Between Midnight and Dawn: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide

Between Midnight and Dawn: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide is a rich and beautiful resource compiled by Sarah Arthur and published by Paraclete Press in 2016.
This exceptional anthology includes selections from classic and contemporary literature by writers as diverse as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens, G.K. Chesterton, George Eliot, Wendell Berry, Luci Shaw and Frederick Buechner.

The book is divided into twenty-one sections that takes the reader from the beginning of Lent through to the end of the seventh week after Easter.
Each section has a theme and begins with an opening prayer, often taken from classic poetry. A Psalm, suggested Scriptures, five to seven literary readings, and opportunities for reflection are also included. The literary selections and the guide on their own would be a treasure, however, Sarah Arthur also has an introductory section that explains how to engage prayerfully with fiction and poetry using the practice of lectio divina (divine reading). While recognising that literary readings are not the words of Scripture, the basic principles, lectio, meditatio, oration and contemplation can be applied to novels and poetry.
There is also  a 'For Further Reading' section at the end of the book with a list of fiction and poetry for the reader to further explore the themes contained in this compilation.

Lenten sorrow makes way for Easter joy, and nothing - nothing - will quench the dawn.
And its the same shift that happens when the soul, alone in grief or guilt or illness or isolation, finds company in the life-giving words of another. During the midnight hours we shelter our guttering faith, and by its light we read poetry and prose that transcend centuries, hemispheres. Words from poets whose battles with God do not lead to victory but to a kind of grumpy determination. Stories from novelists who have tumbled into the abyss of their own undoing - of everyone's undoing - and found Someone there already, holding the bottom rung of the rescue ladder. Raise your eyes, these voices say. Look to the east. Do you not see it? There. The dawn.

These poets and novelists remind us that the sunrise is undeserved, but here we are. Our battles are ongoing but just skirmishes, really, the last desperate attempts of the losing side to go down fighting. The war itself is over.

A long-time friend of mine was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and is scheduled to have surgery in the coming week. On Ash Wednesday I read this poem in Between Midnight and Dawn and it pierced my heart:

Ash Wednesday by Anna Silver (Anglo-American, contemporary)

How comforting, the smudge on each forehead:
I'm not to be singled out after all
From dust you came. To dust you will return.
My mastectomy, a memento mori, *
prosthesis smooth as a polished skull.
I like the solidarity of this prayer,
the ointment thumbed into my forehead,
my knees pressing hard on the velvet rail.
If God won't give me His body to clutch,
I'll grind this soot into my skin instead.
If I can't hold the flame that burned my breast,
I'll char my brow; I'll blacken my pores; I'll flaunt
with ash this flaw in His creation.

* Latin for a reminder that we will die

I was given a free copy of this book for review purposes and I have given my honest opinion - i.e. I wholeheartedly recommend it!
Sarah Arthur is the author, compiler, or co-author of eleven books and is a graduate of Wheaton College and Duke Divinity School and blogs here.

Paraclete Press have also just launched their e-subscriptions and have other resources for Lent and Easter.

 

The Worship of Success

I've almost finished the 2010 biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas. According to the author, Bonhoeffer was fascinated by the way people worship success. He experienced firsthand the fickleness of the crowds at bullfights when he was in Spain; one minute roaring for the toreador, the next, for the bull. In 1938, just after the infamous Kristallnacht, Bonhoeffer, disheartened by the inability of the Church to be bold and firm in the face of oppostion and suffering, wrote in an Advent letter:

 '...God's cause is not always the successful one...we really could be "unsuccessful"and yet be on the right road. But this is where we find out whether we have begun in faith or in a burst of enthusiasm." Pg. 318.

Metaxas writes:

After the fall of France, many understood that Hitler was destroying Germany through success.

Hitler himself saw his success as 'Providential.' Bonhoeffer had a different view:

Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization.   

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1939.

