November 15

Marianne Moore and Sallie McFague

Author

David Barnhart
November 15, 2025

Leaf hopper, 2025. Own photo.

Today is the birthday in 1887, of Marianne Moore, suffragist and poet, whose faith and philosophy informed her writing. 

Today also marks the death, in 2019, of Sallie McFague, theologian of feminism, ecology, and metaphor. 

Reflection: 

Sallie McFague wrote: 

…”to elevate one way of interpreting [theology] as the one and only way is to reify and petrify certain metaphors, models, and concepts that although appropriate to some people in certain times, may be no longer. If we take the form of Scripture seriously, the plurality of interpretive perspectives that it is, we will have to do the same risky, adventuresome thing that it does: interpret the salvific love of God in ways that can address our crises most persuasively and powerfully. And this will not, cannot, mean using the terminology of two thousand years ago.”

and

“It is hard to care for the earth if one has never cared for a piece of it.”

Most of Marianne Moore’s poems are hard to quote in fragments, but there are few gems of short sentences that emerge: 

“Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads."

and

"There never was a war that was not inward; I must fight till I have conquered in myself what causes war." 

Prayer: God, conquer whatever is in us that causes war. Amen.