Graham Speake's Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise

Graham Speake, Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise, 2003.

Graham Speake’s book is a lovely introduction to the monasteries and sketes of Athos, from their origins to today (or rather, to 2002, but what’s 9 years when we’re talking about over a millennium of history?). Part history and part spiritual exploration, Speake’s focus never wavers from trying to offer the reader a sense of why Athos’ existence matters to God, the Orthodox, and the world.

For the unaware, Athos seems like a throwback to a former time and way of being. A peninsula of Greece (that was once an island, thanks to the ambitious canal digging of the emperor Xerxes I in his erstwhile conquests), it is home to twenty Eastern Orthodox monasteries and a plethora of smaller communities (sketes) and hermits who live lives paradoxically dedicated to the renunciation of the world and to praying for it. It is consecrated to Mary, and for over a millennium, no woman has been allowed on the isthmus (punishable even today, by Greek law, by a period of 2-12 months) so as to leave it as her exclusive preserve. The story goes that she was travelling to visit Lazarus, and was forced to take shelter on Athos: so moved by its beauty, she asked her son for it for herself. This legend offers a significant example of a challenge Speake deals with in the book: the monks understanding of Athos revolves not even primarily around what can be historically proven, but around the stories and legends of their collective experience on the Mountain. Speake holds this balance well for the reader.

The oldest monastery on Athos, the Megistis Lavra (Great Lavra) was founded in 963, and the others have followed over time. While most are of Greek origin, some were founded by monks from all over the Orthodox world (such as Iviron's Georgian origins, Chillandariou’s Serbian roots, and St. Panteleimonos’ and Russia). They have survived Ottoman rule, the Axis powers, the birth of modern Greece, and even its entry into the European Union. An often turbulent history makes for intriguing reading, both about foreign relations and Athos’ own internal arguments and challenges.

Speake’s long association with the Friends of Mount Athos, as well as multiple pilgrimages to Athos have resulted in close associations with quite a number of monks on Athos, and his writing shows a deep understanding not just of Athos’ history and geography, but of its ideals. His own understandable biases against nationalism within Athos’ administration and toward hospitality even of non-Orthodox pilgrims become clear as one reads: even without as full an appreciation of Orthodoxy as I might like to have, Speake’s writing is an accessible and inviting introduction. The marvellous collection of photographs that accompany the text are a stunning resource to help the reader comprehend Athos’ remoteness and beauty, and to grasp something of what monastic life is like there.

Some years ago, on retreat at St. Gregory’s, Three Rivers, I heard read at meals Christopher Merrill’s Things of the Hidden God. It was my first introduction to Athos, and Speake’s less-personal book has made me intrigued about the prospect of making a pilgrimage to the holy mountain someday—to experience worship at Vatopedi and some of the sketes seems like a very exciting notion.

Andrew Burnham, Heaven and Earth in Little Space: The Re-enchantment of Liturgy, 2010.

The state of the liturgy isn’t what it should be, argues Bishop Andrew Burnham in this new book. I came to read this book after reading Dr. Martin Davie’s review, posted on Bishop David Hamid’s blog in April. In what is a collection of six essays looking at different expressions of the same theme, Burnham tries to describe what has been lost and what renewal might look like from a committed Anglo-Catholic perspective. Variable in quality, the book is often highly technical and of interest principally to liturgical scholars rather than the general reader; moreover, the examples of contemporary Anglican liturgy are necessarily limited to the Church of England. While fascinating and erudite, I have trouble accepting one of Burnham’s underlying premises, that the decline in church attendance over the past few decades is attributable to either simplification of liturgy or attenuation of Catholic principles. Correlation is not the same thing as causation.

