Interview: Poet Susan Wheeler of New York City and Princeton University

...Just this transpired. Against a tree I swooned and fell, and

water seeped into my shoe, and a dream began to grow in me.

Or despair, and so I chose the dream. And while I slept,

I was being fed, and clothed, addressed — as though awake

with every faculty, and so it went. Then: blaze, blare of sun

after years uncounted, and synesthesia of it and sound,

the junco’s chirp and then the jay’s torn caw...

Susan Wheeler interview-article by Peter Menkin

Poet Susan Wheeler by Frank Wojciechowsk

INTRODUCTION

Poet Susan Wheeler’s interview is another in an ongoing series with Anglican and Christian poets. Professor Wheeler is Director of Princeton University’s Creative Writing Department (Lewis Center for the Arts) in New Jersey. In our initial telephone conversation in the latter part of July, 2012 she said to me:
I think that my own religious belief and spiritual life informs my writing. Long before I was using overt references I had the experience of going to a small Baptist college in PA and speaking to a class with one of my books [in hand]. The students in the class immediately spoke of my personal relationship with Jesus. I was found out. I had a personal relationship with Jesus, and [it was] sort of thrilling. After that I became overt in my references. Assorted poems is selected works. Ledger is  about faith and stewardship.
I think, too in that same phone call early on, she made this interesting remark on The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan William.  He is an influence on her poetry work:
For her book Ledger, the writing of Rowan Williams was very important. The third to last in Assorted Poems is called the “Debtor in the Convex Mirror.” It is originally, an iconic, contemporary poem written 30 years ago, by John Ashbury. Relativism was dominant,then  and was assumed [as the usual thing]. What I wanted to do was talk about that idea of how there could be something as absolute as God if everything is as Rowan Williams made as a model: That our consciousness does not overlap with another person…There are certain shared experiences…it is in those shared experiences that God exists.
The reader realizes soon in a conversation with the poet that as a Christian and Anglican, that she is a thoughtful woman of letters. Her work is neither shallow, nor thrown about, but well considered and in the modern sense engaging in its taste for language that has an American jazz sound. For Susan Wheeler likes to work with the sound of words. She says in this interview, made with her by phone with this Religion Writer where she was situated on the phone line at her home near Princeton University:
There is a strong drive in me for a counterpoint… I do try to go back and forth and vary a great deal.
Her Church, where she attends, she says in that same initial phone conversation: The one I try to go to most recently: St. Luke’s on the Field in Manhattan. On Hudson, West Village. Professor Wheeler, speaking of her Baptism, says she was, Dunked in 1987.
Please note there are a few adult words in the poetry represented in this article-interview.
In one of the few other interviews with the poet, this in Bomb magazine, (2005) reads as Robert Polito asked: A canny, plangent, demotic and visionary anatomy of “Money and God,” as one of her titles here tags it, Ledger might well be Susan’s finest book of poems. The brio, elegance, and wit of her new work make other much recent writing sound clumsy and tone deaf; and her adventurousness, audacity, even her defiance, make many of her contemporaries appear slight, or trivial. Record Palace also focuses on money—on class and race, too, as well as on jazz, art and the city of Chicago. Cindy, a white, “edgy” art history graduate student from Thousand Oaks, California, starts to hang at a record store—all jazz, all clutter—presided over by the astonishing Acie. Susan apostrophized Acie in a sonnet she placed in Source Codes:

You’ve been pure trouble since I thought you up,
Acie: hairnet, glass eye, a wormy dick
through stretch pants across a girth so thick
even your dog don’t jump. I dared you drop
onto pages without a plot—and make for one.
Your diffidence don’t stack up to jack
shit so far, you mangy crank, your bun-
ions in the split of your flip flop’s sock.
I need your help here . . .

She says further in that same Bomb magazine interview: The God part was always there, just not as overt. It was after my second book, I think, that I did a reading at a religious school in Pennsylvania, Messiah College, and there the students just launched in, talking about Jesus and how several poems either supported or took issue with their own beliefs. It was spooky but great—I felt like my secret was out! I’ve always wished I could write something in which faith was as apparent and as organic as it is, say, in Agee’s Death in the Family, but for one reason or another I didn’t.
I knew I wanted this book to be about money, and then it seemed inevitable that it be about God, too. That so much of the yearning is displaced yearning for God.

Another noteworthy man says of poet and Princeton University Professor Susan Wheeler: About her work, John Ashbery writes, “Susan Wheeler’s narrative glamour finds occasions in unlikely places: hardware stores, Herodotus, Hollywood Squares, Flemish paintings, green stamps, and echoes of archaic and cyber speech. What at first seems cacophonous comes in the end to seem invested with a mournful dignity.”
From a published listing about the poet, this information: Wheeler’s awards include the Witter Bynner Prize for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Wheeler has taught at the University of Iowa, NYU, Rutgers, and Columbia University, and is currently on the creative writing faculty at Princeton University. She has lived in the New York area for twenty years.
Additional information about the poet:
Poetry
Bag ‘o’ Diamonds (University of Georgia Press, 1993)
Smokes (Four Way Books, 1998)
Source Codes (Salt, 2001)
Ledger (Iowa, 2005)
Assorted Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009)
Prose
Record Palace (Graywolf, 2005)
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1109
http://www.dailyiowan.com/2012/01/26/Arts/26680.html
http://news.uchicago.edu/multimedia/poetry-reading-susan-wheeler
http://us.macmillan.com/assortedpoems/SusanWheeler

INTERVIEW WITH POET SUSAN WHEELER

1       I found Robert Polito’s question in the 2005 interview published in Bomb magazine very good, and so we start with his question from that interview. His is a question that gets right to poetry and in this case the prose of your novel…:
RP: Record Palace re-creates Chicago so beautifully. Also jazz. Music is crucial to all your characters—your displaced art history student Cindy; record store owner Acie; and Acie’s son Bowtie. Is jazz—is music of any kind—also just as important for you?

Music is, and it was especially so for my novel since it was, in large part, about jazz. In my poetry, the sound is very important. I do borrow from other art forms. I’m most aware of it with visual art in, for example, thinking about the surface of a poem, as one might think about the surface of a painting. There is a strong drive in me for a counterpoint… I do try to modulate, to go back and forth and to vary a great deal.
As a poem that is directly involved with music, there is the poem, “Benny the Beaver: My Father’s Tale,”that’s simply a recounting of a record that I had as a child of a story with jazz music in the background. That’s in Assorted Poems.

Benny’s tail would only drum.
All day while fellow beavers drug

The tree limbs to the riverbank
Benny slapped his tail to bang

A beat on hollow logs,
Keen for external analogs

To the hums within his head.

