This is a guide to prayer for the liturgical season known as Ordinary Time—that long stretch from Pentecost to Advent. However, it is not an ordinary guide to prayer. It does not contain readings from spiritual or devotional writings, discussing spiritual or devotional things through discursive thought. Rather, it is a journey of the imagination guided by poets and authors, both classic and contemporary, who have known the things of God but speak in metaphor. These are writers who tell the truth, as Emily Dickinson put it, but they “tell it slant.” In not stating out loud what they know, they have left much to our imaginations—which is a way of saying they have trusted the Holy Spirit.
Sarah Arthur is a fun-loving speaker and the author of ten books ranging from popular devotionals to serious engagement with theology and literature. A graduate of Wheaton College and Duke Divinity School, she speaks around the country on the role of imagination and narrative in spiritual formation. She is the editor-curator of Paraclete Press’s At the Still Point: A Literary Guide to Prayer in Ordinary Time (2011) and Light Upon Light: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany (2014). When she isn’t chasing two small boys around the house, Sarah can be found gardening, writing young adult novels, and volunteering in youth ministry at Sycamore Creek United Methodist Church in Lansing, MI, where her husband, Tom, is pastor.
www.saraharthur.info