Blog: Literature, Prayer, and “The World”
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Dan HintzRelated Content
Literature, Prayer, and "The World"
I am deeply indebted to C.S. Lewis for my love of words and literature. This week we will be exploring the art of literature, and how it can be used as a vehicle for prayer. C.S. Lewis once reflected, “We read so that we know we are not alone.” In reading, we become part of a greater community of experience – weather that is tragedy, romance, or comedy. Part of the mystery of literature is that it can make us feel intimately close to people who we do not know; it opens us to a world that often seems disparate from the space that we inhabit. Literature challenges our claustrophillic hearts. And in so doing it both comforts and confronts us.
This week we will be comforted and confronted with readings from Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk), Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe), Jayber Crow (Wendell Berry), and Breakfast of Champions (Kurt Vonnegut). Some of these readings may not be overtly religious, or even Christian. They will confront us with the different worlds that God is a part of, worlds that seem alien to us, worlds in which God is hidden. They will challenge us with experiences and perspectives that are not our own, which we may even disagree with. But through literature we become opened. And the questions that percolate through this process become, then, our prayers to God.
We have discussed previously that when we pray we are, in essence, extending hospitality to the God who dwells within us – the Holy Other. But what about “the world” – the Unholy Other? Literature, maybe better than any other form of art, helps us understand the world that God has called Christians to serve. This get’s me thinking. If C.S. Lewis is right, if we read so that we know we are not alone. Perhaps the world will one day look at the way Christians pray and know that they are not alone. Perhaps literature can help us on that journey.
Amen,
D.L.H.