(from “Benny the Beaver: My Father’s Tale”)

2    Of your works of poetry in published books, which of them do you as poet suggest a reader buy and read first? Or borrow from their local library? In this question, please give some sense in that work that will appeal to the Church going Christian, or even the poetry reader who is seeking a look at our modern world in the 21^st Century through your special prism of voice. Especially, as this seeker may be trying to make sense of the kind of existential way that has been called Post Christian in today’s America. Will you allow us to excerpt a short example in your explanation of one of two of the poetry works in your suggested title that you respond about?

Probably the best sampler of the work, since it includes all of my books, except the forthcoming book, Meme (in October), is Assorted Poems. The notion of faith or Christian faith, specifically, comes in throughout the books, but most explicitly in the individual collection, Ledger. If someone wanted an essential focus on faith, one might go to Ledger.
First of all I’m Episcopalian, which gives one a lot of room within the relationship to God… It is a living relationship, not a static one, and accommodates doubt.  There is a poem from Smokes (also in Assorted Poems) called “The Dogwood and the The” which I wrote at a time I was living in Virginia and going to a more evangelical Episcopal Church than I was used to, early on in my life as an Episcopalian. I was having a great deal of trouble with what one of my priests called the “particularity of Christ.” The poem draws upon that, not in a direct or overt way, but does struggle with that. What was the Passion, how can I get my head around a God that became incarnate, in Christ.

Poet as child.

It wasn’t that the process was rational, and I still don’t think I could articulate my faith in a rational way. That is why I am an Anglican; I can hold various contradictory ideas at the same time and not feel the need to sort them out. But because my faith had always been more nebulously based; in order to say the Nicene Creed, I needed to be able to say it without making the incarnation only symbolic or a “story.” I wanted to meet the liturgy on its own terms.
Again, Assorted Poems has a sampling of my work to date. Ledger was a thematic book of poems looking at the measure of faith, and resources, and stewardship. There is a long history of earlier poets using the trope or metaphor of money in devotional poetry. Herbert wrote a number of poems that used various financial vocabularies to talk directly to his God. I also wanted to explore the idea – the book was written before the crash in 2008 — that all of the culture’s consumption had something to do with the absence of a relationship with God, a yearning for transcendence. The rampant faith that money would provide all that religious belief traditionally had provided, I just saw as corrosive. The collection Ledger revolves around that idea, in part.

3          Allow me to put you on the spot for a moment, and here I don’t ask for a defensive response so much as an introduction to the kind of voice and form in your poetry of unusual ear. This quote is from a comment on Amazon.com of your book, Assorted Poems. Comment by S. Stansel:
Susan Wheeler deserves to be much more widely known. She is in the very top tier of poets writing today and Assorted Poems is an excellent introduction to the breadth of her work. I can’t recommend this book highly enough. If you only buy one book of poetry this year make it Assorted Poems.  
With it is this less favorable, even critical comment that in its way dismisses your work. Comment by Simon G. Barrett:
In the very first (and title) poem of Wheeler’s first collection, Bag ‘o’ Diamonds (‘o’?), we read
Oh ye who considereth the faith
When I last looked into the King James Bible, ye was plural; the -eth form takes thou, though in this form (you who-) the ending would properly be -est.
- or is this Pythonesque gibberish deliberate?
NB the ‘O’ in Prince’s 1987 Sign ‘O’ the Times album is an attempt to represent the peace (or anti-nuke) symbol (hence the quotation marks) not a new form of punctuation. More important, should we care? Chock full o’Nuts, more like.

(1)  For the Bible student who probably attends a Bible Study, give us the opportunity to better understand what your poetic statement about considering the faith in the King James Bible is about;
(2)  I think this man’s comment (Simon G. Barrett), represents well some of the confusion that faces many readers of your various works. Do you think this is so, and will you comment telling the reader why this may be?

I’ll go back to that first poem in my first book, Bag ‘o’ Diamonds (the poem is also in the sampler book, Assorted Poems), that the fellow is taking issue with. And the title may have very well failed for half my readership — clearly it failed for this fellow! What I have always been interested in is American vernacular speech, and I wanted to signal that right off the bat. I wanted to connote the vernacular signage in diners where the menu item is written “full ‘o’ nuts” or “frank ‘n beans,” for example, where the apostrophes bear no relation to the missing letters.   It was the same interest in the vernacular of “O ye who considereth the faith,” a voice that would try to approximate elevated, Biblical language.

In this instance, in this particular poem, I wanted to dispense with the childhood sort of history in the first poem. A poet’s first book is often very personal: their growing up, their childhood. I wanted to communicate a sense of alienation and a sense of being judged, and a kind of yearning for something else. In the last two lines: O ye who considereth the faith, can ye slam the wong straight. “Slam the wong,” of course, is another nod to a vernacular, and an off-color vernacular, speech, beinga way of saying masturbate.

My first friend had just died of AIDs in the 80s at a time of great judgment against gay culture, where many conservatives were saying they were bringing God’s wrath on themselves. The American vernacular of these lines, you masturbate yourself into being straight, is used bitterly, sadly. It was a piece of what I was wrestling with – how the religious right could skew religious faith so, as this judgment was not part of the religion I had been dunked into. I definitely think readers face confusion in my poems. I do not generally write a clear story in my poems. I am very interested in language working in the moment. I may have a wistful kind of statement and then contradict that with a smartass remark. Poetry has a long history of working in many different ways, but in the last 50-years of mainstream poetry it has not been so. We expect a poem to be a tiny story with short lines. I think about poems as having so much more possibility; sometimes they can be tiny stories with short lines. They can sometimes be essays, they can sometimes be theatre. All of these dimensions of poetry that go back to the ancients are seen as retrograde. We expect poems to give us a “take-away.”

Poet Susan Wheeler as little girl. This, too, from Poet’s private collection. Photo titled, “Child Two,” by G.L. Skeen.

A lot of that has to be with how we’re taught to read poems. What is the symbolism, what is the message of the poem? Language as a medium, like paint or music, has an enormous range and potential that is not explored by a one line take-away. But language has an advantage on paint or music in that it is intrinsically representational. If we hear the word cat, we have a relationship with it. We cannot think of cat abstractly. I am interested in evoking emotions, feelings, and am occasionally interested in a story — however, I want to do that not through a single occasion for a poem but through the possibilities that open up while writing the poem.

4          In your work as a teacher with students who are poets at Princeton University, where you are Director of the Creative Writing Program, talk to us some about your formal work in the classroom. By this I mean, tell us how you approach the student poet, and what areas of the craft as it appeals to students in recent semesters do you want to hear about? Are there any specific questions or comments made in either the classroom or in your work as Director of Creative Writing you’d like to relay to us in some form?

