At the outset of her new book Reading Genesis, the much honoured and much loved Christian writer, Marilynne Robinson, calls attention not just to the events of the Bible’s first book but to the specificity of the order in which they happen. “Their sequence is an articulation of a complex statement about reality,” Robinson notes. The “wandring steps and slow” of Adam and Eve taking “their solitary way” through Eden in Milton’s heart-rending end to Paradise Lost become, in Robinson’s framing, a statement that, “The magnificent account of the onset of Being and the creation by God of His image in humankind is undiminished in all that follows despite the movement away from the world of God’s first intention — modified as this statement must by the faith that He has a greater, embracing intention that cannot fail.”

Following that movement sequentially from the opening words of Genesis, then, is to walk amid the Biblical parables, history and experience that bring us face to face with the reality of faith embodying God’s infallible embracing intention for us. For that reason, The Catholic Register will present over the next 12 months a “Journey through the Bible” led by Lea Karen Kivi. The seven-day reading program will appear weekly in the space that formerly featured Fr. Scott Lewis, who we thank abundantly for his many years of service to the Register in God’s Word on Sunday. 

Lea herself has made a journey of life and faith and the Scripture reading program she will set out replicates one she began in California where she worked in Silicon Valley until converting to Catholicism and making a 60-day Jesuit retreat. Currently president of Angela’s Heart Communications, her professional life is a technical writer for corporations ranging from Hewlett-Packard to Canada’s chartered banks. Readers of her frequent Register columns will know, however, that her mission is bringing God’s word to the mending of realtionships and the complex realities of the human heart.

The Register welcomes responses and advice from those who engage in the reading program. Comments can be submitted to editor@catholicregister.org and should be marked “Bible Journey.”

Peter Stockland

Publisher-Editor