I got through it

Well, Trinity term has finally wound around and I was able to address the Oxford C. S. Lewis Society. I spoke on "Debriefing Letters to Malcolm." The thing was recorded; perhaps I can get a copy of you want one. The Society meets in Pusey House. Afterwards we went to Compline and had hot chocolate and conversation after that. Up past our bedtime last night! :-)

Our Weekend Retreat

Well, we've still got some people hanging around here somewhere, but the retreat is now officially over.  We had 15 folks attend last night, 7 stayed over and we had a total of 10 today.  Seems like everyone had a good time.  We had lots of good things to talk about in Letters to Malcolm, and, of course, everyone was really excited about being able to study a Lewis book in Lewis' house!

I kept meaning to get more pictures, but it didn't happen.  I should have delegated that.  When we walked down to the Six Bells for lunch, I did get this shot, at least.

Sheila just counted up everything and said the retreat came in short 5 pence!  :-)  Ha!

The Glennies just showed up for tea - I've got to run.  More later.

Fun on St. George's Day

The bunting is up!

 

One of our tour guides leads a tour for students studying at the Oxford Center for Christian Apologetics.  The afternoon weather has turned lovely.

Sheila has walked to the store and is taking a rest at a Cafe Nero cooling off before shopping!  She's getting stuff for our retreat this weekend.  We've also had a painter come by to compose an estimate for painting the exterior.  We are praying the Lord will provide for that.

And the pesky moles are back!!!

Heading into the Retreat Weekend

Hey, Folks:

David here.  Thought I'd jot down a few things before spending some time this afternoon studying for the retreat this weekend.

The Trinity term will begin next week.  This means I'll be back over at Wycliffe Hall, taking a couple of classes and having fellowship with the brethren.  I plan to keep working at getting more tour guides from there to help us.  I am especially looking forward to the last week because that will be the week of the preaching seminar and my good friend, The Revd. Victor Morgan of St. Luke's EMC in Blue Ridge will be joining me.  He comes here every year and every year I wish I could join him.  This time he's joining me!

We have a few people from Wycliffe coming to our retreat this weekend.  All total, we have about a dozen.  Some we got from the local C. S. Lewis Society, some from church, and, as I said, some from Wycliffe.  There's also a professor from Texas coming to join us who is here on sabbatical.  We also have a grad student from Kings in London coming over.  It's going to be a good group and we are all excited about being able to study Letters to Malcolm together. 

Sheila and I are looking forward to having some more home folks visit us this spring.  Archbishop Foley Beach and a couple of other ACNA bishops will be here for a couple of days.  The Buntings from ACOTR will be here for a week.  Lauri Moyle from ACOTR will also visit -  hopefully with his family.  It's going to be so great to see everyone.

Something else I would appreciate prayer for is that next week, Tuesday, I'll be speaking at the first meeting of the Oxford C. S. Lewis Society for the Trinity term on the topic "Debriefing Letters to Malcolm."  I was going to speak on Lewis' narrative poem, "The Queen of Drum," but since I'm spending so much time preparing for the retreat, I thought I'd make my talk an extension of it - the old 2-birds-with-1-stone thing.

There is still nothing on the horizon vocationally.  CCS turned down my application for a history teaching position.  I'm talking with Inter-Varsity about a Faculty and Graduate Student ministry at UTC, but that's creeping along.  Just checked with the diocese (ADOTS) and there's nothing for me there right now.  There's always the possibility that we would do another year here.  But we just want the Lord's will.  After all, that's all we want, isn't it.  His way is perfect.  We and all those we love are safest when we walk in that loving path.

Gotta get busy.  I'll have a report on the retreat next week.  Cheers!

Odds & Ends on April Fools' Day

No fooling here; just some odds and ends.

Our plans for our retreat the weekend of 24/25 April are going well.  We have 7 people coming.  Most are local students.  One is a professor from Texas, who will be in Oxford on sabbatical, and another is a grad student from London.  I will make a presentation about the retreat to our church tomorrow evening.  We'll see if anyone else comes from that.  The important thing about tomorrow evening is that it is a prayer meetiing - very important to pray for things like this.

We've got three scholars staying in the house now, so we are more back to business as usual; it's been too quiet!  Lots of big tours coming through and one of my new tour guides got his feet wet with his first tour yesterday.

I'm having tea with Walter Hooper this afternoon to go over a survey of the Kiln's property from 1936.  I'm wanting to draw an illustrated map so people can get a better idea of what the place looked like in those days.

We finally heard from Archbishop Foley's secretary about a visit in May.  He's going to bring a couple of other ACNA bishops with him!  Looks like I'm going to be tour-guide and host for a couple of days.  Will be fun.

We had a lovely young couple from East Brainerd to visit for a tour yesterday.  He works for Precept and she's a doctor or medical technician of some kind at T.C.Thompson.  Great to see some folks from home.

I visited a couple of pubs with Michael Ward last night; he says there's lots of new and good books about C. S. Lewis coming out this year; that's good.

Sheila got to give a tour of the house for a young 10-year-old grand-daughter of some friends yesterday.  That was fun.  But what a windy day!  It's been gusting at 20 and 30 mph for the last two days and nights!  Thankfully it's a little calmer today with sun.

The flowers are blooming everywhere!  We're getting quite familiar with the classic British primrose.  They are in two sizes, like pansies and violets.  Spring is springing for sure.

We are rather schizophrenic with our worship these days.  When school is in term, we go to Pusey House in the mornings, which is extemely, as-high-as-you-can-get Anglo-Catholic.  In the evenings, we go to St. Ebbe's Headington - which is about as low liturgically as you can get!  But Pusey House is not holding services since term is out, so this Easter Sunday we are going to go back over to St. George's Chapel, Windsor, to worship with the Queen; just because we can, it's an easy drive, and we know it would make a lot of you happy.

Be sure to also visit my Facebook page, where my "tweets" are posted, in case you want more of an idea about what we're thinking about these days - and any other odd things that might show up; like grand-children pictures!! :-)

Love you all!