Sarah Arthur is a fun-loving speaker and author of nine books, including The One Year Coffee With God and At the Still Point. A graduate of Wheaton College and Duke Divinity, she lives in Michigan with her pastor-husband Tom and their two small sons. wwwsaraharthur.com
You’re invited to a feast this Christmas. Sarah Arthur, editor of
the collection At the Still Point: A Literary Guide to Ordinary
Time, has published another volume with Paraclete Press, Light Upon
Light: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Advent, Christmas, and
Epiphany. If you’ve prepared for past Christmas seasons with the
help of God With Us, Image’s own book of meditations from some of
our favorite spiritual writers, you’ll find Light Upon Light to be
another rich tapestry of poetry, fiction, and scripture. A mix of
the venerable and the fresh, pieces from Eliot, Chesterton, and
Rosetti are paired with contemporary writers like Amit Majmudar
(read Arthur's recent interview with Majmudar on Good Letters
here), Susanna Childress, and Tania Runyan (all Image
contributors). Arthur's curation is sensitive and inviting to
epiphany: for the narrative of Christ's birth, she pairs Li-Young
Lee’s "The Eternal Son," a poem aching with the necessary
abandonment of growing up ("and if she’s weeping / it's because
she’s misplaced / both our childhoods"), bookended by an excerpt
from Gary D. Schmidt's The Wednesday Wars, in which a seventh-grade
protagonist witnesses the tarnishing of a childhood hero. Not every
piece is Christmas-themed; pieces from the canon (Dickens' The
Christmas Carol, Andersen's fairy tale "The Snow Queen," classic
poems by Donne and Tennyson) are laid side by side with Jeanne
Murray Walker's "Staying Power" (epigraph: "In appreciation of
Maxim Gorky at the International Convention of Atheists, 1929") and
an excerpt from Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground. You'll
find food for nostalgia as well as delightful new voices, including
Arthur's own. In short: both spiritual succor and pure pleasure.
—Image Update
Each year I look for ways to make the Advent season more
meaningful. It can be surprisingly hard to find something fresh and
new. But a new release compiled by Sarah Arthur, Light upon
Light, is my pièce de résistance for this year.
As Arthur says in her introduction: “Finding the works for this
collection, discovering some of these authors and poets, has been
like lighting one candle after another. Flame upon flame, light
upon light, until the hallowed sanctuary of our quiet devotion
becomes something of a shrine.”
Her book lives up to that description. She quotes many classic
authors I am familiar with and love, such as John Donne, Charles
Dickens, George Eliot, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Francis of Assisi, C. S.
Lewis, and George MacDonald, to name a few, along with more recent
writings from Frederick Buechner, Eugene Peterson, and Walter
Wangerin, Jr. But she also introduces me to contemporary authors
and poets I haven’t read, such as Li-Young Lee, Tania Runyan, Scott
Cairns, and Sarah Arthur (her own compositions). These newer
writers do a fine job of mining the depths of the Advent season
alongside the classic writers with whom I am so well acquainted.
For example, my heart skips a beat when I read this quote from
George MacDonald: “They all were looking for a king to slay their
foes and lift them high; Thou cam’st, a little baby thing that made
a woman cry.”
And I love how this poem “Mary at the Nativity,” by Tania Runyan,
begins: “The angel said there would be no end to his kingdom. So
for three hundred days I carried rivers and cedars and mountains.
Stars spilled in my belly when he turned.”
Arthur begins with the first Sunday of Advent and takes us through
the last Sunday of Epiphany, including Christmas Eve and Christmas
Day in the mix—18 sections in all. To make it easier on all of us,
the book is organized by weeks instead of days.
She encourages the lectio divina practice to get the most
out of this collection: Read the passage, meditate on it, let the
text speak to you, and rest in God’s presence. What more could one
ask for during an outrageously busy holiday season?
