Weekly Links: culture, condolences, and more

"The Freakishness of Christianity":

The assumption that evangelicals own American culture and politics has ended. This is good for minority groups, for other Christians, and for those who are still searching. But the radicalness of Moore, who by right of inheritance should be America’s Culture Warrior in Chief, is that he thinks it’s good for evangelicals, too.

"How to Write a Condolence Note": Helpful and kind.



"Ballast":

The first twenty-four hours or so after this potential diagnosis, similar to thelast twenty-four hours after the last lethal diagnosis, I felt like I was on a ship being ferociously tossed by the waves. Rolling this way and that. And all I could do was cling to the side of the boat hoping that it would not go down. Is there enough ballast? Has the truth been buried deep enough within me? Will I survive this storm?

"How to access a million stunning, copyright-free antique illustrations released by the British Library":  wow!


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Updates to the blog

This post is mostly for folks who (like me) read most of their blogs through an RSS feed-reader (like AOL Reader or Bloglovin') and so rarely actually visit the actual blog site itself.

I've made a few changes to my blog in the past month or so, and wanted to highlight them for you. First, my blog has more than one page now. Aside from the homepage that you land on when you click through to my site, I have:

-an About Me page. This has a slightly longer bio, as well as contact information, should you want it.

-I have a My Books page, too. This is exactly what it sounds like: information about my books. :)

-I have a Blogroll page. This lists (by category) various blogs and websites and podcasts I enjoy. I hope you'll find some good reading there!

-I have a page that tells you where else to find me online. This includes links to articles and interviews I've done elsewhere on the web, as well as links to my Ravelry and Goodreads profiles.

-There is now a Posts by Category page. These are divided into four major categories:
     -Faith. This includes church year posts, devotional thoughts, etc.
     -Family. This includes posts on mothering, marriage, and parenting.
     -Homemaking. This is where you'll find things like recipes and housekeeping posts.
     -Stories. This is where you'll find my book reviews, TV & movie reviews, writing posts, etc.
All of these categories have clickable sub-categories, so it should be pretty easy to specifically find whatever it is you're looking for.

-a Church Year Resources page. A few of the linked-to posts here are mine, but most of them are posts from around the web that I've found informative, inspiring, or helpful in my quest to celebrate the church year at home. I hope you'll find them useful, too!

All of these pages are accessible through labeled tabs at the top of my blog.

Other changes
Aside from adding the above pages, I've made a few more tweaks:

-I updated my template. It has a wider textbox and a more pleasing background. I know I find it more pleasing to the eye than that old, cramped design!

-I joined the Amazon affiliate program. You've probably noted that on some of my posts (mostly my book reviews), I've posted Amazon links. Most of you probably know how the Amazon affiliate program works, but in case you don't, here's the quick version: if you click through to Amazon from my blog, and buy something there (whether it's something I recommend or not), I get paid a small percentage of your purchase price. Also, it's anonymous. I can see what people buy, but have no idea who bought it.
I happily use Amazon all the time myself, which is why I felt okay joining their program. Click through their links if you want to, don't if you don't - I just hope you read and enjoy my posts! :)

-I joined Bible Gateway's Blogger Grid.  Bible Gateway's another site I've used for a long time - it's been my go-to for years, for those times when I've wanted to look up Bible passages online - so I was happy when they asked me to join their blog network! I'm also looking forward to clicking around their site and investigating the other bloggers on the network - the quality of the bloggers I recognize make me suspect that the ones I don't are probably pretty good!


I think that's it. I've been kind of sprucing things up for a while now, so I might have forgotten to list one of the changes. But, overall, I hope I've made this an easier-to-use, more welcoming place. Take a look around, and let me know what you think!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Christian Regency Romance Blog

I'm happy to announce the launch of Regency Reflections, a blog about Christian romance novels set in the Regency (think the time of Jane Austen, Napoleon, and Constable). This is a group blog, and I'm honored to be blogging alongside many talented authors, including Ruth Axtell Morren, Laurie Alice Eakes, and Naomi Rawlings.

What can you expect from the blog? Well, if you'll hop over and read Kristi Ann Hunter's exellent kick-off post, you'll see that it's going to be a mix of history, book reviews, author interviews, and devotional thoughts.

I'll be blogging there about twice a month, starting this Friday, when I'm going to share a bit about love, romance, and John Donne. (Because what's a good marriage without a bit of poetry?)  I hope you'll check it out!  And if it's intriguing to you, go ahead and add it to your feedreader, so you can enjoy some fun chatter about books, beaux, and blessings as we explore this fascinating era and all the fun stories that spring from it.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

look for me, baby

It's been a bit more than a month since my old computer died, but now I'm all set up on a spiffy little (and I mean little) new one. I love it; I've christened it Baby Ivan.

The past month has been full of good things, and a lot of them, I think, have been helped by being offline. There's been more breathing room in life, and in that time, I've:

-got our homeschool organized and started
-got some peace about having to leave our old church
-finish plotting my next novel (so excited about this one!)
-start a new housework routine
-thought about how I need to change how I use my computer
-read lots of books (reviews upcoming)
-learn how to care for long hair

Yes, the last one is a little weird, but doing the research was fun. I've been growing my hair out for a year now, and I thought that since I was planning on continuing, I ought to find out how to do it properly. Most interesting tip I found? That long hair ought to be treated as if it were old lace. Why? Because if your hair is very long at all, it's also very old, and so it's got to be treated gently or it will fall apart (i.e., start to split).

