Two Beautiful Lenten Devotionals

The beginning of Lent – Ash Wednesday – falls on Valentine’s Day this year. I’m not sure if there’s a subliminal message there or not, but the Lenten season is soon upon us. And two recently published resources might be, and should be, of some interest.

Women Who Followed Jesus: 40 Devotions on the Journey to Easter (Paraclete Press) by Dandi Daley Mackall may seem primarily for women, but I also found it an intriguing resource for a general audience. For each day of Lent, beginning with Ash Wednesday, Mackall has Bible verses, a fictional story grounded in the verses, and a few questions for reflection and deeper study.

 

The Biblical women included in the entries are Mary Magdalene; Mary, the mother of Jesus; Susanna; Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza; the Samaritan woman at the well; Mary of Bethany; Martha; and Salome, the mother of James and John. Each has multiple entries; Mary Magdalene has the most with 10, followed by Mary the mother of Jesus with eight. 

 

Little is known about several of the women; Susanna, for example has a single reference in the Gospel of Luke and Joanna has only two; both were among the women who had been healed by Jesus, traveled with him and the disciples, and supported his ministry. But there’s enough to make some educated guesses as to their personalities and how they fit into Jesus’s ministry. 

Dandi Daley Mackall

Mackall has published more than 500 books for adults and children. She’s a speaker at writer workshops, conferences, women’s meetings, and young author events. She’s also been interviewed on television, radio, podcasts, and blogs about writing and her books, which have won numerous awards. She lives with her family in Ohio.

 

Paraclete has also published Season of Beauty: A Lent and Easter Treasury of Readings, Poems, and Prayers. It’s illustrated with classic paintings by well-known artists, which by themselves are worth considering as Lent and Easter devotionals. (a personal favorite painting in the book, “The Straight Path” by Nicholas Roerich, is depicted above.) It’s a small (143 pages) but physically beautiful book.

 

The poems and readings have been written by such authors as Louisa May Alcott, Hildegard of Bingen, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Merton, William Cowper, the Psalms, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Christina Rossetti, Julian of Norwich, Luci Shaw, Rainer Maria Rilke, Saint Patrick, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Saint Francis, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emily Bronte, John Greenleaf Whittier, William Wordsworth, Charles Wesley, and many others.

 

One of the entries is this first-millennium Celtic prayer:

 

You are the peace of all things calm

You are the place to hide from harm

You are the light that shines in the dark

You are the heart’s eternal spark

You are the door that’s open wide

You are the guest who waits inside

You are the stranger at the door

You are the calling of the poor

You are my Lord and with me still

You are my love, keep me from ill

You are the light, the truth, the way

You are my Savior this very day

 

Both books make wonderful resources for the Lenten and Easter season.

 

Top illustration: The Straight Path, watercolor (1912) by Nicholas Roerich; Nizhny Novgorod State Museum of Fine Arts, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. 

 

Some Monday Readings

 

White Noise – poem by Jerry Barrett at Gerald the Writer.

 

Out of Egypt: 50 Holy Wells #17 – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

“Pillar of Fire: Poems for the Lenten Journey” by Oscar Truitt

It’s one of the dramatic images of the Book of Exodus. Egypt’s pharaoh, reeling under the disasters of the 10 plagues, has finally agreed to let the Israelites go. The quickest and easiest way to the promised land was via the land of the Philistines, but God directs them through the wilderness of Egypt toward the Red Sea. He knew that if they immediately ran into battle and war with the Philistines, they’d immediately choose to return to Egypt and slavery.

“And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people” (Exodus 13:21-22, English Standard Version). The distance wasn’t terribly far by modern standards, but upwards of a million people had to travel by day and by night. Speed was of the essence, because God knew the pharaoh would change his mind and come after them. The more complicated route would also set the stage for one of the great miracles recorded in the Old Testament – the parting of the sea to allow the Israelites’ passage, and its subsequent coming together to drown the Egyptian army.

This image of pillars leading the people to safety is an appropriate one for Oscar Truitt’s new poetry collection, Pillar of Fire: Poems for the Lenten Journey. Lent lasts for 40 days, similar to the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness, and analogous to the 40 years the Israelites wandered in the Arabian peninsula. It is a time of preparation, and of setting aside worldly things, as Christians worldwide prepare for Holy Week, the crucifixion, and Easter or Resurrection Sunday. Truitt’s poems offer a way to mark and meditate upon each day until Easter.

Many of the poems are taken from specific verses and accounts of Scripture – the prodigal son, the publican and the Pharisee, the lilies of the field, Zacchaeus who climbed a tree to see Jesus walk by, the parable of the 10 virgins, Mary Magdalene, the betrayal by Judas, the prayer in Gethsemane, the rich man and the beggar, the raising of Lazarus, and the crucifixion. Others relate to people and practices in the Orthodox Church – the Adoration of the Cross, the Holy Martyrs, Saint Gregory Palamas, Saint Mary of Egypt, and Saint John of the Ladder. 

