An Incremental Life: Poems - Paperback

by Luci Shaw (Author)

"Luci Shaw is a legend" --Christianity Today

This captivating collection of poems by beloved author Luci Shaw, reflects on daily ideas and activities as they arrive, bit by bit, to illuminate us with their wisdom and enlarge on the meanings of human experience. Like small messages from beyond, these incidents call us to pay attention.

In An Incremental Life, Shaw breathes life into the simpleness of the every-day and finds God in the memory of the mundane. Through her verses, she explores the intricate tapestry of existence, from the tender memories of childhood to the profound questions of mortality. Her poems are like windows opening to the soul, inviting readers to pause, reflect, and savor the beauty of the world around them.

INCREMENTS
I live by increments, single
breaths of an ambient air,
marking off hours, days.

Apprenticed to grace, I tread statio
in sequentiae, edging every step
forward before venturing the next.

Staggering up towards the stony
crests of the foothills, dusty, I am
almost undone with weariness, only half
believing that the view will widen.

In my falling upward into your home,
O Faithful One, stay with me,
your wind music playing the ear of
my mind like an instrument.

"This is how life happens, one day at a time, in increments! And God is in each of them for us," Luci Shaw

Author Biography

Luci Shaw (1928-2025) was born in London, England, in 1928. A poet and essayist whose writing has appeared in numerous literary and religious journals, in 2013 she received the tenth annual Denise Levertov Award for Creative Writing from Seattle Pacific University, and in 2023 she received the Kenneth N. Taylor Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her lifetime of work in the Christian publishing industry. The author of over thirty-five books of poetry and creative non-fiction, she served as Writer in Residence at Regent College, Vancouver.