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Episcopal/Anglican Blogs and Bloggers

Jul11

First of all, can anyone enlighten me? Is the adjectival form “Episcopalian” or “episcopal”? Or will either adjective work? And are Anglicans located only in Britain and British-influenced countries, or does it have to do with with who’s affiliated with whom? What is the difference between Episcopalians and Anglicans?

Whatever it is, At a Hen’s Pace is the blog of an Anglican homeschooling mom of six. She’s married to an Anglican priest, and she’s fond of books and children–just like me.

The Waffling Anglican offers “thoughts and ruminations about anything that comes up by an ex-Episcopalian as he waffles between embracing a Continuing Anglican parish or swimming the Tiber (or Euphrates?) to an Eastern Catholic church.”

Will Duquette at A View from the Foothills is Anglican. Ugandan Anglican, to be exact. Will writes about books and children and photography and assorted stuff.

A guide at the blog Mere Comments to the Anglican organizations and groups that are now active in the United States. This post is very useful for those investigating Anglicanism in the U.S.

If you’re Anglican or Episcopalian or both and I didn’t mention you, please leave a comment.

Anglican Lit 101

Jul10

Espiscopalians and Anglicans are having their problems these days. ((Also here.) As an encouragement and since I gave a post the week before last to my Catholic brethren and sisters, this week I thought I’d highlight some of my favorite books with an Anglican or Episcopalian setting or background.

The twin Episcopalians are, of course, Jan Karon and Madeleine L’Engle. A Severed Wasp by Ms. L’Engle which takes place in and around the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City is delightfully Episcopalian. It was in this book that I learned that there are orders of Episcopal nuns (how was I to know?) and that a whole microcosm of society can be contained within the walls of a cathedral. In addition, A Severed Wasp tells a great story about faith and betrayal and abuse and forgiveness.

Jan Karon’s Mitford novels are also very Episcopalian. I just read Lauren Winner’s Girl Meets God, and she admits to reading and enjoying the Mitford books with a sort of a guilty pleasure. I don’t feel guilty about them at all. My definition of great literature is still evolving, and the Mitford books are definitely on my list of 100 greatest fiction books of all time, whether anyone else considers them great literature or not. Father Tim, the main character in the Mitford books, is an Episcopal priest, and he lives a life full of small joys and small crises that all add up to a life lived Big in the presence of the Lord Jesus. It’s Christianity as it actually plays out in the lives of everyday people, a quotidian kind of Christianity as my friend at Mental Multivitamin might say. (Thanks for the addition to my vocabulary, MFS.)

C.S.Lewis was Anglican, but the atmosphere of his books is more “mere Christianity.” Dorothy Sayers and P.D. James are more conspicuously Anglican. Parts of their stories take place in Anglican cathedrals and monasteries and other religious places. Death in Holy Orders by P.D. James is set in an Anglican theological college. In Dorothy Sayers’ The Nine Tailors the church and especially the church bells are central to the setting and the plot of the mystery.

Reaching back into Victorian England, there’s Anthony Trollope whose Barsetshire novels are set in a fictional cathedral town populated by all sorts of curates, prebendaries, archdeacons, canons, vicars, and bishops. Very Victorian. Very Church of England. I’ve read Barchester Towers (a long time ago), and I’m in the process of reading Framley Parsonage.. I’ll let you know how I like it when I’m done. I hesitate to say that this quotation from Barchester Towers, which I prophetically recorded about thirty years ago when I read that novel, characterizes the current state of the Anglican communion; however, if the shoe fits . . .

Mr. Arabin:“It is the bane of my life that on important subjects I acquire no fixed opinion. I think, and think, and go on thinking, and yet my thoughts are running ever in different directions.”

I’ve read revews and recommendations for the clerical fiction of Susan Howatch. Has anyone here read her books?

For nonfiction, I like these Anglican and Episcopalian authors and apologists: C.S. Lewis, John R.W. Stott, Os Guinness, and J.I. Packer. The best book the Church of England ever produced was The Book of Common Prayer, a classic if there ever was one.

Friday’s Center of the Blogosphere

Jul7

The Anchoress identifies the source of the world’s problems: fruit.