The format Arthur uses is simple but effective. Each reading begins
with a prayer taken from classic authors. She then offers four
Scriptures to read that relate to the timeline. Following this are
excerpts and meditations by various authors, both classic and
contemporary. Finally, there is a closing prayer. What makes this
prayer guide so worthwhile are the excellent readings Arthur
provides. Each one fits perfectly with the Scripture passages she
highlights, and each one helps us focus on what is truly important
this Advent season and beyond.
So how can you use this if you are a church leader? It would be an
excellent guide to recommend to your congregation or to go through
together as a team. You will also find it invaluable to use as a
devotional during numerous events during Advent. But most of all,
it will quiet your heart and bring balm to your soul in the midst
of a ridiculously busy time of the year. —JoHannah Reardon,
Christianity Today
“For years I have been seeking a book which weaves scripture,
prayer and the finest poetry and fiction into the devotional
experience of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. Finally I have found
it: an elegant and accessible gem with some classic texts and a
rich selection from contemporary literature. This is not only a
useful book, it is edifying and exciting reading—the perfect way
for the literature lover to focus, meditate and celebrate this time
of year.”— Jill Peláez Baumgaertner, Poet, Professor of English and
Dean of Humanities and Theological Studies, Wheaton College
Apparently, either my husband and I are non-traditionalists when it
comes to Advent or really bad at following through. For the first
twenty years of our married life, we had both high hopes and good
intentions on December 1st. We’d buy an Advent calendar or put a
wreath with candles on the table. Maybe even splurge on a book with
a catchy title that promised to guide us through a meaningful
holiday season. For the most part, our good intentions start to
wane around December 14. By that point, the boys had already opened
all of the Advent calendar windows, there would be melted wax all
over the dining room table, and the book, having failed to
transform our month, was buried under the avalanche of catalogs.
Because we are not the kind of people who are easily discouraged,
four years ago Christopher made an epic leap and created his own
version of Advent. Each day, he wrote Scriptures on note cards and
included clues that led the boys to a small—and on one day not so
small—gift. It was a huge success. So much so that we’ve not done
anything since then. Before you condemn or dismiss us, I think this
is fairly normative for folks who make their living (i.e. pastors)
by helping other folks celebrate key events. Since our sons are now
aged fifteen to twenty-one, the only holiday expectations I feel
from them are as follows: put up a tree, give them a few well
chosen gifts, and provide all of the materials for them to create
original gingerbread houses.
I, however, have been hoping for something more. This year, Sarah
Arthur’s beautiful compilation Light upon Light: A Literary
Guide to Prayers for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany has been
my more. Each chapter includes an opening prayer. For example John
Donne’s work: Hear us, O hear us Lord; to Thee
A sinner is more music when he prays, Than spheres or angels’
praises be In Panegyric alleluias, Hear us, for till Thou hear us,
Lord We know not what to say. Also included are suggested Scripture
readings, poems, sonnets and/or excerpts from longer texts, many of
which might seem unlikely but are nevertheless stunning. This one
caused my pulse to race.
“When gods die, they die hard. It’s not like they fade away, or
grow old or fall asleep. They die in fire and pain, and when they
come out of you, they leave your guts burned. It hurts more than
anything you can talk about. And maybe worst of all is, you’re not
sure if there will ever be another god to fill their place. Or if
you’d ever want another god to fill their place. (by Gary
Schmidt from The Wednesday Wars)
I find myself eagerly anticipating going to bed simply so I can
indulge in that night’s offering. I’ve even slowed my blistering
reading pace so that I can savor the beauty and the depth of these
gifts. If I haven’t yet convinced you of Light upon Light’s
merits, I will leave you with Sarah Arthur’s words from the
introduction: “Winter in the Northern Hemisphere is particularly
suited for … prayer and reflection. We find ourselves more and more
indoors, … our bodies slowing to the rhythm of the sleeping
woodlands. Silence is not hard to find. And yet crashing into the
midwinter quiet comes the most frantic event of the cultural year.
