Sunrise Liturgy

Synopsis: Committing theology to poetry is not new, but it's not wildly common. The Sunrise Liturgy aims to do just that. It is a sequence, like liturgy, with a start and a procession and a finish. The sun does the processing, and the play on sun and Son is never far from sight. Sunrise gives the cantus firmus to this theological theme and variations, where the going is by turns easy, by turns thickly polyphonic--take a deep breath! The cantus firmus shifts from voice to voice, disappearing, towards year's end, beyond the audible range of human mortals. But there are other mortals in this procession of the year, "acolytes of the Holy Impotence," and under and beside and through it all flows the St. Lawrence River, le fleuve, winding across the page, a tidal presence at once natural and mystical. As are the snow geese. As is the heron. There is an attempt to wrestle with a credible theodicy, especially environmental. There is a profound penchant for the eremitic, with nods to The Cloud of Unknowing and Gregory of Nyssa. And always there is the priestly sense of "performance," enactment, and Eucharist, for this is a priest speaking. Endorsements: "The Sunrise Liturgy does what it says on the cover: it is a liturgical celebration of dawn. That is, it goes over again and again the kind of change that a new day is--materially and spiritually--and makes us participants in this event that makes the entire world look different. It is constantly surprising and very beautiful . . . It is by turns full of a Joycean exuberance and an extraordinary stillness. . . Exciting poetry, demanding and enlarging." --Rowan Williams Archbishop of Canterbury Author of Christian Imagination in Poetry and Polity "Here is something true--steadying, vivifying. I felt lifted and anchored by the reading. [Anderson's] distinctive narrative leaps, her metaphoric audacity, the graceful flexibility of her poetic mind lead us into a sensibility which amounts to a trued world." --Tim Lilburn Poet and essayist 2003 Governor General's Literary Award winner "In a world full of voices eager to tell, to lay truth out for obedient consumption, how refreshing the buoyant, evocative, teasing, playful--and serious--voice of The Sunrise Liturgy. Spending time in these pages is like spending Saturday afternoon with a fearless child." --Michael Thompson General Secretary of the Anglican Church of Canada "The liturgists of creation, from St Francis to Thomas Traherne, have always been a minority Magnificat. . . Here Mia Anderson joins their throng, introduces environmentalists to the liturgical year, challenges churchy believers with the swoops of a heron, and juxtaposes contemporary idiom with echoes deeply textured in the Christian tradition. The fine membranes between poetry and prayer, prophecy and play, perception and percussion become invisible. God's grandeur is alive once more as she hovers on the wind of the Spirit." --Samuel Wells Author of God's Companions: Reimagining Christian Ethics Author Biography: Mia Anderson is an Anglican priest in the Diocese of Québec, and author of three books of poetry: Appetite (1988), Château Puits '81 (1992), and Practising Death (1997). She was for many years a theatre actor, and later a shepherd.