I’ve read some science fiction, and Engineer Husband works at NASA; however, this thought never occurred to me. Are we going beyond the boundaries that God set for Adam’s race in Genesis when we attempt to explore, maybe even colonize, the Moon or other planets?

Stefanie at So Many Books on reading goals and halfway day. Last week, I posted my list of books read so far this year. Best books read this year: River Rising by Athol Dickson, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card<, Jewel by Brett Lott, and Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner.

Anthony Esolen on a Christian basis for comedy. I think I understand what he’s talking about, although I’m still trying to wrap my mind around it. The ancient Greek comedies are all about politics and scorn for the stupidity of the opposition, aren’t they? I don’t what other ancient peoples laughed about. Esolen writes about “the strange belief, quite foreign to the pagans, that laughter too might be redemptive, as participating in the greatest comedy of all, that of a world wherein man is saved by the means he least expects, and therefore by the most fitting and comical means of all. For the fact is that we like Bottom not just as a source of laughter, but as Bottom and no other; as we like Don Quixote, and Charlie Brown, and the fat bus driver Ralph Kramden. We like them because we take for granted that they are of inestimable value, and because we know that they replicate, in particularly ridiculous form, a story that is our own.” This piece reminds me of that particularly “Christian” movie about Jews during the Holocaust, Life Is Beautiful. Only people who believe in forgiveness and some sort of redemption could make a movie that laughs in the middle of supreme tragedy.

Finally, I hate the entire premise of this post at Wittingshire, maybe because I’m afraid there’s a nugget of truth there? Does the reading of fiction insulate you from reality and give you the illusion of having lived, or does fiction inspire you to do the work of loving and serving real people?

Around and About the Blogosphere

Jul1

buyafriendabook.comBuy a Friend a Book is having a First Anniversary Contest. The contest lasts from July 1-7, and the prizes include a lifetime membership in LibraryThing and lots of books and bookish things.


Also nominations are being accepted at A Gracious Home for the Second Annual Blogs of Beauty Awards. These awards are “given to honor women who bring the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ to the blogosphere.” Click on the graphic for more information.

Friday’s Center of the Blogosphere

Jul1

Tim Challies’ Reflections on Reading. Mr. Challies has excellent food for thought here, especially for Christians who might be thinking they should read more or who are wondering how to make serious reading and study a part of their spiritual lives.

Ella at Box of Books is doing interviews with various litbloggers, set to post while she’s on vacation. My first thought is that I wish I’d thought of this, and my second is that I like the question she’s been asking all her subjects: “Who’s your favorite underappreciated author, and what makes them great?” If you didn’t get interviewed (like me, boo-hoo) and you have a favorite underappreciated author, please leave your answer in the comments. I would say some underappreciated authors that I’ve discovered are Samuel Shellabarger, Leif Enger, and Penelope Wilcock.

Barbara at Mommy Life has a great story of how a talented young lady brought truth before the Colorado Legislature.

Catholic Bloggers of Note

Jun28

To go with my post yesterday on books that give a taste of Catholicism, I give you list of Catholic bloggers who give to the blogosphere that same excellent taste and variety.

Melissa of The Bonny Glen and The Lilting House. A Catholic mother and writer, Melissa lives her faith as she writes about books, homeschooling, children, and mothering. And she comes from a Southern Baptist background, which is fascinating to me. Would you be interested in writing about how that switch came about, Melissa? If so, I’d be interested in reading the story.

Dawn Eden is a recent convert to Catholicism. She has a wonderful testimony, a heart for the unborn, and a way with words. If you visit her blog, you can read about how she became Catholic in several entries entitled “How I Became the Catholic I Wuz.” (Use the Search bar to find the other parts.)

Steve Riddle blogs at Flos Carmeli. Steve is a lay Carmelite and also a convert to Catholicism. In addition, he’s a dad and a lover of books and iterature. He’s got lots of things to teach this unabashed Baptist.

Dawn blogs By Sun and Candlelight and says she’s “from Catholics as far back as we go, from Sunday Mass and family dinner.” She writes about homeschooling, Catholic tradition and meditation, nature studies, books, and poetry.

Love2Learn is a homeschooling group blog with contributions from several Catholic homeschooling moms. Lots of reviews of historical fiction and other goodies here.