In terms of how do I approach a student poet, we are strictly an undergraduate program at Princeton. Many of our students are reading and writing poetry for the first time. Some students come in having read only Shel Silverstein, and they want to write rhyming and funny poems. The students are anywhere from 18 to 22. I teach at all levels of undergraduate.
So my main goal is for them to get a sense of the variety of things they can do with a poem. So I give them a lot of different kinds of exercises. I have them read a number of different kinds of poetry from traditional to experimental. So they get an idea of the range of possibilities. As they develop, I try to look at their poems and encourage them to look at the poem at hand on an individual basis. And try to see what the student poem is trying to do, and improve on it on its own terms. So it is a very individual pedagogy in that respect.
What I generally start beginners in, and I don’t give them long to do it, 24 hours…they are to write a limerick. That is a good exercise to start with. There are certain parameters to a limerick that involve sound, tone, sense. They are off color. They are short. There is a particular meter, a cadence to every line. The students bring in their limericks to discuss with the group on the first day, and many have never been in a group critique. It is a good exercise to begin a discussion of poems, since the parameters are so clear and probably won’t be so straightforward throughout the rest of the semester. Even though we may be writing strict forms with other exercises, we probably won’t be able to agree what makes a poem in the future that works or doesn’t work. It gives students a firm ground before we step off the grid.
By Weldon Kees, midcentury poet:
There was a French writer named Sartre
Who got off to a pretty good start?
But as year followed year
It got painfully clear
He was longer on wind than on artery.

5          I know we’re coming to the end of our interview. Thank you so much for your time and willingness to tell readers of your work as teacher and poet. But we’ve not touched specifically on your life of Church attendance, and matters of faith as they’ve influenced your vision and voice as poet. This broad question leaves more than one door open to you, and in its non-directive way provides an opportunity for you to explore with us some of the influence and inspiration of faith in your own life, mostly as it relates to your writing.

I was raised by two Unitarians who adamantly did not believe in God, and frequently made fun of religious people, but I was fascinated by my friends who were Catholic. My first poems when I was six or seven were prayers. I wanted to imitate my Catholic friends’ prayers.

Book of Poetry by Susan Wheeler; recent collection.

It took many, many years before I became observant in any formal way. I was living in Greenwich Village in the 80s, and I went to a memorial service at an Episcopal church in the heart of the West Village for someone who died of AIDs. And that did it. This was for me. I then got dunked, but it was a provisional baptism because my mother insisted that the Unitarian Minister who had christened me would not have mentioned God. That’s my own history with it. My own kind of seeking has been there in the poems, in one way or another.
Most definitely, certain poems in their writing do feel as though they come through rather than from me, even though I was cautioned by a priest early on that feelings are not faith! It may just be a feeling that I’m having a good day. But yes, I have had the sense, like other poets, that a poem is being talked through us. It is a rare occasion. I definitely think that there is so much open possibility in a poem that there is a lot of room for things that aren’t, can’t be, directly and rationally expressed.

6          In this the last question of our conversation today, this Religion Writer has probably forgotten a question or comment that is on your mind or that you’ve now thought of that you’d like to talk to readers about. Please take some time now, even to mention your current work or an upcoming work. Or where someone may come see you give a reading. The venue need not be accessible to the local or immediate reader to where this interview is posted.

In October my next book, Meme, is being published by the University of Iowa Press. Also the UK edition of what is essentially my “selected poems,” Assorted Poems, is being published by Salt Publishing. My web page is www.susanwheeler.net . If readers want to write Susan Wheeler: swheeler@princeton.edu .

I will be reading from both books throughout the next year in the U.K. as well as in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Boston; the first reading this fall will be at Labyrinth Books in Princeton, NJ on September 27 with poets James Richardson and Tracy K. Smith.  All the readings can be found on my web page or by subscribing to my Facebook page. (In the past I’ve read at Harvard, the Hammer Museum at UCLA, The Poetry Project in New York, the 92^nd Street Y, for some examples).  At most readings, I read between 15 and 30 minutes, depending on whether I am reading alone or with others, and question-and-answer periods and book-signings follow.




ADDENDUM
What I Thought It Would Be Like

after James Wright’s “Living by the Red River”


Blood flows in me, but what does it have to do
with the rain that is falling?
Believing a wiggy army, English teachers
or preachers or adults who (for the smarmiest reasons)
leaned in to listen over holy knitting then,
blood flows in me, but what kind of relation
makes the table when the child falls on the
lawnmower, on this oh deceptive summer day?
Does it have to do with the elephant’s duress
caught red-handed in the butter on his way to the
dryer?  Hardly a day passes when you don’t say now,
“You too,” before the errands come.

Rain that is falling is less than blood, is less
than a storm on the surface of the water, is less
than the level of hot sauce in this jar, is less
than a cataclysmic sentencing, is less than the
view of trees over the accountant’s brow, is less than
the semblance of fortune this rhetoric ringing,
ringing you, predating, preying on, ringing,
pummeling, ringing on you, rain that is falling, blood that
flows in me, but what does it have.





Susan Wheeler, from Bag ‘o’ Diamonds



Farmers, Falling Down



In the distance there are several trees
randomly blowing (or being blown)
and a faculty of oranges still unconvinced (fallen).

Several friends that stood to be counted
have the brisk fallopian air needed now.
One trembles so to think of it you hold her.
One falls like loofah on the stair.

When you went out first you thought love gripped
and shook and that was how
it mattered.  One trembles so to think of it you hold her.
Sympathies the unruly sky parts now into flocks.






Susan Wheeler, from Bag ‘o’ Diamonds



The Snail and the Turtle



It began to rain, and near the lodge
all of the adult campers ran for cover.
Some played Scrabble.
Some made daiquiris from refrigerator mix.
Some underwent sincere transformations.

What did the snail say
when he rode on the back of the turtle?

The other campers were at the petting zoo.
One of the goats had begun to butt them roundly.
Their rumps were getting sore.
Their hair was getting soaked.
A fracas ensued.

The weeeeeeeee of the answer
catapulted the congregation.

Try the host on the left,
what is required milks the sheep.
Long needles are scraping the screens
where the woodsmoke careens.

The adults found the beasts in line for the makeshift crêche,
and found the rector bowed in prayer.
Here, he said, stirring, we will see
2000, broken and dumb as ever.
Then the moron tiptoed past the medicine cabinet
and let the sleeping pills lie.







Susan Wheeler, from Bag ‘o’ Diamonds

Charity Must Abide Call for Ancient Occupation

by Susan Wheeler

Red barn, still house, shimmering heat.

Brown barn, air in rain, green smell.

I climbed the hill to volunteer my hands:

O works that we may walk in.

The rodent's toe in the pinecone cell,

the brackish bag with its damp wax gel,

beside the fence links, glinting.

One was spending one hundred thirteen degrees

supporting the basic initiative,

in his trailer, terminally wounded in Congress,

waiting for sunset so he could sound alarms about its ability

to spend hours putting temporary fences,

implementing, nondiscriminatory,

not only his sheep when it comes to gays but,

when it comes to all their dogs in holes they had dug

to religious faiths, under trailers,

to groups providing government-funded, blistering heat.

And one, Solomon, solemn one, puled,

She, initiate in the knowledge of Him, 

co-creator in His works, 

I determined to take her to live with me, 

for if we want riches in life, what be greater bounty 

than the knowledge that triggers all things? 

