The Back Porch
1. Garden Here, he said, we cut a crease In which to set the seed. Tend the roots and I will bless Whatever fruit is made, Whether fig or olive grow To sanctify the air, Magnolia or willow, The leaves of common prayer. Treat them with a touch as mild As children would demand. Earth…
Book Review: Guide to the Mass from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer
Jackie Jamison and the Rev. Sean McDermott. Guide to the Mass from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer: For Anglican Youth and Newcomers. Charlottesville, VA: Earth and Altar Publishing, 2020. 76 pp. Paperback $12.49. Guide to the Mass from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer: For Anglican Youth and Newcomers is the inaugural work published…
An Homily Concerning Prayer Part III
The Third Part of the Homily of Prayer Ye were taught in the other part of this Sermon, unto whom ye ought to direct your prayers in time of need and necessity, that is to wit, not unto angels or saints, but unto the eternal and everliving God: who, because he is merciful, is always…
A Thanksgiving for the Things We Have Always Done
I grew up in a church that prized its ability to change. We regularly tried new music styles. We tried new fellowship formats and formation methods. We tried new service formats. Change was good. And as I saw other congregations of our denomination shrinking and dying in the 90s while clinging to the same songs…
Every Angel Is Terrifying: A Review of The Elegy Beta by Mischa Willet
The Elegy Beta by Mischa Willet Mockingbird Press, 98 pages, $12 paperback No one, apart from a few oddball formalists, wants to write light verse. James Tate maybe but he is dead.[1] Simon Armitage, sometimes, but the English are a different matter. On the whole American poetry is very serious business indeed—a business that is…
John the Baptist’s Brain Scan
Clinical History:Fetal synaesthesia and involuntary ecstasy; sudden adult-onset soteriological hydrophilia. Findings:There is pervasiverubicund pigmentationof the frontal lobe andluxury perfusionof the mid-cortical gyrisuggesting locust-ingestion ketogenesis.Patient’s sulciare focally engorgedwith desert flower honey.Hypertrophic changesto the circle of Willisreveal vaticination. Impression:MRI findings suggest Nazarite syndrome. Further testing with sandal thongs is indicated to assess digital non-compliance. The patient should…
A Baptized World from Protology to Eschatology
Sacramental theology begins on page one. God prefigures the great regeneration of all things in the initial generation of all things. The first explicit lesson that we are taught in the opening verses of the Scriptures is that God is the creator of everything. The first implicit lesson that we learn is that God created…
An Homily Concerning Prayer Part II
The Second Part of the Homily Concerning Prayer In the first part of this Sermon ye heard the great necessity, and also the great force, of devout and earnest prayer declared and proved unto you, both by divers weighty testimonies, and also by sundry good examples of holy Scripture. Now shall you learn whom you…
Book Review: Christ and Calamity by Harold L. Senkbeil
Christ and Calamity: Grace & Gratitude in the Darkest Valley. By Harold L. Senkbeil. Bellingham, WA: Lexham (2020). 168 pp. (plus x). $9.99 (paper). $0.99 (Kindle). In the midst of the uncertain times in which we live due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, Harold Senkbeil’s Christ and Calamity: Grace and Gratitude in the Darkest Valley speaks…
Confirmation in Classical Anglicanism
At the conclusion of the 1662 baptismal liturgy, the minister charges the godparents: Ye are to take care that this Child be brought to the Bishop to be confirmed by him, so soon as he can say the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, in the vulgar tongue, and be further instructed in…