Author: Amanda McGill

The Common and Best Things

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While struggling against discontentment with the everydayness of life, it can be tempting to seek escape from the mundane. But, perhaps the way of joy is to come closer to the common– to become more attentive to the very things that seem endless. Perhaps faith in the God who chooses bread, wine, and water as his sacraments means a faith that insists upon meaning in the most common things. Sixteenth century Anglican clergyman and poet Thomas Traherne believed this: “I was guided by an implicit faith in God’s goodness: and therefore led to the study of the most obvious and common things. For thus I thought within myself: God being, as we generally believe, infinite in goodness, it is most consonant and agreeable with His nature, that the best things should be most common. For nothing is more natural to infinite goodness, than to make the best things most frequent; and only things worthless scarce. Then I began to enquire what things were most common: Air, Light, Heaven and Earth, Water, the Sun, Trees, Men and …

The Breastplate of St. Patrick

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I look forward every year to St. Patrick’s Day and Trinity Sunday because of singing “The Lorica [or Breastplate] of St. Patrick.” It is a glorious expression of the cosmic realities of our Christian faith. Here is a beautiful arrangement by Melville Cook, sung by St. Peter’s Singers of Leeds: What is a Lorica? The original meaning of “Lorica” is armor or a breastplate. It developed, in the Christian monastic tradition, to mean a prayer of protection. These meanings merged in the reality that knights would often inscribe prayers upon their armor or pray these prayers before they went into battle. Are there other examples of loricas? Yes, there is the “Lorica of Gildas.” The Lorica, Rob tu mo bhoile, a Comdi cride, forms the basis for the hymn “Be Thou My Vision.” The Fursey Lorica is also particularly beautiful: The arms of God be around my shoulders The touch of the Holy Spirit upon my head, The sign of Christ’s cross upon my forehead, The sound of the Holy Spirit in my ears, The …

“Grand Ordinariness:” Thoughts on Cooking with Limits

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One of my favorite books is Robert Farrar Capon’s “cookbook” The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection. Originally written by an Episcopal priest in 1967, it is a gem of a book, describing a great-hearted embrace of creation that fills your soul with joy and laughter. As I was thinking about cooking with constraints during Lent, I was reminded of Capon’s discussion of “ferial” versus “festal” cooking. “Ferial” cooking refers to everyday meals that depend on stretching out expensive food items, like meat, as far as they possibly should go.  Capon insists that both of these have their place, but that there should be a sharp distinction between ordinary eating and extraordinary eating. Capon discusses how the limits of “ferial” cooking have actually led to superb culinary creativity. I often think about how being human means to be limited and how real freedom comes with accepting our limits with joy. This is yet another example of how the accepting of limits becomes the wellspring of creativity. Capon states, “The ferial cuisine, you see, was the poor man’s invention out of necessity, …

A Thousand Small Choices

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I sometimes find myself getting flustered about Lent, unsure about what it’s supposed to be accomplishing within me. I think this is mostly because I start worrying about my emotions, whether or not I’m inwardly responding with right and authentic feelings. In general, influenced by books such as N.T. Wright’s After You Believe and lots of C.S. Lewis, I’ve realized this kind of self-centered focus on my emotions is, in fact, the unhelpful leftovers of the Romantic movement of the 19th century and the Existentialist movement in the early 20th. Not to say that our emotions are not important barometers of our inward condition, but they are not the measure of our virtue, our Christlike character. As Wright states, “Virtue. . . is what happens when someone has made a thousand small choices, requiring effort and concentration, to do something which is good and right but which doesn’t ‘come naturally’ — and then, on the thousand and first time, when it really matters, they find that they do what’s required ‘automatically,’ as we say. . . Virtue is what happens …

A Letter to My Daughter on the Conversion of St. Paul

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Today, we celebrate the Conversion of St. Paul. I grew up believing that his dramatic Damascus Road experience was normative for Christians. I remember how many times I heard other young people share their testimony “I grew up in a Christian family” as though it were an apology. I hope that you never feel apologetic for not having a dramatic testimony and that you never feel like you need to create one either. But at the same time, I hope that your father and I do not overreact to our background, full of so much good. Instead of only emphasizing our corporate experience within the church, I pray that we can foster in you that story-telling spirit that glories in telling about God’s grace to individual sinners, “of whom I am the worst.”

The Cultivation of Christmas Trees

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I came across this beautiful poem by T.S. Eliot– “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees” a few years ago. I think it is the perfect reminder of what we are aiming for in all of our Advent preparations and attempt to fully celebrate Christmastide. This is what we want for our children and for ourselves– that the “accumulated memories of annual emotion” might be “concentrated into a great joy, which shall be also a great fear.” The Cultivation of Christmas Trees There are several attitudes towards Christmas, Some of which we may disregard: The social, the torpid, the patently commercial, The rowdy (the pubs being open till midnight), And the childish — which is not that of the child For whom the candle is a star, and the gilded angel Spreading its wings at the summit of the tree Is not only a decoration, but an angel. The child wonders at the Christmas Tree: Let him continue in the spirit of wonder At the Feast as an event not accepted as a pretext; So that the …

Double Vision in Advent

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Advent historically splits our vision into two focal points in time: the first coming of Christ in the manger and His second coming in glory. For some reason, this dual vision unsettles me. And, it’s probably supposed to, in the wisdom of our forbearers. We are not allowed to only rejoice in the tiny baby in the manger, but we must grapple with the reality that this is also the one who died and rose again and will come again to judge both the quick and the dead.

Why the Church Year, Part 2

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Celebrating the Church Year as fully as I can is another way of wisdom that helps me to be “smaller” and tunes the music of my life to the hymn of all creation. By remembering saints’ days , I am reminded that I am surrounded by a chorus of “so great a cloud of witnesses,” — that the goal of life is not happiness or self-satisfaction, but the imitation of Christ. By participating in the seasons, I join in with the Church of God throughout history and submit my soul to the authority of the ages. I am guided in my devotion to Christ, following the tempo and notation of the masters.

Why the Church Year?

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Most of our parish members grew up in non-liturgical Christian churches. So, for many of us, the historical church year was a compelling, but foreign concept. Our priest, Fr. Wayne, often says that it takes around 10 years for the church year to get in your bones, deeper in your yearly rhythm than the secular calendar. As we approach the beginning of a new church year with this Advent season, we want to consider a few reasons why in fact this is a wise practice, both godly and practical for our families.  The human condition of living in time, enjoying change (at times!) and yet also needing permanence. C.S. Lewis, through the words of the demon Screwtape, states: “The humans live in time, and experience reality successively. To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change. And since they need change, the Enemy [God] (being a hedonist at heart) has made change pleasurable to them, just as He has made eating pleasurable. But since He does …