Devotional literature

Review: The Joy of Advent

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Cover image of "The Joy of Advent" by Rebecca and Stephen Grabill, Ph.D.

The Joy of Advent, Rebecca & Stephen Grabill, Illustrated by Claire Therese Gray. Paraclete Press (ISBN: 9781640609556), 2024.

Summary: Daily readings, reflections, activities guiding families to create meaningful Advent and Christmastide traditions.

For many of us, our Christmas celebrations may involve some Christmas music, lighting Advent candles, Christmas Eve and Day festivities…and then the after Christmas sales. Historically, the church’s celebration has been far richer beginning the fourth Sunday before Christmas. This begins the season of Advent, preparation for our Lord’s coming. Then on Christmas Eve and Day, Advent gives way to Christmastide, twelve days of celebration that concludes with the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6, celebrating the coming of the Magi.

Rebecca and Stephen Graybill felt their own Advent and Christmastide celebrations lacking. Over the years. they developed family practices and traditions, which they have gathered into The Joy of Advent, delightfully illustrated by Claire Therese Gray. The book consists of daily readings reflections, and resources for family celebrations.

Beginning on December 1, the book offers daily resources through Epiphany. In addition, when special feast days coincide, they provide special readings and delightful activities to celebrate. For example, on St. Nicholas Day, (December 6), they include background on Saint Nicholas. Then they offer instructions on the tradition of the shoes, filling up shoes from each family member with treats. Also, they introduce us to St. Nicholas letters.

One activity that runs through each day is decorating a Jesse Tree. The Jesse Tree is inspired by the prophecy of Isaiah 11:1 about the shoot that will grow from the stump of Jesse. It can be any small tree on which you can hang hand made or drawn ornaments of images from the day’s reading. Printable ornaments are also available at their website: https://www.joyofadvent.com/.

For each day, a scripture and personal reflection are provided on the first page, suitable for teens and adults. Following this. the second page offers a focus verse and description of the Jesse Tree symbol. With young children, this may be all you do. Then the third page offers a song (you might pull up the video on YouTube ahead), a family reflection, and several discussion questions. Finally, the fourth page offers a prayer appropriate to the reading of the day.

Over the course of the readings, we trace the scarlet thread of Christ’s redemptive work through scripture. Instead of just a mish-mash of Bible stories, we get to walk through the great story of God’s saving work.

I was impressed with the diversity of feast day activities that included recipes, such as Moravian Spritz cookies, and a variety of crafts. For St. Stephen’s Day, families assemble care packages for neighbors, shut-ins, and even college students!

If you want to enrich your observance of Advent and Christmastide, The Joy of Advent is a great resource. Printed on quality paper, graphically attractive, and substantively written, this may serve you for many years. In addition, it is flexible for use by families of all ages and stages. Advent begins in just over a month. So this is a good time to order the book and discover for yourself the joy of Advent.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Diary of an Old Soul

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Cover image of "Diary of an Old Soul by George MacDonald, Introduction and notes by Timothy Larsen.

Diary of an Old Soul, George MacDonald, with introduction and notes by Timothy Larsen. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514007686), 2024 (originally published in 1880).

Summary: A new edition of MacDonald’s extended devotional poem, with seven line stanzas for each day of the year.

In 1880, George MacDonald, the prolific fantasy writer, published a work he titled A Book of Strife in the Form of a Diary of an Old Soul. He intended the book as a gift to friends, assuming the cost of publication. As historian Timothy Larsen notes in the Introduction, devotional works were common during this time, supplementing daily Bible readings with spiritual reflections. What MacDonald did was write an extended poem broken into 365 seven line stanzas. Opposite the poems, he provided a blank page for the reader to write his or her own reflections, which would become part of the work.

The New Edition

IVP Academic has just published a new edition of this work. Unlike later versions, this edition preserves the interleaving of blank pages with the poem with one to three stanzas on a page with a blank page opposite. Wheaton historian Timothy Larsen, drawing upon the resources of the Marion E. Wade Center, provides an introduction to the life, context, and content of The Diary. He also lightly annotates the work, mainly defining unusual words and giving context for some allusions. I appreciated the unobtrusive character of the notes. They did not distract from the text. The IVP edition is 4.25 x 7 inches in size, with a cloth binding and bookmark ribbon, ideal for devotional use.