The Anchoress gives commentary on all things political from a Catholic, conservative perspective. She’s humble and feisty at the same time, a trick that I’d like to learn someday.

Southern Appeal is a group of lawyers and law clerks and lawyer-friendly types, mostly Catholic, I think, and all Southerners.

First Things: On the Square is the blog of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus and his cohorts at First Things.

Those are a few of my favorites. If you write from a Catholic worldview and I missed you, accept my apologies and leave a note in the comments.

100 More Things To Do When You’re Bored: Summer Edition

May28

Last year about this time one of the urchins was concerned that she might be bored over the summer. So I made her a list of 100 possible things to do when she was tempted to use the B-word. This year no one is using the word, but the natives, who insisted upon taking a hiatus from regular schoolwork this week, are becoming restless. So I’m making another list, mostly cribbed from a selection of my favorite blogs.

Yes, we’ll be doing plenty of math this summer, but a Saxon lesson a day only takes about thirty minutes to an hour. And even I can only read for most of my day. Then what?

1. Build fairy houses in the backyard.
2. Start a nature scrapbook.
3. Canstruction.
4. Play chalk games. or draw pictures with chalk on the sidewalk.
5. Make mud pies and have a tea party.
6. Have a real tea party with some friends and tell stories.
7. Play with rice.
8. Make a yummy salad and eat it.
9. Paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
10. Work a jigsaw puzzle.
11. Copy a famous painting.
12. Get your bicycle out, clean it up, and get it ready for summer.
13. Practice folding a shirt.
14. Make a poster collage.
15. Make some playdough.
16. Preschool Paper Crafts
17. Mix 2 cups water with a little food coloring, add 6 cups of cornflour/cornstarch to make goop. (I hate it, but my urchins love it.)
18. Cut out and play paper dolls.
19. Watch a familiar DVD dubbed in a foreign language.
20. Make a house of cookies.
21. Volunteer to help a neighbor for free—just because.
22. String beads on dental floss to make a necklace.
23. Listen to Peter and the Wolf and act it out.
24. Make a milkshake or a smoothie.
25. Start this “childhood in a jar” project.
26. Make a lapbook.
27. Learn to sew.
28. Write a story.
29. Watch a Shakespeare play on video. HT: Buried Treasure.
30. Have a backyard carnival.
31. Make up a math scavenger hunt game or a treasure hunt for a younger brother or sister or for a friend.
32. Learn the alphabet in sign language.
33. Make sand pictures.
34. Make birthday cards for all your friends and relatives for the year. Date them and file them in date order to be ready to send.
35. Make a kite and fly it.
36. Plant a flower bed.
37. Write an old-fashioned, hand-written letter to a friend.
38. Go for a bike ride.
39. Try origami (Japanese paper-folding) or make a paper airplane and fly it.
40. Make a collage.
41. Play store—or library–or school—or???
42. Spring/summer clean.
43. Play a card game.
44. Play in the rain.
45. Play a map game.
46. Put on a play.
47. Open a day spa.
48. Build with LEGOS.
49. Learn a few magic tricks and produce your own magic show.
50. Give yourself –or a friend –a pedicure.
51. Take a long, hot bath.
52. Play hopscotch.
53. Swing. (“Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing ever a child can do.”)
54. Go camping–or stay home and camp out in your own dining room.
55. Create a new word. My new word for this month is semicolonic. I’m now trying to popularize it.
56. Start a lemonade stand.
57. Make and walk on tin-can stilts. We read about these in Ramona and Her Father.
58. Make a summer snack.
59. Blow bubbles.
60. Play with water guns.
61. Play scoop ball.
62. Laugh 400 times today. Keep count.
63. Visit a playground. But don’t go to the park on an August afternoon in Houston. There’s a story there that I’ll tell someday when I get over the trauma of it. It may be a while yet because it all happened about fifteen years ago. We’re talking Houston heat, sand, buried shoes, lots of tears and one exhausted, hot mother. I should have laughed. Not a happy memory.
64. Practice your Morse code— or your tap dancing.
65. Create your own Roxaboxen.
66. Arrange some flowers for a centerpiece.
67. Watch a movie based on your favorite children’s book.
68. Go to the library.
69. Memorize something meaningful: a psalm, a poem, a passage from the Bible, the Gettysburg Address.
70. Pop some popcorn.
71. Climb a tree.
72. Bathe the ponies. Or your dolls. Or the dog. Not the cat.
73. Practice tying knots.
74. Swim.
75. Wash the car, or wash someone else’s car.
76. Collect some canned goods for the food bank.
77. Dance to whatever music you have available.
78. Iron some clothes while listening to a recorded book.
79. Paint a picture: use watercolors, tempera, oil paints, acrylics, what ever you have on hand.
80. Organize your own marching band.
81. Draw a map of your block or of your town, or trace a map of your country and fill in the states or cities or other features.
82. Get a haircut. If you’re really adventurous, give yourself a haircut. (Has anyone ever done this—as an adult? I’m much too klutzy to cut my own hair.)
83. Find a joke and tell it someone else.
84. Practice playing a musical instrument. If you don’t play an instrument, try learning to play one, maybe the recorder or the harmonica.
85. Shoot baskets or play tennis.
86. Interact with nature.
87. Make your own fireworks for the Fourth of July. Engineer Husband really used to do this when he was a young adolescent, and I can’t believe his parents let him. He tried to make nitroglycerine once, but he got scared and made his father take it outside and dispose of it! Maybe you should just read about how fireworks are made and then imagine making your own.
88. Read another list of 101 things to do in the summer. You could stay busy reading lists of things to do and never really do anything!
89. Use fabric paints to decorate a shirt.
90. Walk around your block and pick up all the litter you can find.
91. Visit a nursing home. Bring handmade cards or pictures you drew or something to give away.
92. Read the book of Ruth in the Bible. Or another book of the Bible.
93. Rearrange the furniture in your bedroom.
94. Clean out your closet.
95. Make up a scavenger hunt.
96. Make a macaroni necklace. Or string beads.
97. Water the yard or the houseplants or the flowers you planted.
98. Write each of these activities on a separate piece of paper and fold the papers and put them in a jar. Choose two or three papers out of the jar whenever you need a suggestion for something to do.
99. Run around the block 3 times.
100. Make your own list of things to do when you’re bored.

