Story Warren

Kindling Imagination for Kingdom Anticipation

The Warren & The World Vol 8, Issue 16

by Leave a Comment

We’re at the stage that the first half of Newton’s first law of physics applies to: objects at rest tend to stay at rest. If you’ve been socially distancing and working and educating from home and all the things we’re supposed to do, then you’re probably feeling this: it’s starting to feel normal. My cat is sleeping on my lap, perfectly content to stay there in perfect, purring peace. But tonight, I know she’ll want to play and run. May you find yourself living well in the tension: purring in perfect peace in this new normal, but not forgetting the joy that is a life well lived outside your doors.

Around the Web

He Made Us to Grow

Lore Wilbert gives us another nature illustration, and it’s a good one.

  • Are you weary yet of all the illustrations we can make with nature for our lives? Too bad. Here’s another one. God put us in a garden, amongst seasons and roots and leaves and shoots and fruits and fallows and soil and labor and groans and birth and death and he did it all for a reason. Here is the reason I’m finding today:
    Last fall a friend stopped by for tea on her way home from the local plant nursery and brought with her a small plant with an orange flower for which I do not know the exact name but which I have been meagerly nourishing with water when I remember since then.
    Read more

How to Survive This Virus

Ann Voskamp reminds us that “The only way to travel life’s journey is: Accept brutal hardships on one hand, while gripping Brave Hope in the other.”

  • It feels like we are living through history,” I mumble it to the Farmer this morning as I make the bed.
    “We are — we always are.”
    “But — I don’t want to be living through this kind of history.” I look up at him.
    “But HIStory — is whose story?” He smiles.
    40-ish days of quarantine now so far.
    Half the planet locked down behind their doors to escape a strange & novel virus.
    I mean — c’mon.
    Read more

Introducing: The Brave Artists Club

“You have to be brave to be an artist,” we learned from Henry and the Chalk Dragon. Well, here’s your chance. 

  • The Brave Artists Club is a free family art experience featuring a variety of artistic activities and mediums taught by illustrators, cartoonists, painters, potters, leatherworkers, and writers who are part of the Rabbit Room community. We hope this fun, eclectic journey will spark imagination, camaraderie, and creative courage.
    Read more

Stuff For You

Book lists and printables and programs, oh my!

Around the Warren

Eventown, by Corey Ann Haydu

Laura Peterson reviews an upper middle grade novel.

  • The first thing to catch my eye about Corey Ann Haydu’s Eventown was the phrase “twin sister” on the inside flap. Being a twin myself, I love reading twin stories. It’s so interesting to me to see what authors imagine twin life to be like, whether it’s close to my own experience or not. I’m not sure if Haydu is a twin herself, but wow, I was immediately blown away by how she nails the push-pull bond between Elodee and Naomi Lively, our main characters in Eventown.  
    Read more

Rabbits in the Now-and-Not-Yet

Jim Miller looks to the rabbits of The Green Ember series for encouragement in dark days.

  • “I believe you’re right, Picket,” he said, smiling through fresh tears. “I have only one desire in these painful days, to see my work matter for the mending. I know I help invent things that destroy, but they are aimed at the darkness. And I hope that, when they have blown a hole in that darkness, the light pours in.” -Emerson, Ember Rising, S. D. Smith
    I can’t turn my head away from the news. The twenty-four hour cycle has taken its toll on my concentration and focus, and the COVID-19 pandemic ratchets the already-intense barrage to levels nearly unbearable. I want to know, but knowing is killing me, if not in body, at least in mind and soul. I am being catechized by Twitter and my inbox; not surprisingly, the fruits of that spirit are fear and despair.
    Read more

Something to Do with Your Kids

In a day when we all feel a little out of control, here’s a chance to channel that into letting out-of-control become something beautiful. Check out these watercolor resources for kids.

Something to Watch

This dance group found a way to dance together across social distancing boundaries.

Thanks for reading. We’re on your side. 

-The Story Warren Team

Carolyn Clare Givens
Latest posts by Carolyn Clare Givens (see all)

Leave a Reply