Tag: poetry

My Top 5 Books of 2025

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment

I do not usually read with lists in mind. I read slowly, often distractedly, sometimes devotionally, sometimes just to survive a season. But looking back over this year, a handful of books stand out not because they impressed me intellectually, but because they helped to form me. They changed the way I noticed the world. They softened me. They reoriented my imagination toward God.

These are my top five books of 2025, not ranked by importance, but gathered because each met me where I was and quietly moved me somewhere better.

1. Haiku: Japanese Poems for the Four Seasons edited by Ornella Civardi

This book did something simple. It forced me to slow down.

Haiku does not allow for rushing. There is no room for verbosity or explanation. You must attend. You must notice. A falling leaf. The sound of rain. A moment that would otherwise pass unnoticed. Reading these poems is helping me to train my attention outward again, away from constant abstraction and into the texture of the world around me.

Spiritually, this mattered more than I expected. It reminded me that presence is not a technique but a posture. That the sacred often hides in what is small and fleeting. That God does not always speak in paragraphs but sometimes in a single image, held long enough to be received.

I found myself more deliberate after reading this book. More aware of light, sound, and stillness. In a culture obsessed with speed and productivity, haiku felt quietly resistant. Almost monastic.

2. The Wood Between the Worlds by Brian Zahnd

Zahnd has a gift for naming the thin places between heaven and earth, and this book lives entirely in that space. Drawing its imagery from C S Lewis, The Wood Between the Worlds explores liminality, transformation, and the places where God meets us between certainty and chaos.

What I appreciated most was its refusal to rush toward answers. This is not a book trying to win arguments. It is a book inviting readers into mystery, into surrender, into the slow work of unlearning false images of God.

It resonated deeply with my own growing sense that faith is less about holding tight to certainty and more about learning how to dwell faithfully in the in between. Zahnd writes with pastoral warmth, theological depth, and poetic imagination, making this a book I returned to more than once.

3. Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls: Learning the Art of Pastoral Ministry from the Church Fathers By Coleman M. Ford and Shawn J. Wilhite

In an age where pastoral ministry is often shaped by metrics, branding, and performance, this book gently but firmly pulls us back to a much older vision of soul care. One rooted in patience, humility, discernment, and deep attention to the inner life.

The section on Gregory of Nyssa stood out to me in particular. His vision of the soul as endlessly journeying into God, always growing, always becoming, reframed formation not as fixing people but as accompanying them. Gregory does not see humanity as a problem to be solved, but as a mystery to be loved into wholeness.

That perspective has stayed with me. It has shaped the way I think about spiritual direction, formation, and even my own inner life. It reminded me that good pastoral care is slow, relational, and deeply human.

4. The Shack by William Paul Young

I know this book divides opinion. But this year, God used it powerfully in my life.

The Shack met me at a time when I needed healing more than explanation. It did not answer all my theological questions, nor did it try to. Instead, it reintroduced me to a God who is present in suffering, gentle with wounds, and more loving than my fear had allowed me to imagine.

Reading it felt less like consuming a book and more like being accompanied through a difficult conversation. It helped clarify my path toward God this year, not by removing doubt, but by reshaping trust.

For all its simplicity, The Shack carries a deeply pastoral theology. One that prioritises relationship over control, love over fear, and presence over performance. I am grateful for it.

5. Kitchen Hymns by Pádraig Ó Tuama

Reading Pádraig always feels like home.

Ó Tuama has a remarkable ability to write about God without forcing God into the room. Kitchen Hymns is intimate, domestic, and deeply human. It finds the sacred in ordinary spaces, conversations, and moments that rarely feel religious enough to matter.

What I loved most is how gently theological it is. The poems and reflections do not preach. They listen. They honour complexity. They allow grief, joy, doubt, and love to sit at the same table.

This book reinforced something I keep returning to in my own writing and faith. That God is not waiting for us in abstraction or spiritual achievement, but already present in kitchens, friendships, silence, and shared meals.

Following the Winter Sun

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There are seasons in the soul when the warmth of faith feels far off. The glow that once saturated your days with clarity fades into a pale shimmer low on the horizon. These are the winter months of discipleship—when following Jesus feels less like dancing in the light and more like trudging through shadows.

And yet, the call remains.

Christ does not promise us eternal summer (at least in this life). His road leads through the wilderness (Mark 1:12–13), through the long dark of Gethsemane (Luke 22:44), and through the silence between Good Friday and Easter morning. “Take up your cross,” He said (Luke 9:23), not your picnic blanket. Faith becomes less about the brilliance of belief and more about the posture of trust, especially when nothing feels certain.

