, Micheal O’Siadhail, Thomas Hardy, Malcolm Guite, and more—and this encourages me to think about how our words might inspire others as we speak, write, and live in prayerful partnership with Jesus the Sower, our Song, the Winemaker.

About the Painting

The painting above comes from the Vie de Jésus Mafa project in Cameroon. In the 1970s, French missionary François Vidil encouraged Mafa Christians to perform contextualized dramatizations of gospel stories, from which artist Bénédite de la Roncière then painted scenes. The collaboration produced over 60 paintings that helped the Mafa people and others relate the gospel to their own cultures—an inspiring creative collaboration!4

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Thank you!

Thank you to Fathom Mag for originally publishing “Let my words.”

Finally, thank you for reading! I hope this poem and artwork are a gift to you. Please reply or comment with any thoughts. I’d love to hear from you!

Footnotes:

My poem “Undone” (below) is based on the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8:1-11. I wanted this poem’s structure to draw out the dynamics of this woman’s contrasting encounters with the religious leaders and Jesus, respectively. I settled on an innovative blend of two poetic forms:

• The Petrarchan Sonnet — 14 lines of iambic pentameter, with a “turn” (or “volta”) between the first stanza (the problem) and the second stanza (the resolution)

• The Chiasmus — in which the the first line is paired with the last line, the second line with the second-to-last line, and so on toward the middle. It draws its name from the Greek letter X (“Chi”) for its shape and is often used in the Bible.

The first stanza of this sonnet shows the woman becoming undone as the religious leaders judge her and are ready to stone her (the problem), while the second stanza shows how their sentence was undone by Jesus (the resolution). Each line in the Jesus stanza both rhymes with its chiastic pair in the first stanza and thematically undoes it.

Note: If you’re on a phone, try turning your phone horizontal to help the poem’s lines fit.

Undone

They dragged me out in all my naked shame
   yelling “Adulteress!” with hungry eyes
      and stones in hand. I hid there in the day,
         crouched down beneath the sounds of pious men
            condemning me for choices I had made—
               though not a word about the man who’d fled.
                  They hurled their questions at the rabbi, baiting.

                  But he… he crouched down, silent like me, waiting,
               a wordless word that no one else there said.
            There, dead before the law, desperate, I prayed.
         He rose and answered: “He who has no sin
      can stone her first.” Like stars, they hid away.
   Alone, he talked with me—looked in my eyes—
and set me free. I've never been the same.

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Poems in Books

I’m still working on publishing my own poetry collection, but in the meantime, I’m excited to have poems tucked away in two forthcoming books that you can pre-order.

• We Mend with Gold: An Immigrant Daughter's Reckoning with American Christianity by Kristin T. Lee is a thoughtful and timely memoir/reflection about Kristin’s experience in both the Asian immigrant church and the white evangelical church—and her journey of deconstructing and mending her fractured faith. I read an early draft of this book and it was already incredible—definitely worth the pre-order (one of the best ways to help a book launch well). I’m honored to have a new poem in these pages, singing in harmony with Kristin’s melody of beautiful prose.

• I’m delighted to have three poems in I’ve Got a Bad Case of Poetry, an illustrated anthology of children’s poems. It sailed past its Kickstarter goal a while ago, but it’s not too late to grab a copy!

Notes

The artwork above is by the late Sri Lankan painter Nalini Jayasuriya who, incidentally, was instrumental in encouraging Sawai Chinnawong (one of my favorite Thai artists) to paint biblical scenes in traditional Thai styles, which became his life’s work. You can find more of Jayasuriya’s work in the book The Christian Story: Five Asian Artists Today.

Thanks to Resolute Magazine for originally publishing “Undone” in their fourth issue.

Finally, thank you for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts or questions on the poem, the artwork, or anything else, so feel free to reply or leave a comment.

Walking in the King’s Park

Bangkok, Thailand

A monitor lizard drags a mangled fish
onto the pond’s grassy shore and rips
flesh from bursting flesh, flies swarming,
scales glinting, smell repellant.

A pied fantail hops and spreads its feathers
to stir up little critters. “Look what I found!”
my two-year-old son exclaims and runs
to watch it dancing on the grass.

My daughters see for the first time
how rice grows. “In water!?” one shouts
like it’s so silly. Her little sister lingers,
slowly fingering the growing grains,

while people swipe through two-inch boxes,
caged.