Together, the poems are pulled from a rich tapestry of Scripture, tradition, and church history.

In one of the daily meditations, here’s how the poet explicates a passage of Scripture, the account of Jesus cursing the fig tree.

The Fig Tree

(Matthew 21:18-19)

Nature requires of me

That I give something of myself

To those who come with hunger

On this path where I am planted;

But my life has been

Like a tree without fruit,

Unprepared for its season,

Grown, but not productive.

I have squandered all my talents

And they have not borne blossoms

Despite the good intentions

And promises I’d made.

Will it be my lot in life 

To wither prematurely

Without ever having shown

I had something good to offer?

Oscar Truitt

Truitt is a poet who is the author of The Yes That is Enlightenment. He is the administrator of the Facebook group Contemporary Psalms. He and his family live in Massachusetts.

Pillar of Fire is a welcome addition to the Lenten devotional genre. The poems possess a quiet beauty, often a starkness, as they take the reader through the 40 days of the period. And they are a reminder of why we should prepare and ready ourselves for what is coming.

Top illustration: Pillar of Fire by Paul Hardy in The Art Bible (1896), via Wikipedia.

Paraclete Press E-Subscriptions for Lent

Paraclete Press, the publisher of several books that I’ve reviewed here, has two e-subscriptions ($9.99 each) for the Lenten season.

God for Us: Discovering the Meaning of Lent and Easter, is edited by Greg Pennoyer and Gregory Wolfe. The writers contributing to the daily emailing include Scott Cairns, Luci Shaw, Kathleen Norris, James Calvin Schaap, and Richard Rohr, among many others. There is also a companion book of the same time, edited by Gregory Wolfe.

According to Your Mercy: Praying with the Psalms from Ash Wednesday to Easter is by Father Martin Shannon (and it, too, has a companion book with the same title). As the title implies, the newsletter and the book use the psalms to explore and illuminate the days of the Lenten season.  Father Shannon is an Episcopal priest and member of the Community of Jesus, an ecumenical Benedictine community on Cape Cod, Mass., where he lives with his family. He received as M.Div. from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in Liturgical Studies from the Catholic University of America.

The books I’ve reviewed that are published by Paraclete Press include A Well of Wonder: Essays and The Arts and the Christian Imagination, both by Clyde Kilby; All Shall Be Well: A Spiritual Journal and Love Never Fails, by Hilda St. Clair (the review for Love Never Fails will be published tomorrow); and The Paraclete Poetry Anthology 2005-2016, edited by Mark Burrows.

For Lent: The Word in the Wilderness

This year, for the Lenten season, I decided to read The Word in the Wilderness by Malcolm Guite. Subtitled “A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter,” the book is simultaneously a devotional and a poetry reader.

Some might argue that “devotional” and “poetry reader” are possibly redundant. I might be one of those making that argument. Guite certainly is: “…the poetic imagination does indeed redress an imbalance and is a necessary complement to more rationalistic and analytical ways of knowing. What I would like to do in this book is top put that insight into practice, and turn to poetry for a clarification of who we are, how we pray, how we journey through our lives with God and how he comes to journey with us.”

The book is divided into seven sections, each with an introduction followed by daily poetry readings. Many of the poems are by Guite himself, but you will also find Seamus Heaney, Dante, John Donne, Alfred Tennyson, Gerald Manley Hopkins, Czelaw Milosz and others.

This Guite sonnet is the reading for Ash Wednesday:

Ash Wednesday

Receive this cross of ask upon your brow

Brought from the burning of Palm Sunday’s cross;

The forests of the world are burning now

And you make late repentance for the loss.

But all the trees of God would clap their hands,

The very stones themselves would shout and sing,

If you could covenant to love these lands

And recognize in Christ their lord and king.

He sees the slow destruction of those trees,

He weeps to see the ancient places burn,

And still you make what purchases you please

And still to dust and ashes you return.

But Hope could rise from ashes even now

Beginning with this sign upon your brow.

He then wonders at the use of ashes – a sign of destruction – as “a sign of repentance and renewal.” And yet there is something profound in that sign being both one of renewal and a signal of our ultimate return to ashes and dust.

Malcom Guite

Guite is a poet, but he is also an Anglican priest and chaplain of Girton College at the University of Cambridge. He’s published several books, including several poetry collections, such as Sounding the Seasons and The Singing Bowl. He’s a lecturer and speaker. And he’s a rock band musician part of the Cambridge-based group Mystery Train. He received his undergraduate and masters degrees from Cambridge, and a Ph.D from Durham University, where his dissertation, according to his entry in Wikipedia, focused on the poets Lancelot Andrewes and John Donne and their influence on T.S. Eliot.

I’ve now read the first three of the poems and readings in The Word in the Wilderness. Already I know that this is a Lenten journey well worth taking.

Top photograph by Jane Illnerova via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.