Christine Rodgers, poet

Writing, for me, is first and foremost a way of praying –

a way of wrestling with assorted angels. It is also a way of

giving witness. The great Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins

said, “All the world is full of things that go unnoticed.” I

would like to point people in the direction of beauty –

turn their gaze just so. I hope many will be nourished by

these poems, but in particular those who are longing for

a spiritual community, and those in ministry.

To Be A Poet

One must see
the color green
everywhere

What is living
among the dead -
what is shining

among the dull
and smeared.
God is the color

green in the
world - see how
the light lands there.

God spoke a single word and the Beloved One became the greatest poem ever written. These poems are quite small by comparison. But the contemplation of this remarkable time – the exquisite liturgical seasons of Advent and Christmas – beckons us to a still, silent place where just a few words are enough.
May your heart find rest on these pages, and perhaps even joy.

A Series of Poems from El Ritero
Thirteen poems written during an 8-day retreat at the Jesuit Center in Los Altos, Ca. in July of 2008.

To order Upon a Luminous Night,click here.
Or send e-mail to Tallpilgrim12@hotmail.com

Other works:
Song on the
Feast of the Epiphany

Begin with Rage

Climbing Inside the Passion

Song for Robert McNamara

Lamentation and Absence

Elegy for Margaret Hassan

Regarding Mourning

Covenant

This collection of poems is meant to be a contemplative companion – something you might encounter on retreat.
This book encourages the art of moving slowly – of going from one poem to another as though you were in a garden or a forest of tall, still trees. Like trees, poems help us breathe more deeply.
May this small orchard bring you solace.

To order Into The Great Green Heart of God,click here.
Or send e-mail to Tallpilgrim12@hotmail.com

Christine Rodgers is an actor and poet living in San Francisco. Her poetry has appeared in the National Catholic Reporter, Radical Grace and on a variety of websites including The Witness, Poets Against the War and Grace Cathedral. In 2000 she appeared as a panelist in The Forum at Grace Cathedral entitled “The Creative Spirit in Poetry” – with Francisco X. Alarcon, Judy Grahn and Dean Alan Jones. Her poems have also been used in a number of retreat centers, and some are still floating around Africa. She published her first collection of poems, Into the Great Green Heart of God in 2005.

Hear Christine in a
panel discussion,
The Creative Spirit
in Poetry in The
Forum at Grace
Cathedral in San
Francisco.

Hear Called To Be Light from the series Sermons at the Swedenborgian Church of San Francisco, January of 2009.