The first essay shows that the rites of the Church of England are essentially reformed in character, and not catholic. Burnham traces the development and evolution of both the Eucharist and the offices (the former in much greater detail), and makes a convincing argument. One of the points in this piece recurs in various forms throughout the other essays. He argues that while recent reforms have made the surface view of the rites look more catholic, the wide variability and choice permitted in their enactment force the worshipper to have what is a reformed experience. This argument is suspect, to my mind: here, as throughout the book, Burnham returns to asserting that the only possible identification of something as Catholic is a continuity with long-standing uses so deep as to prevent the possibility of any meaningful inculturation or development. I have trouble differentiating his view from a celebration of stasis, or at least of change so minimal and glacial as to be unidentifiable as renewal. (It’s hard to see how Burnham and George Guiver might ever agree on these points, and I find Guiver far more persuasive: see Guiver's Vision Upon Vision: Processes of Change and Renewal in Christian Worship.) Catholicism is not stasis; if our faith is alive, its expression in worship will change over time. Certainly it will always value and celebrate tradition, but to quote the old saw, tradition lies in handing over the flame, not praying over the ashes.

The second essay is an interesting assessment of the state of the two rites of the Eucharist currently in widespread use in the Roman Catholic church.

In his third essay, “Fast or Feast,” Burnham advocates strongly for the renewal of the rhythms of the church’s year. Here he varies between a tedious lament of the waning influence of Christianity on the lives of the general public—and their eating and drinking habits—and a forceful argument that reminds the reader of the distinction between chronos and kairos, an argument that the church would do well to remember.

The fourth essay engages the role of music in the liturgy, and makes a number of conservative assertions and arguments. While not wrong about why contemporary music so often fails to work well at creating or supporting certain moods important to solemn celebrations, the lament reads as cranky and overly conservative, rather than constructive.

In discussing the divine office in the fifth essay, “Town and Country,” Burnham is at his most effective. While I don’t agree with a number of his suggestions, nor his deep concern to restrict options, his argument that modern office forms need to balance and support both corporate and individual efforts to pray the office is compelling. (I have less sympathy for what he misses from the pre-conciliar breviary and the 1911 cursus, and more for a richer use of psalmody.)

I am still unsure what to make of the final essay on Mary. I agree whole-heartedly with his argument, following the Council of Ephesus of 431, that “there is no adequate Christology without an adequate Mariology” (196). Yet he reaches this point by tracing developments and expressions of the hyperdulia owed Mary, and I struggle with the assertion that “If lay folk paused at morning, noon, and night for the Angelus, if the Rosary became part of the daily rhythm of prayer, and if the Marian antiphon at the end of the day were to become once more a nocturnal habit, Christian daily life would again be Christocentric...” (196). The devotions to which he refers, while valuable and appropriate for some, are an expression of faith; they’re not essential. To quote another adage, all may, none must, and some should. I’m not sure they’re indicative of a Christocentric life, so much as merely a certain devotional strand; given Burnham’s concern in this sentence for laity, I’d be willing to agree if the rest of their lives manifested devotion for Christ translated into action and ministry. Despite this quibble, I learned some intriguing things both about Anglican devotion to Mary, and was able to make better sense of my own Mariology.

Despite my issues and disagreements with Burnham, I was glad to have read the book; I look forward to sharing it with a number of other people who might be intrigued by his points.

Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, 2009.

I don’t keep this reading journal as a way of crowing about what I have read; the blog doesn’t exist to trumpet notches on a bookshelf. Yet there are some entries, when I come to gather my thoughts on a book, that I can’t help but beginning by celebrating the fact that I finished reading it – even, and perhaps especially, when I really enjoyed the book, as in this case!

I first saw reference to MacCulloch’s magisterial monograph in Bishop David Hamid’s blog in October; Bishop Hamid reposts each month (with permission), the reviews compiled for the House of Bishops of the Church of England by that House’s Theological Secretary, Dr Martin Davie. I’ve been very tempted by more than one of the reviews, and a couple of the books have found their ways onto my shelves. Church history is in some ways one of my weaker subjects. Of all of my courses in the subject at seminary, only one wasn’t cross-listed to the Theology department and that was only because it was a reading course. My background, then, is more in the history of ideas, with the various other aspects of history sweeping in only as they affected theological developments. Reading MacCulloch, I was surprised both by how much I already knew and how much I did not. It’s a staggering, 1016 page, work that begins in the period well before the Church in both of the prominent cultures which would influence its early development (Greek and Hebrew) and extends through to the present day. Despite its length, the book’s vast scope means that the pace through the material is breakneck. MacCulloch’s prose is lucid and concise, and deeply funny with a simultaneously scathing and affectionate dry wit offering asides (I’m still laughing at bits about Moravians and a fascination with trombones, and the treatment of Henry VIII’s marital miscellany, but the humour is omnipresent; make sure to read the footnotes and the lists of major sources for each period, where even funnier bits lurk).

