Glenn Clark, I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1937).
Reviewed by the Rev. William De Arteaga
I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes is Prof. Clark’s second major books on prayer. The first one was The Soul’s Sincere Desire (1928). Unlike other Protestant churchmen of the time, Prof. Clark was extremely well read in both Catholic and Protestant classics of prayer and the mystical life. Recall that the CFOs were founded on Clark’s understanding of the famous Catholic work by Brother Lawrence, Practicing the Presence of God. I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes is modeled after the classic work of Walter Hilton’s, The Ladder of Perfection, written about 1390.
I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes is a work filled with marvelous insights on how to achieve effective prayer, too many to cite in this review. But to cite a few: in chapter one he leads the reader to understand that his/her prayer life must be done as a Hind traverses mountain terrain. That is, the Hind steps with her front feet, and then she will tract her rear feet in the same footprint. For Prof. Clark this is an image of how our conscious and subconscious mind must be in harmony about our prayer requests. Another magnificent insight is his understanding of intercession, which demands a deep understanding of the supplicant, including the supplicant’s sorrows and hurts, and then lifting that person in prayer to the Lord (pages 80-82). This prefigures Agnes Sanford’s breakthrough in inner healing that occurred decades later. Note especially his discussion of Jesus’ prayer for unity among Christian in the Gospel of John – it is magnificent.
Chapters 3 and 4 are the most demanding of them all. Prof. Clark points the reader into the highest levels of effective prayer and union with God. Each chapter includes daily exercises, bible passages, meditations and prayer laid out on a seven-day schedule. What he writes is based on his own rich prayer life and the Christian classics. But here I find I have a reservation. He indicates that following his plan will lead the Christian to an ecstatic union with God. (Chapter 3, Seventh day, “Prayer on the Mountain Top.”) That might be possible for a few persons who are especially graced, but it seems that this is telescoping the grace process that most Christians experience, including the great saints. Achieving union and ecstasy normally takes years, if not decades of serious prayer work. There is often serious demonic opposition to that prayer pilgrimage that Prof. Clark does not mention. (He wrote this work before encountering the demonic through the ministry of Rebecca and Roland Beard, major figures in the 1940’s CFO.)
This is not to discourage you from reading this work. It is a magnificent contribution to the literature of prayer. Rather, take Prof. Clark’s book as a life-long road map to effective prayer and union with God, but not as a manual that can be achieved in a few weeks or months.
Glenn Clark, The Man Who Talks With Flowers: The Intimate Life Story of Dr. George Washington Carver (Saint Paul: Macalester Park, 1939).
Reviewed by William De Arteaga
George Washinton Carver (1864-1943) was born a slave, but raised by a loving white couple. He developed 300 ways of using the peanut and 150 for the sweet potato, and he is most famous for these innovations. His 44 agricultural bulletins, issued from Tuskegee University, are masterpieces of what is now recognized as sustainable agriculture.
Glenn Clark’s book on Carver is a sketch of his life and work, not a full biography. The accent is on Carver as a man of God and the spiritual basis of his great achievements. Carver’s daily prayer life began promptly at 4:00 am as he slipped out of his home at Tuskegee University to commune with God and talk to the plants around him. Professor Clark records he never prayed with anyone who had more power in prayer, and that he began all his experiments with prayer. Carver’s base scripture for his work was Gen. 1:29, “Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” (NIV)
Professor Clark was a personal friend of Carver, and much of the information in The Man Who Talks With Flowers is based on Clark’s conversations with him. Professor Clark, who had great spiritual wisdom, was able to discern what in Carver’s life enabled his successes in horticulture, and specifically in his astounding communication with plants. Carver, from the time he was a child, talked to, and received communications back from plants. This was unbelievable to most people of the era. But in fact, we find similar gifts of communication with plants and animals in other saints of history, including Agnes Sanford, who was a CFO speaker for over 40 years. Thankfully, speaking to plants has now become more common with the publication of Peter Tompkins book, The Secret Life of Plants (1973).
