Notes from a panel at Capricon 44, Chicago, Feb. 3, 2024. Any mistakes are mine. The panelists are not responsible for any errors here.
Janice Gelb (moderator); Jeana Jorgensen; Will Saddler, Lucy A Synk, Susan Weiner
The Bible uses fantastic elements in describing the inexplicable, prophecies, and fables. What elements of the Bible correlate to common tropes in fantasy literature? How have the fantasy elements in the Bible influence writers of fantasy?
My wife Mia and I left Windycon about 9AM last Sunday, missing the con events of that day. It took about an hour, in perfect traffic conditions, to reach the east side of Evanston. Just like two years ago, our objective was St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. It continues to thrive. We were able to talk to some people we knew from of old. Mia and I were members there for 20 years. It is one of the key places that made us who we are. Though the buildings are very different, our present parish, St. Clement’s Episcopal Church in St. Paul, feels very much like St. Luke’s and we instantly felt at home there when we first walked into it on Maundy Thursday of 2019.
Maybe. See Outing Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Do I care? No. I still consider him “a Christian hero, a Protestant saint.”
The sermon at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church was given by Bob Shoemake. He preached on the appointed Gospel John 1:29-42. This passage is about Jesus and John the Baptist. One thing Bob said was that, unlike in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), there is no baptism of Jesus by John. Why the Gospel of John Depicted John the Baptist So Differently suggests that is because John (the Evangelist) has a different, “higher” Christology.
A workshop on Friday, September 2, 2022 at Chicon 8, presented by Sally Wiener Grotta
The women of the Bible (Eve, Esther, Miriam, etc.) have been amongst the West’s most enduring female archetypes. As lush and varied as any mythology, their stories have been reinterpreted by every generation’s artists, clerics, and political leaders, according to how they expected women to be. However, these archetypes have been largely overlooked by modern spec fic authors. In this workshop, we’ll have fun challenging and toppling common preconceptions about various women of the Bible, as we mine this rich mother lode for SF&F story ideas.
The following are my notes and amplifications. I am solely responsible for their content and any mistakes.
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In March 2021 I wrote about A Copper Mine in Ancient Israel, which seems to data from the time of David or Solomon. It now seems that Wood cut to fuel King Solomon’s ancient mines caused environmental collapse – study.
This morning at St. Clement’s Epicopal Church the first lesson was from Acts, part of which reads:
My wife Mia and I left Windycon about 9AM Sunday, missing the con events of that day. It took nearly an hour, in perfect traffic conditions, to reach the east side of Evanston. Our objective there was St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. We were members of it from 1977 until 1997, and were married there in 1978. The church went through a difficult period in the late 1990’s, but has since recovered and seems to be thriving again. The liturgy is still excellent. Some people from our day are still members, and we were able to talk to a couple of them, including our old EFM mentor. There was quite a crowd for an ordinary Sunday in November, especially in the age of Covid. We introduced ourselves to the new Rector and told her how happy we were at how the parish is doing under her leadership.
Proper 10. Track 2.
It turned out that I was the assigned reader for the first lesson and my wife Mia the reader for the second, but nobody had informed us of this. So we had to wing it. We did OK.
Continue readingNotes from a sermon by the Dr, Mark Stahura at St. Clement’s Episcopal Churcn, St. Paul, MN. March 21, 2021. Readings
Leo Tolstoy, Three Hermits.
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 