To attempt to offer a summary of the book would be audacious, given that it is in many ways itself a compendium. One observation I would make is that MacCulloch is interested not just in Christianity as we tend to think of it – that is, as a monolithic faith, albeit splintered into sects – but as it has been in varied forms and in possibilities. Much of what was new to me was about aspects of Christianity under- or mis-represented in most treatments, especially around non-Chalcedonian offshoots and local inculturations. The discussion of the Arian church in Europe was particularly fascinating.

MacCulloch has a gift for making the material deeply engaging, and introducing the reader to the major sources and gists of the various periods and types of Christianities that he elucidates. Many chunks of the book might seem deeply uncomfortable to anyone who comes to it with faith convictions that do not allow for serious consideration of other convictions. I think, as a whole, it’s a book that rewards the reader who already has at least a fairly familiar grasp on the history of the faith: the pacing is such that some topics receive short shrift, and background knowledge can help one fill in gaps. At the same time, as Dr. Davie noted in his review, much the fun of the book is deciding whether one agrees with the view MacCulloch propounds – or, perhaps, how one would nuance it. The thought I had throughout was that, if one needed to assess someone’s knowledge of Church History, asking them to compile a list of what they’d want to emend from the book in their own re-telling of the stories would be a very good assignment indeed.

I am glad that I spent the time with this work that I have; it has been a long read, and it has rewarded me richly. I have to agree with MacCulloch’s concluding words, about my reading experience as well as about the future of the faith he studies:

Original sin is one of the more plausible concepts within the Western Christian package, corresponding all too accurately to everyday human experience. One great encouragement to sin is an absence of wonder. Even those who see the Christian story as just that – a series of stories – may find sanity in the experience of wonder: the ability to listen and contemplate. It would be very surprising if this religion, so youthful, yet so varied in its historical experience, had now revealed all its secrets. (1016)

L. William Countryman, Living on the Border of the Holy: Renewing the Priesthood of All, 1999.

As my ordination was looming nearer, and I was chatting with my friend M—- about my desire to make better sense of ordination as a sacrament, he strongly recommended Countryman’s book. I began to read it before my pre-ordination retreat, but hardly had much time to spend with it, before or since. It’s hardly surprising, then, that it was the focus of my retreat this past week.

Countryman’s book is genius, absolute and stunning genius. It’s dense and far from an easy read, but is profoundly rewarding. He begins by defining “priest” as “any person who lives in the dangerous, exhilarating, life-giving borderlands of human existence, where the everyday experience of life opens up to reveal glimpses of the HOLY—-and not only lives there, but comes to the aid of others who are living there” (xi). To gloss this idea slightly, allow me to recast it: a priest is someone who has been aware in some way of the presence of the ONE WHO IS and then makes an effort to help others into their own experiences of the TRANSCENDENT. (The small-cap thing, which I'm not learning how to do in html, is Countryman’s stylistic habit, and makes a certain amount of sense in context: you, reading only this blog entry, must simply live with me using it in this entry.) What is fascinating about this definition is the unavoidable conclusion that we are, simply by being human, priests at some moments in our lives. Those with a priestly identity are those more attuned to living in the “borderland” in which we can encounter GOD, and who make a conscious effort to help others attune their own livings of life to be attentive to the presence of the HIDDEN REALITY. The other conclusion we can draw is that religion, in its variety of forms, is a stylized effort to try to mediate and re-present the ULTIMATE to those who participate in the rites and faiths tied to the practice of religion. Ordained priests at their best and most honest then are a sacramental representation of our inherent human priesthood. OK: simpler still, priesthood is about seeking and sharing the experience of TRUTH in our lives, and about remembering that this is the important focal point for how we live out our own lives.

