The Warren & the World Vol 5, Issue 43

The Warren & the World is Story Warren’s weekly newsletter, providing a round-up of our favorite things from around the web as well as a review of what was on our site over the past week. We’re glad you’re here!

News from S.D. Smith

Our own S. D. Smith has a special announcement. (No, it’s not that The Green Ember: Book III is ready…yet.) But it’s still very exciting!

Around the Web

Helping Our Kids to Celebrate God’s Beautiful, Diverse Creation

Trillia Newbell writes at Risen Motherhood on navigating the challenges of teaching our children to celebrate the variety of God’s creation.

“Mommy, look at her, she’s really tall.”
“Why is he sitting in that chair, Dad?”
“I have freckles. You have freckles. But my skin is darker than yours.”
These are only a tiny fraction of the comments we hear from children as they learn to relate to the world around them. They are curious and often expressive without much regard for what they are saying and whom they are speaking about. There’s sweetness to their curiosity. But with all things, we want to teach and guide them so that they are knowledgeable about the God-given differences seen in others. Like you’d teach them with anything else, it’s essential that we begin to teach our children about creation, specifically the image of God, at an early age. If you want your children to embrace those who are different than them, then you must start with helping them understand that God is the Creator of every tribe, tongue, and nation.

Every Moment Holy: Downloads

Rabbit Room Press’s new book Every Moment Holy is a fantastic collection of liturgies for everyday life. I highly recommend investing in the gorgeous leather bound hardcover edition now for sale at the Rabbit Room store for your family to enjoy together. But some of the liturgies are now available as downloads for your use.

One of our hopes for Every Moment Holy is that it will be a book that’s not only read and enjoyed but used over and over again by individuals, families, and communities. We’re delighted to see that’s already happening and the book hasn’t even been officially released yet!
Early on we recognized that it’s hard to lead a liturgy unless everyone in the room has a copy to read from, and since it’s unlikely that you’ll have a copy of the book on hand for everyone, the liturgies need to be easily accessible and printable.

Our Gathering Song

Jennifer Strange writes at Art House America on the song that has become their family tradition.

This morning, our third son threw a bin of Duplo across the living room because I said he could not watch “Goldie and Bear” right then. At noon, our fourth son toddled into the bathroom and delightedly threw his father’s toothbrush and toothpaste and hair gel and spare glasses and lip balm from their drawer into the tub. After school, our second son complained loudly that everyone hates the cello and no one should ever practice it, least of all him, before playing “Minuet in G” faster than would seem humanly possible with all the rage of a death metal mosh pit. And by the time my husband came home from work, our first son had been snacking for two hours and didn’t want to set the table for dinner, thank you very much.

I’m a Mom Who Doesn’t. You Don’t Have to, Either.

Elizabeth Spencer reminds us of the freeing power of the words, “I don’t.”

A while ago, I told a mom friend I was hosting a sleepover. I confessed to her I rarely let my daughters have them because I always get all worked up about what the girls will do and where they’ll sleep and if, heaven help me, EVERYONE IS HAVING A GOOD TIME.
“I don’t do them, either,” she told me.
Shortly after that confession, I told another mom my daughters were making dinner that night– something they’d never done before in spite of being teenagers, because I’m a control-freak, neat-freak mom who never cooked with her kids.
“I don’t cook with mine, either,” she told me.
I. Don’t.

Around the Warren

The Moments and the Miles

Glenn McCarty shares some of his recent birthday reflections and encourages us to pray for the faith to have real sight; to see the mundane moments turn into miles that allow us to trace our journey in hindsight.

As milestone birthdays go, turning 38 scarcely qualifies. And yet, as I found myself approaching that signpost a few weeks ago, I began to find more significance than I had anticipated. Turning 38 means two decades since the spring I graduated high school, and the fall I started college. I was 18 all those years ago, when Chumbawumba and Sugar Ray were on the radio, boy bands were still (mercifully) a few years off, and I looked at the future much like the “fresh, green breast of the new world,” which F. Scott Fitzgerald called it.

Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes: Book Review

Peter Nimble is one of the most delightful characters I’ve ever met and it’s always fun to recommend your favorite characters to everyone around.

“Adventure ho!” reads the author’s inscription on the first page. Jonathan Auxier is a friend of a friend who lent me her signed copy of Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes for a read. Auxier wasn’t wrong. From the first page, Peter Nimble rollicks forward through adventure with barely a missed beat along the way.
Peter Nimble is an orphan, blinded by a raven, found as a baby floating in the river by sailors, who turn him over to the town magistrates, who name him and leave him to fend for himself. He takes up with a family of cats under the porch of an alehouse until the whole lot are found by the tavern owner, scooped into a bag and tossed in the river. There Peter’s innate skills as a thief show themselves when he looses the knots and swims to safety.
And that’s in the first two pages.