Perhaps it is our fear of stillness, of quiet that drives us to
anything but the ‘silent night’ of Christmas: we do not want to
know what we might discover in reflection. More likely it is a
consumer economy that thrives on a relentless pace: slow and
contemplative people are not shopping people; silence does not
sell. So the one time of year that we are given to pause and seek
the One who seeks us becomes the one time of year that drives us
nearly to self-extinction. And it is this season, of any, when we
are least likely to pick up a book and read.”
Please, pick up this book and read. (It has almost sold out so
don’t delay.) —Dorothy Greco
Yes, Owen Meany, I do. I do keep them there, because in books I get
lost and find myself, or find something I didn’t know I needed;
something I needed later. Words carry me forward, tell me I’m not
alone; teach me. Words do that for me, even before my John
Irving-reading days. That one, it’s from “A Prayer for Owen
Meany.”
Lectio divina — it’s one of the methods that drew me to Charlotte
Mason. Lectio divina is a fancy way of saying meditative reading;
receptive reading; reading that leaves you wide open to the Holy
Spirit. Learning to slow and receive all of what we’re hearing is a
lifelong art I’ve only really started mastering.
Another be-still lesson, always.
Lectio divina’s also the spine of Sarah Arthur’s new book, “Light
Upon Light.” She’s curated this really powerful collection of
poems, prayers, and literature for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany
that I’ve had the joy of unpacking early, and now reviewing here.
Read it, slowly. This one will sink into you. Like the
previous “At the Still Point,” each chapter’s theme threads its way
through prayers, scripture selections, poetry, and selections from
good books.
Contemporaries keep the selections unexpected, each time; classics
remind me this story is much larger than my today, my Advent, my
Christmas. This isn’t a book of prepackaged emotions — lectio
divina isn’t that; you can’t predict how the Spirit will use it,
even the stories heard before. But from St. Francis to Dickens to
Luci Shaw and John Irving, its scope is so generous, its helping so
generous — Sarah’s given us readers a new vista, which is just
about the best earthly gift for that time of the year. Even
selections from books I’ve read before speak with a new voice,
beyond what was probably the author’s original intent. That’s part
of it. Our culture dives into Christmas as if it held all the hope
and sparkle of the entire year, but “Light Upon Light”‘s selections
are richer, and they don’t abandon us on Christmas Day, like radio
stations that switch back to pop music at midnight. She doesn’t
leave us at the cultural crescendo, and I’m going to be grateful
for that come January.
“Light Upon Light” mixes the now, our current, broken world and our
Christmases; and the Then, that Holy Then; and words for my soul
and words for the world outside it — so far from my today that it
feels not mine. I think Christmas should be that way — it’s very
much an experience in my heart, IN MY HEART, Owen says. But it
can’t be contained there; it’s a story that’s been writing itself
since the beginning. I think Sarah Arthur’s selections come as
close as we can to nailing the scope of the story. Sarah, a
friend of mine, she knows story and the appetite God’s given us for
stories. She knows when story becomes so holy that we just put the
words up there and let the Spirit take it from there. The spaces
for that to happen are all throughout “Light Upon Light.”
There’s a savior-baby, a holy hope, a very-appropriate peace
and joy here. But there’s the parts of the story that don’t
look so cheerful on the Christmas card: the Holy Innocents, the
refugee baby. That depth and tension and the invitation to slow
down during that season that isn’t a Be Still season for most
people … Take it, that invitation. —Seeking the Abundance
"In our individual darknesses we long for more light. Sarah Arthur
understands this, and, as if pulling together scores of candles
with burning wicks, she illuminates our whole year with the gift of
flaming words. A treasure of enlightenment." —Luci Shaw,
author of Breath for the Bones and Adventure of
Ascent
We spend much money, effort, and time in our culture candy-coating
the Christmas season with superficially “pretty” things. Colored
tree lights, shiny wrapping paper, glitter-covered snowflakes—I
think we hope these trappings will distract us from more unpleasant
realities that, sadly, don’t take time off during “the holiday
season.”