The book is brilliant. The footnotes are engaging, and have provided for me a number of interesting things to read (though I recommend reading the book once, ignoring the footnotes, and then reading it again with the footnotes, so as not to bog down in the asides and interesting ideas: not sources so much as other thoughts with which Countryman is in conversation). I would recommend it highly to those interested in thinking about vocation, about how we encounter and share our encounters of the HOLY, and about the meaning of vocation itself. I will leave you with a sample of quotations from the book which may pique your interest further.

“I cannot say too often that the priesthood of the whole people is the fundamental priesthood. Even for the ordained minister, Christian priesthood still means primarily one’s exercise of the priesthood shared with the whole people. The ordained priesthood is a sacramental service offered not so much to the whole people (which would imply a stance over and against the laity) as in and for that prior and more universal ministry.” (109)

“The great tool of priesthood is not any specific knowledge—whether of the Bible or history or theology or newer disciplines such as pastoral counselling or church growth. Any or all of these are of potential value, but the great tool of priesthood is a priestly life, a priestly self. And such a self, as we have been saying, grows and matures by the fact of our living, attentively and in communion with other priests, on the border of the HOLY. It occurs in conversation with GOD and with one another.” (152)

“The Bible, church history, the traditions of intellectual theology, the ethical reflections of past and present, the liturgical tradition—all these interact with one another and, above all, with our lived experience of GRACE, to create the present and future of our faith.” (155)

“Jesus’ living out of the fundamental human priesthood serves to focus and guide our living out of it in our own time and place. But it will never be enough if we try merely to copy what Jesus did. Instead, we pray that what we learn from Jesus will shape us so that we can live responsibly and generously, in our own day and place, as Jesus did in his.” (77)

The past week has been wonderful for reading. I read the entirety of if nobody speaks of remarkable things, a wonderful present from W—and S--, and a book which left me in awe both of the skill of the artist and the world in which we live. I finally finished Swann’s Way. I finished, and then read again, L. William Countryman’s book, Living on the Border of the Holy: Renewing the Priesthood of All, which is about priesthood (both the ordained kind and the more important kind that stems from our humanity) and what it is to live in ways open to the HOLY. I read quite a number of poems by Rowan Williams. I spent a lot of time with the book of Kings. I enjoyed and learnt from Barbara Brown Taylor’s The Preaching Life. I read Edmund Gosse’s biography of Jeremy Taylor, and a large and not overly fruitful chunk of Jeremy Taylor’s own work, including the entirety of Holy Dying, in the fond hope of finding a passage that has been occupying my spiritual life for some time now. I browsed throughout the monastery’s library, and read bits and pieces of a number of different things, about which I will not make an effort to blog. I’ve reread The Rule of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, and chunks of de Waal’s expansive commentary on the rule of Benedict, A Life-Giving Way. I’ve started reading Icelander, an amusing and odd mystery novel (“A Nabokovian goof on Agatha Christie,” reads the back), if only because its name sounds soothing in the midst of the heat of summer (though chapel, library, and refectory have been deliciously cool).

I have also read a lot of psalms. Some I sang, some I spoke, and many more I listened to. In one of the books I glanced into there was a story of a Zen master visiting a Camaldolese monastery and commenting on the amount of time the monks spent reading the psalms. The response given to the Zen master by one of the monks was no: we spend far more time listening to our brothers read them to us. We are quiet here, and we listen. This retreat of mine has been about space and about calm, about an entirely different rhythm of life than that which I experience at home. It will be interesting for me to pay attention to how I carry the rhythms of this place back with me. To a large extent, that’s why I brought my copy of the SSJE rule with me, and the de Waal commentary: I want to be more intentional about how I am, and they’ve offered me some help in making sense of how to re-engage the process of reflection on my life. More helpful still was the endless flow of psalms, the wave of scripture read, and the wash of “chapters” that share stories of the saints and our call to respond to God’s love that have enveloped me and made space for me to be quiet.

I have been still.

I have enjoyed the rich waft of cedar that has held me in a close embrace in the chapel.

