Lenten Resources
Feb. 27, 2009 by hweidner
Here is my Lenten movie, music, book list for 2009…
Willa Cather: Death Comes for the Archbishop. This American classic is essential. Why is that lay people and Willa Cather was the ultimate one…lesbian, Protestant…do the best in writing about priests. J.F. Powers, Garrison Keillor, Georges Bernanos, and Graham Greene are the others.
George Eliot Middlemarch. This is the story of the life of many of us. The last chapter is a killer diller…but do not cheat and jump ahead unless you read my Grief, Loss, and Death, the Dark Side of Ministry. My book is not as long but the last page ends with the last page of Middlemarch.
A. Schmemann. Great Lent [Orthodox theologian, superb!]The Orthodox Church, read also the Greek Catholics, know what Lent is all about. This IS the book.
ThomasMerton…take your pick…
Opera has its own power so I recommend Dialogue of the Carmelites Poulenc did the music, Bernanos the script.
Kathleen Norris Dakota or her edition of the Psalms or the latest, Accedia. Very real and with a good reading of the tradition.
Movies:Winter Light, Diary of a Country Priest, Wild Strawberries. The first and last are by Ingmar Bergman. All three are in black and white. The second one is a French classic.
K. Kieslowki, movies, a Polish director who has died since. Blue is about I Corinthians 13. The Decalogue is 10 50 minute stories that will knock your socks off and put them back on again later in the night.
H. Weidner, Grief, Loss. and Death (yes,
that¹s my book).
John Henry Newman Sermons (vol. 4 especially of
Plain and Parochial Sermons or the selection with an intro by Murial Spark.
Caryl Houselander take your pick.
Gong Ji-Young, My Sister, Bongsoon. Gong is a Catholic novelist in Korea.
Anne Lamott any title.
Annie Dillard wrote this a long time ago but a great class now: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
Peter Pan…first page
Wind in the Willows chapter called Pipers at the Gate of
Dawn.
Harry Potter…all volumes so you know why the last one is so
important…
Lord of the Rings…I think I can even recommend the movies now, but the books are the best.
Narnia by CS Lewis.
Wrinkle in Time by M. L’Engle. Wonderful “children’s” book.
Then there is the Japanese convert novelist Shusaku Endo, either The Samurai or Silence.
Takashi Nagai, Bells of Nagasaki (about the bombing and the author¹s faith, a Japanese Catholic).