In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things the figure of Him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger and is at best the object of pity. The world will allow itself to be subdued only by success. It is not ideas or opinions which decide, but deeds. Success alone justifies wrongs done...
With a frankness and off-handedness which no other earthly power could permit itself, history appeals in its own cause to the dictum that the end justifies the means...
The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.
Bonhoeffer, pg 363

Calvary by Jan Bruegel, c.1610

It is not your business to succeed, but to do right. When you have done so the rest lies with God.
C.S. Lewis

From my Reading: Obedience, Suffering & Trust

Camille Corot, 1854

In the last week I've come across the themes of obedience, suffering and trust in three different places. I'm always pleasantly surprised when these connections happen and I'm grateful I've gotten  into the habit of having a number of books on the go at the one time. It really does help these connections to happen organically.
I've been reading, very slowly, through One Thousand Gifts after starting it earlier this year. Ann Voscamp bares her soul in this book and I've been savouring what she's written about so honestly - the pain of her childhood experiences of loss, her struggles to trust in God's goodness and her journey of gratitude.
This week I read these words:

The practice of giving thanks...this is the way we practice the presence of God, stay present to His presence, and it is always a practice of the eyes. We don't have to change what we see. Only the way we see.

This living a lifestyle of intentional gratitude became an unintentional test in the trustworthiness of God - and in counting blessings I stumbled upon the way out of fear...
Every time fear freezes and worry writhes, every time I surrender to stress, aren't I advertising the unreliability of God?

The Keeper of the Bees by Gene Sratton-Porter

I've just finished this book and will write about it more fully later but I wanted to share this quote which relates to obedience and how our decisions in this area don't just affect our own lives.

"Don't!" cried Jamie. "Don't be bitter, Margaret. We don't know why, we never can know why things happen in this world exactly as they do; but this we know: We know that God is in His Heaven, that He is merciful to the extent of ordaining mercy; we know that if we disobey and take our own way and run contrary to His commandments, we are bitterly punished. And it is the most pitiful of laws that no man or woman can take their punishment 'alone' in this world. It is the law that none of us can suffer without making someone else suffer, but in some way it must be that everything works out for the best, even if we can't possibly see how that could be when things are happening that hurt us so..."

This third place where these three themes were expressed was this article I read on Sally Clarkson's blog. Sally speaks about the example of a mentor/an older, wiser woman, and the encouragement she gained from her life:

“But it is what you practice, day after day, that builds your integrity, your character, your strength, your message–what you do when no one is looking.

And so this is the place I became spiritually strong. God gave me a testing ground for my soul–this place of being faithful, generous, loving even if I received nothing in return.

This place of difficulty became my greatest lifetime glory. Never underestimate the hidden, unseen acts of obedience.”

Choosing Chrysaor

"D'you remember the book of German legends downstairs Tales from the Nibelungen Lied? There was a sword in the story, the sword Balmung, stolen from the treasure hoard. It was the sword of conquest and, wherever it went, it brought woe and destruction. That's the very sword Germany's using today. She's fighting with the sword Balmung. The United Nations are using another sword, Chrysaor, the golden sword of Justice.

"There's a rambling old Elizabethan poem about a knight who carried that sword long ago. He fought for justice and cared only to right the wrong. He wasn't always successful. Made a ghastly muddle of his various quests and collected a host of enemies who loathed him because he tried to do justly. We're using the sword Chrysaor, like that knight. We're fighting for freedom and justice and the rights of the weak against the strong...and whatever we've done wrong in the past, there's no doubt that today we are fighting with the sword Chrysaor."

I'm reading Enemy Brothers by Constance Savery to my 9 year old. I've read it aloud to all my children and now it's Moozle's turn. (I wrote a bit about the book here) Up until recently I was unable to trace the where the swords appeared in the tales and then I discovered that the sword Balmung was called Nothung in Wagner's version of The Nibelungenlied and it was Siegfried's mighty sword. The Age of Fable by Thomas Bullfinch has a short summary of the story here.

