The IE is essentially the 1662 BCP of old, but unlike the Cambridge edition it is not just that and nothing more—it is the 1662 judiciously tweaked and supplemented in a way calculated to attract both newcomers to the BCP and long-time Anglicans.

Tributary streams remind us that every attitude flows to the sea. Our reactions to the streams of today’s circumstances feed the rivers of our everyday attitudes.

Our disagreements are about real things, but people are real too.

The main posture of a liberal arts education is slowing down, rest, seeing. But if we just train students to only strive, reach, stretch for something more, then suffering will come as a wasteful, meaningless interruption.

"After all, if you are too small to do anything, what need is there to stir!”

Then I read a book like Raft of Stars, and I am again filled with wonder. Not just at nature–at rivers, forests, and fields–but at my children themselves.

When our own churches are divided and bubbled up in their own media worlds, unable to agree on basic “facts” related to current events, you know its time to take a more theological approach to this thing we call the “news.” Bilbro’s rich reflection is a fine place to start; let it be read and discussed widely in the families, churches, and neighborhoods that offer us real and lasting alternatives to the silos that so often distract us.

One answer from Kingsnorth’s fiction lies in limits. No human, nor all of us put together, is sovereign over the fate of the world, despite the unprecedented power we enjoy over life and death within it.

A short review cannot do justice to the range of reasons visitors to the Porch should read Kingsnorth’s three novels, so I’ll begin simply by saying: Read them. These are thought-provoking, challenging, and linguistically creative novels.

Time and time again, in both mythic and recorded history, humans have celebrated the passing of a hardship by gathering together in merriment with good food and drink and song.