Today is the last installment of this year's Lent series. Grace welcomes Dr. Abram Van Engen to discuss all things George Herbert, much to her delight (a bit of fangirling over Herbert is always in order). They focus on the beautiful, dense, multilayered poem "The Altar."

Abram Van Engen is Stanley Elkin Professor in the Humanities, Chair of the English Department, and Professor of Religion and Politics (by courtesy) at Washington University in St. Louis.

Van Engen has published widely on religion and literature, focusing especially on seventeenth-century Puritans and the way they have been remembered and remade in American culture. His book, Word Made Fresh, introduces reading poetry as a spiritual practice. He hosts the podcast Poetry for All.

Here is the text, but be forewarned that the shape of it might be altered (get it?) in the podcast notes, so do look it up to see the poem's proper shape.

In the latest installment of the Lent series, Grace welcomes Amy Baik Lee to discuss the poignant Sonnet 19 by the great John Milton.

Amy Baik Lee is the author of This Homeward Ache: How Our Yearning for the Life to Come Spurs on Our Life Today. Her cross-cultural childhood gave her a love for a wide variety of musical and storytelling forms; she grew up to study English literature at the University of Virginia and develop a deep interest in the intersection where faith, the imagination, eucatastrophe, and daily life meet. Her work has been featured by the Rabbit Room, the Anselm Society, Cultivating Magazine, the C.S. Lewis Foundation, the Marion E. Wade Center, the Buechner Review, the One Thousand Words podcast, and others. Away from the writing desk, she enjoys baking and watching birds in the garden with her family in Colorado.

Find out more about Grace's new book, Ask of Old Paths.

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Today, Grace welcomes professor and author David Taylor in this installment of the Lenten poetry series. They talk about the great nineteenth-century poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and in particular, his masterpiece “The Wreck of the Deutschland.”

W. David O. Taylor is Associate Professor of Theology & Culture at Fuller Theological Seminary and the author of ten books, including Open and Unafraid, Glimpses of the New Creation, Naming the Spirit, and the forthcoming, To Set the World Aflame. An Anglican priest, he has written for The Washington Post, Christian Scholars Review, Image Journal, and Christianity Today, among others, while also contributing scholarly essays to The T&T Clark Companion to Theology and the Arts and Theology, Modernity and the Visual Arts. He lives on 21 acres east of Austin with his artist wife and children.

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