On my way to and from that space of prayer (and particularly on my way to and from Matins, at 4:00am) I have revelled in the odd smell that reminds me of the strawberry fruit roll-ups that were a staple in my grade school lunch boxes. It took me five or six trips along the path before I was able to identify the smell, and it evoked waves of nostalgia, and makes a fitting image of this time and my reading: a Proustian recollection; an invitation, a la Countryman and Brown Taylor, to look deeper into all things of the world, that we may experience and share our encounter with the ONE WHO IS, a reminder of the transitory nature of life from Williams’ poetry, and a true Benedictine way of being quiet, and listening. Away, I’ve had much needed time for reading and prayer. I’m looking forward to discovering how to carry this experience back with me into the rest of my life: I will be still, in the midst of busy-ness.

Martin L. Smith, The Word is Very Near You: A Guide to Praying with Scripture, 1989.

I had this book recommended to me by my spiritual director quite a space back, and on first glance, fell in love with it. I read the first chapter, thought that it was bang-on, and then school interrupted my reading. I took advantage of another educational moment to read it in its entirety, and its initial lustre seems to have faded for me.
Smith begins with a relaxed and informal introduction to what prayer can be, how it can be the placing of ourselves into a position from which we can more easily listen for the movement of the Spirit in our lives. He engages and makes sense of popular misconceptions, and attempts to de-mystify prayer while retaining a sense of its necessity and rewards.
It’s the second part of the book that disappointed me. While the ideas are sound, I found myself reacting against the book: Smith feels prescriptive as he outlines meditation, lectio divina, and contemplation as options for prayer. Unsurprisingly, he privileges stillness in a way as to make my kinetic self deeply uncomfortable.
I need to give some of his ideas a fair chance, but this book is unlikely to be the wondrous tool for merging encountering scripture and prayer together that I at first hoped it would be. I think it's likely a great book for people who are just encountering these ideas for the first time, or for whom stillness is more likely to be a rewarding part of their prayer life, than it was for me.

Susan Howatch, Glamorous Powers, 1988.

I mentioned the first one in this series some weeks ago, and my thoughts about this one are much the same. It's a decent book, but not quite what I hoped for. Heavy on the Freudian analysis. Far less plausible than the first; I have trouble believing that the central character of this book, Jon Darrow, could have been so effective a spiritual director in the first book with his own self so unbalanced. The notion of glamorous powers is intriguing, though--and the book explores well how misused they can be in ministry and within the church.

I'm not convinced I'm going to read the other four novels any time soon, but we'll see. I'll want to relax with pulp this summer.

Essays and Reviews, 1860. Eds. Victor Shea and William Whitla (2000)

I’m nearing the end of my second year of a three-year program at Trinity College. That has not meant less reading, as the decrease in blog postings might suggest, but reflects a decision I made at the beginning of last year. I have not blogged about the books I have read for classes. There have been a large number of such books, but when one is writing essays and assignments, a blog is not the place in which to work out the beginnings of my thoughts about these texts.

This book, though, is one I started reading some time ago, and the sidebar of this blog advertised for a long time that I was reading it. Last term, I designed a reading course around it, and now that that course is out of the way, I felt it appropriate to blog about the book now.

Essays and Reviews is a massively important book to the history of Anglicanism. It reshaped how people thought about the Bible; it reshaped how people approached the discussion of religious norms. To describe its publication as beginning a revolution would not be an exercise in hyperbole.

Before I take a quick look at the seven essays and reviews which form this book, as it was first published in 1860, I want to discuss briefly the importance of this particular edition. William Whitla and Victor Shea, of York University, have produced an apparatus that brings this book back to life. The ideas of Essays and Reviews are far from daring in contemporary Anglican thought, and so the real value of reading the book now lies in the field of social history, or the history of ideas. It is difficult to do such a reading, though, because of a loss of context. The copious notes provided for each essay by Shea and Whitla restore this context: they translate the fragments included in original languages, left untranslated in other publications of Essays and Reviews; they explicate history and allusions; and they make clear which points were disputed and why, offering an entry into the ludicrously vast collection of secondary literature about this book. Their masterful introduction not only explicates the essays themselves and gives requisite biographical information about their respective authors, but also situates the book within the context of the Victorian church far better than many book length studies of the issues. (One might well argue that their writing is itself book-length! This tome, after all, with introduction, essays, supporting material, bibliography, and information about both the publication history and the heresy trials of the authors, weighs more than a large sack of sugar, and is more than 9.5” by 6.5” by 3”. It’s not light reading material!)

