When you get past the alleluias and the glorias, songs about the birth of Christ often convey the idea that our response should be one of silent contemplation: “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence,” “My Soul in Stillness Waits,” and of course, “Silent Night.” Jeanette …
Read MoreChoose Joy
One of Jeanette Hardage’s daughters recently came across an unpublished poem in Jeanette’s handwriting tucked away inside a piece of old furniture. She had probably not intended it for publication, as it contained none of her usual word choice edits. With candor she shares how …
Read MoreDialogue with the Holy
Jeanette Hardage greatly admired Kathleen Norris, author of Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, a book which Jeanette reviewed for two magazines in 1999. In her meditation on Truth, Norris says that “poetry, like prayer, tends to be a dialogue with the holy.” Jeanette seemed …
Read MoreGuilty Pleasure
Steeped in the Brethren religious tradition, Jeanette Hardage’s family had a decidedly conservative approach to the American cultural practices around them. One of my favorite poems from her Faith and Other Matters anthology is one in which she rebels just a bit against her church …
Read MoreLooking Back
On this fifth anniversary of Jeanette Hardage’s passing, it seems fitting to contemplate her death through the lens that she provided as she reflected on her own experience of losing someone dear. The poem below is included in her Faith and Other Matters anthology. Lastingness …
Read MoreI Have Known Rain
Some of Jeanette Hardage’s most powerful verses are those that dwell on painful subjects. She frequently employed nature as a metaphor in her poetry. In the poem below, published in Faith and Other Matters, she uses rain to express her heartfelt sadness, melancholy, even despair. …
Read MoreIn Love With the Sea
Owen Hardage started going to sea when he was just a young boy, making his first trip across the Pacific Ocean at the age of eight in 1934. As a young man, he served in the Navy during World War II, then later made a …
Read MoreSpring Rebirth
As spring bursts forth again, enjoy Jeanette Hardage’s poem below, originally entitled “April 10: For Doug,” which celebrates the growth, beauty, and hope of the season. She penned this sonnet in honor of her younger brother Doug, pictured here with a teenaged Jeanette along with …
Read MoreAn Hour and Twenty Bucks
In an undated journal entry, Jeanette Hardage shared the experience of visiting a “third hand” bookstore in Dartmouth, UK. It was located in a repurposed old stone church called St. Barnabas and it was characterized by the kind of haphazard organization that often seems to …
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