A minor

People are always up in the night, with their colicky babies and their sick children, or fighting or worrying or full of guilt. And, of course, the milkmen and all the people on early shifts and late shifts. Sometimes when I walked past the house of one of my own families and saw lights on, I'd think maybe I should stop and see if there was a problem I could help with, but then I'd decide it might be an intrusion and I'd go on. [...] It was on the nights I didn't sleep at all and I didn't feel like reading that I'd walk through town at one or two o'clock. In the old days I could walk down every single street, past every house, in about an hour. I'd try to remember the people who lived in each one, and whatever I knew about them, which was often quite a lot, since many of the ones who weren't mine were Boughton's. And I'd pray for them. And I'd imagine peace they didn't expect and couldn't account for descending on their illness or their quarreling or their dreams. Then I'd go into the church and pray some more and wait for daylight. I've often been sorry to see a night end, even while I have loved seeing the dawn come.

―Reverend John Ames, in Marilynne Robinson, Gilead, p. 71

In the previous post, I mentioned Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. Here are some friends on it:

Jeff Meyers: one, two, three
Josh Anderson
John Barach, who links to this Books & Culture review
Peter Leithart; see also this post of his
Wayne Larson
Jamison Galt
Joel Garver

Obviously now I have to give it another try.

Marilynne Robinson, Home

I haven't read much Trollope. I borrowed The Warden twice from the library and honestly can't remember if I finished it. (I tend to think not, but maybe so. Guess I need to check it out a third time in either case...)

Anyway, I haven't read much Trollope, and I've read even less Marilynne Robinson, but I'm interested in her new book, Home. Something makes me think she's continuing the tradition of Trollope and, more recently and perhaps more pulpishly, of Susan Howatch in writing clergy and "family saga-type novels which describe the lives of related characters for long periods of time fiction."

I read and enjoyed all of Howatch's church novels (the Starbridge series and St Benet's trilogy). A while back, I listened to the first few chapters of Robinson's Gilead on tape and just couldn't get into it at the time. I'll eventually give it another try. But I'm thinking of trying Home first.

Here are two articles that have whetted my appetite (thanks to Pastor Tom Clark of Tri-City Church & Academy in Somersworth, NH):

"Return of the Prodigal Son" by A. O. Scott in The New York Times Sunday Book Review, September 19, 2008
"At 'Home' With the Past: In Life and In Her Novels, Marilynne Robinson Looks Back to Find Meaning" by Bob Thompson in The Washington Post, Monday, October 20, 2008, Page C01

__________

Related post: "Clerical Fiction," which links to John Barach's post of the same title, which links to Lauren Winner's article, "Mitford Rules: Jan Karon and the clerical novel" (Books & Culture, Nov/Dec 2005, Volume 11, Issue 6), which mentions Trollope, Howatch, and Robinson all in the same sentence.

Koontz on Faith & Writing Odd

From "Chatting With Koontz About Faith" (Tim Drake, National Catholic Register, March 11-17, 2007):

Spirituality has always been an element of my books. People who see it as a sudden development were just not perceiving it previously, when it was less central to the story. I write about our struggle as fallen souls, about the grace of God, but I never get on a soapbox about it. I'm first and foremost an entertainer.

...and...

While I was working on The Face, a line came into my head … "My name is Odd Thomas. I lead an unusual life." It had nothing to do with The Face, but suddenly I began writing longhand — which I never do — and finished a first chapter of Odd Thomas. That book, from beginning to end, was a flow-state experience of great joy.

In the Odd Thomas series, the overriding theme is the beauty and power of humility. The first three Odd books were gifts to me, and I can't wait to write the fourth. Alone at the keyboard, you find that writing is meditation, sometimes even prayer.

Read it all.

Odd Relationship Quote

     In spite of all that we had been to each other and all that we hoped to achieve together in the years to come, I had been able to hurt her―Why're you afraid of sex?―when she pushed me too hard about my fear of guns.
     A cynic once said that the most identifying trait of humanity is our ability of be inhumane to one another.
     I am an optimist about our species. I assume God is, too, for otherwise He would have scrubbed us off the planet a long time ago and would have started over.
     Yet I can't entirely dismiss that cynic's sour assessment. I harbor a capacity for inhumanity, glimpsed in my cruel retort to the person I love most in all the world.

―Odd, in Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas, ch. 21

Most people desperately desire to believe that they are part of a great mystery, that Creation is a work of grace and glory, not merely the result of random forces colliding. Yet each time that they are given but one reason to doubt, a worm in the apple of the heart makes them turn away from a thousand proofs of the miraculous, whereupon they have a drunkard's thirst for cynicism, and they feed upon despair as a starving man upon a loaf of bread.

―Odd, in Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas, ch. 19

"Writing isn't a source of pain. It's psychic chemotherapy. It reduces your psychological tumors and relieves your pain."

―P. Oswald Boone, a.k.a. Little Ozzie, in Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas, ch. 16

Ritual & Communion

This post is a stroll through the links with little commentary. This week I've run across a few good discussions (or at least mentions) of the manner of celebrating the Lord's Supper:

Alan Knox writes about the "Lord's Supper as a meal in practice."
An article on the Visitor's Café at New St Peter's Church in Dallas mentions a list of common visitors' questions, including one that really intrigued me: "Why do you come to tables for the Lord's Supper?" (For what it's worth, I found this indirectly through my old friend Howard Davis, who became a fan of Elliott Greene on Facebook, which led me to Tyrannus Hall and New St Peter's.)
Jim Jordan writes about "Ritual Versus Christianity" on the BH blog.
Remy Wilkins builds on Jim's post, specifically on "The Order of the Eucharist."

Enjoy.

Garver, Jerome & Trent on Orders

I asked Joel Garver the question from my previous post, and here's part of his reply:

Check out Jerome, Letter 146:
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001146.htm

This was a matter of ongoing discussion all through the middle ages. The dominant view was that the distinction between a presbyter and deacon is one of order, divinely established, while the distinction between a presbyter and a bishop is one of jurisdiction, established by the church, though perhaps with apostolic warrant.

According to the Council of Trent, there are 7 Orders: priest, deacon, subdeacon, acolyte, exorcist, lector, and door-keeper (Session 23). Bishops are a matter of "hierarchy" rather than "order" per se, according to Trent, though Trent does maintain that this hierarchy is divinely ordained.

"Peter Leithart, Irenaeus & Bishops"

Just ran across this post by Taylor Marshall, which seems to assume the (majority?) view that presbyters/priests and bishops are separate orders. Somewhere I picked up the idea that presbyters and bishops are ultimately of the same order, as evidenced by the fact that bishops are not ordained to the episcopate, but rather consecrated. They were already ordained; they're just set apart among the ordained to serve as bishops, as pastors of pastors, cities, regions, etc. I seem to recall that this was a historically held position, although probably the minority (Eastern Orthodox?) view. Can anyone point me to some resources on this?