Seven pieces comprise the original text. Frederick Temple (later Archbishop of Canterbury) contributed a piece entitled “The Education of the World,” a rather Victorian look at progress in humanity’s evolution and life of faith. Rowland Williams was tried for heresy for his review, “Bunsen’s Biblical Researches.” Nominally a look at a German theologian, Williams used Bunsen’s ideas as a basis for his own assertion of principles of higher criticism. Baden Powell’s essay, “On the Study of the Evidence of Christianity” is a rejection of the type of logic so inextricably associated with Paley. Henry Bristow Wilson’s interesting essay is called “Scéances Historique de Genève: The National Church,” a critical look at the Church of England. Charles Wycliffe Goodwin’s contribution, “Mosaic Cosmogony” is a look at the relevance of geological sciences and the accepted history of the world from a faith perspective (Ah, Archbishop Ussher and the world being created in exactly 4004 BC!). Benjamin Jowett's essay is about the proper interpretation of scripture. The final essay, and one of the most intriguing, is a brilliant work of history by Mark Pattison, “Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688-1750.”

None of the essays are particularly earth-shattering to modern ears, and it’s hard to feel the storm of excitement that arose because of this book. So why look for the excitement? Well, for two reasons. The first is that, in 1860, the world (by which I mean people in England who could read) cared—about poetry, science, and religion. They cared about ideas, and so it’s interesting to try to gain some sense of what that was like. The second reason is that the controversy around Essays and Reviews was largely confined to the Church of England, and was principally about how to read the Bible. It’s an argument in which the Anglican Church, now even more widespread, finds itself engaged. Moreover, the actual details of the argument have not shifted much. Does, then, Essays and Reviews offer us some solution? Certainly if history repeats itself, things would look bright for the more liberal side: some trials and tribulation, followed by an acceptance of correctness? While I doubt that things will fall out in quite so simple a repetition of the past, Essays and Reviews—in the remarkably large Shea & Whitla edition—is well worth the time it takes to engage with a fascinating period in the life of the Church.

Susan Howatch, Glittering Images, 1987.

DW suggested that I take a look at this series of six novels, telling me that each of the novels is a compelling read. It sounds uninteresting when described as a history of the Church of England in the twentieth century, told in specific narratives—but judging by this first volume, I agree with DW.

Glittering Images is the story of Dr. Charles Ashworth, a cathedral canon and Fellow at Laud’s College, Cambridge, and the protégé of ++Cantaur, Dr. William Cosmo Gordon Lang. Following a public spat in the House of Lords between the Archbishop and bishop of the fictional diocese of Starbridge, revolving around A.P. Herbert’s divorce bill, the Archbishop sends Ashworth to Starbridge ostensibly to investigate whether Bishop Jardine might be vulnerable to gossip in the tabloids. While there, Ashworth finds himself immersed in a familial mystery, and finds himself in a spiritual crisis. He retreats to an abbey, and the new abbot challenges him to deal with the traumas that have brought him to this point. I found Ashworth’s story compelling, and though the details of his journey are far different from my own, some odd similarities caused me to have a new look at my own spiritual life. Given tools to help him in his life, Ashworth re-emerges to grapple with the mystery and situation in which he finds himself immersed.

The novel is fascinating. Much of the story is told through dialogue, and certainly the novel has a greater appeal if one is passing familiar with both the history of the Church of England and theology. Regardless, it is a novel I read in a gulp, reluctant to pause, although I have marked passages to which I want to return. It is a romance, as much as anything else, and its only real flaw is that one might well think Ashworth’s recovery an easy path—akin to the psychiatrist who can cure a patient within a half-hour television episode—rather than the more difficult journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance that it actually represents. The book is, as well, a remarkable look at the church in the late ’30s, in the midst of trying to make sense of a great deal of change in social mores and behaviours. I’m quite looking forward to the second volume.