The Elizabethan poem referred to in the quote turned out to be The Faerie Queen. Some of my children have read Fierce Wars & Faithful Loves scheduled in Ambleside Online Year 8 which is Book 1 of Edmund Spencer's epic poem but there was nothing in there about Chrysaor. The other day I learned that the story is in Book 5 (there are six of them in this poem).The quote below is from a retelling of the Faerie Queen by Mary Macleod (1916) which is an easier introduction to the poem:

Even from his cradle Artegall had been brought up to justice; for one day when he was a little child playing with his companions, he had been found by a great and wonderful lady called Astræa, who, while she dwelt here among earthly men, instructed them in the rules of justice...

She taught him, to weigh equally both right and wrong, and where severity was needed to measure it out according to the line of conscience...

Astræa gave Artegall a wonderful sword, called "Chrysaor," which excelled all other swords. It was made of most perfect metal, tempered with adamant, all garnished with gold upon the blade, whereby it took its name.

In course of time Astræa left this world...But she left behind her on earth her servant, an Iron Man, who always attended on her to execute her Judgments, and she bade him go with Artegall and do whatever he was told. The man's name was Talus; he was made of iron mould, immovable, irresistible, unchanging; he held in his hand an iron flail, with which he threshed out falsehood and unfolded the truth.


The painting below by John Hamilton Mortimer (1778) is titled Sir Arthegal, the Knight of Justice, with Talus, the Iron Man and was inspired by The Faerie Queen. Sir Arthegal is depicted holding the sword Chrysaor.

 

Linking up with Tina at Booknificent Thursday.

Co-operating with the Divine Teacher

Alpine Flowers, Mt Kosciusko

Some thoughts on atmosphere & relationship...

I'm taking Oswald Chambers out of his initial context here, but this quote from his book My Utmost for His Highest meshes with what I've been reading in Charlotte Mason's book, Parents and Children, especially Chapter 5:

The main thing about Christianity is not the work we do, but the relationship we maintain and the atmosphere produced by that relationship. That is all God asks us to look after, and it is the one thing that is being continually assailed.

It's easy to put all our work into the 'doing' of education and to forget or disregard the importance of 'relationship' - with our child and with the Divine Teacher.

And without the relationship we don't have the atmosphere that is vital part of the whole:

Education is an atmosphere, a discipline and a life.

Chambers says that relationship is the area where we find ourselves constantly assailed.

To assail:

To attack with a view to overcome, by motives applied to the passions 

To overthrow

I generally know when I'm being assailed.

I become aware that I've made decisions without first pausing in my spirit.

I've made a decision based on my passions or feelings or a sense of urgency.

For me this isn't usually in the big decisions. I'll talk those through with my husband.

It's all the small ones that add up over time.

Charlotte Mason's words on co-operating with the Divine Teacher are encouraging but at the same time sobering:

Our co-operation appears to be the indispensable condition of all the divine workings. We recognise this in what we call spiritual things, meaning the things that have to do more especially with our approaches to God; but the new thing to us is, that grammar, for example, may be taught in such a way as to invite and obtain the co-operation of the Divine Teacher, or in such a way as to exclude His illuminating presence from the schoolroom.

Part of that co-operation involves keeping our relationship with God, and the atmosphere it produces, not just intact but vigorous and healthy.

It is wonderfully empowering, not to mention reassuring, to know that God instructs my child.

He knows my child's innermost being.

He is familiar with all his/her ways.

'God doth Instruct.'––In the things of science, in the things of art, in the things of practical everyday life, his God doth instruct him and doth teach him, her God doth instruct her and doth teach her. Let this be the mother's key to the whole of the education of each boy and each girl; not of her children; the Divine Spirit does not work with nouns of multitude, but with each single child.

Let the mother visualise the thought as an illuminated scroll about her newborn child, and let her never contemplate any kind of instruction for her child, except under the sense of the divine co-operation. 

Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally

Thomas Keneally is an Australian author who first heard of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist and the unlikely hero of this book, when he was looking at leather briefcases in a shop in the USA in 1980.

The shop belonged to a 'Schindler survivor' and Keneally's book is based on the detailed recollections of the Schindler Jews and other witnesses, including Oskar Schindler himself. 

In his introduction the author states that he has used his craft as a novelist to tell a true story and has tried to avoid all fiction in the telling of it. Although at times it was necessary to reconstruct incomplete conversations, all events are based on eye witness accounts.

