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Lake Mithrim, by J.R.R. Tolkien

For this year’s Lenten program, we will be taking a journey across the pond to the hallowed halls of Oxford University. During Lent, join us at Heavenly Rest to learn about some of Anglican history’s most important writers with some of the finest scholars in the area. We will be exploring these modern Anglican Divines in the context of Evensong, a choral service of Evening Prayer that is one of Anglicanism’s great gifts to the Christian tradition. We hope that you will be able to join us to experience and learn more about our rich Anglican heritage.

	Wedneday, February 29 at 6:30 pm in the nave Larry Fink, Professor of English at Hardin-Simmons University, will begin our Lenten series by introducing us to George MacDonald, a Scottish author and clergyman whose work influenced many of the great Christian writers of the twentieth century.
Additional information and select readings from George MacDonald George MacDonald (10 December 1824 – 18 September 1905) was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister. Known particularly for his poignant fairy tales and fantasy novels, George MacDonald inspired many authors, such as W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, E. Nesbit and Madeleine L'Engle. It was C.S. Lewis who wrote that he regarded MacDonald as his "master": "Picking up a copy of Phantastes one day at a train-station bookstall, I began to read. A few hours later," said Lewis, "I knew that I had crossed a great frontier." G. K. Chesterton cited The Princess and the Goblin as a book that had "made a difference to my whole existence." Elizabeth Yates wrote of Sir Gibbie, "It moved me the way books did when, as a child, the great gates of literature began to open and first encounters with noble thoughts and utterances were unspeakably thrilling." Even Mark Twain, who initially disliked MacDonald, became friends with him, and there is some evidence that Twain was influenced by MacDonald. Selected Readings: George MacDonald: Images of His World with biography by Rolland Hein and photography by Larry Fink. This book contains 130 photographs of MacDonald sites in Scotland, England, Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy accompanied by extensive quotations from his fiction, poetry, and letters
	Wedneday, March 7 at 6:30 pm in the nave Chris Willerton, Professor of English at Abilene Christian University, will continue our series by discussing Dorothy Sayers, an English author known for her diverse and prolific output ranging from crime novels to devotional writings.
Additional information and select readings from Dorothy Sayers Dorothy Leigh Sayers (Oxford, 13 June 1893 – Witham, 17 December 1957) was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages. She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between World War I and World War II that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. However, Sayers herself considered her translation of Dante's Divina Commedia to be her best work. She is also known for her plays and essays. Selected readings: Biographical of Dorothy L. Sayers from the Dorothy L. Sayers Society The Mystery of Vocation by Martha Greene Eads Dorothy L. Sayers, Letters to a Diminished Church: Passionate Arguments for the Relevance of Christian Doctrine, Review by Cole Matson, The C.S. Lewis Chronicle Vol. 7, No. 3, Michaelmas 2010
	Wedneday, March 14 at 6:30 pm in the nave Mikee Delony, Assistant Professor of English at Abilene Christian University, will continue our Lenten exploration by teaching us about J.R.R. Tolkien, who is best known as the author of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings.
Additional information and select readings from J.R.R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University from 1925 to 1945 and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature there from 1945 to 1959. He was a close friend of C. S. Lewis—they were both members of the informal literary discussion group known as the Inklings. Tolkien was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972. After his death, Tolkien's son Christopher published a series of works based on his father's extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion. These, together with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings form a connected body of tales, poems, fictional histories, invented languages, and literary essays about a fantasy world called Arda, and Middle-earth within it. Between 1951 and 1955, Tolkien applied the term legendarium to the larger part of these writings. While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings led directly to a popular resurgence of the genre. This has caused Tolkien to be popularly identified as the "father" of modern fantasy literature—or, more precisely, of high fantasy.  In 2008, The Times ranked him sixth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".  Forbes ranked him the 5th top-earning dead celebrity in 2009. Selected readings: J.R.R. Tolkien & C.S. Lewis on the True Myth of the Gospel by Travis Buchanan, Transpositions, June 12, 2011
	Wednesday, March 21 at 6:30 pm in the nave Ronald Schuchard, C. White Professor of English at Emory University, will discuss the Lenten experience in T.S. Eliot’s life and work. Thursday, March 22 11:30 am luncheon in the parish hall.  Please make reservations for lunch via email or call 325-677-2091. 4:00 pm university seminar in the parish hall.  All are welcome to attend. The general theme of Schuchard's talks will be Eliot and spirituality, with a focus on the conflicts of the intellectual soul, the nature and difficulty of spiritual progress, the inextricability of doubt and belief, the necessity of humility, and the action of the will, as developed in his poetry and essays.
Additional information and select readings from T.S. Eliot Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM (26 September 1888 – 4 January 1965) was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25) and was naturalized as a British subject in 1927 at age 39. The poem that made his name, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock—started in 1910 and published in Chicago in 1915—is regarded as a masterpiece of the modernist movement. He followed this with what have become some of the best-known poems in the English language, including Gerontion (1920), The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930), and Four Quartets (1945). He is also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Selected readings: Ronald Schuchard, Eliot's Dark Angel: Intersections of Life and Art  (with emphasis on the chapters on Ash-Wednesday and Little Gidding),  2001.  This book can be purchased through Amazon. T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,  1917. T.S. Eliot, Whispers of Immortality,  1920. T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land  1922. T.S. Eliot, Ash-Wednesday,  1930. T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets: Burnt Norton,  East Coker,  The Dry Salvages,  Little Gidding, 1945.
	Wedneday, March 28 at 6:30 pm in the nave Ken Herfurth, Adjunct Professor of Religion and Ethics at McMurry University, will conclude our series with a discussion of C.S. Lewis, a Christian apologist known widely as one of the most imaginative Christian writers of the twentieth century. Sunday, April 1 at 9:30 am in the library Ken Herfurth will continue our dialogue about C.S. Lewis as special Sunday school event.
Additional information and select readings from C.S. Lewis Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963), commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland. He is known for his fictional work, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy. Lewis was a close friend of J. R. R. Tolkien, and both authors were leading figures in the English faculty at Oxford University and in the informal Oxford literary group known as the "Inklings". According to his memoir Surprised by Joy, Lewis had been baptized in the Church of Ireland (part of the Anglican Communion) at birth, but fell away from his faith during his adolescence. Owing to the influence of Tolkien and other friends, at the age of 32 Lewis returned to the Anglican Communion, becoming "a very ordinary layman of the Church of England". His faith had a profound effect on his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim. In 1956 he married the American writer Joy Gresham, 17 years his junior, who died four years later of cancer at the age of 45. Lewis died three years after his wife, as the result of renal failure. His death came one week before his 65th birthday. Media coverage of his death was minimal, as he died on 22 November 1963 – the same day that U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the same day another famous author, Aldous Huxley, died. Lewis's works have been translated into more than 30 languages and have sold millions of copies. The books that make up The Chronicles of Narnia have sold the most and have been popularized on stage, TV, radio and cinema. Selected readings: J.R.R. Tolkien & C.S. Lewis on the True Myth of the Gospel by Travis Buchanan, Transpositions, June 12, 2011