The Poem

The original first part of MacDonald’s title gives us a clue to the character of the poem. MacDonald portrays the strife of the soul against sin, spiritual inertia, and the vicissitudes of life, in order to love God as one would desire. This is not for lack of his intimacy with God but because of it. That intimacy is evident in these lines from January 5:

My soul breathes only in thy infinite soul;
I breathe, I think, I love, I live but thee.
Oh breathe, oh think--O Love, live into me;
Unworthy is my life till all divine,
Till thou see in me only what is thine.

The poem does not follow the liturgical year. MacDonald was from a Low Church background. He makes an exception only for Christmas, which he loved. Rather, his poems sometimes follow the circumstances of his own life: the memory of a lost child, the loss of a home due to straitened finances, or even a rainy, gloomy spring.

Given the extended poem nature of the work, consecutive stanzas are often thematically related. The stanzas for August 21-23, for example, focus on our forgetfulness of God. He observes how often our thoughts are upon other things than God. While he recognizes that this reflects his own finitude, he does not want to fall into sin. Rather, he longs to never stray far from God though not always conscious of God.

The verses remind us of God’s utter sufficiency and our utter dependence upon him in every moment, in our living, aging, and dying. This verse, from August 6 is a good example:

O Father, thou art my eternity.
Not on the clasp Of consciousness--on thee
My life depends; and I can well afford
All to forget, so thou remember, Lord.
In thee I rest; in sleep thou dost me fold,
In thee I labour; still in thee, grow old;
And dying, shall I not find in thee, my Life, be bold?

Using The Diary

Unlike my reading for this review, The Diary is best read one stanza a day. That said, be aware of the stanzas before and after. Timothy Larsen suggests his own practice of reading and re-reading each day’s reading. To this I would add turning your reading into prayers. And use the blank pages to crystallize your own thoughts and impressions. Just as in our reading of scripture, some passages will resonate more deeply at a given time. I suspect one may come back to this in another year and connect with a very different set of verses.

Even in my initial read-through, MacDonald caught my attention at numerous points. On December 23, for example, he speaks of the loneliness of God. That’s one I want to think about further! What makes The Diary so good is that MacDonald gives voice to all the seasons of our spiritual journey, not just the exalted times. In doing so, he often provides words for us in the times our own words fail us. What a gift this must have been to his friends!

[I will be interviewing Timothy Larsen, who introduced and annotated this work on July 9, 1 pm ET. If you are interested in listening to the live interview, sign up for the weblink here.]

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Being Here

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Being Here: Prayers for Curiosity, Justice, and Love, Pádraig Ó Tuama. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2024.

Summary: A book of essays and prayers, including 31 days of readings and prayers, focused on being in communion with God as we seek to live lovingly and justly in our own places.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is an Irish poet-theologian invited for a writer-in-residence program at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in Manhattan during 2020. The essays, poems, and prayers of this book arose out of the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns of this annus horribilis. The work opens with this prayer that seemed to express the longings of many of us in that year:

     Turning to the light
     the light turns to us.
     Moving toward the source
     the source moves toward us.
     Holding on to hope
     hope holds on to us.

The book opens with asking, “What is Prayer?” and answers “It’s not a passport to heaven. If anything, it’s a way of seeing here, a way, of being here.” After a short essay on the uses of the book, Pádraig Ó Tuama offers a fascinating essay on the Collect, a form he uses through the thirty-one days of prayer to follow. His most succinct summary is:

  1. Address
  2. Say more
  3. Ask one thing
  4. Say more
  5. End

Then he practices that kind of succinctness over the 31 prayers and readings that follow. For each day, there is:

  • Opening Prayer
  • Reading (drawn from literature)
  • Scripture
  • Silence
  • Collect of the Day
  • A Remembering Prayer

The opening prayer and remembering prayer are the same throughout. I found myself centering on different phrases each day. The prayers for generosity, encounter, stories, new beginnings and mutual confession in the opening are gathered up in this wonderful closing: “Because this is a way of living/That’s worth living daily.” Being here. The remembering prayer recalls the glory of our creation as very good as we look about our city and then “pray for our city/and for the cities we are” and that God would breathe renewal into us throughout our days and all their encounters. What a wonderful prayer to pray in the midst of Manhattan or any of our cities! Being here.

Between the opening and remembering prayers were literary and scripture readings, a time for silence, and a collect, often thematically related. For example, from day 18, he pairs Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh, with its tale of dying aspirations and the call of Life, with Matthew 20:32, where Jesus asks the question “What do you want me to do for you?” He follows with this collect:

     Questioning Jesus,
     we do not always know what we want.
     Yet what we want
     can drive us
     even when we do not know it.
     Help us find the moments to come in contact
     with those deep drives
     so that we can be moved
     toward what will
     create
     and not destroy.
     Amen.

