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.
