by Lanier Ivester | Aug 29, 2016 | Author Reviews, Book Reviews, Journal Entries
I’m not quite ready to say goodbye to summer—although there are those who are enduring this Georgia heat along with me who’d think I’m absolutely crazy to say that! But it’s been a light-hearted (if somewhat madcap!) season of visits to and from dear ones across the...
by Lanier Ivester | Jun 12, 2016 | Journal Entries
I’ve shared it in this space before, but one of my very favorite Elizabeth Goudge passages comes from the 1936 A City of Bells. The dreamy child Henrietta has just returned from an exciting stint in Edwardian London, and, upon her homecoming, experiences a sort-of...
by Lanier Ivester | Mar 23, 2016 | Journal Entries
I had the privilege of presenting last weekend at the From Death Unto Life conference in Franklin, Tennessee, and one of my sessions was a short plenary on William Wordsworth’s immortal sonnet, “Surprised by Joy” (the poem from which C.S. Lewis took...
by Lanier Ivester | Mar 14, 2016 | Journal Entries
I remember the way you talked about your daddy, How your eyes would dim when you said he was only 81. “He’d have lived to 100, if he hadn’t smoked.” I understand, now. I know the waking panic of 3 AM; The nauseating sense that a great mistake has been made— A wrong...
by Lanier Ivester | Feb 29, 2016 | Journal Entries
Looking back, I’ve always called it the Annus Mirabilis: my own little wonderful year. Its wonders consisted not in calamity (thank goodness!), nor were they even of a particularly earth-shattering nature. But it was a (mostly) happy year for me, dawning in the sudden...