Our imaginations are shaped by what we read. Like water over rock, the words we read slowly shape our minds and so determine how we understand and view the world.
There are no words that are more important than the words I wrote about last week, the words of scripture. They are the root of any mature Christian life. But if they are the root, this week I want to write about the trunk. That is, I want to reflect briefly on the people who, through the centuries, applied scripture to new situations in profound and sometimes startling ways. By reading them, we learn how to make scripture and the Christian life relevant and powerful for our own day.
The Christian tradition is both deep and broad. It can be delightful and instructive to read people from other branches of our larger family, like the Eastern Orthodox influenced writings of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. But I have found, given the limited time we all have to read, that I am most deeply enriched by returning regularly to our own American and English tradition of Christian reflection, a tradition with direct connections back to the Roman Empire.
Here's an annotated list of seven books, working backwards in time. I conclude with what I believe to be, by far, the single most important book in our tradition.
1. The Chronicles Of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. The twentieth century was rich with Christian imaginative literature including Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and L'Engle's A Swiftly Tilting Planet. I chose this one because, beyond this great children's fantasy series, Lewis provides a broad and deep feast of Christian writing.
2. The Four Quartets by TS Eliot. Eliot and Auden were both outstanding poets who, by the middle of their lives, had made strong commitments to Anglicanism. The Four Quartets are a mystical Christian reflection on God and time.
3. The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. This is a simple parable of the adventures of a Christian Soul facing allegorical challenges like the Slough of Despond. It was written by a 17th Century puritan from an English jail and for centuries was one of four or five books every English speaking Christian owned. It is still well worth reading.
4. The Temple by George Herbert. Unlike his contemporary John Donne you don't need professional guidance to understand these direct, heartfelt and beautifully crafted poems. Some have made their way into our Hymnal.
5. The Cloud of Unknowing by Anonymous. There were two high points of English Spiritual literature. One was the the early seventeenth century which gave us Herbert, Donne, Andrewes and the King James Bible. The other was the late fourteenth century which gave us Julian of Norwich, Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton and this brief book, which gives us the way of Centering Prayer so many of us practice today.
6. The Divine Comedy by Dante. Not only is this a great piece of literature in its own right, it also gives us a thorough introduction to the broad range of medieval Christian thought and life. Reading it is like exploring Chartres Cathedral.
7. The Confessions by Augustine. If you are going to commit yourself to the project of reading one Christian book in our tradition, make it this one. Augustine set the agenda for Western Christianity. There is no thought we can have about Christianity that Augustine hasn't already had. By entering into deep conversation with Augustine, which is what it feels like when we read the Confessions, we enter into the heart of our way of following Jesus.
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