Go to home page - diocesan shield

The Anglican Church in Tasmania                                                             Search

a healthy church...transformingLIFE

Tasmanian Anglican

July 2004

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Leaping - revelations and epiphanies by Brian Doyle. Loyola Press, Chicago RRP$39.95

 

 

Editor's angle
Wonder and delight

by Sheelagh Wegman

 

 

Holidays and illness make good opportunities for catching up on reading, so this month’s Editor’s Angle is a bit different.

I have long enjoyed Brian Doyle’s writing, which appears regularly in a variety of publications as well as in the Melbourne Age. (Brian Doyle is editor of Portland Magazine and refers to James Button, editor of the Age as ‘my antipodean brother).

Brian has compiled ten or more years of ‘pieces’ into a book entitled Leaping - revelations and epiphanies. It is filled with a sense of wonder, delight and wit as he writes about his children, his church, his faith, all with humour, wisdom and affection.

Under headings such as Christ’s Elbows, Grace Notes, Last Supper, The Death of a Rascal, The Measure of Mystery, Brian Doyle ‘makes his way through a forest of prickly ideas, armed with only his pen and his faith.’ (notes on the back cover)

Prayer

It is difficult to select one special part of this book to share. The following from Prayer for Pete seems appropriate for this edition. Brian was asked to pray for a friend who will be dead in a couple of years, slowly and cruelly eaten by disease:

So what prayer do I make for Pete?... Do I really think that my prayers will save Pete…?

I don’t know.

But I believe with all my heart that they mattered because I was moved to make them. I believe that the mysterious sudden impulse to pray is the prayer, and that the words we use for prayer are only envelopes in which to mail pain and joy, and that arguing about where prayers go, and who sorts the mail, and what unimaginable senses hear us is foolish.

It is the urge that matters… So a prayer for my friend Pete...and a prayer for us all, that we be brave enough to pray, for it is an act of love, and love is why we are here. p. 150