For those looking for some good summer reading, I herewith propose The At the Still Point Challenge: See how many works you can read this summer from the novelists and poets included in my anthology At the Still Point: A Literary Guide to Prayer in Ordinary Time (Paraclete Press). And I don’t just mean excerpts: I mean entire novels and poetry collections. If your experience is anything like mine, the challenge will not merely enrich your summer but enrich your life.

Where to begin? Well, first you’ll want a copy of At the Still Point so you can discover these classic and contemporary writers for yourself. The book provides an outline of prayer and reflective reading for each of the 29 weeks in the liturgical season of Pentecost, or Ordinary Time (which began May 19). Each week includes 3-6 poems and fictional excerpts that you can read over the course of the week. And that’s where I would start. As soon as you come across an author or poet you really enjoy, look up the artist in the Acknowledgments and Permissions section in the back of the book or run an online search. Many of their works can be found at your local library or through inter-library loan, or you could hunt down online or e-book editions, especially of the classics.

Depending on the works you select, you should be able to get through a good handful of books and collections before September. Some of them you’ll blow through quickly, such as Katherine Paterson’s marvelous junior novel Jacob Have I Loved. Others–like George Eliot’s Middlemarch or Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov–could take you well into the fall. Whatever the case, I challenge you to finish them, even if it’s slow going at times.

And meanwhile, I’ll be involved in my own literary challenge: creating another guide to prayer for Paraclete, this time for the seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany (to be released in 2014). I love the working title so much that I just might keep it a secret a bit longer, like an extra special Christmas gift! Suffice it to say–as with At the Still Point–I read a lot of T. S. Eliot to find just the right phrase.

The manuscript is due this fall, while my second child is due July 23, so prayers are appreciated. Also, if you have any suggestions of poems and fictional excerpts that could be included–particularly from women and minorities–please don’t hesitate to contact me at [email protected]. We belong to a rich community of readers across time and distance, and to share the treasures we have found will only deepen our encounters with God.

Happy reading!