Arthur: Literature for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany
“Many of us, when charting the timeline of our lives, can point to a moment when a story or poem happened.” —Sarah Arthur, in Light Upon Light (Paraclete Press 2014) p. 9.
Light upon Light is a literary guide of daily and weekly readings and prayers by well-known authors for the liturgical seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, compiled by Sarah Arthur. She has also written similar companion guides for the long Pentecost season (At the Still Point) and Lent and Easter (Between Midnight and Dawn). Arthur emphasizes that this is not only a guide to prayer during a time of year when our lives become too busy, but also a literary guide to prayer. We remember and recall poems, scripture, and fiction that moved us in our daily lives. Arthur believes literature can make a difference daily when we need it most.
The readings begin with the first Sunday in Advent and end the week of Ash Wednesday.
Arthur hopes to open our imagination as she exposes us to brief excerpts or short works of writers well known to us, as well as some authors we may not know but should! Arthur warns that often we should encounter an alert in the readings of this anthology: “Warning: Powerful Spiritual Moment Ahead!” Finally, Arthur suggests that we digest each lesson not as something for our English Literature class or even for pleasure, but as liturgical pieces for worship and prayer.
Each week begins with an outline for the week of an opening prayer, scripture readings, readings from literature, a place of personal prayer and reflection, and a closing prayer to use for that week. Arthur suggests applying the ancient principles of lectio divina or divine reading that we have used in reading scripture now when reading poetry and fiction. We read the passage, meditate on it, and pay attention to a word or phrase that connects us to a place resting in God’s presence. My experience has been to carry that word or phrase during that day or perhaps the whole week. Since this process is no longer being used for scripture, she has christened it holy reading or lectio sacra.
I invite you to join this journey with Sarah Arthur during the extraordinary seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, with a unique spiritual practice of daily worship and prayer using well-known literature.
Joanna Seibert https://www.joannaseibert.com/
Book Signing St. Mark’s, Sunday December 4th
After 8 and 10:30 service
Letters from my Grandfather: A History of Two Decades of Unconditional Love. by Joanna Seibert
A pediatric physician, an Episcopal deacon, a mother, grandmother, and author of ten other books on spirituality, shares letters from her grandfather after she left home. She responds to his letters in the present time, giving insight into two decades of unconditional love. $20 all proceeds go to Camp Mitchell.
Advance Praise. Letters from my Grandfather: A History of Two Decades of Unconditional Love.
I love this book, which began as a collection but became a correspondence. Dr. Joanna Seibert, a distinguished Professor (and practitioner) of Pediatric Radiology at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, had treasured a fourteen-year stream of letters from her grandfather and saved them all for more than sixty years. Lately, she decided to publish them, so that her own five grandchildren, among others, might someday enjoy and profit from them. Joanna’s re-reading of the letters now prompted fresh reflections, resulting in her writing a new reply for each epistle (there were sixty-six)! Both sets ––his to her back then, and hers to him this year–– are picturesque and full of detail in the lives that each of them has led. The yield to us is two biographies, his and hers: from one side, a World War I soldier, born in 1888, a Southern Baptist who made his living repairing watches in a one-man shop; and from the other, his beloved grandchild, a distinguished Arkansan on the leading cusp of the women’s movement, who taught and practiced medicine through a time of rapid change in that––and, it has often felt, in everything. He knew life in 1888, she in 2022. So here they are writing forth and back across that historical divide––and breathing gratitude and love on every page. Three times, Joanna says, in three different ways, “you saved my life.” But, above it all, “you taught me how to love.” She wants to pass it on.
The Rev. Dr. Christoph Keller, III