Temple Garden

""With Jock Stein, we are on pilgrimage through the world and our own hearts. In one moment, we 'gaze aghast at Abraham's warring children, ' the next, we are in our backyards to 'wake, remember who I am.' . . . Soaring heights and local depths are captured in 'Incarnation, ' which is a meditation on the God who bridges these extremes, as do Stein's poems for us in this short and absolutely lovely book where God tells us to 'read my lips.'"" --Julie Canlis, Liturgical Director, Trinity Church, Washington State ""Jock Stein applies his keen poetic ear, and knowledge of poetic form, to his understanding of Scripture and theology to create poems of depth and integrity. The book's subtitle, Poems of Faith and Curiosity, is particularly apt as it contains many poems in which Stein wrestles honestly and unflinchingly with the big questions. But there is also humor and hope and a warm appreciation of relationships, nature, and human creativity."" --Christine De Luca, poet and former Edinburgh Makar ""There's much beauty being fought for in these poems. . . . The wrestling is not only done with ideas and what we face today in terms of environmental chaos and our loss of God; it's also with history, with what Scotland was and where she stands today. What I will carry with me is the raw honesty of these journeys of thought, these finely-honed meditations where every word has been weighed."" --Kenneth Steven, poet ""Temple Garden is full of sights and sounds, . . . a landscape where divine love is at the center and the circumference, a world where revelation, history, politics and plants coexist through beautiful words and imagery. . . . It is an inspiring anthology, a haven for questioning minds, wounded souls, and lovers of beauty."" --Murray Watts, author and director of The Wayfarer Trust ""This poetic coat of many colors shows us that faith and curiosity are cut from the same cloth--wondering at God's creation, wrestling with its despoiling, witnessing to its glory. These are classic Jock Stein poems to make us think, taking ourselves less seriously, but taking us to the heart of the matter. We are alive in God's garden of delight but always weeding the hard questions. Put on this shimmering coat when you do."" --William Storrar, Director, Princeton Center for Theological Inquiry ""Temple Garden gathers singular works [of poetry], each one both a praise-song and an argument, a hymn to creation's magnitude and a prayer for her vulnerability. . . . Stein's faith is Christian, but his range of sympathetic reference is much broader than any single church, and if his poetry might challenge the pieties of reverence, it never for a moment loses its sense of respect for humankind's capacity to love and be renewed."" --Alan Riach, Professor of Scottish Literature, University of Glasgow