Overview

" As Lauren Winner says ""Maybe it’s not right to think of feasting during the somewhat penitential season of Advent, but that is what this book is: a sumptuous feast.”  In keeping with At the Still Point: A Literary Guide to Prayer in Ordinary Time (“a thing of beauty” and “a literary treasure trove and devotional feast,” two reviewers called it) this collection contains daily and weekly inspirational readings to help the reader prayerfully experience God through the liturgical seasons of winter. Well-loved classics by Andersen, Dickens, and Eliot join contemporary works by Frederick Buechner and Gary Schmidt. Poems by Donne, Herbert, and Rossetti are paired with newer voices: Scott Cairns, Benjamín Alire Sáenz, Susanna Childress, and Amit Majmudar. Readers are invited to experience Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany in its raw strangeness, stripped of sentiment, and to turn toward Emmanuel."

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9781612614199

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Reviews

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 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 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 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 Pelaez 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 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 piece de resistance 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

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

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

Author Information

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  

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