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Suan Luang Rama IX is the biggest park in Bangkok, built to honor Thailand’s late King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX). It lies just a few minutes from our house and has long been my favorite spot to go running. We also took our young kids there regularly during the pandemic, when I originally wrote this poem.

But the park took on a deeper significance for me this year. Early on in my sabbatical, God clearly led me to step away from screens and to step outside—first to my garden, then to my local open-air market, and eventually to morning after morning at this stunning park. The King’s Park, as it’s commonly called in English—and I welcome the multivalence here, because above all this park reflects the lavish creativity of our Creator King—became the place where I deeply encountered God through unrushed hours of prayer, good books, and the beautifully noisy silence of nature. At the end of my sabbatical, my wife thoughtfully bought me a framed fine art print of the painting above as an ebenezer, a way to remember how God graciously restored and transformed me during this season.

Needless to say, I absolutely adore this gorgeous oil painting by fellow Bangna artist Jonathan Preg. It happens to depict the exact pond mentioned in the poem’s opening lines, the place where this poem was born. There’s even a monitor lizard in the bottom right! (Check out Preg’s Instagram for more views of this painting and his other amazing oil paintings.)

This was the first poem I wrote (though certainly not the last: see “iRemember”) about how technology affects our relationship to the real world around us. If there’s one thing I don’t like about this early attempt from 2020, it’s that the last couplet might come off like I’m pointing the finger at others in a holier-than-thou way, when the truth is that I was mostly writing to myself from a moment of clarity—a slow day at the park with my kids. It has taken a lot of time and intentionality, and God’s patient leading, to grow toward the kind of person I want to be when it comes to relating to technology in healthy ways and becoming attuned to the world around me. I’m sure I’ll write more about this topic in the future, but for now, here are four books on this topic that I found formative this year:

• Jenny Odell — How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

• Manoush Zomorodi — Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self

• Catherine Price — How to Break Up with Your Phone: The 30-Day Digital Detox Plan

• Cal Newport — Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

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More on Writing and Faith

• Thailand-based poet Eris Cardin recently interviewed me for her blog, Rhyme and Rhythm. I really enjoyed her thoughtful and thought-provoking questions!

• There are still spots left for the August 2025 cohort of Spirit & Scribe, the four-week workshop about integrating spiritual formation and writing craft. Need-based scholarships are available. Learn more and register at the link above.

Finally, thank you to The Way Back to Ourselves Literary Journal for originally publishing “Walking in the King’s Park.”

I’m back from a truly wonder-full sabbatical, grateful for the gracious and surprising ways God restored and formed me. Perhaps the most unexpected fruit of sabbatical was that I took up the hobby of birdwatching! After nine years of living in Thailand, I finally know the names (and am learning the personalities) of the birds that I see and hear all around me all the time. To borrow language from Jenny Odell’s exquisite book How to Do Nothing, my “rendering” of the world has forever changed for the better.

So it is with great fondness that I return to this poem I wrote back in 2023 (a foretaste of the birdwatching banquet ahead) about a pair of Ornate Sunbirds who, as I write this, are once again building their nest outside our bedroom window. The poem is accompanied by a drawing (above) from my favorite visual artist. Enjoy!

Providence

Sometimes it’s the shadow
of zestful wings
against our drawn brown curtains,

other times the short, high,
insistent call
that catches our attention,

letting us know they are here,
the familiar pair
of tiny olive-backed sunbirds,

to build their hanging nest
just outside
our third-story bedroom window.

They weave their bowl-shaped home
from all things threadbare:
fibers, feathers, twigs,

and bits of silver tinsel
glinting sunlight—
whatever they can find.

We celebrate their work
with wordless gazes:
songs amidst our storm.

They cannot comprehend
the things we grieve
on this side of the glass,

the problems far too heavy
for even us,
strong as we are, to carry.

And yet their coming and going,
their bright notes,
their dwelling built from all

that You, Creator, have given
to sustain them
in this world of cars and concrete,

sustains us, gives to us
the simple joy
of seeing how you care

for them and for their young—
and care for us,
who know you only dimly

through the glass.

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Two Opportunities

Registration is currently open for two different opportunities that I’m co-leading with journalist and author Chanté Griffin:

• Spirit & Scribe is a four-session online workshop helping writers integrate spiritual formation and writing craft. We’ll be leading our seventh cohort of 20 people this August. You can learn more and register here.

• The PAX Fellowship is a nine-month fellowship for Christians of color ages 25-45 that includes teaching, group mentorship, contemplative practices, and community building. We’ll be co-leading Writing Cohort A (one of ten cohorts), helping writers develop both the spiritual and practical aspects of their calling.

