Bøker av William Flewelling

These are bible studies of a limited scale, developed and led by the author with two of the congregations he served. The first congregation was in Mantua OH in the late 1970s, from which the first three bible studies arose: Ruth, Lamentations, and The Infancy Narratives. The second congregation was in New Martinsville WV from 1998 through 2003, these being done is a slightly different style: Psalms of Ascent, Selected Psalms, The Speech of Stephan, Encountering God, Matthew 5 and Matthew 6 & 7. I sought to bring a serious, somewhat scholarly approach to the study of the bible among those congregation members who chose to attend. This revisiting of those studies prove once again their value to me. I hope they prove to be so for you as well.

These Reflective Prayers are the result of permitting a gentle reading of the lectionary texts for a given service to resonate in me and emerge as a searching engagement of the word with my spirit in a mood of settled joy. The ninety samples are the most recent, in order, at the time of publication.

The Book of Psalms in the Bible attracts a great deal of devotional attention from many people, including this author. This attention turned in the Spring of 1993 toward a project of translating the Psalter from the original Hebrew. This was as a spiritual as well as scholarly task for me. The end product, with a few other Hebrew poems added to the collection, came complete in the Spring of 1994. In the late summer of 2022, I took to revisiting my work, revising and correcting it as I found it necessary, and brought to this format in the late Autumn of the same year. I had sought to provide a translation in the immediacy of the present tense, as free as I could manage of the generic masculine, and as lively as I could manage to formulate. I wanted to convey the energy of spirit and of devotion that I felt in the text as I had engaged it. As I brought my revisitation to a conclusion, I felt I had achieved what I had hoped and wished to share it all with what readers I may accumulate, hopefully you.

Abbot Andre Louf said that, when a person decides to get serious about the spiritual life, s/he should acquire a spiritual director. Wayne Proudfoot argued that the form of religious experience depends upon the tradition in which it is perceived. Georges Bataille searched out the meaning of his own intense inner experience in non-traditional ways. This book seeks to follow the meaning of traditional measures of the spiritual life learned through the experience of the author once his spiritual life decided to choose him.

My poems sharpen my sight, so that I see better what is there to be seen. I will find some situation or image or nuance that catches my eye, intrigues me. Sometimes, that seeing lends itself as an image for me, and then a line, just one at first that, when written down, enters into a cadence, a rhythm, a sense of sound and echo that emerges into a sequence of lines that flow, usually quickly. And then, the lines stop, the images seem complete, and then they announce to me that the poem is complete. That is true whether the image is a raindrop, a face, a pose, a tree, a flower, a bird, a shadow, or the innuendo of faith or country - whatever. This book draws upon poems written some years ago, mostly in the years 2009 and 2015. There are also a few current poems that insist themselves into the collection as they are accumulated into the current year's file. As I revisit poems of years ago, quite often the occasion presents itself to memory - but not always so. Sometimes, that occasion is as if unnecessary and, indeed, almost in the way of the poem as it has come to be. Revisiting is always a pleasure; it becomes one of the spurs toward forming the collection itself. Indeed, it is the pleasure and the satisfaction in that book that brings it about. Satisfaction is such a boon to life.

The Bible Studies I chose to do came in answer to the request of my first congregation out of seminary. I consistently sought to present a serious, somewhat scholarly approach to the interested among my parishioners. I would take a book in the bible to study, assume it was written or edited to be read from the beginning and make sense to the reader in that format. I attempted to discover for myself and my group what the book sought to convey. In this volume, the study of Galatians (1981) and 1 Thessalonians (1989) followed that pattern exactly. The Pastoral Epistles (1989) treated the three letters both separately and as an extended effort by their author.

