A few weeks ago, I began to notice something.  One post I wrote about Marilyn Chandler McEntyre’s book included the phrase “beautiful sentences” in the title.  That post has risen to near the top of my “most popular” entries, and the term “beautiful sentences” is one that has attracted more readers than any other in the last week.

Are you a discriminating reader who thinks about writing at the level of the sentence?  Do you have a few favorite quotes–beautiful sentences?  I invite you to submit them to a new contest located right here in the comments section of this post. The inbox will stay open until May 27 at 10 p.m.  I will gather up the quotes and make a new post out of all of them and then ask readers to vote on their favorites.  The winner will receive a memoir selected just for him or her from my overflowing memoir bookcase. Feel free to submit a sentence of your own! And enjoy the hunt for beautiful sentences in everything you read in the next week.

As you know, it was a contest that got me started writing memoir.  Maybe this one will get you started too!

Christ, My Companion is not a memoir, though it includes fascinating glimpses of the author’s life story.  Illuminating the prayer, one small piece at a time, Marilyn guides us from beginning to end.

Here is the famous “breastplate prayer” of St. Patrick:

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, and in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

Marilyn Chandler McEntyre loves the play of language.  Her gorgeous book of poems about Vincent Van Gogh’s famous last paintings, The Color of Light, celebrates the paintings’ transformation of solid objects into forces of energy–or as she puts it, nouns into into verbs.

In Christ, My Companion, Marilyn employs the same grammatical logic she demonstrates in her poetry to the contemplation of another part of speech–the lowly preposition.  Each section of the 13-part prayer gets its own chapter.  Prepositions–with, within, behind, before, beside, to, beneath, above, in–change in each chapter, even if no other words change.  The result is a prism or finely-cut diamond in each case with Christ at the head of the sentence and the personal pronoun “me” at the end.

What connects Christ and me?  McEntyre shows us the ways by exploring angle, point of view, and position of the all-encompassing spirit of God.  When Christ is above, we catch a memoir glimpse of the author hustled out of doors when she was depressed:  “I went outside and looked up, through the branches of high trees, to the light that suddenly seemed like a constant stream of blessing.  I began to sit in my window seat evenings and watch the stars come out.”  The divine energy from above is not just a tonic to depression, however.  Within this chapter lie reflections on modern physics, hymn texts, the Nicene Creed, and Denise Levertov’s “Ascension.”

Marilyn brings us down to earth like a parachutist, then rises again with these words:  “Relinquishment is the cost of lifting up our hearts.  Only letting go, at least momentarily consenting to leave behind the things that bind us to this sticky, earthy life, will lighten us enough to be lifted up into a new plane of encounter with God, awareness of the life of the Spirit, fellowship with the communion of saints, hope of heaven.”

Even though this book is not a memoir, it offers testimony to a life immersed in spirit and word.  Only someone with the rhythm of King James English in her blood, a prayer book in her hand, and a heap o’ livin’ in her own life could have crafted sentence upon sentence of such shimmering praise-filled prose.

I traveled to California for the Fetzer Institute to visit with board members, meet with a colleague at the Skoll Foundation, and attend a fundraiser for Youth for Environmental Sanity (YES!), the Purpose Prize Award ceremonies/ Encore Careers Summit.  As snow was flying in Kalamazoo, I was watching the sun rise over the bay in Sausalito.  The trip provided wonderful respite from winter weather and also a great stimulus.

During the first two days of the trip I enjoyed talking with three Fetzer board members and a new friend, all of whom are authors.  At some point in these four individual conversations, our attention turned to storytelling and writing.  Below you can enjoy one thought and two books from each incredible woman.  I am so blessed to know each of them!

Angeles Arrien:  “I can’t tell you how many people are searching for meaning.  This desire shows up for people especially in their later years and during transitions.”

Frances Vaughan:  “People in our culture today are looking for trans-traditional spirituality.”

Lynne Twist:  “We are living in a time of rapidly changing consciousness.  The whole world is waking up!  The tide is turning from fear and violence to love and forgiveness.”

Marilyn Chandler McEntyre:  “Why do you have to write about conflict?  Tensions are always there, yes, but they don’t have to be conflicts.”

Each participant will receive a Moleskine notebook, “the legendary notebook” of Hemingway and Picasso.  Watch out world–the writers of the Fetzer Institute are getting serious!

1. Begin with meditation.

2. Using examples from this book, Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs, we will break the ice by trying to describe our lives in six words.

3. We will then do three timed-writing life story exercises:

a. My life as a story of empowerment

b. My life as a story of tragedy, failure, victimhood

c. My life as a story of grace

4. We will conclude with gratitude for the pied beauty of our lives and for the opportunity to learn together.

The basic structure of this one-afternoon event came from Marilyn Chandler McEntyre who wrote an essay called “Growing in Grace” in Weavings: A Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life. Marilyn has taught courses on spiritual autobiography to both undergraduates and adults for many years. “I have nothing to give that was not a gift to me,” she says.

When we recognize our endebtedness to others and to God, we fill up with abundant wisdom and grace to give, keeping the cycle of growth alive.