(2019)
George Eliot, Illuminated by The Message is the tenth in the series “Literary Portals to Prayer,” each featuring excerpts from the work of a single literary giant paired with an illuminating quote from The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language.
For this volume, Darren J. N. Middleton has selected passages from Eliot's essays, poems, and fiction, including the following: Adam Bede; The Mill on the Floss; Silas Marner; Felix Holt: The Radical; Middlemarch; and Daniel Deronda.
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“In a moment in history when many of us would say our way of interacting with ancient scriptural texts is anything but playful or imaginative, Middleton’s invitation to poke and prod literary and scriptural texts for meaning is provocative. Bringing these voices together, it is as though Middleton has lit the lamp by which we read and — in reading — come to discover something of God’s nearness. Using one passage to pry something loose from the other, we can start to see God in both (i.e. the novel and the scripture)…Middleton has deftly paired passages which stir up wonder. The relationship across the binding of the book is two-directional; there is a push-me-pull-you of the texts that is playfully dialogical and wonderfully Midrashic in method and purpose, leaving room for readers to interject their own lived experiences into the conversation. As pastors who interpret sacred texts and help people make meaning of their lived experiences, we consistently aim to do the same — to bring texts, oral traditions, current events, and lives together to see what sacred sparks ignite when they meet. Thus, this book is a necessary resource for the church that wishes to reinvigorate the Christian prayer imagination, and a welcome travel companion for any who find themselves in search of the Mystery beneath the real.”