Friday’s Center of the Blogosphere

May25

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere. Blaise Pascal

Calling all Walmart-haters, here’s another chain for you to demonize–Nakumatt. Next time I’m in Kenya (ha!), I think I’ll check it out.

Ariel at Bittersweet Life on obedience in the Christian life: ” . . . the cliff is where we always live. Obedience is always a desperate situation. We are constantly living in a state of moral emergency from which only Christ can extricate us. And awful things begin to happen when we make out as if obedience is merely a hobby.
When we remember that life in Christ is lived out on a cliff face, then we habitually drink deep of Jesus, the “fountain of life.” Obeying him is never easy. But we become addicted to Christ instead of our sin.”

Sarah Louise has some practical advice for graduates and for their parents, pretty good advice from an experienced graduate.

And Diane at Circle of Quiet writes about plans for the summer: ” . . .math for our family is like a cranky relative who gets resentful if you don’t visit often enough. Take the summer off? Well, you could get the cold shoulder for weeks, maybe months. It’s as if you’d never seen each other before. All those afternoons getting acquainted over tea could be for naught! So, we take care to nurture our math relationships all summer long. It saves a lot of trouble, and a lot of wasted time.” Absolutely, I agree. My best advice for homeschooling during the summer is, “Keep doing a little math every day.” Read for pleasure or for information, and DO MATH DAILY.

Book-Spotting #12

May22

Lanier Ivester recommends gardening books. I say that if I can’t garden, I can at least read about it.

Sarah at Reading the Past asks: “On the off-chance that any historical novelist reading this needs a subject for a new writing project (um, right), may I humbly suggest one of the following medieval women. Who else would you like to add to the list, royal or not, medieval or not?”

Dawn on The Books of Summer: “Every month or two I like to gather books with a seasonal flavor ~ arrange them in a basket, add a pretty ribbon, and place the basket somewhere on display in hopes of tempting curious and eager minds … What a lovely decorating scheme!

Jared’s doing a Literacy Check at Thinklings. Go over and tell them what you’re reading, and check out what everybody else is reading.