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Dark Whispers + Ginger Peach Tea
I have been waiting for this book for a long time. Over a decade, to be exact. When I was in grade school, I was obsessed with unicorns. My best friend at the time shared this passion, and we were always sharing unicorn themed books and playing make-believe unicorn games. There’s a surprising lack of unicorn-related books in the book world, and one of our favorites was The Unicorn Chronicles, by Bruce Coville. We read the first two fairly quickly (review here), and then prepared to wait for the third installment. It never came. I distinctly remember asking about it every time I went to Barnes and Noble. But eventually, I grew up and…
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Fashion as Storytelling
Whether we buy into new trends, wear the things that make us happy, or simply give the matter little thought, one thing is certain — the clothes we wear have something to say. Put simply, fashion is a form of storytelling, whether we intend it to be or not. Movies and books know this fact intimately. One of the first things authors and screen writers describe about their characters is the clothing they wear. And that’s not an accident. Perhaps the easiest way to shape someone’s perception of a character is to be intentional about the clothes you put on their back. And it works. When was the last time…
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Finding the Extraordinary in Ordinary Time
The Christmas season is officially over, and as we reluctantly pack up our decorations and trudge forwards, back into the mundane of the everyday, the Church moves forward too. It is now that we leave a season of rejoicing, and enter back into Ordinary Time. I’ve always struggled with Ordinary Time. Shoved in between Christmas and Lent, Easter and Advent, Ordinary Time feels a bit like those final, stale pieces of a Thanksgiving feast that no one wants to eat. Nestled beside the emotional highs of suffering and joy, the mundane tends to lose its luster. After all, who wants to choose the ordinary? In actuality, most of our lives…
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The Cruel Prince + Chai Green Tea
I recently loaned The Cruel Prince as an ebook from the library and read it over the course of a few days. I had been seeing the book everywhere on Instagram (probably because of the looming release of The Wicked King) so I decided to give it a shot.
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The Story Begins with Christmas
Our God is a storyteller. As a writer of stories myself, this fact has always made me feel like what I am doing actually matters — like every little word that I manage to jot down on a page really can change the world. After all, I am mimicking my Father’s own craft. Perhaps I am only creating pseudo-worlds, while his Word takes on Flesh, but there is something so beautiful in being able to reflect God’s own creative nature in such an intimate way. When you think about it, the story God has written is more bizarre, more fantastic, more mysterious, more mystical than any fantasy epic you could…
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Four Feast Days to Celebrate During Advent
It’s no secret that our Church is home to a lot of beautiful traditions. Traditions are like spices — they add warmth and depth and flavor to the rhythmical cadence of the liturgical year. Throughout the year (during Lent, Advent, Easter, Christmas, and Ordinary Time) the feast days of Saints are sprinkled like mulling spices in a hot cup of cider. These feast days help to break up the seasons and remind us of the remarkable men and women who have gone before — the ones who pave the narrow way. Choosing to celebrate these feast days can help add some of that spice into our own life, and breaks…
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Black Friday Culture
It’s almost that time of year again — the long awaited “holiday season.” Soon it will be Thanksgiving, and then Christmas will be just a breath away. It is the day after Thanksgiving, however, that has been on my heart more recently. That day is Black Friday. I’ll be honest. I’ve done the Black Friday run several times, and it is a lot of fun. Looking through Black Friday ads on Thanksgiving, pushing your way through jam-packed stores, competing to snag that exclusive deal … there’s a sort of thrill to it all. Despite this, I find the day itself rather distasteful. Thanksgiving is all about gratitude. We gather with our families…