An unlikely hero was the term I used to describe Schindler: affluent, fond of good food and wine, a capitalist to the core and a womaniser, he moved in high places and used the strength of a debased and barbarous system to keep over 1200 Jews working in his factories from annihilation in the Nazi death camps.

His rescue work began in 1943 in Nazi occupied Poland with an act of kindness towards a misused young Jewish woman in the service of a brutal SS officer; but he neglected and frequently abandoned his wife who was loyal to him, and who was instrumental in saving the lives of many of his workers.

The rescued Jews 'had their attention taken by the grand, magical, omni-provident Oskar,' and it was hard 'to see behind the Herr Direktor to the quiet wife. But to the dying, Emilie was more visible...One wonders if some of Emilie's kindnesses...may not have been absorbed into the Oskar legend...'

Emilie said of her husband that he had done 'nothing astounding before the war and had been unexceptional since.' The war gave him an opportunity to summon up virtue for a season and Thomas Keneally has told his story well, taking care to distinguish between the real man and the myth, at the same time acknowledging the role Emilie Schindler played.

As they got closer to the gate, they became aware that Herr Schindler was standing in the midst of the SS men...A short, dark SS officer stood beside him. It was the commander...Liepold. Oscar had already discovered - the women would discover it soon - that Liepold, unlike his middle-aged garrison, had not yet lost faith in that opposition called The Final Solution. Yet though he was...the supposed incarnation of authority...it was Oskar who stepped forward as the lines of women stopped.                   

The women staggered across the cobbles in their tattered Auschwitz clothes. Their heads were cropped. Some of them were too ill, too hollowed out, to be easily recognised. Yet it was an astounding assembly. It would not surprise anyone to find out later that no such reunion occurred anywhere else in stricken Europe. That there had never been, and would not be, any other Auschwitz rescue like this one.

Places of interest:

Schindler Jews

The Jewish Virtual Library - a list of the names included on 'Schindler's list,' which he gave to the SS in order to convince them his 'factory workers' were essential to the war effort.

Wednesday with Words: Abstractitis

 The effect of this disease, now endemic on both sides of the Atlantic, is to make the patient write such sentences as, Participation by the men in the control of the industry is non-existent, instead of, The men have no part in the control of the industry; Early expectation of a vacancy is indicated by the firm, instead of, The firm say they expect to have a vacancy soon; The availability of this material is diminishing, instead of, This material is getting scarcer; A cessation of dredging has taken place, instead of, Dredging has stopped; Was this the realization of an anticipated liability? instead of, Did you expect you would have to do this? And so on, with an abstract word always in command as the subject of the sentence. Persons and what they do, things and what is done to them, are put in the background, and we can only peer at them through a glass darkly. It may no doubt be said that in these examples the meaning is clear enough; but the danger is that, once the disease gets a hold, it sets up a chain reaction. A writer uses abstract words because his thoughts are cloudy; the habit of using them clouds his thoughts still further; he may end by concealing his meaning not only from his readers but also from himself, and writing such sentences as The actualisation of the motivation of the forces must to a great extent be a matter of personal angularity.  

H.W. Fowler (1858-1933)

When I read the above quote I thought of George Orwell. He wrote about what he saw happening to the English language in his day:

By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash -- as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot -- it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. 

He gives an example using the Book of Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English: 

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

Wednesday with Words - Plutarch

We've been reading through Plutarch's life of Quintus Fabius Maximus, learning some things about his character and drawing lessons from his life.

Fabius was slow and steady, a plodder, a characteristic that was not appreciated by his next in command, the impulsive and arrogant Lucius Minucius (love that name!).

So, basically, Fabius was called to Rome and in his absence Minucius took matters into his own hands and attacked Hannibal. Instead of being punished, Minucius was elevated by those opposed to the rule of Fabius to a position of equal authority with Fabius and continued in his rash behaviour, despising the advice of the older man. Hannibal took advantage of the rift and cunningly lured Minucius into a battle:

When, therefore, (Fabius) saw the army of Minucius encompassed by the enemy, and that by their countenance and shifting their ground, they appeared more disposed to flight than to resistance, with a great sigh, striking his hand upon his thigh, he said to those about him, "O Hercules! how much sooner than I expected, though later than he seemed to desire, hath Minucius destroyed himself!"

