David Russell Mosley Ordinary Time The Beheading of St. John the Baptist The Edge of Elfland Hudson, New Hampshire Dear Readers, As some of my letters have indicated, I’ve been feeling spiritually destitute of late. So, thanks to the help of some friends, I finally met with a spiritual director. He’s helping me to pray amidst what is still a new life to me of being a stay-at-home/work-from-home father of twins. Rather than try and reengage all the longer practices... Read more
David Russell Mosley Ordinary Time St. Augustine’s Day The Edge of Elfland Hudson, New Hampshire Dear Readers, Today, as my children napped, my wife and mother-in-law watched a little television, and my father-in-law, was running errands, I sat outside with my pipe and did some work and some reading. After my work and spiritual reading were done for the moment I turned to David Bentley Hart’s new collection of essays, A Splendid Wickedness. There I read, for the second time,... Read more
David Russell Mosley Ordinary Time St. Bartholomew’s Day The Edge of Elfland Hudson, New Hampshire Dear Readers, Today I was made aware of a fascinating tradition that goes on in Sandwich in England. There is an old chapel there dedicated to St. Bartholomew (you know, the apostle). There is an old tradition there––how old I don’t know––that on St. Bartholomew’s day, after a service held in the chapel, and a few other rituals, the children of the village run a... Read more
David Russell Mosley Ordinary Time 23 August 2016 The Edge of Elfland Hudson, New Hampshire Dear Readers, I’ve been spending a lot of time with C. S. Lewis lately, as my last letter indicated. I’m also reading Restoring Beauty: the Good, the True and the Beautiful in the Writings of C.S. Lewis by Louis Markos for review for Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal. In it I was reminded, as if I could ever forget, of Professor Kirke’s exclamation, “It’s all in... Read more
David Russell Mosley Ordinary Time 22 August 2016 The Edge of Elfland Hudson, New Hampshire Dear Readers, Since I’ve assigned it as a textbook for the intro theology class I began teaching today, I’ve be re-reading C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. I read this book, if not every year, then at least every other because I often find myself challenged by it. The other day, however, I came across a passage that I felt so accurately describes the feelings, and... Read more
David Russell Mosley Ordinary Time 20 August 2016 The Edge of Elfland Hudson, New Hampshire Dear Readers, Another week has come and gone. Here are the letters you seemed to particularly like from the past week. Read more
David Russell Mosley Ordinary Time 19 August 2016 The Edge of Elfland Hudson, New Hampshire Dear Readers, As I did a little background reading before my last letter on beauty, I decided it would be good to re-read Pope St. John Paul II’s Letter to Artists. This was only my second reading, my first coming just a months prior as I prepared a paper proposal for an upcoming conference. There are many things from this letter about which I could,... Read more
David Russell Mosley Ordinary Time 18 August 2016 The Edge of Elfland Hudson, New Hampshire Dear Readers, Well, I finished my annual re-read of Harry Potter a few nights ago, and rounded it off with a re-read of The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Hopefully, I’ll eventually get my hands on a copy of The Cursed Child, but until then, I have two primary thoughts from this re-read. The first concerns dementors and souls, again; and the second concerns muggleborns.... Read more
David Russell Mosley Ordinary Time 17 August 2016 The Edge of Elfland Hudson, New Hampshire Dear Readers, I’ve been trying to write you all morning. Each time I sat here and would two or three paragraphs written before deciding I was not happy with what I was writing. I began to get rather melancholic. So I stopped trying to write. I played a bit with my kids, but even there I was becoming short-tempered, so I turned to my domestic... Read more
David Russell Mosley Ordinary Time 16 August 2016 The Edge of Elfland Hudson, New Hampshire Dear Readers, A few years ago, while I was still a PhD student at the University of Nottingham, I made a commitment to make what decisions I could based on what is beautiful. I would walk daily to my desk at the university, a 1.3 mile walk, and I would try to decide my route based on beauty. Sometimes, it meant walking straight through High St.... Read more
Letters from the Edge of Elfland
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