Michael Schwartzentruber, ed., The Emerging Christian Way, 2006. Contributions from Marcus Borg, Tim Scorer, Tom Harpur, Thomas Berry, Sallie McFague, Matthew Fox, Bruce Sanguin, Anne Squire, Bill Phipps, Mack MacLean, Bruce Harding, Susan Burt, Donald Grayston, Nancy Reeves, and the editor.

This is a decent collection of essays. It's one of those books that didn't particularly grab me, because I've read chunks of most of these authors before, and none of them really said anything new or dramatic--which is only to be expected, given that many of these pieces have been previously published elsewhere.

I enjoyed Borg's piece more than most of his books that I've read, perhaps because it articulates quite clearly a vision for which I have great sympathy, of faith-in-action, working to bring about the reign of God.

Harpur was Harpur, talking about the historic creeds as stumbling blocks, and the need for creeds more based on a faith that stresses the nature of our relationship with God as transformational. I thought that his offering of a new creed was weak, though he is clear that it's only a starting point. (A better couple of possible starting points, to my mind, can be found in the New Zealand prayer book.) Matthew

Fox's piece struck me as self-serving and egocentric. Bill Phipp's essay was quietly interesting, and worth further thought.

Grayston's thoughts on pastoral care--and really, about faith development--might well be the best thing in the book.

All in all, it's a spotty collection. It's one of those books to dip into, to get myself thinking, but not something that offers a lot of framework or leading ideas, nor really, anything but the questions I bring.

Kate Charles, Evil Intent, 2005.

A newly ordained, newly appointed curate enters life in a parish not sure what to make of female clergy: some of the parishoners won’t so much as shake her hand, the rector’s wife feels usurped in role—and is also worried that a romantic takeover of her husband’s affections is in hand—and the rector wants to use her to do the jobs he doesn’t want to do. (No concept of team ministry. Baffling to a Canadian church fellow like myself.) Making matters worse, a good chunk of the deanery’s priests seem to be against women joining there number, and Callie’s ex-fiancé just happens to be placed as curate in the next parish over. Thank heavens for her good friend, a chaplain at the hospital--who’s promptly accused of murdering another priest with his own stole.

Machinations abound in this relatively entertaining murder mystery. For my taste, there’s a bit too much of Callie’s romantic life and uncertainties, but the book loses all the appeal it has with its deus ex machina ending—far too neat, tidy, and convenient.

Convenient is not a word I care for in the realm of mysteries. I was disappointed that an otherwise well-written book should collapse so dramatically at the end.

Anne Hines, The Spiral Garden, 2005.

A Globe & Mail review from the same week as One Foot in Heaven pointed me to this book.

So. First of all, the basic plot is as follows: the Rev. Ruth Broggan, a (it's called something else, but it's quite obviously) United church minister moves--not of her own volition--to a much smaller and older church in Toronto than where she had been. She's met by inertia, not all that unusual for a parish: the parish is quite set in its ways, and resists any ideas she has for growth. She feels caught, snagged in a mire that seems hard to escape. The depth of her isolation is brought home in part by the way the story is told: what we read are her EMails and letters, her sermons and her thoughts--and we don't see replies thereto, but do read of her wanting to hear more from her friends, all of whom are at a distance. The story at this point is poignant, and seems to accurately capture the difficulties and challenges that face a minister who doesn't seem to meet the people of her congregation where they are. Perhaps the most interesting moment, for me, is when Ruth speaks of a talk with a neighbouring rabbi:
"As the rabbi got up to leave, he said, 'Well, if there's any way I can return the favour, just let me know.' And I said, 'Actually, there is a way. You can tell me how we know there really is a God.'" (79).
His response isn't what Ruth wants to hear, doesn't really help her--but the way the story is told, we know that not much can help Ruth. She retreats into her manse, promising to stay there until God speaks to her.

Then the television cameras and the reporters arrive on her lawn.

Much of the rest of the book is told--again in notes and messages, EMails and short and scattered writings--from the perspective of the people affected by her absence, and then her re-emergence. This section is where the book gets weird. The first part is almost a neat study of parish dynamics, and the second is an odd mix of hagiography and a postmodern, new-age-y mélange of feel-good, non-denominational (and inter-religious) spirituality. There's little I can say about this section without revealing too much, but there are some moving bits despite the oddness.