Most practical tip? Um, don't cut it. No, honestly, that's apparently what most people get wrong. They're always told to trim ever 6-8 weeks, but if you do that, you're probably cutting most, if not all, of your growth. The truth is, if your hair is healthy, you don't have to trim it more than about every six months.

Huh. I didn't think my first blog back would be talking about hair. But, there you go. I can braid it all the way around my head now, and I'm very happy about that.

Anyway, I missed you all. Though I've kept up on reading blogs (and so many of you are so encouraging), I've missed being part of the conversation. I'm looking forward to sharing more books, and homeschool plans, and kid stories, and church year celebrations, and novelist adventures as the year (finally! I hope!) slips out of summer and into the glorious, crisp, lovely clean air of fall.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

p.s. the title of this post refers to a song by Fiction Family. It's good. Buy it on iTunes. :)

Advent continues

but blogging aparently does not. :)

Bless all of you still faithfully writing on your blogs during this season. I greatly enjoy reading your entries. Sadly, I haven't been able to keep up with blogging, as every spare minute is going towards crafting. I love, love, love this handmade holidays idea. But next year, I want to start in JANUARY.

peace of christ to you,
Jessica Snell

A couple of experiments

One of the characteristics of a good homemaker, I think, is that she is an irrepressible experimenter. Always tweaking her household routine, always trying to make things a little better, make things run a little smoother. Though she sticks with what works, anything that doesn't is liable to be changed, to see if it can be made more efficient, more welcoming, more homey.

I've found myself in the middle of several experiments. I blame the new year.

One of them is this blog. I had so much fun during Advent, that I decided that trying to celebrate the whole church year was a good idea. And being a writer, I thought that writing about it every day would be the best way to spur myself towards learning how to celebrate it. So far, I'm happy with this experiment. At the end of the year (St. Andrew's Day! or thereabouts), I'm hoping that I'll have laid the groundwork for celebrating the church year every year for the rest of my life.

Another one I started last week, and it came about largely because of this blog. Doing research for this blog has had me digging into the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) more than I have since I first started attending the Episcopal Church and was trying desperately to learn the order of service! And in doing that, and in thinking about how to celebrate the church year every day, I've rediscovered morning prayer.

Since I have kids, the biggest part of my particular homemaking job is taking care of my children. And one of the most time-consuming aspects of that is nursing my son, who's only 10 1/2 months old. I usually use the time he's nursing to read, but I've decided that, at least some of the time, I ought to be reading more edifying stuff than movie reviews on the internet. So, for at least the next week, I'm going to try reading the morning prayer service out of the BCP while I'm nursing Gamgee down for his morning nap. I tried it a few days last week, and I did it this morning, and so far it seems to be doing exactly what I'd hoped: it's ordering my day. Starting the day praying along with the Psalms and hymns and prayers in the BCP is starting my day with the reminder that the earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, that I am the Lord's and all that is in me is his. It's very good.

And it seems like a good experiment to start during Ordinary Time. :)


The Morning Prayer service is almost like a mini-church year all on its own. It has the same structure every time you do it (like each day has morning, noon and night), but small pieces of it changes day to day based on the season, the day of the week, which Psalm you've read last and, also, just whatever things are on your heart to talk to the Lord about, during the "other intercessions" part. I like that pattern of sameness and change. We need both.



And that's sort of the way homemaking experiments work too. You might experiment with vegetarian meals, but you still feed your family something healthy every night. You might experiment with how and when you clean the bathroom, but you still make sure that your family has a decent place to wash up. You might tweak your laundry schedule, but you still want to make sure your family has clean sheets. Sometimes our techniques change, but our big, overarching goals don't. I might learn more about what it means to obey the Lord, but I expect that even when I'm eighty, obeying him is still going to be on the top of my list of what I want to accomplish.

Lord have mercy.


So what are you all trying at home that's new and different? How's it working out?


peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

on the practical and the spiritual

I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying writing this blog. (Here, watch me try: "Lots! I'm enjoying it lots!" See, wasn't that eloquent?)

But I've run into a slight snag: this blog is about homemaking and the church year, and while I'm under the impression that most of my posts should be about both topics, sometimes I want to write a post just about the church year, or one just about homemaking.

For the past few weeks, it's seemed to me that this might be breaking the rules, but I think I've decided (fiat me!) that it's not. 'Cause it's my blog.


Oh, okay, I guess I actually have a little more reason than that. The truth is that it's all about Jesus. If you're a Christian, everything you do is to be done to the glory of God. So, hopefully, when I write a post that's just about the practicalities of homemaking, you'll understand that I write it on the assumption that the recipe I'm cooking, or the cleaning technique I'm using, or the garden I'm planting is being cooked, used or planted to the glory of God. All things done excellently, for God's glory.

A much greater man, J.S. Bach, used to inscribe an acronym for "To the Glory of God Alone" on all of his written music. The notes, of course, being notes and not words, wouldn't spell out the gospel (though I know I have some musician friends who would argue differently!). But he wanted it understood that everything he did was with a mind of pleasing Christ. Writing down notes was practical, doing it for God's glory was spiritual, but it was all one thing.


So, while I intend this blog to look at the relationship between the liturgical church year and the job of homemaking, sometimes I'll just be talking about one or the other. Even though not all the individual posts will tie the two together, hopefully the blog as a whole will.


Okay, thanks for letting me muse on that subject. Back to more normal pontificating shortly! :D

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

a post a day

Or close. That's what I want to do on this blog, but I've found the actual homemaking and church-going interfering with my grand plans.

So I'm trying something new. Using Blogger's cool "save as draft" feature, I'm going to plot out my posts on the weekend, and polish up one a day for posting. So check back often, there and you should find something new!

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica