The St. Francis Prayer Book
By Jon M. Sweeney
Paraclete Press, 2004
157 pages, $13.95
Book Review by the Rev. Dr. Clair McPherson

Last year, the ENY reviewed a splendid new edition of Paul Sabatier’s 19th-century classic Life of St. Francis, The Road to Assisi. This work was more than a welcome reissue of a classic, however. Its notes and introduction were brand new and insightful, and marked the debut in Franciscan work of a fine theological writer, Jon Sweeney.

Now this gifted writer-editor has written The St. Francis Prayer Book, a handy and handsome volume that incorporates prayers and practices of St. Francis into a Daily Office format. It is, in a way, a companion volume to the Sabatier-Sweeney biography.

The centerpiece of the work is a model week of daily morning and evening prayers modeled on St. Francis’ known practice — and, more importantly, inspired by Francis’ vision. You will find a deep, personal focus on the person of Jesus; for example, Francis made Jesus his template, with stunning, startling results. You will find gentle, incarnational prayers; Francis embodied Christian embodiment. And you will find considerable use of silence; Francis allowed plenty of patient time for God to talk to him.

Sweeney also provides a clear, helpful introduction, lots of traditional Franciscan prayers (including the famous prayer “attributed to Francis” that scholars think he didn’t write; as Sweeney explains, it’s really only about a century old. But it’s Franciscan nonetheless. Scholars don’t get the tradition of prayer, where copyright and plagiarism are foreign ideas. Your prayer is my prayer, and who cares anyway, if it works?)

But Sweeney also adds two intriguing appendices: one on the “Use of Devotional Books in Francis’ Day” and one on “Memorization and Prayer in the Middle Ages.” The former will interest ENY readers as an important window into the circumstances from which our own Book of Common Prayer developed. The latter should be must reading for anyone seriously interested in spirituality. Memorization is far more than a Victorian schoolmaster’s disciplinary ploy, though that’s what many think. It is actually a vital tool for spiritual growth. Read Sweeney’s remarks, then go read three pages from any of the Gospels and ask yourself this: how much Scripture did Jesus have by heart?

Experienced spiritual explorers will find plenty of helpful suggestions here. Even those deeply involved in the Office already will find it easy to give their practice a Franciscan spin by using Sweeney’s materials. But perhaps most importantly, this work should be required reading for all beginners. It will make a superb introduction to the daily practice of personal prayer. Who better than St. Francis as a guide for a daily walk with God?

INTERVIEW With Jon M. Sweeney
By the Rev. Dr. Clair McPherson

Q: You coin a wonderful word on page 5: dailyness. Whatever we do daily is cumulative, habit-forming, familiar — all sorts of good things. Could you comment on how this “dailyness” is in tune with the Franciscan spirit?
A: Yes, I love that word in all that it means. We hear a lot about another word these days: mindfulness — a word that comes to us from the East — and it makes good sense, and even works when you put it into practice. But then, when you combine this sort of paying-close-attention-even-to-the-little-stuff with the robust Christian traditions of praying the Daily Office and other spiritual practices that define us each day, dailyness speaks to who we are when we practice our faith with mindful repetition. Francis of Assisi taught the first Franciscans to have this spirit, to be satisfied in the everyday-ness and every moment-ness of practicing prayer, gentleness, compassion, and so on.

Q: Silence, you say, is more than just a pause — it’s an integral part of the Prayer. Could you perhaps say something about that?
A: I mention that in my introductory remarks about how to use the week of morning and evening prayer that follows. Prayer, it seems to me, should be much more about our listening than about our talking. In my Episcopal parish in Vermont I know that on Sundays we rush through those proscribed silences in the liturgy and I often wish that we could slow them down. I was just hoping that people would slow down when they pray. Francis certainly did.

Q: How about some suggestions for daily prayer practice for our readers: time of day, place, other practical suggestions from someone who has drunk deeply at the Franciscan well?
A: Following Francis’s lead has often worked for me: early mornings before others are awake; solitary walks in the woods (a lot of that near my house in Vermont!); as well as the flip-side of these, which is to be ready for prayer at all times and all places. We love Francis as a nature-mystic, but he was also a lover of people — right up close and personal. I get the feeling that he had prayers on his lips very quickly and easily while caring for the sick, healing emotional wounds and helping to resolve conflicts.

Q: This question relates to your fresh version of Sabatier’s book as well as to The St. Francis Prayer Book: in the present moment — the early 21st century — what can serious Christians learn from Franciscan prayer, practice, and vision?
A: The first and greatest commandment and the second that is like unto it: Love for our neighbors as ourselves. I think that Francis would like it if we went back and started at the beginning, at that which we haven’t even begun to understand or do.

Q: I like to think of Francis himself as a kind of latter-day incarnation of the Desert Fathers and Mothers — and of those second-century explorers. I think especially of his creative and even daring approach to Christianity — challenging not only to the world but also to the Church. Do you sense this at all, or am I seeing things?
A: Oh yes, I see what you mean. Francis was subtle in his challenges to religious authority, as for example when he simply avoided going to Rome so as to side-step any further papal instructions that might hinder the freedom or ministry of his movement. He also dared to be a fool — something that I respect enormously. I wish I had his courage to be foolish rather than respected, imprudent rather than practical, simple rather than complex.

Q: You sketch St. Francis’ prayer practice in terms of the Office (“The Use of Devotional Books in St. Francis’ Day”) very well. Could you summarize the historical situation for our readers?
A: Sure. Ironically, I suppose, I didn’t want readers to enjoy The St. Francis Prayer Book too much. Too often, I think, we settle for comfortable armchair spirituality. I wanted to remind readers (and myself, again and again) not to get too comfortable with books. They used to be extremely rare, expensive, and they represented the slaughter of animals in ways analogous to expensive unnecessary leather products today. Francis didn’t want his brothers to own their own prayer books if at all possible. He wanted to share everything in common. But occasionally he relented. Also, on the positive side, devotional books and prayer books were intimate and precious during the late Middle Ages and even into the time of the Reformation and the Renaissance. Small, hand-held copies of Albrecht Durer’s Passion woodcuts, for instance, were extremely popular with people. Before the advent of cheap printing, small prayer books did for spiritual practice what recorded music later made possible for music lovers.

Q: It’s an old historian’s cliché, but like all cliches, it has its grain of truth: could you say that, in some ways, St. Francis really IS, here, a “precursor of the Reformation”? I’m thinking particularly of the Anglican “retrieval” of the Daily Office, which became the frontispiece of the Book of Common Prayer.
A: He clearly wrestled with the Church and its leaders in his attempts to lead the great movement that he started. And his life had the effect of a breath of fresh air on the Church, given all of the corruption and abuses that are acknowledged by all scholars to have been eating away at true faith at that time. He also took faith to the people in tangible ways, through scripture, acts of compassion, working side by side with workers in the fields, the mediation of conflicts, and so on. But he never would have had Luther’s presumption. He never would have questioned the value of tradition.

Q: I thoroughly agree with your chapter on memorization — it reminds me of the classic Love of Learning and the Desire for God by Dom Jean Leclercq. Could you summarize what you say about learning by heart for our readers?
A: You know, I love that book, too. I remember reading it while in seminary, having seen it referred to by Thomas Merton somewhere.... Yes, we’ve lost the art of memorization today. When the Torah says “Write these words on your hearts” it means something that we cannot easily relate to today. Our worldview tends to divorce the head from the heart and we “think” our praying too much when it would better for us to let in inhabit us, in our hearts. Praying was easy for Francis largely because he prayed from the heart.

Q: The St. Francis Prayer Book, as ENY readers will discover, is centered on a kind of model week of Franciscan prayer. But everyone who tries it will want to keep going. Could you explain how one might use the Franciscan form you provide along with the daily lectionary in the BCP — and even, perhaps, adapt the forms itself to Morning and Evening Prayer?
A: The sample week of Francis-inspired morning and evening prayer is intended to help you jump-start a daily prayer practice, or to invigorate one that (we all know!) needs occasional change and diversity. Readers who want to dive right in should join the thousands of Episcopalians around the world who gather as a communion of saints each morning and evening and pray the Daily Office. Pick up a copy of Daily Office Readings from Church Publishing, find “Year Two” (the daily office is divided into two “years” and we began Year Two the first week of Advent), and turn to the readings and prayers for today!

THE WRECK AT SHARPNOSE POINT: A Victorian Mystery
By Jeremy Seal
Picador, 2002
316 pages, $14
Book Review by Richard Mammana

Robert Stephen Hawker, the High Church Vicar of Morwenstow on the Cornish coast, is remembered today for many things: for his epic poems, for his invention of the Harvest Thanksgiving service in modern England and for his opium addiction and belief in mermaids and goblins. He is also fondly remembered for his caring, self-sacrificing work in ministering to sailors shipwrecked in the treacherous seas off Cornwall.

Hawker’s rectorate at Morwenstow from 1835-75 coincided with countless significant shipping disasters in the region. Some villages were notorious — deservedly or not — for failing to provide assistance to those who survived wrecks. The inhabitants of coastal villages frequently seized ruined ships, taking anything of value from wrecks for local use or resale. There were even cases in which shipwrecks appear to have been caused by coastal dwellers who moved lamps erratically along cliffs in order to confuse navigators in the dead of night before the proliferation of lighthouses.

In contrast with these practices, Hawker’s image in legend is of a devoted priest who went against local tradition in the urgency and sincerity of his care for sailors in death or distress.

The Wreck at Sharpnose Point examines Hawker’s work in connection with the wreck of the Caledonia, a ship which ran aground and was completely destroyed in his parish in September 1842. Only one seaman survived, and Hawker’s devout collection and burial of the eight bodies of those killed in the shipwreck has become a standard episode in his biographies as well as in Cornish lore. He memorialized the event in his memoirs and in one of his many extensive poems.

