Holy Luck - Paperback

Holy Luck collects seventy poems by Eugene Peterson, most of them never printed before, and most of them working the Beatitudes over.

How to read it

Buyers arrive at one method independently: a single poem a day, read twice, dictionary within reach. The book resists being finished in an evening.

The pieces group into three runs, one from the Beatitudes, one on ordinary created things, one on what turns up while following Jesus.

If you know The Message

Same ear. Peterson spent a working life on how a sentence carries a claim, and the poems are that instinct without a congregation in front of him.

Buyers name the introduction on its own as worth the purchase.

From the publisher

Throughout his many years of pastoral ministry, almost everything Eugene Peterson has done -- preaching, teaching, praying, counseling, writing -- has involved words.

To keep himself attuned to the power of words and to help himself use language with precision and imagination, Peterson both reads and writes poetry.
Holy Luck presents, in one luminous volume, seventy poems by Peterson, most of them not previously published.

Speaking to various aspects of -Kingdom of God- living, these poems are arranged in three sets:
Holy Luck -- poems arising out of the Beatitudes
The Rustling Grass -- poems opening up invisible Kingdom realities through particular created things
Smooth Stones -- occasional poems about discovering significance in every detail encountered while following Jesus

Echoing the language of Peterson's popular Bible translation, The Message, the poems in Holy Luck are well suited for devotional purposes. An ideal gift item, this volume is one that readers will look to again and again.

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