The thirty one days follow the course of Jesus’s life from genealogy and birth to death and resurrection.

The book concludes with several brief essays and poems including one on the power of stories during the author’s struggle with vertigo amid our collective disorientation of COVID, and one on the spirituality of conflict. There is also a thought-provoking essay on Mary questioning the ways we shroud her with a kind of saccharine piety when her life, and the life she bears, is a form of resistance to Rome. And he offers a wonderful prayer for times after pandemic, asking, “Help us help us/with the time needed for integration;/with the time needed for risk;/with the time for recovery/and honor and trying old things again/and trying new things again, too.”

What Pádraig Ó Tuama brings us in these prayers is an invitation to be present both to Christ and to our lives, and the lives around us. Indeed, this is praying that opens our eyes to the presence of the unseen kingdom in our midst. Being here.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Endless Grace

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Endless Grace: Prayers Inspired By The Psalms, Ryan Whitaker Smith & Dan Wilt. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2023.

Summary: Prayers in free verse inspired, psalm by psalm, from Psalm 76 to Psalm 150, responding with ideas from the whole of scripture as well as literature.

Endless Grace, covering Psalm 76 to Psalm 150 is the companion volume to Sheltering Mercy, prayerful responses to Psalm 1 to Psalm 75. This is a gem of devotional literature! What the writers have done is to render prayers of response for each of the psalms. These are not paraphrases. Rather, what the writers have done in free verse is to write prayers drawing upon the whole of scripture as well as references from literature and The Book of Common Prayer that connect to the themes of the psalm. Where they do so, they provide footnotes citing the relevant biblical or other text.

One of my favorite psalms is Psalm 127. Here is Psalm 127 in The New International Version:

Psalm 127

A song of ascents. Of Solomon.

1 Unless the Lord builds the house,
    the builders labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
    the guards stand watch in vain.
2 In vain you rise early
    and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
    for he grants sleep to[a] those he loves.

3 Children are a heritage from the Lord,
    offspring a reward from him.
4 Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
    are children born in one’s youth.
5 Blessed is the man
    whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
    when they contend with their opponents in court.

Here is the rendering of Psalm 127 by the authors:

PSALM 127

LORD OF THIS HOUSE

------------
Who is our head and host?

Christ,
Lord of the Feast.

Who watches over us?

Christ,
our stronghold and refuge.

Who grants us peace?

Christ,
our Eternal Sabbath.

Who is the giver of life?

Christ, 
in whom all the families of the earth are blessed.

Who is King over this house?

Christ,
who loved us
and gave Himself up for us--
who call us His own.

The center justification of the verse reflects the format used throughout these psalms and, for this reader allowed meditative reflection on each phrase.

As evident in Psalm 127, the writers draw upon the full redemptive arc of the biblical material, praying these psalms through the eyes of Christ, or a Christ-centered perspective. Custom artwork throughout complements the text and the book is hardbound, allowing for many seasons of devotional use. I found this not only a way to read the Psalms with fresh eyes but to pray with fresh words.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers Program.

Review: With Fresh Eyes

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With Fresh Eyes, Karen Wingate. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2021.

Summary: Sixty reflections of a woman born legally blind, who gains significant sight in one eye, seeing not only the world, but also the world’s Creator with new eyes.

Karen Wingate was born legally blind due to a genetic defect. Successive surgeries had given her marginal vision in her left eye. Then she faced another surgery on her “good eye” that might help but could also cost her her vision. On the eve of the surgery, a friend prayed that she would see “better than ever.” Then after her surgery, her eye surgeon spoke to her that he had not only clear debris out of her eye but had been able to open up her contracted pupil, allowing more light into her eye and also told her that her vision would likely be “better than ever.”

As she absorbed these words, she reflected:

“Despite low vision, God had given me all I needed. I could fill pages with stories of how God provided me transportation to travel all over the country even though I don’t drive. A Bible seminary that didn’t have services for disabled students recruited undergrads to read textbooks to me. At every point when work and my poor eyesight collided, computer technology took a leap forward, relieving the strain of seeing. I had an education, a family, a career, and a good ministry. God had answered my childhood prayer to help me live my life despite poor eyesight. I had learned to be content and grateful for the vision I did have.

