Tuesday Tomes - Poems and Preparation

I am enjoying a collection of poems, First Words (2010), by Joyce Sutphen. She is currently the Minnesota Poet Laureate and I have posted about her before in a previous edition of Wednesday Words. With poem titles such as "Zuchinni Bread," "Polka Revival," and "Breakfast," the collection comes across as a very personal, midwestern, down-to-earth memoir in verse. I just love it.

From Red Dragonfly Press:
Joyce Sutphen grew up on a working dairy farm, and her poems recover this lost world, with all its beauty and order. This collection traces a shift in the rural landscape from horses to tractors, from haystacks to hay bales---and watches as time ages and changes the people who make up the story. First Words is both elegy and celebration--ultimately its center is family, then and now.

I'm also reading a couple of books in preparation for an upcoming teaching series I'll be starting on April 29. The series title is You Were Made for This and will explore the topic of spiritual gifts, talents, and abilities, and what it means to find our places of ministry in the life and mission of the church.

The two new books I'm reading on this topic are: What You Do Best in the Body of Christ by Bruce Bugbee, and What Are Spiritual Gifts?: Rethinking the Conventional View by Kenneth Berding.