Jeremy Seal, fascinated on a visit to Morwenstow by the deteriorating wooden figurehead of the Caledonia, delved into shipping records, service lists, burial registries and personal interviews to investigate the crew and their final weeks:

My book was conceived, in one sense, as an experiment in historical retrieval; how much factual detail regarding a ship, her loss in 1842, and the lives of her crew remained available over 160 years later? And could those facts, however scarce, serve as the foundations for a creative dramatisation of the events leading up to and including the loss of the ship?

The fruit of his work is The Wreck at Sharpnose Point, a radical revisioning of Hawker’s character and his role in caring for shipwrecked seamen, and a close look at the lives of men engaged in dangerous merchant shipping. Seal’s investigation reveals that Hawker buried just five bodies of the Caledonia’s sailors, not the eight he claimed he had. Contemporary vicars left their own recollections, and made annotations in books by Hawker during his lifetime; they tell a story in which their own roles in burying the Caledonia’s dead emerge, and Hawker’s begins to decrease. There are even unsettling hints that Hawker may have used an outbuilding on the parsonage grounds as a lookout from which to spot ships, which could subsequently be drawn in and lured aground through calculated movements of lanterns.

Seal does not delve further into Hawker’s career — he claimed to have buried some 40 sailors during his time as vicar — but he produces a fascinating narrative defying classification by genre. The Wreck moves seamlessly between raw detection and credible re-creation. Particularly interesting are the author’s accounts of the sailors’ lives in the year before the wreck, during which the Caledonia called at Rio de Janeiro, Odessa and Constantinople. This does them a kind of posthumous and moving justice and restores multidimensionality to people who have been mere names for decades.

For readers who have been intrigued by Hawker through his various biographies, Seal’s revelations come as surprising and disturbing. Hawker’s reputation as a lovable, if eccentric, ritualist priest appears to remain entrenched for the long term. Future generations will have to discount part of his “role as mariner’s undertaker” — the aspect of his life “most vividly and memorably rendered” for popular consumption.

Modigliani: Beyond the Myth
The Jewish Museum, New York, NY
Book Review by the Rev. Dr. Clair McPherson

When I first heard about the Modigliani exhibit that was held this summer at The Jewish Museum, I was cynically amused. Amadeo Modigliani was, to me, one of the quintessential modernists, a painter of lovely iconic images, compelling portraits that almost looked like caricatures, and, above all, elongated nudes, all with a gorgeous palette that made him, with Matisse and early Picasso, one of the great 20th-century colorists.

He also happened to be Jewish. But that, to me, hardly makes him a “Jewish artist.” Chagall — there was a Jewish artist. Ben Shahn. Modigliani’s friend, Chaim Soutine. For that matter, Benny Goodman. Why? Because their faith obviously informs their art. Not so with Modigliani. A Jewish artist? One might as well celebrate Dali as a “Catholic artist” or Van Gogh as a “Protestant.”

I certainly did not plan to write about the show for the ENY.

I was utterly mistaken about this — and most pleasantly surprised. The exhibit, which ended on September 19, was comprehensive and indeed featured exquisite examples of the Modigliani I was familiar with: plenty of those portraits (including a poignant sketch of Picasso made in a Paris bistro — can you imagine Modigliani offering it to the sitter for some cash or a drink?) and a room devoted to those graceful nudes (the very ones that were obscene even to a Parisian eye in 1917 — today they look demure, fresh and lovely). But beyond that — far beyond — it also featured a Modigliani I have really never noticed, never known.

And that Modigliani is very much a Jewish artist. And a most ecumenical one at that. For example, one can discover many Scriptural paintings, which in itself is startling. Painted in his distinctive style, one can appreciate his debt to El Greco. He offers not only Old but also New Testament images — a brilliant image of John the Baptist, for example, imagined, accurately enough, as a Hebrew prophet, complete with Jewish symbols. One can find depictions of medieval Judaism, Buddhist icons (Paris in the early 20th century had discovered Eastern thought, and Modigliani studied it seriously), archaic Greek sketches and sculptures (which, unlike Picasso, Modigliani seems to have understood as religious also).

Modigliani was, in fact, an authentic student of mysticism and comparative religion, confirmed in his Judaism while quite open to the share of the truth expressed by any other faith. The exhibit was very wisely arranged so that, first, one was immersed in the “unknown” Modigliani — the religious, meditative young man who explored the iconography of global faith. Then, when one encountered the familiar Modigliani, he no longer seems so familiar. The paintings and the drawings and the sketches are as lovely as ever — but far deeper, far more interesting.

The Modigliani exhibit broke all attendance records for The Jewish Museum. I attributed that to sensationalism, until I saw for myself. Now I urge any reader who cares about religion and art to reconsider this artist. The title of the exhibit accurately explained that there is more to Modigliani — his art that is “beyond the myth.”