“And now this. Better Than Ever” (pp. 36-37).

What follows in this book are sixty reflections on the experience of seeing the world Better Than Ever, and what the author saw of God in the process. It is a story of seeing the great blessings of God in the smallest things we often don’t notice or take for granted. Like reading the bathroom scale without awkwardly bending over. Noticing the grains and texture of dirt sifting through one’s hands. Seeing the vivid burst of fireworks–and the smoke. Noticing the smudges caused by the dog’s nose against the window. Seeing the wings of a hummingbird at a feeder.

There is a gentle, often self-deprecating humor that runs through these reflections. But there is something more. There is a woman trained to fill pages with her recognition of God’s goodness, filling new pages with the fresh recognition of God in the things she was seeing for the first time. She writes of hearing a flock of geese flying her way, and silently wish-praying “O God, I would like to see the geese. It would be so nice if they came closer.” And they did, the whole flock flying fifty feet over her head for miles. She muses whether God could and would send a flock of geese on this route just to fulfill her wishes and concludes that “God loves our enjoyment of his creation. He delights to give us good gifts.’

If there is a theme that runs through these reflections, it is that God is deeply good, even in the hardest places, and that we can trust God. Wingate invites us into her life, not only what she sees, but her circle of friends, her husband, and her two daughters. As we read her reflections, she offers an account of what it looks like for one woman to walk trustingly with God, attentive to the ways God shows up in daily life.

Each three to four page reflection begins with a scripture, followed by her reflection on something seen with fresh eyes, concluding with a prayer and a “seeing with fresh eyes” exercise. I often found myself, having been drawn into her stories, praying her prayers because they spoke so meaningfully.

I guess part of what caught my attention is that I have always had poor eyesight, a combination of astigmatism and near-sightedness, corrected first with lens, then gradated lenses for different distances, and reading glasses because I read a lot. Two of my family members experienced macular degeneration so that could be in my future. My optometrist tells me I have the beginnings of cataracts. Lights don’t seem as bright as they once were. With a love for both reading and the natural world, I increasingly appreciate the preciousness of sight as I face the possibility of its diminishing. Karen Wingate encourages me not only to be attentive to the beauties of the world around me but also of what they show me of God. I will have that even should I have no sight. But only if I pay attention to what I see…

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: The Way of Julian of Norwich

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The Way of Julian Norwich: A Prayer Journey Through Lent, Sheila Upjohn. London: SPCK, 2020.

Summary: Six meditations on the writings of Julian of Norwich that redirect our focus from sin and judgement to the greatness of God’s love revealed in Christ’s incarnation and death.

Julian of Norwich chose a life of prayer and seclusion in a cell attached to St. Julian’s church in Norwich. At thirty, she nearly died, and during the time of her illness, experienced a series of “showings” of the Passion of Christ that were recorded in Revelations of Divine Love, the first book written in English by a woman.

Sheila Upjohn first read Revelations of Divine Love fifty years ago and is a founding member of Friends of Julian of Norwich. Out of her lifetime of reflecting on Julian, she offers this book consisting of an introduction to the life of Julian of Norwich and six meditations drawing upon the material from Revelations of Divine Love. This makes for an ideal guide to reflection during the six weeks of Lent for individuals or groups.

One of the themes running through these reflections is — surprise–Divine love. The first reflection is titled “Our Prayer Makes God Glad and Happy.” This drawn from Julian herself who wrote:

“Our prayer makes God glad and happy. He wants it and waits for it so that, by his grace, he can make us as like him in condition as we are by creation. This is his blessed will. . . He is avid for our prayers continually.”

Julian of Norwich, Chapter 41 as cited in Upjohn, p. 6.

In the second reflection on the “Huge, High Wholeness of God” Upjohn shows us Julian’s adoration of the Trinity and concept of God as both Father and Mother to us. Then in the third, and perhaps to me, most striking reflection, she explores the idea of sin as “behovely.” Using the example of the exposure of David’s sin by Nathan and his repentance and casting of himself upon the mercy of God, Julian argues that sin is behovely, or behooves us, in that “it cleanses us and makes us know ourselves and ask forgiveness.” For Julian, the fear of God’s anger is in us and drives us to God who we find is not angry but good.

