I must start with an apology for not posting anything this week. My visit at Holy Cross has been simply overwhelming – I’d forgotten that people in American parishes are so (dangerously) active and involved! On Sunday, I left Linthicum with a long list of creative ideas about the things we could do together for the monastery; on Monday, I was extremely excited about everything; by Tuesday I’d realised each of those great ideas means another thing for me to do: something else to learn, other people to contact, more articles to write, and so on. Since Wednesday, I’ve been recovering from the shock…
Read further and discover the first of the proposals coming out from that meeting with Fr Gregory’s parish:
Ben Anderson is a Reader in the Orthodox Church, is married, and has four children. His book series, The McGunnegal Chronicles, began as a long series of bedtime stories that he told his children, and these turned into a set of three books (so far) that use the genre of fantasy to “speak in whispers” of Orthodox spirituality, faith, and life. These are clean, fun adventure stories appropriate for any age group, and like the books of C.S. Lewis, Tolkien and others, provide the thoughtful reader with many nuggets of truth to think on, particularly from an Orthodox perspective.
It’s great fun and very well written, slightly reminiscent of Alan Garner’s early stories, with engaging characters who are realistic AND honourable and decent. I would wholeheartedly recomment to anyone of any age who enjoys adventure and mythology.
Thank you so much for your thoughts on this, dear Margaret! I didn’t have the time to read the trilogy myself, but Ben is a member of Fr Gregory’s Holy Cross parish in Linticum Heights, which was good enough for me. His generosity is overwhelming – he said that all we need is to sell around 70,000 copies, and we have our monastery! 🙂