I waited on that corner until the yelling began,

the sharp horn, the crumpling steel ——

until the songbirds swooped in like carrion,

into the funnel of charitable provisions,

sounding the alarm in a surfeit of ours,

initiates, faith based in moneylenders' lairs.

I credited their flight. Wrung charity.

But the wing flapping went on in the heat.

In the hour before sunrise the wet & swift wings ceased.

Should there be, I thought, a mandible for each?

A Dolly for each Sofia? Faith entering the breach?

Still air, expectant, dark. The legalese.

From one I will expect, before earth us takes,

Staff, and thermos, crazed. Deafening heat.

From Ledger by Susan Wheeler. Copyright © 2005 by Susan Wheeler.

That Been to Me My Lives Light and Saviour

by Susan Wheeler

Purse be full again, or else must I die. This is the wish

the trees in hell’s seventh circle lacked, bark ripped by monstrous dogs,

bleeding from each wound. We see them languid there,

the lightened purse a demon drug. Less, less.

At the canal, the dog loops trees in a figure eight —

a cacophony of insects under sun. A man against a tree nods off.

Let there be no sandwich for the empty purse.

Let there be no raiment for someone skint.

Let blood run out, let the currency remove.

Let that which troubles trouble not.

My father in the driveway. Legs splayed behind him. Pail beside him.

Sorting handfuls of gravel by shade and size. One way to calm

a pecker, compensate for stash. Dad! I lied.

The man shifts by the tree and now grace is upon him.

The slant of sun picks up the coins dropped by travelers and — lo! —

grace enables him to see. The demon dog fresh off an eight barks, too,

standing, struck by the man, by the coins, barks at their glare;

the man reaches in scrim at the glint in the light and thinks Another

malt. The flesh is willing, the spirit spent,

                                                   the cloud passes over —

relief is not what you think, not the light. Regard the barking

dog now tugging at the dead man’s leg becoming bark.

You be my life, you be my heart’s guide,

you be the provision providing more,

you be the blood — stanch the sore! —

you be failing

                          proportion (mete) . . .

Steward of gravel squints up at the girl who is me.

What? defensively. Out of the east woods, a foaming raccoon spills.

Palmolive executive? Palmolive customer? Palm’s stony olives

                              on the embankment of limestone or soapstone or

shale. Leg of the man clamped in the dog’s mouth. Mouth

of the man open and unmoved. Voice of the man:

Three dolls sat within a wood, and stared, and wet when it rained

into their kewpie mouths. They were mine to remonstrate to the

trees at large, the catalpas and the fir, the sugar maples in the

glade turning gold. To each is given, one doll began, so I had

to turn her off. Consider how it was for me — 

Flash of the arrow and the foam falls down. Three balletists

ignoring pliés bound onto the long lawn and its canalward

slope. I am underwater and they haze in the light,

                                                                      mouth

but do not sound. In the arrow’s blink they start.

Decimal as piercing of the line —

Table as imposition of the grid —

Sum as heuristic apoplex —

Columns in honeysuckle cents — or not.

Just this transpired. Against a tree I swooned and fell, and

water seeped into my shoe, and a dream began to grow in me.

Or despair, and so I chose the dream. And while I slept,

I was being fed, and clothed, addressed — as though awake

with every faculty, and so it went. Then: blaze, blare of sun

after years uncounted, and synesthesia of it and sound,

the junco’s chirp and then the jay’s torn caw, arc

of trucks on the distant interstate, your what the fuck

and then her call. Beside me, pinned to a green leaf,

in plastic and neat hand, a full account. I had indeed still

lived, and been woke for more. So, weeping then, I rose.

From Ledger by Susan Wheeler. Copyright © 2005 by Susan Wheeler.



This work appeared originally Church of England Newspaper, London. Contact the author Peter Menkin: pmenkin@att.net .

Essay: Elvis sings, 'Peace in the Valley' and other Gospel songs by Peter Menkin

...his sincerity of offering his Gospel recordings to a large, large audience, has probably Evangelized many people, if not entertained with his Rock n’ Roll manner of singing for thousands and thousands through the years. No doubt Elvis is more than sympathetic to the Gospel music he sings in this set...

by Peter Menkin

Early Elvis: Photo by Sun Records

Tomorrow I hope to write about Elvis Presley and his recording CD set of multiple disks, “Elvis Presley, Peace in the Valley: The complete Gospel Recordings.” Elvis has a very nice voice, and though these spirituals are not to my listening ear all top notch in an equal sense, many are quite good. In fact, I enjoy this CD set greatly, and especially the words and the “rock” music sound to them. Some are traditional works, of course, and Elvis does a fine job in his inimitable style and identifiable voice so many, many times. I’ll give the recording five stars for those who like this kind of thing, and of course, Elvis. I bought it on Amazon.com.

Here is something I wonder: Though Elvis is not a spiritual or religious leader, but more a man who as a child learned guitar in the Pentecostal, Assembly of God Church from his pastor, his sincerity of offering his Gospel recordings to a large, large audience, has probably Evangelized many people, if not entertained with his Rock n’ Roll manner of singing for thousands and thousands through the years. No doubt Elvis is more than sympathetic to the Gospel music he sings in this set, though some will find the limitation of his play and range as a singer one that hampers a full performance of some greater voices. Nonetheless, Elvis is a phenomenon of 20^th Century music, and this popular rendition that he is identified with does seek the listener in an effective embrace. If you like his kind of style, and this Religion Writer thinks that just because the work exists and has for so long, it is a religious contribution to the genre, do buy the 3 CD set. At the least, it is an entertainment and a lot of fun. And afterall, it really rocks. Even the musical group contributing to the play is outstanding and no doubt top professional.

A criticism of Elvis is that he is a sinner, but of course one who passed away a long time ago—more than 30 years. It is said he died of an overdose of drugs, sadly. The medical cause on the death certificate was heart attack. The drugs he took were prescription medications, and further, it is said ill of the man in controversy even today that some Gospels he sang after practicing with his group and musicians were sung when he was manic, and so the mean rumor goes he is not a really religious man nor were they sung in a reverent frame of mind. I suppose the real inference is that his inspiration did not come from the “real” Holy Spirit.

This religion writer doesn’t know what frame of mind Elvis was in when these spirituals and even traditional songs were recorded that are on the 3 CD set. At the least, one can understand the words without too much difficulty. That in itself is a value, and this Religion Writer is not a judge of another man’s understanding of his own tradition of worship in song, especially a man of sincere tones in his singing as is Elvis in these works of his that are so understandable to so many listeners in the United States and the world. God works in mysterious ways, and if He wants Elvis Presley to stay up late and keep his musicians and singers busy into the morning hours working on singing Gospels with him, more power to the man during his lifetime. Elvis did say the Gospels gave him, “comfort.”