One of my favourite bits in this section are Kit's diaries. Kit is one of Ruth's best friends, who unrequitedly and erotically loves Ruth, and tells of what must be simultaneously both a lovely and a frustrating return of agape. The diaries are moving in their depiction of an interesting and thoroughly self-involved woman. The book then comes to an ending that is both unexpected and the only possible ending for such a story; I felt it to be thoroughly unsatisfying.

The book is very well written, and I'm glad I picked it up. I did, however, enjoy the first and more realistic part of it much more than the second that wanders into a weird example of magic realism that never quite anchors itself in a world other than our own, nor adequately critiques this world.

Ed. Toby Forward & David Johnson, The Spiritual Quest of Francis Wagstaffe, 1994.

The book is a very funny series of letters from a "Francis Wagstaffe" to various bishops in the Church of England, and the responses of those bishops.

Most of the letters revolve around Francis's offer to let all those CofE-ers disillusioned by the upcoming move to ordain female priests join the church that he bought (by purchase thus becoming Archbishop, Primate, and Metropolitan of the Old Northern Catholick Church of East Riding). At any rate, from advice about toupees to getting gun salutes for his investiture to starting television programmes--Baywatch, only with people on missions in swimsuits instead of lifeguards--to casting about for advice, the humour in this collection was enough to keep me in fits. The solicitude and engagement of the bishops who wrote back is quite impressive indeed.

Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes, 2003.

Archbishop Williams gave the 2001 John Main Seminar Lectures on "the wisdom of the desert"--that is, what's relevant about the Desert Fathers for our faith today.

The book is the edited versions of those lectures, plus a Question and Answer session, that discuss four principal ideas with which the Archbishop engages: neighbours, silence, flight, and stability. Williams starts each lecture with a saying from the desert fathers, understands the saying in its context, and then deals with what it can impart today. As he goes through his lectures, he hits on ideas of vocation and ministry, of what it means to be a member of the church, and of what it means for one's decisions and attitudes to be a follower of G-d.

The Archbishop is compelling; each point he makes is hard indeed to refute, and I found myself increasingly convinced by his arguments. The one flaw of the book is that it feels like a series of talks rather than like a book: two many colloquialisms or standard modes of speech remain that should have been excised.

For people unfamiliar with the Desert Fathers, this book serves as a wonderful introduction, better perhaps than Merton's The Wisdom of the Desert--my copy of which I can't for the life of me find--at helping a newcomer to enter the tradition of the Fathers. It would be nice if the book had more of their sayings; readers are going to want to find a copy of Merton's Wisdom or Sister Benedicta Ward's The Sayings of the Desert Fathers if they want to spend some extended time with the thoughts of the Fathers.

Society of Saint John the Evangelist, The Rule of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist.

The book I used for lectio divina for Lent book this year was the rule of the SSJE for the North American Congregation.

It's not a book that can be talked about in the same way as I talk about most of the other books I read.

This is a book with a very specific focus: it lays out the principles by which the Brothers of the SSJE live. It addresses all aspects of their common life, and of the expectations of the society for its members. In short chapters of no more than two pages each, it essays to begin explanations of the call of the society, of the vows the brothers take, of the ideas and actions that are important for their corporate life, and of what it is to live as a brother of the SSJE.

The rule is written in such a way as to demand careful reading, thought, and attention--id est, with the concept of lectio divina in mind. What the book asks of its readers is that they reflect on how they lead their own lives. It was the perfect book for Lent, but it's one I think that I'll need to keep rereading regularly.

Stephen Fried, The New Rabbi: A Congregation Searches for Its Leader.

Fried spent three years at Har Zion, a conservative synagogue in Philadelphia, chronicling the retirement of the long-serving rabbi and the synagogue's search for its next leader. The story is more than simply a chronicle of back-room machinations and religious politics; Fried asks his readers to think about their spirituality as he develops a better understanding of his own. This book is a fascinating and compelling read; I couldn't put it down.