The season does, however, contain real beauty for those with eyes
to see and ears to hear. Sarah Arthur is someone who
does, as her rich and refreshing compilation of literary
texts, Light upon Light, shows. With these carefully
cultivated passages from poetry and fiction, arranged to illuminate
the biblical texts and themes commonly encountered during the
liturgical seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, Sarah
invites readers “to sit… to breathe in the words of others… [to]
seek points of light that cannot be extinguished.”
If you’ve been listening to and reading The Sci-Fi Christian a
while, Sarah’s not a stranger to you; she generously provided
signed copies of some of her earlier books as prizes for our
Tolkien-Lewis Writing Contest last year. Well-versed in both
Middle-Earth and Narnia (as well as the works
of Jane Austen), Sarah knows we need stories, including tales
of other times and other worlds, to feed our “God-hungry
imaginations” (the title of her wonderful book on
storytelling in youth ministry). She is a strong advocate of
engaging fiction and poetry prayerfully who emphasizes that God’s
Spirit can speak to and shape us through not only the words of
Scripture but also the words of good literature. Like her earlier
literary prayer companion, At the Still Point, Light upon
Light presents poems and narrative excerpts in a suggested,
simple order for prayer and reflection.
Fans of fantastic literature will recognize a few classic names
from the genre: Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald, Hans Christian
Andersen (a passage from “The Snow Queen” that should send anyone
suffering from Frozen fatigue back to that movie’s original,
superior source material). Charles Dickens’ Christmas
Carol makes an appearance, too, confirming its well-deserved
status as a classic.
But it’s the real world, where joys and sorrows jostle against each
other for attention and where beauty breaks in only fitfully and
unexpectedly, that concerns all the writers represented in these
pages, even when they’re engaging it in a fictional mode. A
heartbreaking passage from Oscar Hijuelos’ novel Mr. Ives’
Christmas, for example, captures how quickly and cruelly death can
intrude upon our well-ordered lives. In contrast, Mary F.C. Pratt’s
poem “Stunned Back to Belief While the Mezzo Sang ‘He Shall Feed
His Flock’” exemplifies how the most ordinary of moments can, with
equal suddenness and force, convey unlooked-for, undeserved
holiness.
Unsurprisingly, the biblical Christmas narratives and their
characters are common subjects, but they are often treated in
surprising and powerful ways. G.K. Chesterton takes us to “The
House of Christmas,” “the place where God was homeless/And all men
are at home;” while Susanna Childress imagines the Nativity taking
place in “Bethlehem, Indiana”—the peacock farm’s caretaker
“awakened with a sudden urge/for green bean casserole only to find
a heavenly host inside/his refrigerator…” Joan Rae Mills expresses
the mystery of the Incarnation in “Mary”: “she holds the One/who
has so long held her.” Paul Mariani explores Joseph’s mindset: “How
difficult it must have been, standing in, as ever father/must
sometimes feel.” In a funny and moving excerpt from John Irving’s
novel A Prayer for Owen Meany, an awkward children’s Christmas
pageant rehearsal turns, before readers’ eyes, into a fleeting
moment of goofy glory.
An accomplished poet herself (she has, fortunately for us, included
a few of her own pieces), Sarah Arthur has brought together so many
texts that sparkle with piercing turns of phrase, from such a
diverse range of writers past and present, it is tempting to quote
example after example. Instead, as we enter another Advent next
week, I encourage you to discover the wealth of insight and
inspiration within Light upon Light for yourself. The
words lovingly offered here may help you catch unexpected
glimpses of the beauty of the Word made flesh. —Michael, The Sci-fi
Christian
"A beautifully navigated journey through a treasury of literary
wisdom - a book to cherish." —Jeremy Begbie, professor of
theology and director of Duke University Initiatives in Theology
and the Arts
The problem with reviewing a book like Light Upon Light is that
Sarah Arthur has done such a fine job explaining her purpose in the
introduction that anything I say feels superfluous. As a
guide to prayer during the season of Advent, she has compiled a
rich assortment of poetry and prose from long ago and far away as
well as from down the road and practically yesterday.