Reading that the 2.88.888. hymn meter is considered powerful in Welsh hymnody - but that it is not used in English - I became curious. I tried the pattern out even though I initially could find no hymn tunes to that meter; indeed, it has not been used in English as my glance at my hymnals and online showed. So, I took my experience of hymn meters and the way this one was expressed and let the resonance begin to flow. It seemed to me that the meter did work in English, that it provided a powerful pattern and an inviting schema to express my own religious instincts and experience. I found a variety of stimuli for the texts, taken from scripture and other sources, put in my own medium and conveyed in the energies of the 2.88.888. hymn meter. Tunes were eventually discovered in a Welsh language hymnal, the 1929 hymnal of the Welsh Methodists.

My poems help me see what is in front of me. They typically find an image presented to me, a line of words appearing - a first line, in fact, and then begin to cause the lines to emerge until they are done. These have been stored - originally in hard copy form, more recently in electronic form. Out of those files, revisiting them in words read and images re-formed - either something akin to the original spawning image, or something created anew in my rereading - the selection is serially made to answer the insights revisited, regained and place them within the context of this manuscript. It is a pleasure to revisit those words, re-see the context and now to share the results of my delight with you.

My poems have helped me see things for years now. Looking back on my poems, written and now collected, I discover I see things anew-not only the remembered incidents (when that happens), but also the vision created in my mind by the poem itself. These poems, collected from parts of the life I ran past again recently, are things that offer glimpses of what is seen and what that seeing seems to mean. I find that poems best serve me in becoming the creators of insights and perspective. The poems in this book have been giving that gift to me again.

In an endeavor to find a fresh way into the scriptural text upon which I would be preaching, I began to develop an imaginary world populated primarily by wee folk. I found they-the characters I developed and the way that they evolved in my mind and on the page-served me well as a consideration of how I sensed things happening in the scriptural text at hand. I want to make these stories and the world they represent newly available, and so I bring them to book form, fifty at a time.The cover drawing is done by Eve Sullivan, the author's granddaughter.The drawing is the artist's conception of Sophie enjoying the sunshine.

My poems have helped me see things for years now. Looking back on my poems, written and now collected, I discover I see things anew-not only the remembered incidents (when that happens) but also the vision created in my mind by the poem itself. These poems, collected from parts of the life I ran past again recently, are things that offer glimpses of what is seen and what that seeing seems to mean. I find that poems best serve me in becoming the creators of insights and perspective. The poems in this book have been giving that gift to me again.

The Bible Studies I chose to do came about in answer to the request from my first congregation out of seminary. I consistently sought to present a serious, somewhat scholarly approach to the interested among my parishioners. I would take a book in the Bible to study, assume it was written or edited to be read from the beginning, and make sense to the reader in that way. I attempted to discover for myself and my group what the book sought to convey. In this volume, the study of Luke 9:51-19:27 followed that pattern exactly. This volume picks up from the study of Luke 1:1-9:50 and precedes the future volume on Luke 19:28-24: 53.

The Bible studies I chose to do came about in answer to a request from my first congregation out of seminary. I consistently sought to present a serious, somewhat scholarly, approach to the interested among my parishioners. I would take a book in the Bible to study, assume it was written or edited to be read from the beginning, and make sense to the reader in that way. I attempted to discover for myself and my group what the book sought to convey. In this volume, the study of Luke 19:28-19:27 followed that pattern exactly. This volume completes the study of Luke, following volumes on 1:1-9:50 and 9:51-19:27.

My poems have helped me see things for years now. Looking back on my poems, written and now collected, I discover I see things anewnot only the remembered incidents (when that happens) but also the vision created in my mind by the poem itself. These poems, collected from the parts of the life I ran past again recently, are things that offer glimpses of what is seen and what that seeing seems to mean. I find that poems best serve me in becoming the creators of insights and perspective. The poems in this book have been giving that gift to me again.

The Bible Studies I chose to do came about in answer to the request from my first congregation out of seminary. I consistently sought to present a serious, somewhat scholarly approach to the interested among my parishioners. I would taka book in the Bible to study, assume it was written or edited to be read from the beginning, and make sense to the reader in that way. I attempted to discover for myself and my group what the book sought to convey. In this volume, the study of Luke 1:19:50 followed that pattern exactly.