Scholarships are available for both if money is an obstacle. If you have any questions, just ask in the comments below. And please share these opportunities with anyone you think would be interested!

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Thanks to The Clayjar Review for originally publishing “Providence” last year.

And thank you for reading! If you have time to leave a comment, I always appreciate it.

Grace and peace,
Michael

As part of a sabbatical (January - May 2025), I’m currently taking a break from most spaces online, including this newsletter. I look forward to resuming these newsletters in the summer, so subscribe and stay tuned.

While I won’t be posting any new poems for Lent this year, you can find all my published poems for Lent and Easter on my Holy Week poems page.

Grace and peace,
Michael

I wrote this week’s poem on Christmas Eve, 2017, alone in a hospital room with our two-month-old son who was suffering from bronchiolitis. I sat there alone with him, helpless to do anything but pray that his fragile little body would finally turn the corner and start getting better instead of worse.

Thankfully, our son made it through just fine. But that Christmas Eve forever deepened my awe of the unthinkable, daring reality of what God chose to do by coming to earth, not as an adult, but as a needy, fragile baby like my son.

Breathe

This Christmas Eve
my infant son
lies wrapped in swaddling cloths
and oxygen tubes.

Vulnerable.
Our hearts have held their breath
too many times
for love of his little life.

Tonight I marvel
that an eternal God
would make himself
a breathing baby boy

and, vulnerable,
sleep in our sin-sick world—
that, having died,
we might breathe again.

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Thai Nativity

I conclude this Advent series with one of my favorite Christmas paintings, Sawai Chinnawong’s Thai Nativity. An original 2022 re-painting of this work (which he first painted in 1984) hangs in our home as a beautiful and hopeful expression of Jesus making his home in Thailand, where only one percent of people are Christian—and where most Thais still perceive Christianity as a foreign Western religion.

Sawai Chinnawong (pictured below) is a Thai Christian artist who paints the Christian story using traditional Thai styles drawn from his experience as a Buddhist mural artist. Here are three things to notice about this painting of Jesus’ birth:

• The people are everyday Thai folks, wearing traditional Thai clothes and riding water buffalos (not royal elephants). As Chinnawong wrote in That Man Who Came to Us, Jesus “was born in humility so that all people can come close to him.”

• The painting, however, is defined by the striking traditional Thai colors of holiness: red, which represents heaven, and gold, which signifies divine energy.

• The jagged line across the painting, called a sinthao, is usually used to mark off holy spaces in Thai religious murals. But Chinnawong has done something remarkable with his sinthao. Directly above Jesus, the star completely eclipses this division between heaven and earth, brilliantly expressing the significance of Jesus’ birth: heaven breaking through into the lives of everyday people on earth.

Like any good work of art, Chinnawong’s painting does more than words could ever capture, but I hope the above insights help you to appreciate one of my favorite Christmas paintings as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus this week.

Thank you for reading and have a Merry Christmas!

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Notes

Thanks to Fathom Magazine for originally publishing my poem “Breathe.”

You can find more of Chinnawong’s work at the Overseas Ministries Study Center, in this article from Christianity Today, and in the books The Christian Story: Five Asian Artists Today and That Man Who Came to Us.

This week’s poem is one of the rare poems I wrote in my twenties before starting to regularly read and write poetry. While I can feel the ways I have grown as a writer since penning this poem, its imagery and sentiments continue to stay with me. I hope you enjoy it!

Christmas Lights

 Everywhere we look we see
     bright rows of stars on Christmas Eve;
     the darkness cannot but receive
their light—even mistakenly
     illuminating, to its fright,
     their marvelous display at night;
 
and in our homes, an irony,
     the Christmas symbol ever seen:
     the never-Fall, the evergreen,
the never-dying dies so we
     can celebrate, amidst our strife,
     the glory of a given life;
 
and underneath the Christmas tree,
     the gifts that everybody sees
     and wants to open early (“Please!”)
are purchased costly, given free;
     though so long in their boxes trapped,
     one morning they will be unwrapped!

We see all this and yet forget
     the Light who shone into our depths,
     the Ever-Life who died our death,
     the Giver of immortal breath,
the God who chose to pay our debt
before there was a Christmas yet.