“Finding the works for this collection, discovering some of these
authors and poets, has been like lighting one candle after
another. Flame upon flame, light upon light, until the
hallowed sanctuary of our quiet devotion becomes something of a
shrine.”
And that’s exactly how it feels to read it and savor it, day by
day, through the dark of December.
The readings are arranged into eighteen sections for four weeks of
Advent, one for Christmas Eve, one for Christmas Day, two for the
following Sundays, one for Epiphany and nine for the following
weeks of Epiphany. Flexibility is the name of the game, so this is
not another holiday straight-jacket, but, instead, a warm,
comforting sweater. Each reading has a suggested prayer, a
psalm and suggested Scriptures, an assortment of readings to add
flame upon flame, and then a suggested closing prayer. The
index of contributors is a valuable resource for further reading of
favorite authors, or for answering the burning question, “Who wrote
these gorgeous words?”
Partake of Light Upon Light like a delectable Christmas
treat. Let the words waft over you like the aroma of
Christmas tea and hot cider. Slow down your Christmas and
find the Holy that has been right there all along.—Michele Morin,
Living Our Days
When I’m asked to describe why I became an Anglican, I think back
to my freshman year of college, when I first started my journey
towards Canterbury. As a student at Wheaton College, I had a lot of
options on a Sunday morning. The town of Wheaton, just outside of
Chicago, has more churches per capita than almost anywhere else in
the country, and most of them court new students with promises of
free rides from campus and home-cooked meals after their services.
I had grown up in a charismatic house church, gone to an Assemblies
of God elementary school, and attended Baptist churches in my
middle school and high school years, so it came as a surprise that
I ended up in an Anglican church, but there I discovered gifts of
church tradition that I had never encountered before.
One such gift was the liturgy’s attentiveness to language. Phrases
from the Book of Common Prayer hung in the air before me,
simultaneously shimmering with beauty and convicting me with their
gravity. As a newly minted English major, I found myself savoring
the words of the collects and the general confession, turning them
over in my spirit like a delicacy on the tongue. I had never
experienced a church service that acknowledged the power of
beautiful language to transfix and transform us.
The cycle of the church calendar was also a new gift to me. Rather
than trudging through a long series of monotonous Sundays, each one
as generic as its predecessor, I found myself walking through the
central story of my faith at a much slower pace, as each Sunday
built on the previous week and traced the next chapter of that
story. The church seasons invited me not just to recall the events
of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection on a cognitive level, but
to enter into them as a participant.
Now, almost 15 years later, the language of the liturgy and the
shape of the church year continue to mold me as a Christian and as
a priest, but I must admit that the newness has worn off. Over
time, language that was once so fresh becomes rote, and the seasons
that sparked so much reflection become routine. In order to enter
these seasons with intention, I have found it necessary to seek out
spiritual guides to help me stay centered on Christ.
As Advent draws near this year, I am looking forward to reading a
new devotional that brings together my love for language and for
the church seasons. In her new book Light upon Light: A
Literary Guide to Prayer for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, Sarah
Arthur helps us approach this overly familiar time of year in a new
way, gathering together different voices that help us “experience
Christmas in all its raw strangeness, stripped (when possible) of
sentiment, tuned to a different pitch” (10). Rather than offering
her own devotional reflections, Arthur offers a selection of prose
and poetry from a wide range of authors for each week of Advent,
Christmas, and the season after Epiphany. For anyone who loves
literature, it is a delight to turn each page and discover either
beloved religious poems like those of John Donne, Christina
Rossetti, and Gerard Manley Hopkins, or less expected choices like
an excerpt from John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. Arthur
weaves these disparate pieces together in a way that beautifully
illuminates the significance of these three church seasons. As the
back cover says, her work is “a literary and spiritual feast” for
anyone who loves literature and wants to experience afresh the
reality of Christ’s incarnation.
