CHARLIE BELL is an Anglican priest, an academic clinical fellow in psychiatry, and author of Queer Holiness (Books, 22 July 2022), which champions the place of LGBTQ+ people in the life of the Church, and his recent Unity (Books, 10 January). While earthed in traditional Anglican observance of Lent, his new book can be studied with profit across the ecumenical spectrum.
Bell sums up the aim of this Lenten journey as “to re-situate ourselves within the divine life to which we are called . . . a time to give ourselves a good shake, shut up, and listen to what God might have to say about our whole selves . . . to become more fully ourselves in communion with one another.” This is a potent prospectus, but Bell delivers.
He opens with a succinct introduction to the Psalms in the Coverdale version familiar to those conversant with choral matins and evensong. The approach is devotional and pastoral rather than academic, inviting engagement with a treasury of spiritual nourishment. But it also challenges comfortable conformism, as lament and protest feature, together with thanksgiving, praise, wisdom, and future hope.
There are chapters for each Sunday in Lent, Ash Wednesday, and each day in Holy Week. Each chapter features a chosen Psalm, the Gospel reading appointed for the day, material for reflection, and cleverly crafted questions for individual or group consideration. The Gospel readings are those set for the current liturgical Year 3.
Bell is steeped in the study and practice of psychiatry, and this is to the fore in his interpretation and application of the biblical texts — both the Psalter and the Gospels. He takes us to the heart of who we are in all honesty, and calls for the Lenten disciplines of self-examination and repentance, on the basis of accountability to God and to one another, as well as to ourselves. Yet this is done without compromising his confidence in the inexhaustible love of God which reaches out to us through thick and thin, and to which the chosen Psalms and Gospel extracts bear witness.
Lament is a recurring theme in the Psalms and, as Bell demonstrates to good effect, also in the words of Jesus. Here, we see the combination of psychiatrically informed priest and pastorally attuned psychiatrist to maximum effect.
A chapter is devoted to promoting holiness as our readiness to return to the Lord and seek God’s mercy, time after time, before progressing to a celebration of God’s abundant kindness on the Fourth Sunday in Lent. These chapters challenge the Church to change in the light of God’s unfathomable generosity and grace to each and every one of us.
Now our faces are turned with Jesus towards Jerusalem on Passion Sunday, and then on into Holy Week. Bethany to Gethsemane, via the Upper Room, and then onwards to Golgotha and the garden tomb on Easter Day feature in daily readings and reflections for Holy Week. Service, power, fear (especially of those we look upon as “not one of us”), doubt, betrayal, companionship, faith, hope, waiting, and redemption are all given the Bell treatment, by now familiar: challenging, but essentially reassuring.
This is rich fare, indeed: food for the journey and nourishment for the soul.
The Rt Revd Dr John Saxbee is a former Bishop of Lincoln.
Searched Me Out and Known Me: Journeying Lent with the Psalms
Charlie Bell
DLT £12.99
(978-1-915412-78-2)
Church Times Bookshop £10.39