Carver shared with Prof. Clark his three-fold secret of communication with flowers and plants. First, he loved them, and let them know this. Second, he maintained an attitude of humility despite his fame as the greatest African American scientist of his time. Third, Carver always had a sense of awe about nature that ran all the way from animals and plants to the seemingly useless clay soil of Georgia. In fact, he developed several commercial dyes from that very soil. This awe melded with an expectancy about its God ordained goodness.
There are many books of George Washington Carver, but this brief work gives us the essence of Carver’s Christian way of communication with plants and melding science and scripture.
A Man’s Reach, The Autobiography of Glenn Clark
Review by Martha Dobra
Chapter One, paragraph one: “Each of us is a son of God. Each of us is a son of Man. As the former, we are each a focal point through which the infinite resources of God Himself may flow. As the latter, we are each related to every other human being on the face of the earth.”
One can see that these are the two themes in Glenn Clark’s autobiography, and the history of his discovering these truths.
He begins with his own ancestors and then his immediate family as well as his earliest awareness of God and the infinite.
At 14, he received a “vision” of his future life, which he called the Divine Plan. From 14 to 21, he would develop himself. Indeed, he studied writing and speaking. He wrote, and he practiced orating to his little flock of chickens. A more attentive audience, he never found. He built up his constitution by horse-back riding, first out west for a summer, and then daily from home, delivering newspapers on a 12 mile route. He attended college and then began to teach at a very small high school where he also coached football and track.
From 21 to 28, he was to mix and mingle with the world and become an extrovert. This era began with a bicycle tour of Europe with a friend. He then accepted a position at a brand new college where he would teach creative writing and coach football and track, again.
From 28 to 35, he was to integrate the “inner and outer threads” to prepare for his “life’s work.” He married Louise, whom he had courted for a very long time, and the next 7 years, for the two of them, were a “winnowing out of the ego and the discovery of our souls.” Mutual adjustments were made and he also began to teach at Macalester College.
When he reached 35, he had three successive dreams which spoke death to him. His vision, or divine plan, had stopped at age 42. So he wondered if he would die then. So he prayed for God to help him die to himself in the next 7 years so completely that when the time came for God to take him, he would start to actually live in heaven right here and now! He said he had never prayed such a sincere prayer in all his life.
In fact, in the following year, he took a 7 month sabbatical leave to California with his wife and two small daughters, to rest, to meditate, and to learn how to pray. During that time, he was “born again,” and came back home “with Jesus abiding in his heart.” He then began what I would consider his life’s work, as he began to study the teachings of Jesus, Brother Lawrence and F.L. Robinson, a British physicist who believed one’s prayers could be just as scientifically infallible as the laws of physics and chemistry. He developed many of the spiritual principles he is famous for: walking with Hind’s feet to reach high places (integrating the conscious with the subconscious mind), the power of affirmation or positive thinking, the secrets of answered prayer: praying with Positive Faith, Sincere Love and Radiant Joy; trouble being a gift from God if it turns a person to God, Healing from sickness and walking in divine health. The key for him was to spend an entire hour each morning in meditation and prayer.
So, he turned 42 and did not die. In fact, he began to write. The Soul’s Sincere Desire was his first book, published when he was 44. Nine years later, Power in Athletics was produced. He also became a speaker at summer youth camps and then envisioned a camp where people would come to learn about prayer and to pray. Camps Farthest Out was born. That is a story in itself and can be found in chapter 21. Clark began what was to become CFO International with a trip around the world with Marcia and Roland Brown to establish a belt of prayer groups that would pray for world peace. He started a publishing company, Macalester Park Publishing Co., to publish and distribute his writings and continued to teach the principles of answered prayer.
It is a wonderful, encouraging story of man’s reach for God, and finding Him to be everything he had hoped for and more.
Please note all three books are available for cost of postage and a small donation. Contact CFOI at cfoicoordinator@gmail.com for further information.