As Advent approaches, I am grateful for another opportunity to
relive the events that are so central to our faith, and I’m
thankful for literary companions whose words bring fresh
perspective on the love shown to us in Christ. May we prepare to
welcome him into our hearts and lives once again.
—Covenant, when you come together to eat, wait for one
another, October 2014
For those who delight in honoring the beginning of the liturgical
year and are connoisseurs of aesthetic excellence, Light upon Light
will enchant and satisfy. Sarah Arthur has compiled some of the
most seasonally-fitting literary excerpts from poets, novelists,
and essayists. Each section – four for Advent, four for Christmas,
and 10 for Epiphany – includes opening and closing prayers,
scripture lessons, and a variety of readings for one’s own
choosing.
In a world that encourages us to rush through the Advent and
Christmas seasons, Arthur urges us to slow down through the medium
of poetry and symbolically-thick essays. Leaving an entire week to
read through the essays and poems and Scripture passages, Arthur
reminds us through the very set-up of the book that we must sit
with the words and meditate on their meaning so that they can
settle into our souls. Arthur writes “So the one time of year
that we are given to pause and seek the One who seeks us becomes
the one time of year that drives us nearly to self-extinction. And
it is this season, of any, when we are least likely to pick up a
book and read.” But don’t make that mistake: the book must be
picked up and read, sifted through and listened to.
And after the holidays when the bustling of the season has come to
an end and we are left with the greyness of January days
(especially if you reside in the Midwest), the literary selections
and scripture passages will give us a glimmer of the light that we
long for. The sections that help illuminate our lives will
lead one through Epiphany.
The light that you will find in the book will be delivered by poets
such as Scott Cairns, Li-Young Lee, Enuma Okoro, and Gerard Manley
Hopkins. And if poetry is an intimidating medium, there are
plenty of essayists to keep you coming back to the book week after
week, including Dostoevsky, Brian Doyle, Gary Schmidt (of Calvin
College), and Frederick Buechner. The compilation of authors
and poets and scripture leave one feeling that there are hidden gem
after hidden gem in the words offered to us in Light upon
Light. The interplay of texts inspires a variety of readings
and meanings; one is left with a euphony of theological and
aesthetic beauty. In the introduction, Arthur writes “Other
themes emerge, there to be discovered. They may touch you on this
reading; they may not…Allow them, if you will, to give the gift of
themselves.”
And it is absolutely true: the readings are gifts and they will
give to you in abundance if you simply sit, read, and let the
volume of the words touch you in the silence. —Kellan Day,
editor of faith alive books
From my earliest childhood years, I have known the celebration of
Advent. Sitting at my great grandmother’s antique dining table—then
owned by my mother, now owned by me—I would watch as my father’s
devotional words sailed through the air and amongst the candles of
our Advent wreath, causing flames to squirm with the ticklings of
prophecy and hope, warm wax quivering, then spilling over
continuously, until over time the candle became its own strange
piece of modern art sculpture. I don’t remember much from the
devotions my father read each night. What I do remember were the
sugar cookies we made during the pink candle week; the shapes
representing some of the names of Christ: a dawning sun for The
Rising Son, a resting lamb for The Lamb of God, a shepherd’s hook
for The Good Shepherd, a scepter and a crown for The King of Kings.
