Welcome to my website. The picture on my home page is beautiful Roberts Bay Bird Sanctuary at sunset, not far from where I live on Vancouver Island. You can see a bit of background information about me at about.me/DrMarkWagner. This site contains reflections of mine primarily on the Psalms, including tweets and posts which I made over about a decade. These are captured in my Haikus, Musings and Ponderings. And there's More to explore! The whole process clearly left me... a musing Mark.
Reading through the Psalms, as I often do, I decided to write a haiku one of them . My idea was to summarize the essence of the Psalm using only the seventeen syllables of a haiku. Having given it a go with one Psalm, I went about making a haiku for each of the Psalms and to tweet them out each day. From January to June 2014 I tweeted 150 haikus, one for each Psalm. After seeing some of my attempts, you may wish to give it a go for yourself! For me it was a good exercise in thinking through the meaning of each Psalm by capturing it in a haiku form.
I published my first musing on a Psalm on April 28, 2020, as the pandemic raged. As I worked my way through the Psalms again, this time using a variety of lengths and forms. I had some fun using "hidden" words in some poems after the manner of English poet, George Herbert. My aim throughout was to contemplate each Psalm and to produce a verse summarizing my musings. (I wouldn't say each verse rose to the level of poetry). I have included a representative verse from each Psalm in an image beside each musing. On the same page, you can also look up a Psalm from the Bible so that you can see the text I am reflecting on.
I have read through the Proverbs many times (and tweeted my thoughts in 2014, 2015 and 2018), but in the summer of 2020 I read them through using the massive, two-volume commentary by Dr. Bruce Waltke. His insights into this ancient book were remarkably thorough, and gave me new occasion to contemplate its meaning. The ponderings that resulted were presented in thirty-one chapters, one a day throughout August of 2020. I also posted these ponderings in the stories of my Instagram, using the "reels" function. That is why they are presented in video format here. Thoughts from earlier ponderings are posted alongside the videos. There is an opportunity for you to look up a given chapter of Proverbs on the page so that you can have the context for these ponderings.
This area includes some of my other reflections through the years. Under "Miscellany" there are thoughts about the 10 commandments, Christmas and Holy Week. Under "New Testament" there are musings from the Gospels and the Epistles. There is a section reflecting on the 12 minor prophets. Under "The Lovely Isobel" are poems on several occasions, like birthdays and anniversaries. And then there's also a bit of fun - for no other reason but... amusing Mark!