David Russell Mosley Ordinary Time 21 October 2014 The Edge of Elfland Hudson, New Hampshire Dear Friends and Family, As many of you know, I am a proponent of handwriting letters. One of my correspondents calls them ’49 cent miracles’. Actually, he called them 44 cent miracles, but stamps cost 49 cents now. Well, in a recent letter from a friend, he pointed out that while neither he nor I were raised in liturgical/sacramental churches, we have both found our... Read more
David Russell Mosley Ordinary Time St Teresa of Avila 15 October 2014 On the Edge of Elfland Hudson, New Hampshire Dear Friends and Family, I sometimes wonder about the way we (and by we I mean those who tend to align themselves with evangelical churches, but I’m sure it’s more widespread than this) use the word legalism. It feels as though we use this word as a shield to guard against asceticism openly and sometimes discipline secretly. As anyone who... Read more
David Russell Mosley Ordinary Time St Edward’s Day 13 October 2014 On the Edge of Elfland Beeston, Nottinghamshire Dear Friends and Family, I just wanted to give everyone a quick life update. As I mentioned a while back, my second-son (born a whole minute later than his elder brother) was diagnosed with cancer. Well, I am pleased to announce that the tumour, what we have been calling the dragon, is gone. I honestly don’t know all the details yet. We... Read more
David Russell Mosley Ordinary Time 10 October 2014 The Edge of Elfland Hudson, New Hampshire Dear Friends and Family Recently, there has been an influx of work concerning a way of living in Modernity called The Benedict Option. This notion derives from Alistair MacIntyre’s seminal work After Virtue. The idea is rather simple, in the fall of Rome and Western Civilisation as it was then known, the Benedictines served as pockets of resistance. These communities who had withdrawn from society... Read more
David Russell Mosley Ordinary Time 8 October 2014 The Edge of Elfland Hudson, New Hampshire Dear Friends and Family, That Hideous Strength is perhaps often viewed as one of the strangest and weakest of Lewis’s fictional books. It certainly makes little sense if we think of it as the culmination of a Space Trilogy since the entire book takes place on Earth. What’s more this book makes a sudden introduction of Arthurian mythology that is completely absent from the previous... Read more
David Russell Mosley Ordinary Time 20 September 2014 On the Edge of Elfland Hudson, New Hampshire Dear Friends and Family, I want to take a brief brake from my letters on C. S. Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy to bring to your attention two things I’ve seen today. The first is a video on the nature of heaven and earth I will share below. Please give it a watch (Hat Tip to Robin Parry at Theological Scribbles for posting this). In this... Read more
David Russell Mosley St John Chrysostom’s Day 2014 The Edge of Elfland Hudson, New Hampshire Dear Friends and Family, In Lewis’s Perelandra, we get much less of the angelic. Perelandra, or Venus as we know it, is at the point of decision where Tellus before it had failed. Two rational creatures, in the shape––but not in any of the standard hues––of humanity, have evolved from a rather fishier biological background and have been separated. The woman, along with first meeting... Read more
David Russell Mosley St Monica’s Day 2014The Edge of ElflandMapperley Park, Nottingham Dear Friends and Family, A few weeks ago I finished, for about the fourth or fifth time, reading C. S. Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy. These unsung science-fiction novels from the creator of Narnia have captured my maturing imagination. These novels discuss themes of sin, perfection, incarnation, cosmology, evolution, marriage, gender, and more. If you haven’t read them, I hope you will after reading my panegyric of them. The first... Read more
David Russell Mosley 22 August 2014 On the Edge of ElflandMapperley Park, Nottinghamshire Dear Friends and Family, First, let me say, sorry for the silence. I’ve posted a few times on our Caring Bridge site, but not much has been happening there either. Since my last letter (my vision of angels) here, we have said goodbye to Lauren’s mother; shipped all our belongings to America; moved in with a couple from our church (who are now on vacation); and generally just... Read more
David Russell Mosley 21 July 2014 On the Edge of Elfland Beeston, Nottinghamshire Dear Friends and Family, A few weeks ago, over on our Caring Bridge site (where you can read about our second son, Edwyn and his battle with the dragon called neuroblastoma), I posted some fatherly and theological reflections on one of my sons having cancer. I wrote this sentence, ‘I believed in angels, and other spirits; I believed in sacred spaces and that yet the whole world... Read more
Letters from the Edge of Elfland
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