Bread and Wine, Readings for Lent and Easter
Orbis Books
The Lenten companion to Watch for the Light reviewed in the last Epistle, Bread and Wine also contains writings by a number of authors including G. K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Oscar Wilde, Henri Nouwen, Philip Yancey and others. There is a reading for each day of Lent starting with Ash Wednesday and ending on Holy Saturday. These writings are divided into Invitation, Temptation, Passion, Crucifixion and Resurrection. The final section, New Life, is focused on Easter and beyond. As with Watch for the Light, the readings are varied, including poems and essays, some familiar, some very new, some easy and some requiring patience and repetition to gain insight and ultimately to understand.
The Desert, An Anthology for Lent
John Moses
First discussing the spirituality of the desert and renewed interest in the desert fathers, this introduction is followed by sets of daily readings for each day from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. Each day’s reading is either a single short piece or a group of short pieces with a common theme. The book concludes with an essay on the literature of the desert. The words of the frontispiece, by St. Jerome: “Then the desert held me; would that it had never let me go!”
Kneeling in Jerusalem
Ann Weems
A book recommended on the National Cathedral’s collection of meditations for Lent (2013) is one of poems by Ann Weems, Kneeling in Jerusalem. There are 71 poems that provide a journey through Lent to Easter. One of these poems, ‘Lent,’ graces the back cover of this issue.
Lent with Evelyn Underhill
G.P. Mellick Belshaw, editor
Daily readings from the devotional writings of Evelyn Underhill take the reader from the ‘spiritual stocktaking’ of Ash Wednesday to Easter Saturday’s ‘joyous anticipation of God’s ultimate gift.’ Evelyn Underhill was an English Anglo-Catholic poet and novelist known for her works on Christian mysticism. Her 1911 publication Mysticism was one of the most popular in its field. She was also the first woman to lecture to the clergy in the Church of England and one of the first women theologians to lecture in English colleges and universities.
A Practical Christianity: Meditations for the Season of Lent
The Very Rev. Dr. Jane Shaw
Next, there is this 2012 book by the Very Rev. Dr. Jane Shaw, Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, A Practical Christianity. A comment in the preface by Br. Curtis Almquist of the Society of St. John the Evangelist (Episcopal order in Cambridge, MA): “If we are going to be present to Jesus’ real presence—and not just virtually present—we need to find practices for “being there,” living life as an ongoing invitation from God. Whether we work, or walk, or weep, or wait, God is with us. Many of us need periodic reminders of this truth. Lent can be a great help to retrieve, recover, redeem what is most important to us, yet may have gotten lost along the way.”