We are saddened to announce the passing of our beloved friend, Luci Shaw.

A charter member of the Chrysostom Society, Luci contributed decades of wisdom, encouragement, and leadership to the group, beginning with its first meeting in 1986. She is remembered not only for her over two dozen published works of poetry and spiritual reflection (the latest, An Incremental Life, published just months before her death at the age of 96), but her ability to inspire generations of students, writers, and readers to approach the world with her signature curiosity and wonder.

We miss Luci dearly and thank God for her bright presence in our lives and her legacy of, as she writes in the poem “Manna,” “watching for what/the wind may bring [her] next.”

Below, enjoy just few of Luci’s beautiful words, both written and spoken.

Under Cover

We see God in the shape
he shows us. For some, fire.
For others, holy smoke, oil,
running river, sheep’s crook,
muscular right arm that holds
against the dark, the dread.

It is the oddity of poets
to not see the world straight on
but at some slant, under the skin,
behind the scrim—a scurry
of leaves, clouds. God
speaks his presence in
the wind, in frost.

I sensed him even in the ink
warming inside my pen before
these words arrived.

—Luci Shaw, from Scape (Paraclete Press)

• The Calvin Center of Faith and Writing’s video of Luci reading “The Generosity”

• A few of Luci’s thoughts on why poetry is essential

• On surprise in poetry, during Luci’s writer-in-residence time at Regent College in Vancouver

You can find Luci’s body of work online and in various bookstores.