This week’s visual art is José y Maria by Everett Patterson. This modern urban portrait of Joseph and Mary is crammed full of fun biblical allusions that are a delight to spot. But the reason I love this illustration is because it helps us encounter afresh the shocking fact—to which we can become so jaded—that God chose to be born to a poor, marginalized family on the fringes of empire. It is too easy to romanticize Joseph and Mary’s story, and I love how this illustration pushes against that tendency.

Patterson created this piece during the Syrian refugee crisis, at a time when xenophobia was on the rise. He wanted to communicate in a fresh way that “Jesus was a refugee, a poor person with nowhere to lay his head.”

One thing I didn’t notice until Patterson explained it is that he “framed and composed [José y Maria] like a medieval illustration, with halos and the stilted postures of medieval paintings.” Kudos to Patterson for being the first and only person to use a giant “beef jerky” sticker as an iconographic halo! It’s an artistic move as profound as it is playful, reminding us that—in contrast to the shiny, sanitized nativity scenes we often see—God came (and still comes) to meet us (ordinary people!) in the messy reality of our everyday lives.

Notes

Thanks to Ekstasis Magazine for originally publishing my poem “Christmas Lights.”

You can buy prints of Everett Patterson’s José y Maria here.

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I love this painting by Tim Joyner called Incarnation. He painted it during Advent 2021 using primarily “Lamp Black” pigments made from “discarded stubs of vigil candles” to symbolize the darkness so many of us experienced that year. Yet his painting ultimately symbolizes how, to quote Joyner,

…at the end of all this waiting there is an arrival. But it’s not me arriving at the other end of darkness or doubt, brokenness or betrayal. It is the Christ Child who arrives. He meets us here. And rather than chasing away all that it means to be human—including the pain and the longing unfulfilled—and banishing it forever, He wraps Himself in it.

Like Joyner’s painting, this week’s poem is also about God wrapping Himself in darkness in order to bring us light.

It was inspired by the true story of Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, Pope Francis’ official almsgiver, who took desperate measures when Rome shut off power to an unused state building where hundreds of unhoused people were sheltering. Krajewski climbed down a manhole, broke police seals, and flipped a switch to restore the building’s power for these families. His actions are a striking metaphor for what God has done for us through Jesus’ incarnation.

On a Cardinal Climbing Down a Manhole to Restore Power to 400 Homeless People

We were almost used
to living in the dark,
to being powerless,

that day you quietly
pulled the lid off the sky
of a world below

and snuck down, strange
inside that stale air,
to flip the switch,

subverting power structures,
sparking gasps of joy
in us who could not pay

that suffocating debt,
your dirtied hands declaring,
“Let there be light.”

Notes

Thanks to Commonweal Magazine for originally publishing this poem.

You can read more about Tim Joyner’s painting Incarnation at The Rabbit Room and find more of his work on his Instagram.

Thank you for reading! Feel free to share this post, and be sure to check out the rest of my Advent series.

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This week’s poem is “Mary and Eve,” an ekphrastic poem (a poem written about a work of visual art) inspired by Sister Grace Remington’s illustration Mary and Eve. I hope these works of art help you to wonder afresh at the coming of the Savior, mysteriously foretold in the curse of Genesis 3:15:

“And I will put enmity
     between you and the woman,
     and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
     and you will strike his heel.”

Mary and Eve

	after the illustration by Sister Grace Remington

Then Mary took Eve’s hand—
     which once had felt the tender flesh
     of the forbidden fruit, plucked fresh,
defying God’s command

in favor of the snake’s:
     “You’ll be like gods!” the snake had lied,
     and so she’d eaten, fallen, died,
watched all creation break—

and yet, within that curse
     had burned a seed, sown like a spark,
     that sang of freedom from the dark
in veiled and pregnant verse.

Eve laid her sin-stained hand
     on Mary and her hidden Kin
     and felt the Promise kick within
her womb: their God made man!

The snake had left her dead—
     this child whose very name meant Life—
     but here she touched, amid her strife,
the One who’d crush its head.

Notes

For more about Remington’s illustration, check out this interview with her in Plough. You can purchase official prints of her illustration at Monastery Candy.

Thanks to Ekstasis Magazine for originally publishing this poem.

Last year, I translated this poem into Thai (helped by Papink Vareerat) for an Advent arts night at a local church. Though it’s not in a traditional Thai poetic form and doesn’t rhyme, I’m quite proud of these eight-syllable lines we crafted! You can listen to the poem in Thai below.

Thanks for reading, feel free to share, and have a wonderful first week of Advent!

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