 

This Press Release first paragraph tells of the shrine and Graceland exhibit that interests so many Elvis fans, showing how Colonel Tom Parker had kept Elvis “alive” well past his mortal passing. In an interview with ABC’s Ted Koppel in 1980, Colonel Parker was asked if he was the one who made Elvis famous and who Elvis without the Colonel would have been–a lesser star, not so successful. Colonel Parker said that he, the Colonel, was not responsible for Elvis’ success as a phenomenon. But that he was the one that was there and so though people ask could anyone make Elvis a success, said again in his direct way that the Colonel was there to do the job. And the job he did. It is true as Ted Koppel learned, according to the Colonel, that all but one of Elvis’ songs were chosen by Elvis.


 MEMPHIS, Tenn. – June 27, 2012 – Elvis Week 2012, August 10-18, will feature more than 25 events including concerts, a daylong music festival spotlighting young Memphis musicians, an art exhibition, movie screenings, panel discussions, autograph sessions, and sporting events. Tickets for all Elvis Week events are on sale now at ElvisWeek.com.

That same Graceland Press Release announces a live extravaganza, perhaps in the mold of the kind of live performance such as that with the theme of Hawaii that made Elvis again an immensely and amazingly popular and enormously successful draw. It will be interesting to see what kind of action this contemporary extravaganza holds. Though this Religion Writer won’t be there for the event, it is clear by the promotion attempts of the Elvis Industry machine that they’ve managed to keep people interested in and active in enjoying Elvis long past his death: Elvis Lives is almost the apparent way in which this one-time, live performance is being presented.


 The much-anticipated Elvis 35th Anniversary Concert, on Thursday, August 16, at 8:00 p.m. at the 18,000-seat FedExForum, will celebrate Elvis’ iconic performances which span multiple music genres including rockabilly, gospel, blues, country, and of course, rock ‘n’ roll. The concert puts members of Elvis’ original bands and back-up vocalists on stage as the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll is projected larger than life on state-of-the-art screens. All music in the concert production is performed live except for Elvis’ voice.

As time has gone by, the memory of Elvis as a member of the Pentecostal, Assembly of God is also kept alive.

Birthplace, Tupelo, Mississippi

In the coming Elvis Week, there will be this “action:” Morning Gospel Singin’ Featuring First Assembly of God, Memphis 9:00 a.m…Experience the gospel music Elvis heard when he attended services at the First Assembly of God, Memphis.

Is the music in an Assembly of God church a bread for the congregants? That is the more likely than not and if one were to ask a Worshiper, the answer would be Yes. Though like Church music in general where some say it is an entry to heaven, where heaven meets earth and uplifts the congregant, it is part of the event of worship, as necessary to the worship experience as is the Sermon. In a similar way, Elvis 3 CD set of, “The complete Gospel Recordings,” offers its listeners a bread of spiritual music, all of it recognizable by name, and though not all true to solely the Assembly of God experience, a moving tribute to the entertainer’s willingness to play and sing to the Lord. An admirable practice, no doubt, so most would claim. 



In his second Ed Sullivan performance, Elvis Presley sang, “Peace in the Valley,” which liner notes writer Cheryl Thurber says was “…one of the songs that Elvis had sung a month earlier at an impromptu session at the Sun Studios with Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. It was the kind of song Elvis liked.”  Interestingly, Cheryl Thurber points out that as a then new movement the Pentecostals whose initial converts, most of whom like Elvis were Working Class, found “…new ways of experiencing the Holy Spirit. They did not condemn the popular music of their day.”

Youth-age Elvis’ Pastor, Reverend W. Frank Smith baptized Elvis at the age of 9, and since the Church “…had a piano and Reverend Smith would sometimes play his guitar as well he was able to interest Elvis with music and praise. Smith told [how] he taught Elvis a few chords and guitar rifts;  he noticed the boy already had an instruction book for the Guitar. It was when this poor family move to Memphis around 1948 when Elvis began attending Sunday School at the First Assembly of God.

Apparently, so we may surmise, his interest in music grew—Church being influential if not seminal in developing a degree of his taste and education in the matter of the bread Church music offers its members, and others. Here is a man who as an adult did feed on music and feed others, whether through his entertaining, interesting personage, or just that he, Elvis was known as an phenomenon.

Even Colonel Parker said so of him, and he knew Elvis well. Apparently, the myth of Elvis success and fame is groomed as a secret or hidden series of secret forces rather than the work of others promoting and managing him. If you reader recall, Elvis chose his own songs, even the Gospels he sang, and if there was

Divine Charism displayed in a movie

some Divine Charism helping him along the way with his fame, people who worked with him didn’t say so, but they did say it was his talent and work that did it all. But let us not debunk or ignore the mystery that was Elvis Presley in his force to bring in listeners and audiences to his singing and type of music. Maybe the time had just come for the sound that Elvis sang, and anyone could have done it, but it was he who was there and did the doing.

On the CD this Religion Writer purchased, “Peace in the Valley: The Complete Gospel Recordings,” some of the songs are not as good as others. At least to this listener’s ear: The song “Life” is one of those. Yet despite a few not so good, almost all play well and engage the listener, not only for Elvis’ voice and his involved if not deep interpretations, genuine in their work by the singer Elvis. “When the Storms in Life are Ringing,” is just one I enjoyed. This is Rock n Roll as done by Elvis: Gospel singing.

When the Storms of Life Are Raging (He Will Hide) by James Mc Granahan

When the storms of life are raging Tempests wild on sea and land I will seek a place of refuge In the shadow of God’s hand

He will hide me He will hide me Where no harm can e’er betide me He will hide me Safely hide me In the shadow of His hand



Tho’ He may send some affliction ‘Twill but make me long for home For in love, and not in anger All His chastenings will come

Enemies may strive to injure Satan all his arts employ He will turn what seems to harm me Into everlasting joy



Words public domain



“Without Him,” is another that has the sincere Elvis sound of genuine and musical work well done, and not that others don’t:

Without Him We Can Do Nothing by Petra

How can, how can we who are dead to sin Live any longer therein? We’ve been, we have been called and loved and forgiven Our old life is forgotten (Chorus) Do you remember what he’s called you out of? Do you remember where you were? Let us not take advantage of his love That we forget that we have been forgiven Without Him we can do nothing I know, I know where I was when He found me With so much confusion around me He’s been, He has been all that we would let Him Without Him we can do nothing
                              
Words and Music by Greg Volz / �1981 Dawn Tender Music (SESAC) a division of Jubilee Communications, Inc. Administered by Gaither Copyright Management




“So High,” the third and final choice of example of the work on the 3 disk set.