In the fourth reflection, Julian explains how this all could be so. Not only in Adam did we all fall, she also explains how the Son fell with us, becoming a servant, bearing our sin that we might be blameless. Julian’s vision of divine love does not obliterate an understanding of evil and temptation, which Upjohn explores in the fifth reflection on the temptation of Christ. The sixth and final reflection brings us to Good Friday and the different ways we see the cross, either in horror tinged by our own guilt or the wonder that through the cross, we belong to God:

“Then our good Lord Jesus Christ said: ‘Are you well paid by the way I suffered for you? I said: ‘Yes, Lord, I thank you. Yes, good Lord, blessed be your name.’ Then said Jesus our kind Lord: ‘If you are well paid, I am well paid, too. It is a joy, a happiness, an endless delight that ever I suffered my Passion for your sake. If I could have suffered more, I would have suffered more.’ For the Father is fully pleased with all the deeds that Jesus has done to win our salvation. Through this we are his, not just because he bought us — but also by the gracious gift of the Father. We are his joy, his reward, his glory and his crown by the generous gift of his Father.”

Julian of Norwich, (Chapter 22) as cited in Upjohn, p. 78.

Upjohn not only introduces us to Julian, but to the God of divine love, moving our focus from ourselves, our fear, our guilt and our shame to the unfailing mercy of God, revealed in his son. The work is tastefully illustrated with artwork and photographs. Each reflection concludes with questions for discussion and directs the reader to stations of the cross and Julian’s reflections. The fourteen stations are included in the after matter as well as Margery Kempe’s account of her visit to Julian.

This is a wonderful compilation to familiarize one with Julian’s work that may be used at any time of the year as well as one in the ‘Prayer Journey Through Lent’ series published by SPCK. My suggestion would be to obtain a copy now to read and then use with several others during Lent next year. The combination of Julian’s writings and Upjohn’s thoughtful meditations offers rich material for reflection and prayer at Lent or throughout the year.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: The Autobiography of Saint Therese: The Story of a Soul

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The Autobiography of Saint Therese: The Story of a Soul
The Autobiography of Saint Therese: The Story of a Soul by Thérèse de Lisieux
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I take personal retreats regularly at a center named after Saint Therese. So it seemed only right that at some point I should read her autobiography.

It is personal narrative with a single thread throughout: Therese’s intense love for Jesus that was a consequence of her great confidence that she was greatly loved by Jesus. It is this love, even more than the fact that two of her sisters had preceded her in entering the monastery, that moved her from an early age to long to be “wed” to Christ.

She confesses at times that her writing is “muddled” and indeed it has something of a “stream of consciousness” flow to it moving from an event in her family to reflections to a narrative on caring for novitiates. Yet the theme of the love of Christ and her love for Christ weaves throughout and gives the narrative an underlying coherence.

The book speaks of her earliest spiritual memories in her awareness of the love of God for her manifest both in nature and in the Catholic mass. She describes her confirmation and chrismation and the joy of knowing herself sealed by Christ’s Spirit. She recounts her pleas with her priest, bishop, and finally on pilgrimage, the Pope to be allowed to enter the Carmelite order early. At last, all relented and she entered at age 15.

She describes the vicissitudes of monastic life and how she learns through each of these to see them as loving gifts from God to form her more deeply in the love of Christ. She discovers that this is a love that is greater than all her weaknesses. We see her embrace of caring for others in her novitiate beginning with her prayers. With that love, we see a growing passion for “lost souls” expressed in prayer both for missionary priests and the people they sought to win.

We hear this love burning more brightly as her death at age 24 approaches. Toward the end of this narrative (and her life) she wrote this, which expresses well the recurring theme of this narrative:

“O eternal Word, my Saviour, You are the Eagle I love and the One who fascinates me. You swept down to this land of exile and suffered and died so that you could bear away every soul and plunge them into the heart of the Blessed Trinity, that inextinguishable furnace of love. You re-entered the splendours of heaven, yet stayed in our vale of tears hidden under the appearance of a white Host so that You can feed me with Your own substance. O Jesus, do not be angry if I tell you that Your love is a mad love…and how can you expect my heart, when confronted with this folly, not to soar up to You? How can there be any limit to my trust?(p. 158).

The Catholic context in which this love is expressed may seem foreign to the non-Catholics like me who read this account. But one cannot help but ask oneself in reading Therese’s narrative, “do I love Jesus with anything like the longing of this woman who died so young?” As one who believes in the grace of God in Christ, I must ask whether I have anything like the confidence of Therese in the greatness of God’s love to overcome my lesser and greater sins?

Good questions for my next retreat, it seems.

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