The psalmist declares that all creation gives testimony to the presence of God. The poetry of Nancy Dillingham does the same. A daffodil blooming in the gray days of winter, a star pulsating in the dark of night, a four-petaled dogwood blooming at the dawn of a new day-all of these invite us to see the holy in the world around us.Like the offering of the magi and the spices the women prepared for their departed friend, her poems are gifts to us, deepening our faith, soothing our spirits, challenging our assumptions, and naming the feelings we cannot speak.
All of us are pilgrims on a journey. These poems provide gentle guidance and reveal the presence of the holy wherever we may travel.
-Rev. Dr. Edna Jacobs Banes
Words are powerful and transformative. Nancy Dillingham's poetry is a testament to that fact. Drawing on the liturgical calendar, Dillingham invites the reader into an encounter with the sacred. Her lines confront the reality of a fallen and tragic world that yields to a reflective hope. Her thoughts breathe life into the mundane and nudge the edge of our common understanding.
Dillingham's work is a religious journey that explodes into our lived desires and releases the reader into a transformed experience.
-Rev. Dr. Allen Permar Smith
Experiencing the beauty and depth of Nancy Dillingham's work fills the reader with huge measures of delight, of power and strength, of emotional pain, and, most significantly, of unbridled and long-lasting joy.
Many of us have heard the stories of Advent and Lent for most of our lives, but Dillingham's particular means of telling the story is marked with seldom used and vibrant verbs and complex but appealing phrases that shine, sparkle, and shimmer light on the magnificent story of Jesus.
-James B. Graves, Ph. D.