So High by Stephen Speaks

Song: So High
Chords and Music by: Black Tern (Carlo Stephen I. Villa)
(Actually composed song ko po ito)

Intro: (c.p:// c – G – Am – F)

Verse I: (Do chod pattern)
You’re a queen and I am just a pawn in here
I can’t win, In a war where I’m within
I can’t decide, My role is just to sacrice
My self, for you

CHORUS: (Do chord Pattern)
You’re so high
You can reach the sky
You can get anything with just a simple smile
Your so high
You can pass it by
Well I am just a simple man with nothing

Verse II: (Do chord pattern)
Under the sun,I’ve got nowhere to run
But then you came, you’ve made my life undone
It’s so wierd, why is this happening to me
We’ll I don’t know, what I will do without you
(REPEAT CHORUS)

Bridge:
Am                 c
Once I’ve seen you in my scene
F            G
You are just lying
Am              c
I already know everything
F            G
Please stop pretending…
(REPEAT CHORUS)




And of course, Elvis sings, “Amazing Grace.”

Amazing Grace Lyrics

John Newton (1725-1807) Stanza 6 anon.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.
T’was Grace that taught my heart to fear. And Grace, my fears relieved. How precious did that Grace appear The hour I first believed.
Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come; ‘Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far and Grace will lead me home.
The Lord has promised good to me. His word my hope secures. He will my shield and portion be, As long as life endures.
Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail, And mortal life shall cease, I shall possess within the veil, A life of joy and peace.
When we’ve been here ten thousand years Bright shining as the sun. We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise Than when we’ve first begun.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.


This essay-article on Elvis Presley originally appeared Church of England Newspaper, London. Contact the author Peter Menkin: pmenkin@att.net .

Comment and report on 'Holy Women Holy Men,' a book of Saints by Episcopal Church

Blessed feasts of blessed martyrs,

holy women, holy men,

with affection’s recollections

greet we your return again.

This article written and compiled by Peter Menkin

The Very Rev. David Thurlow of South Carolina goes over wording changes in an amendment to a resolution with the Rev. Susan Williams of Western New York during a meeting of the Prayer Book, Liturgy and Church Music Committee.Photo/Sharon Sheridan

The renewed Episcopal Church book of Holy Women Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints has almost 800 pages. Though I have no copy of this work, there is a PDF of it and that PDF is found here. This book is used in worship. In my own Parish (Episcopal) in San Francisco’s Bay Area we use the work, for it is authorized in Dioceses for the next three years by General Convention, 2012. You’ll note the title starts, Holy Women, which is politically correct for Episcopal Church USA.

Church Publishing offers the book for $35 here and says this in their statement about the work: “Fully revised and expanded, this new work is the first major revision of the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church in more than 40 years! It is the official revision of Lesser Feasts and Fasts and authorized by the 2009 General Convention. All commemorations in Lesser Feasts and Fastshave

This work is being evaluated, Holy Women Holy Men, and during this time it is in use in worship services. It is a live evaluation.

been retained, and many new ones added. Three scripture readings (instead of current two) are provided for all minor holy days. Additional new material includes a votive mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary, many more ecumenical commemorations, plus a proper for space exploration.”

What rationale there is for so many Holy Women Holy Men for a calendar, far more than the previous Lesser Feasts and Fasts–this Religion Writer does not know yet. Perhaps someone will explain in a comment. The text says the Presiding Bishop of Episcopal Church USA asked for the new work. Frank T. Griswold, Twenty-Fifth Presiding Bishop says in the “Forward”:


…questions have been raised regarding some of the biographies,
choices of scripture, and composition of the Collects. During my term
as Presiding Bishop, I therefore asked the Standing Commission on
Liturgy and Music to undertake a review and revision of Lesser Feasts
and Fasts, and to consider anew each entry in the existing Calendar
of Saints, alongside any proposed new commemorations. To that end,
a committee of the Commission was established. Holy Women, Holy
Men: Celebrating the Saints is the fruit of the committee’s careful and
painstaking work.

Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints seeks to expand the
worshiping community’s awareness of the communion of saints, and
to give increased expression to the many and diverse ways in which
Christ, through the agency of the Holy Spirit, has been present in
the lives of men and women across the ages, just as Christ continues
to be present in our own day. Faced with circumstances most often
very different from our own, these courageous souls bore witness


The PDF of the document starts with this poetic lyric. The lyric is a lovely text and a meaningful statement of its own. It sets a very good tone for this useful book currently used in worship on a temporary review basis:

Blessed feasts of blessed martyrs,
holy women, holy men,
with affection’s recollections
greet we your return again.
Worthy deeds they wrought, and wonders,
worthy of the Name they bore;
we, with meetest praise and sweetest,
honor them for evermore.
Twelfth century Latin text,

translated John Mason Neale
#238, The Hymnal 1982


This is the Committee’s Resolution. They are the Prayer Book, Liturgy and Church Music Committee. Take a look at this official statement to get a taste of its directness of language and willingness to save words in again endorsing continued testing of the book in Parishes across America. For this Religion Writer, it is a disappointing note to lose Lesser Feasts and Fasts to this thick book that lists so many saints. I know what is asked for is comments, for to my way of thinking on the matter, some are more worthy of being published for worship use than others. Was a purpose to have a Saint a day. What was the criteria for a Holy Woman or Holy Man’s inclusion? One early comment by a reader of this article remarked, Existen acontecimientos que escapan a la cuesti�n humana, llenos de intriga y fuera de aparente explicaci. Mitos, cuentos, meaning, There are events beyond the human question, full of intrigue and out of apparent explanation. Myths, stories,. A comment well said by the reader, for it is so difficult to know who is to be included, and who not. Ruth Meyers, Chair of the Committee developing the book, says the survey for commenting is closed. She adds, You can purchase the book from Church Publishing. You can download the text in Spanish (Santas, Santos) and in English from the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music page on the General Convention website.


RESOLUTION TEXT (ORIGINAL)
Resolved, the House of _______ concurring, That the 77th General Convention
continue the trial use of Holy Women, Holy Men until the next General
Convention; and be it further
Resolved, That the 77th General Convention direct the Standing Commission on
Liturgy and Music to continue the process of inviting responses from the wider
Church and developing Holy Women, Holy Men for the coming triennium; and
be it further

Resolved, That the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music be requested to
present the revised edition of Holy Women, Holy Men to the 78th General
Convention in 2015 for a first reading.

Here are the Holy Women Holy Men for January and February. These people of history in God are a good group.