To follow the winter sun is to trace faint light when it offers no heat. It is to remember that the sun is still rising, even when its warmth is hidden. In the same way, to follow Jesus in seasons of silence, sorrow, or struggle is to walk with Him not for what He gives, but for who He is.

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105). But notice—lamps in ancient times did not flood the road. They lit only the next few steps. God rarely overwhelms us with certainty. Instead, He invites us to walk in rhythm with Him, step by unsure step.

The winter sun teaches us that light is still light, even when dim. Christ is still Christ, even when His presence feels like absence. And sometimes, that kind of trust is the holiest kind.

I have followed the sun
when it was warm,
when it laid itself across my back
like a blessing.
When it sang golden through the leaves
and made holiness seem easy.

But now—
it is winter.
The sun slips sideways
into low skies and long shadows.
It does not warm,
only glimmers.
And still—
I follow.

I do not follow because it is bright,
but because I have seen it rise
from behind the hills
too many mornings
to doubt its return.

I do not follow because I feel it—
most days, I don’t.
I follow because
once, it found me
when I wasn’t looking.
And that kind of finding
is hard to forget.

So I walk
with a stiff wind against my chest,
shoes wet with old rain,
the path uncertain—
but I walk.

Because some loves
are not about feeling
but choosing.

And some mornings
are not about light
but trust.

And I trust
that even this cold sun
knows where it’s going—
and that it is worth
following.

Small Oomphs

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“Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.” – Barbara Brown Taylor


In many traditions, sacraments are the means by which God’s saving grace is poured out: baptism, communion, and Scripture. For some, they also include marriage, confession, ordination, and anointing the sick. These acts are official, sacred, and ritualised. They are meant to tether us to the divine.

But for many of us, church has lost its oomph.

We’re between churches, clinging by a thread, or slowly, quietly slipping out the side door, trying to find God, ourselves, and the world again. We’re not hostile; we’re just tired. Church has become a place of confusion—a lifeless Christianity where we feel like we’re always doing something wrong. We get into trouble when we go, and we get into trouble when we don’t.

And so we drift. Or maybe… we walk.

I see you — not lost, but loosed,
from pew and creed, from tight-bound truths.
Your prayers now rise through silent skies,
no hymnal hand to harmonise.

You carry ash where fire once burned,
a sacred ache in lessons unlearned.
And still, you bless the broken road,
each doubt a stone, each step a psalm.

No steeple shadows where you stand,
yet grace still gathers in your hands.
You’re not alone in holy strife —
this, too, is part of a faithful life.


And yet, grace is not confined to altar rails or sanctuary walls. Sometimes, it greets us in the smallest of things — the steam rising from a morning coffee, the comfort of a well-worn novel, the warmth of soup shared on a cold day. These aren’t just distractions or creature comforts. They can be sacraments too, if we have eyes to see.

1 Corinthians 10:31 — “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”

To make a cup of coffee with care, to read a story that stirs your soul, to laugh at the dinner table with someone you love — these are not lesser spiritual moments. They are the liturgies of the everyday, the sacred stitched into the ordinary. In these acts, God is not distant. He is here, humming quietly beneath the noise, waiting to be noticed.

Psalm 19:1–3 — “The heavens declare the glory of God… day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech… yet their voice goes out into all the earth.“

In these wandering years, it’s easy to feel the absence of God — to feel the numbness, the long ache. It might take years before you feel whole again, before you even consider walking into a church.

Maybe you never will.

But as you walk the broken road, remember—

“Taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Psalm 34:8)

Even here.
Even now.

In the small things.

The Long Night

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Sheol saw me and was shattered, and Death ejected me and many with me. I measured its depth and I was not held captive, for I became a light to those who were in its depths.”

– (Ode 42)

He walked the long night

where no prayers reach,

where silence is thicker than stone.

Sheol held its breath.

The tomb was not still—

it trembled.

He wore no armor

but the memory of light.

He sang no song

but still the gates cracked.

One by one

He called the names of the forgotten.

Dust stirred.

Chains rusted.

Even Death blinked and turned

its face away,

unable to hold Him

who had measured its depth

and found it shallow.

– (a poem I wrote inspired by Ode) The Long Night

Unbuilding

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Do you believe in God? I used to answer quickly.

Now, I pause —

not out of rebellion, but reverence.

I dismantle doctrines like old furniture,

finding splinters of truth and tradition embedded in my hands.

The creeds I once recited now echo with questions, each word a doorway to deeper understanding or further doubt.

In the quiet morning, amidst the smell of roasted coffee, I find sacredness in the mundane, grace in the unspoken.

Scripture pages worn thin from searching, not for answers, but for the presence that lingers between lines.

I am both the builder and the ruins, the seeker and the found.

Do you believe in God? I still ask, not seeking certainty, but connection.