Luci Shaw has lived for nearly a century. During that time, she’s written dozens of books. She’s co-authored volumes with Madeleine L’Engle. She has taught and inspired—and she’s not finished yet.

In an interview with CT, Shaw spoke about her latest poetry collection, Reversing Entropy.

“Reversing entropy is important to me—pushing back against chaos and despair, replacing them with hopefulness, with joy, with creativity,” Shaw said. “The concept of entropy is that systems of an evolving creation are declining and losing energy. People of faith, people of Christian faith, are able, through the arts, to take and reclaim territory that has been lost.”

For Shaw, this reclamation comes through opening things up and examining them through her poetry. She looks to geese, to lichens, to a crumb being swept into a broom, and in it all she sees God’s story of redemption.

“We have only a tiny fraction of understanding and knowledge, because we’re so limited and restricted as individuals,” Shaw explained. “But, also, we have this calling, to go beyond the surface of the ordinary and to see significance in those ordinary things. It’s never a dead end. There are always open windows for us to lean out of and to see the larger world.”