January
1 A THE HOLY NAME OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST
2 b Vedanayagam Samuel Azariah, First Indian Anglican Bishop,
Dornakal, 1945
3 c William Passavant, Prophetic Witness, 1894
4 d Elizabeth Seton, Founder of the American Sisters of Charity,
1821
5 e
6 f THE EPIPHANY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST
7 g
8 A Harriet Bedell, Deaconess and Missionary, 1969
9 b Julia Chester Emery, Missionary, 1922
10 c William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1645
11 d
12 e Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx, 1167
13 f Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, 367
14 g
15 A (alternative date for Martin Luther King, Jr. – see April 4)
16 b Richard Meux Benson, Religious, 1915, and Charles Gore,
Bishop of Worcester, of Birmingham, and of Oxford, 1932
17 c Antony, Abbot in Egypt, 356
18 d THE CONFESSION OF SAINT PETER THE APOSTLE
19 e Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, 1095
20 f Fabian, Bishop and Martyr of Rome, 250
21 g Agnes, Martyr at Rome, 304
22 A Vincent, Deacon of Saragossa, and Martyr, 304
23 b Phillips Brooks, Bishop of Massachusetts, 1893
24 c Ordination of Florence Li Tim-Oi, First Woman Priest in the
Anglican Communion, 1944
25 d THE CONVERSION OF SAINT PAUL THE APOSTLE
26 e Timothy, Titus, and Silas, Companions of Saint Paul
27 f Lydia, Dorcas, and Phoebe, Witnesses to the Faith
28 g Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Theologian, 1274
29 A Andrei Rublev, Monk and Iconographer, 1430
30 b
31 c Juan Bosco (John Bosco), Priest, 1888
31 c Samuel Shoemaker, Priest and Evangelist, 1963

February
1 d Brigid (Bride), 523
2 e THE PRESENTATION OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST IN
THE TEMPLE
3 f The Dorchester Chaplains: Lieutenant George Fox,
Lieutenant Alexander D. Goode, Lieutenant Clark V.
Poling and Lieutenant John P. Washington, 1943
4 g Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Denmark
and Sweden, 865*
5 A Roger Williams, 1683, and Anne Hutchinson, 1643,
Prophetic Witnesses
6 b The Martyrs of Japan, 1597
7 c Cornelius the Centurion
8 d
9 e
10 f
11 g Frances Jane (Fanny) Van Alstyne Crosby, Hymnwriter, 1915
12 A Charles Freer Andrews, Priest and “Friend of the Poor” in
India, 1940
13 b Absalom Jones, Priest, 1818
14 c Cyril, Monk, and Methodius, Bishop, Missionaries to the
Slavs, 869, 885
15 d Thomas Bray, Priest and Missionary, 1730
16 e Charles Todd Quintard, Bishop of Tennessee, 1898
17 f Janani Luwum, Archbishop of Uganda, and Martyr, 1977
18 g Martin Luther, Theologian, 1546
19 A
20 b Frederick Douglass, Prophetic Witness, 1895
21 c John Henry Newman, Priest and Theologian, 1890
22 d Eric Liddell, Missionary to China, 1945
23 e Polycarp, Bishop and Martyr of Smyrna, 156
24 f SAINT MATTHIAS THE APOSTLE
25 g John Roberts, Priest, 1949
26 A Emily Malbone Morgan, Prophetic Witness, 1937
27 b George Herbert, Priest, 1633
28 c Anna Julia Haywood Cooper, 1964, and Elizabeth Evelyn
Wright, 1904, Educators
29 John Cassian, Abbot at Marseilles, 433

Where test of book Holy Women Holy Men
 is used in Daily Prayer at okay
 by its Rector,
 The Reverend Richard Helme
r of Episcopal Church of Our Saviour,
 Mill Valley, California.

As part of this bare bones article that is a kind of taste of this new book in consideration, this excerpt: Keep in mind the work of this book is for review and trial use only, Copyright 2010, Church Pension Fund.



The name of Thomas à Kempis is perhaps more widely known than
that of any other medieval Christian writer. The Imitation of Christ,
which he composed or compiled, has been translated into more
languages than any other book except the Holy Scriptures. Millions of
Christians have found in this manual a treasured and constant source
of edification.

His name was Thomas Hammerken, and he was born at Kempen in
the Duchy of Cleves about 1380. He was educated at Deventer by the
Brethren of the Common Life, and joined their order in 1399 at their
house of Mount St. Agnes in Zwolle (in the Low Countries). He took
his vows (those of the Augustinian Canons Regular) there in 1407,
was ordained a priest in 1415, and was made sub-prior in 1425. He
died on July 25, 1471.

The Order of the Brethren of the Common Life was founded by
Gerard Groote (1340–1384) at Deventer. It included both clergy and
lay members who cultivated a biblical piety of a practical rather than
speculative nature, with stress upon the inner life and the practice
of virtues. They supported themselves by copying manuscripts and
teaching. One of their most famous pupils was the humanist Erasmus.
Many have seen in them harbingers of the Reformation; but the
Brethren had little interest in the problems of the institutional Church.
Their spirituality, known as the “New Devotion” (Devotio moderna),
has influenced both Catholic and Protestant traditions of prayer and
meditation.

Episcopalian Peter Menkin
 uses Holy Women Holy Men in
 Daily Office when attending
 Our Saviour, Mill Valley, California.

Thomas à Kempis
Priest, 1471

i Holy Father, who hast nourished and strengthened thy Church by the inspired writings of thy servant Thomas à
Kempis: Grant that we may learn from him to know what
is necessary to be known, to love what is to be loved, to
praise what highly pleaseth thee, and always to seek to
know and follow thy will; through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one
God, for ever and ever. Amen.

ii Holy Father, you have nourished and strengthened your
Church by the inspired writings of your servant Thomas
à Kempis: Grant that we may learn from him to know
what is necessary to be known, to love what is to be loved,
to praise what highly pleases you, and always to seek to
know and follow your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one
God, for ever and ever. Amen.


Psalm Lessons
33:1–5,20–21 Ecclesiastes 9:11–18
Ephesians 4:32–5:2
Luke 6:17–23


In the Episcopal News Service report on some General Convention activity written by Sharon Sheridan it is noted there is a very good comment. Please recognize that they are quoted in their entirety and refer to text that was incorporated in Liturgy, not only the work of Holy Women Holy Men. One tells about a popular kind of reaction to the General Convention 2012 itself. The work of the test goes on with many people commenting and participating in other ways.

Wll there be a response link for “Holy Women, Holy Men” as was true after the Trial Use 3 years ago?

Have the previous response materials been collated? Is there a report on the responses ? Available thru’ what link? Thank you for any info.

R H Lewis


These two more comments found on Sharon Sheridan’s report … also noted here:

I am glad to see the article mention The Contemporary English Version and the Contemporary English Version Global. (Global has metric measurements, not British) The translation is set at a 4th grade reading level, and is especially meant to be read orally and listened to. When readings for the Gospel of John come up, that have the word “the Jews” translating hoi Ioudaioi, consider CEV, as you will find “the Jewish leaders” or “the leaders” or “the people.” I have been involved in interfaith work for a couple of years, and have an ear attentive to how our words can sometimes lead themselves to unfortunate connotations and misunderstandings.

If you buy a copy, get the American Bible Society with Deuterocanonicals and Apocrypha. The art work is middle-Eastern (not blue-eyed blond northern European). Or, if you go to Bible Gateway on line, the entire text (excluding the Deuterocanonicals and Apocrypha) is available online. I thank the bishops and deputies of GC 77 approving D021.

And, yes, I have a Common English Bible. I most often read NRSV in worship and on occasion feel I should be reading something else.