Then there was the 9x11 inch casserole pan that my mother
transformed into Bethlehem: filling the bottom with sand for us to
place a wooden figurine in it each night, culminating with Baby
Jesus being placed in the stable between his parents on Christmas
Day. But as for the devotional words, they only sounded like a
Sunday morning service: serious, solid, Lutheran and…bland; a stoic
marching towards the birth of Christ. These are the memories—the
combination of warm light, wooden figurines and faithful marching—I
hold every year on the eve of Advent. There is, on one hand, a
beautiful yearning for and a comfort in revisiting the story
through the tradition of a daily devotion. In the other hand,
however, is a desire to journey and not to march. To discover the
Savior afresh, not reread the theology of His birth. I want to
approach the barn with the shepherds—in awe of this Babe that
somehow is for me. And then I want to leave the scene changed,
bathed in the Light. Light to pierce even my darkest nights of the
coming year. In Sarah Arthur’s most recent compilation, Light Upon
Light, I have found myself—quite unexpectedly—on this very journey,
this Advent, Christmas, Epiphany journey. I am sitting across from
Mary at the Annunciation. I am with Joseph in the barn looking upon
the Child who is—but isn’t—his. I am one of the shepherds,
shell-shocked and raw with personal implication, and all this from
reading poetry and excerpts of well-written stories. As Arthur
explains in her introduction, we often can point to that time when
one moment we are living in the mundane—opening mail or pouring
cereal—and the next moment we are transported by some words on a
page—a poem or story—into the Light. And by those words, we are
changed. It is the great mystery and gift of beautiful literature.
(9) With this understanding Arthur has carefully selected and
compiled a rich array of writings that, knitted together, create
opportunity after opportunity for that time to present itself.
Arthur does not force the reckoning, however. Her invitation into
this literary way of approaching and praying through the season is
quiet and unassuming. She reminds us of the natural quietness of
wintertime— the opportunity for silence and meditation all around
us. “And yet, crashing into the midwinter quiet comes the most
frantic event of the cultural year…so the one time of year that we
are given to pause and seek the One who seeks us becomes the one
time of year that drives us nearly to self-extinction.” (10) All
this in celebration of a night that was—for the most part—silent,
when the only words spoken were those of the Word. And it is
through beautiful words passed from generation to generation that
the darkness continues to be pierced by the light. But as our
culture deepens itself into commercialization and the cheapening of
our words into sentimentalities fit only for stanzas of holiday
carols and greeting cards, we risk losing the eternal power of this
piercing light. Unlike the hyper-brightness with which our culture
tends to treat the Christmas season, Arthur invites us first into
the darkness. We enter into Advent, a time of preparation and
making way for the Light. But Advent itself begins in darkness,
solitude, the cellar of our souls; only one candle being lit at a
time: “On any other calendar there’s nothing particularly notable
about [the first Sunday of Advent]. It doesn’t mark the solstice or
some special phase of the moon. Rather, the Christian New Year
begins on an obscure Sunday in early winter when we rise in the
dark, bathe in the dark, dress and eat in the gloom of a gray dawn.
It comes at a time when the Northern Hemisphere braces itself for a
descent into the unlit, low-ceilinged root cellar of the year. We
light a candle, peer into the hushed and cobwebbed darkness, step
over the dusty detritus of old harvests. It will only get darker
from here.” (12) So Light upon Light begins its journey dimly lit.
Each week acts much like the advent wreath, one candle at a time
bringing greater illumination. Week One is titled aptly: Begin with
a Change. Through six poetry selections and an excerpt from
Frederick Buechner’s novel Godric, we prayerfully meditate on the
promise that brings hope, the Word becoming flesh—how can it be?
