It was Tilly’s birthday and she was excited about visiting a theater. Her aunt Gina was going to perform in the ballet, sleeping beauty. She had a surprise for Tilly.
When Tilly came to the theater, she followed Aunt Gina backstage. There, Gina gave her a costume to wear for the show. Aunt Gina danced beautifully.
Then she invited Tilly onstage to do a special birthday dance! Tilly felt so happy. After the show, she said, “I wish I could see it all over again.”
But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.
― C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism
Of all the children’s picture books we have read or reviewed for our yearly Best of the Best, none stands out more dearly to me this time of the year than a tale about a family in the early 20th century in the American Wild West. They settled in one of the most desolate regions of the West, the open, wind-swept prairies of Wyoming, and the story opens with their yearly ritual at the onset of winter: saying goodbye to their community schoolhouse, buying gobs of paper and pencils at the town store, and raiding the local library for pounds of books to last them through the isolating months ahead of closed roads and home-bound activity. Continue reading
Drum roll please… The results are in for the 2015 Best of the Best in all the respective media categories. Please see below and also the archives for previous years. Happy viewing and reading everyone, and as always, we would love to know what you think in the comment section below. Continue reading
One of the most awkward moments in my life happened the first time I visited an Orthodox Church. I came armed with my trusty notebook containing all the biblical questions I was prepared to hurl at anyone who might ask. From my infancy, I had known the Holy Scriptures which were intended to make me wise unto salvation; at that point in my life, however, they served more to puff up my ego. I thought I was prepared for any question about my faith, to give a defense in the form of words. What I was NOT prepared for was an argument in the form of images, a faith in the form of a divine feast, and a challenger in the form and substance of a little child. While I stood through the beautifully festive service with my notebook of interrogations, a wordless boy of not more than three next to me gazed upward in silent wonder at an icon of a saint. I put away my notebook and realized quickly that this babe was getting something that I was missing: wonder in the face of something or rather Someone much larger than my feeble intellect. Continue reading
Just finished Dicken’s Great Expectations with our older girls as an evening read aloud, a project which has lasted two years for us. It is hard to have patience in our age of soundbites with an author who was paid by the word and often seemed to multiply characters needlessly. But any reader who has spent time with his tomes and become acquainted with his universe of characters knows the power they have of teaching charity and a host of other virtues to hearts grown cold with indifference and self-centeredness.
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When a sick queen died, a horrible witch strove to become the heir of the throne. The king chose her as his wife, not knowing that she was a witch. But she deceived him completely and transformed the king’s seven sons into swans. The king’s daughter then married and saved her brothers from the nasty queen’s spell by making magic shirts for them which turned them back into princes. This book started in the Russian language for children, and you may find it at the library in the fairy tale section.
There is a joke among recovering fundamentalist Christians. It goes, “Why is pre-marital sex so wrong? Because it might lead to dancing.” While most Christians can agree with the former prohibition against sex outside of marriage, the latter taboo has brought frustration to many a footloose Christian who begs for a definition of exactly what kind of dancing leads to moral degradation. As for this recovering fundamentalist, I have never been happier than the first time I witnessed centuries-old folk dancing going on right in the fellowship hall of an Eastern Orthodox church. You can even say it was one of the things that led me to the Church. Continue reading
Two of our daughter’s favorite books had characters that had many interesting similarities and differences, Louise the Big Cheese by Elise Primavera and Fancy Nancy by Jane O’Connor. Here is her review: Continue reading
My children first heard about The Little Chapel that Stood in our homeschool study of the last 500 years. Beginning with the present century, Ground Zero and St. Paul’s Chapel stands as one of the most significant places of modern pilgrimage and remembrance. So when my girls heard that we were going to the New York City area for a concert trip, they begged me to visit the chapel they had read about which had captured their hearts.
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December 6/19, St. Nicholas
Archbishop of Myra in Lycia, the Wonderworker
Whose Relics Lie Principally in Bari, Italy
And Whose Legendary Brother Santa Claus Lives in the North Pole
It was unthinkable. Several years ago, we were celebrating the annual feast of St. Nicholas, and our priest confessed that there was not a single person in our parish whom we could wish a happy name’s day. My wife, who was pregnant at the time, turned to me and we decided then and there to start a trend that is all too common in other Orthodox and Eastern European Churches. Now, including my son, there are at least two boys named Nicholas in our parish. We are now more like the Greek family in My Big Fat Greek Wedding with every other person named Nick, Nikko, Nikki, or Nikolaki.
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Like Mendicant Monks... 