Fabius's response to the younger man's rashness and flouting of authority was:

"We must make haste to rescue Minucius, who is a valiant man, and a lover of his country; and if he hath been too forward to engage the enemy, at another time we will tell him of it."

Magnanimous, I'd call that.

Hannibal, seeing so sudden a change of affairs, and Fabius, beyond the force of his age, opening his way through the ranks up the hill-side, that he might join Minucius, warily forbore, sounded a retreat, and drew off his men into their camp...

Fabius, after his men had picked up the spoils of the field, retired to his own camp, without saying any harsh or reproachful thing to his colleague...

The man who has understanding holds his tongue.
Proverbs 11:12

Minucius learnt a valuable lesson that day. He came to an understanding of authority and submission and that the race isn't always to the swift. Gathering his army around him he said these words to his men:

"To conduct great matters and never commit a fault is above the force of human nature; but to learn and improve by the faults we have committed, is that which becomes a good and sensible man. Some reasons I may have to accuse fortune, but I have many more to thank her; for in a few hours she hath cured a long mistake, and taught me that I am not the man who should command others, but have need of another to command me; and that we are not to contend for victory over those to whom it is our advantage to yield."

When pride comes then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. 

Proverbs 11:2

Minucius's words got me thinking about churches and the problems that result when we get this authority and yielding wrong. I've seen lots of people just drift away or go off and do their own thing because they couldn't have others 'command' them - I'm not talking about bad or abusive leadership, but a general unwillingness to yield to anyone but themselves.

Just as Minucius disregarded and despised the leadership of a man he thought was too slow, mistaking circumspection for cowardice, we can chafe under the leadership of someone who isn't doing things the way we think they should be done or in the time frame we'd prefer.

For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Matthew 23:12

 Until we learn how to be under authority, we're not going to be able to handle being in authority.

Boys Adrift

Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D.

This is a very interesting book about boys and young men and the five factors driving the widespread growth of apathy, underachievement and lack of motivation amongst them. The author looks at video games, teaching methods (and the feminization of schools), prescription drugs, environmental toxins and the devaluation of masculinity. He shares his personal anecdotes and strategies to counteract these factors.

In his chapter, End Result: Failure to Launch, he discusses our present time where physicians and lawyers are more plentiful than plumbers:

The social critic Dr. Charles Murray observed early in 2007 that many high school students from middle-class families "go to college because their parents are paying for it and college is what children of their social class are supposed to do after they finish high school." Those kids may have very little idea what they want to do at college. Few of them have given any thought at all to the trades.

Forty years ago, even thirty years ago, there was no shame in a young man choosing a career in the trades. Beginning in the early 1980's...a consenus grew in the United States that every young person should go to college, regardless. "Vocational education" lost whatever prestige it had, and came to be viewed in some quarters very nearly as a dumping ground for the mildly retarded. Principals and superintendents began to see classes in auto mechanics or welding as expensive diversions from the school's core mission of ensuring that every student would go on to college.
The consequences go beyond plumbers who charge exorbitant rates. The downside is a growing cohort of unproductive youmg men who see no meaning or purpose in their lives.

This has been an interesting read for me at this time because our fifth child (the third boy in the family) has decided to get a plumbing apprenticeship. He's sixteen years of age and has spent a couple of weeks working with tradesmen in a few different trades and decided plumbing was what he wanted to do. As parents we want to see our children become true craftsmen and women, '...skilled and trained for the Lord.' (1 Chronicles 25:7) whether that comes via a trade or a degree.

'Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings, he will not stand before obscure men.' Proverbs 22:29 

Update: Since reading this book I've listened to a podcast at the Circe Institute by Andrew Pudewa on teaching boys which mentions some of the issues Leonard Sax addresses in the above book and another of his books, Why Gender Matters.