Personally, I regret The Message was not approved. There are times I will read the gospel in NRSV and then read The Message to begin the sermon. Some of the parables are unbelievably good. If/when it is approved, I would use it judiciously and rarely. I first heard The Message read at an ecumenical service in a Methodist church, and the reader read I Corinthians 13. I heard that chapter like I had never heard it before.

My contacts at the American Bible Society pointed out that the CEV was not designed to replace the Good News but to supplement the Good News. I know that an Episcopal priest who works at the ABS will be in touch with SCLM about the Good News

Les Singleton


Wow. What a convention! Now *this* is the Episcopal Church I thought I had joined 40 years ago! Intelligent, humane, concerned for justice and creation. Yes, that’s still a church worth loving and serving.

Harry Coverston


The last comment is the comment favored by the Episcopal Church USA of the most of kinds of comments on this recent Convention. That is my opinion through anecdotal evidence heard in San Francisco’s Bay Area among Episcopalians.


ADDENDUM I

Here is an example of a working suggestion added to the test work. It and others can be found here:

June 15: Evelyn Underhill, 1941
June 15, 2011by goforthforgod9 Comments

Welcome to the Holy Women, Holy Men blog! We invite you to read about this commemoration, use the collect and lessons in prayer, whether individually or in corporate worship, and then tell us what you think. For more information about this project, click here.

About this commemoration

The only child of a prominent barrister and his wife, Evelyn Underhill was born in Wolverhampton, England, and grew up in London. She was educated there and in a girls’ school in Folkestone, where she was confirmed in the Church of England. She had little other formal religious training, but her spiritual curiosity was naturally lively, and she read widely, developing quite early a deep appreciation for mysticism. At sixteen, she began a life-long devotion to writing.

Evelyn had few childhood companions, but one of them, Hubert Stuart Moore, she eventually married. Other friends, made later, included such famous persons as Laurence Housman, Maurice Hewlett, and Sarah Bernhardt. Closest of all were Ethel Ross Barker, a devout Roman Catholic, and Baron Friedrich von Hügel, with whom she formed a strong spiritual bond. He became her director in matters mystical.

In the 1890’s, Evelyn began annual visits to the Continent, and especially to Italy. There she became influenced by the paintings of the Italian masters and by the Roman Catholic Church. She spent nearly fifteen years wrestling painfully with the idea of converting to Roman Catholicism, but decided in the end that it was not for her.

In 1921, Evelyn Underhill became reconciled to her Anglican roots, while remaining what she called a “Catholic Christian.” She continued with her life of reading, writing, meditation, and prayer. She had already published her first great spiritual work, Mysticism. This was followed by many other books, culminating in her most widely read and studied book, Worship (1937).

Evelyn Underhill’s most valuable contribution to spiritual literature must surely be her conviction that the mystical life is not only open to a saintly few, but to anyone who cares to nurture it and weave it into everyday experience, and also (at the time, a startling idea) that modern psychological theories and discoveries, far from hindering or negating spirituality, can actually enhance and transform it.

Evelyn Underhill’s writings proved appealing to many, resulting in a large international circle of friends and disciples, making her much in demand as a lecturer and retreat director. She died, at age 65, in 1941.

Collects

I O God, Origin, Sustainer, and End of all creatures: Grant that thy Church, taught by thy servant Evelyn Underhill, guarded evermore by thy power, and guided by thy Spirit into the light of truth, may continually offer to thee all glory and thanksgiving, and attain with thy saints to the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast promised us by our Savior Jesus Christ; who with thee and the same Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

II O God, Origin, Sustainer, and End of all your creatures: Grant that your Church, taught by your servant Evelyn Underhill, guarded evermore by your power, and guided by your Spirit into the light of truth, may continually offer to you all glory and thanksgiving and attain with your saints to the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have promised by our Savior Jesus Christ; who with you and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen.



Psalm 37:3–6, 32–33
Lessons
Wisdom 7:24–8:1
1 Corinthians 4:1–5
John 4:19–24


Preface of the Dedication of a Church
From Holy, Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints © 2010 by The Church Pension Fund.




ADDENDUM II

These newspaper reports in major papers ...

There is a Wall Street Journal article online about Episcopal Church General Convention 2012, but I am no longer able to find it to put the location here.

This Ross Douthat and a WSJ story on the Episcopal Church are having an impact on the denomination, especially among progressives who say, “Not so.” Maybe it is somewhat in league with the Time magazine cover of the 60s about God is Dead. In any event, this and the WSJ piece are important reports; pay attention is a good idea in this case: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/opinion/sunday/douthat-can-liberal-christianity-be-saved.html?_r=1

This is the Beliefnet piece on Episcopal Church General Convention, similar to WSJ and NYT in content I’ve heard. I’m going to read it after posting this, as I haven’t done so yet but it is supposed to be worth the time, etc. http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Home-Page-News-and-Views/Why-is-the-Episcopal-church-near-collapse.aspx


A former Dean tells what he thinks of Douthat’s column in NYT. He says churches in North America are in decline. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/can-christianity-be-revived/2012/07/18/gJQAD7jXtW_blog.html

George Conger gives an ABC radio talk on Episcopal Church troubles: http://www.abc.net.au/radio/player/rnmodplayer.html?pgm=Religion+and+Ethics+Report&pgmurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.abc.net.au%2Fradionational%2Fprograms%2Freligionandethicsreport%2…F&w=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.abc.net.au%2Fradionational%2Fmedia%2F4138956.asx&r=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.abc.net.au%2Fradionational%2Fmedia%2F4138956.ram&t=America%27s+most+influential+church+on+the+brink+of+collapse&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.abc.net.au%2Fradionational%2Fprograms%2Freligionandethicsreport%2Famerica27s-most-influential-church-on-the-brink-of-collapse%2F4138956&p=1#

“Kind of report on book, ‘Holy Women Holy Men’ with a note on Episcopal Church General Convention 2012” admin says:

27/07/2012 at 02:37 (Edit)

This Religon Writer Peter Menkin found the link to The Wall Street Journal article on Episcopal Church USA General Convention. This is it: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303919504577520950409252574.html?KEYWORDS=episcopal+church

This is a favorite link by some on the same subject of their General Convention, considered favorable and fair by some Episcopal Clergy: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/episcopal-churches-short-on-politics-sexuality-debates-and-long-on-jesus/2012/07/18/gJQAbly0tW_blog.html





27/07/2012 at 22:10 (Edit)

Dear Mr. Menkin,
Because the General Convention renewed the trial use, the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music will re-open opportunity for comments. The commission won’t meet until later this year, so I don’t know yet what the process will be. For now, we continue to get occasional comments on our blog – http://liturgyandmusic.wordpress.com/category/holy-women-holy-men/ – and we will review all of those comments during the coming triennium.

Grace and peace,
Ruth Meyers
Chair, Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music


This article about Holy Women Holy Men originally appeared Church of England Newspaper, London. Contact the author: pmenkin@att.net .