Find yourself in a better story
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To Love and to Honour: A Review of Robin McKinley’s “Beauty”
“I was the youngest of three daughters. Our literal-minded mother named us Grace, Hope, and Honour, but few people except perhaps the minister who had baptized all three of us remembered my given name.” As a very young child, Honour renames herself “Beauty,” a nickname which sticks despite the fact that she is hardly the…
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a work of GENIUS
When P.G. Wodehouse, possibly the best comic writer who ever lived, had his first novel published, he sent a copy to his friend Bill Townend with these words inscribed: To Villiam Townend these first-fruits of a GENIUS at which the WORLD will (shortly) be AMAZED (You see if it won’t) from the author Sep 28.…
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rowing out to the darkness
It could be that God has not absconded but spread, as our vision and understanding of the universe have spread, to a fabric of spirit and sense so grand and subtle, so powerful in a new way, that we can only feel blindly of its hem. In making the thick darkness a swaddling band for…
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thoughts on “Being the Body”
I just finished reading Being the Body by Charles Colson and Ellen Vaughn. A friend lent it to me months ago, but during the school year I don’t get much chance to read. Anyway, the book’s central theme is the Church in its worldwide (“the church universal”) and local (“the church particular”) incarnations. Colson presents…
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Religion BookLine on Creating Culture
Religion BookLine, a division of Publishers Weekly, published this interview with Andy Crouch, author of Creating Culture, today. Crouch says, “As I read the work of academic sociologists like Peter Berger I became really convinced that the only way that cultures change is when people make more culture—which called into question a lot of the…
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gifted
“The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the LORD hath made even both of them.” Proverbs 20:9 I wrote the fantasy novel Worlds Unseen six years ago. At the time, I had some loose ideas about what it could say–besides telling a good story, which was my first priority! It touched on some of my…
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Tales from an Irish Hermitage
A few months ago, I was contacted by a nun in Ireland. She was trying to self-publish a book and wondered if I could give her any advice on formatting. I already knew her through an online community and had enjoyed her writing very much, so since I had a few weeks of vacation ahead…
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Flashpoint: A Review
Review of Flashpoint by Frank Creed Review by Rachel Starr Thomson The year is 2036. The place, Chicago—under control of a worldwide government called the One State. A father drives his children through the rain and drops them off under a bridge before fleeing the “Peacekeepers” on his trail. Little do Dave and Jen know…
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small ones
Four years ago, on a beautiful night in late June, my sister Tabithah was born. (I assume it was a beautiful night. Chances are it was humid and very warm, but I know it was green, and it wasn’t raining. In any case, the event made it beautiful.) I was twenty years old. Taba and…
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saintly service
Then came he to Derbe and Lystra: and, behold, a certain disciple was there, named Timotheus, the son of a certain woman, which was a Jewess, and believed; but his father was a Greek: Which was well reported of by the brethren that were at Lystra and Iconium. Him would Paul have to go forth…