There is the hope of light, but our beginning is mostly darkened;
only a small glimmer from our candle. Because Light Upon Light is a
unique sort of guide to prayer in that it evokes poetry and story,
Arthur offers lectio divina (divine reading), the ancient
meditative practice for praying and meditating upon Scripture, as a
method for engaging the selections prayerfully. There are four
steps to the process: lectio—reading the passage;
meditatio—meditating, or reading it several more times slowly;
oratio— allowing the text to speak personally through its images,
words, and ideas; and contemplatio— shifting focus to God and
resting in His presence. Arthur is quick to recognize that the
excerpts are not Scripture. But, she notes, the same principles can
be well applied to poetry and novel, since Scripture is great
literature as well. (15-16) Week after week we put aflame another
candle, meditating and praying on literary substance. Arthur does
not snub one age of poetry for another. Paul Willis and Christina
Rossetti ask us to “begin with a change.” Alfred, Lord Tennyson and
Tania Runyan invite us into Christmas Eve and its sacred space
“between darkness and light.” Throughout the book, contemporaries
and ancients alike share in the work of preparing our hearts for
the Christ Child. What I appreciate as much as the richness of the
selections is the order and the themes in which Arthur presents
them. She does not minimize the times of darkness nor make chintzy
the moments of light. After the slow illumination of the Advent
season we are brought into the warm glow of Christ’s birth and the
brief dawn of that first Christmas morn—each day given its own
weeks’ worth of readings: Between Darkness and Light, and This
Brief Dawn. But this is not our final destination. We cannot live
forever at the scene of the nativity. There is the time between
Christmas and Epiphany—Saints and Sinners, and Stunned Back to
Belief—both themes forcing us to reckon with all we have just
witnessed at the manger. Then Epiphany begins. Through poetry
selections by Elizabeth Rooney and Gerard Manley Hopkins among
others, and an excerpt from Henry Van Dyke’s “The Other Wise Man,”
Arthur turns our heads towards the sky to consider the message of
the stars and our continued pilgrimage. For, “…it is better to
follow even the shadow of the best than to remain content with the
worst. And those who would see wonderful things must often be ready
to travel alone” (from “The Other Wise Man” by Henry Van Dyke,
109). With that, we blow out the candles of Advent and Christmas,
and turn toward the season of Epiphany–a journey of revealing.
Epiphany is, says Arthur, the beginning of the shortest season
called Ordinary Time. (14) To me, however, it was anything but. Who
can stand to look upon the fallen nature of humanity? More than
once I was loathe remaining on the road. Each week and theme drew
me further into the darkness. Yet somehow—through the Spirit’s
faithfulness alone—I kept in my heart that the Light has come. The
hardships we face this side of eternity are not for naught. Then as
carefully as we are led down into the darkest places of the cellar,
readings from the final weeks of Epiphany guide us back into the
light. They are the words of Luci Shaw, Scott Cairns, Walter
Wangerin Jr., Synesius and others, who implore us to remember
Advent. Remember Christmas. Remember the Light. Let it continue to
pierce our darkness so that we can, with Synesius, proclaim: In the
Father’s glory shining Jesus, Light of light art Thou; Sordid night
before Thee fleeth, – On our souls Thou’rt falling now. (from “In
the Father’s Glory Shining” by Synesius, 194) By the depth and
quality of her selections, Sarah Arthur reveals her passion and her
reverence for literature that brings light. Her introductory notes
set a contemplative tone, fringed with anticipation and expectation
for the reader. And she is right: I was changed by this compiled
work of great literature— from the first Sunday of Advent to the
final week in Epiphany. There will be some who may shrink back from
this book, fearing times of frustration at not “getting” a
particular poem’s meaning. But here is where Arthur’s words are
reassuring and her offering the process of lectio divina a
salvation to those of us who are poetry simpletons. I had a few
mornings of stumbling through; fighting my own hurried nature that
enjoys checking boxes and extracting bullet point insights. But I
found that as I faithfully applied the steps of lectio divina, even
those poems mysterious to me intellectually, became—through prayer
and meditation—a field ripe with meaning, ready for my soul to
harvest. Light upon Light is for all lovers of a word well spoken.
It is for the pilgrim, the sojourner; for those who desire to
journey toward Bethlehem rather than march. And who believe, like
Sarah Arthur, that there is eternal power in great literature,
power to pierce the darkness with its Spirit-infused light. —Shari
Dragovich, Englewood Review of Books
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