Hello! Welp, another weekend with hardly any blogging done. Still, I’m optimistic to get back on my game this week. I do have a solid start on a post about Lenten resources; I just need a bit more time to work on it.

In other news, I went ahead and added a “Hymn Texts” tab to my website header menu. I’m not sure whether that means I’ll gradually add more of my hymn texts here or not, but we’ll see. 🙂

I’m looking for Lenten suggestions for devotional reading & other Lenten practices so I can compile a blog post with them for next week. 🙂 Any suggestions? 

Also, let this week be a lesson to me. I have stuff to write for you (and I mean a list of books I can review), but I just can’t make time to blog during the week. I’ll rectify that with weekend writing. God-willing.

Thankfully, I can also share that I’m finally writing on my Liturgy Lessons again! Yay yay yay! I also have two more LutheranHomeschool.com projects I hope to wrap up this weekend.

Sigh. I turned down a short-term gig I really wanted. I’m going to cling to the fact that this is the mature adult thing to do. But I hated to pass it up.

A blessed weekend to you!

Friends, I think this is awesome: a Lutheran founding a group so that Tamil children can access their language globally: Kelir Books.

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Hello! I know I often blog Ray Keating sales in summer, but he often has sales via his newsletter, too. Plus right now he’s offering a limited time extra!

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Want to know the name of the new CPH president? I sure did! 

Wednesday, the release went out: Jonathan D. Schultz was unanimously elected the 9th President & CEO of Concordia Publishing House.

Schultz has been serving as Interim President and CEO since last May. He’s also been a pretty long term Vice President and Corporate Counsel. He’s worked with the Board of Directors, coordinated legal activities of the corporation, directed HR and contracts/rights/permission departments. He and his wife have also done mission work.

Yay! Exciting times!

Titus Classics has a new release: The Apostle’s Creed Latin Coloring Book!!! What can I say but AWESOME!!!!!!!

The Cultivation of Christmas Trees
T.S. Eliot

There are several attitudes towards Christmas,
Some of which we may disregard:
The social, the torpid, the patently commercial,
The rowdy (the pubs being open till midnight),
And the childish – which is not that of the child
For whom the candle is a star, and the gilded angel
Spreading its wings at the summit of the tree
Is not only a decoration, but an angel.

The child wonders at the Christmas Tree:
Let him continue in the spirit of wonder
At the Feast as an event not accepted as a pretext;
So that the glittering rapture, the amazement
Of the first-remembered Christmas Tree,
So that the surprises, delight in new possessions
(Each one with its peculiar and exciting smell),
The expectation of the goose or turkey
And the expected awe on its appearance,

So that the reverence and the gaiety
May not be forgotten in later experience,
In the bored habituation, the fatigue, the tedium,
The awareness of death, the consciousness of failure,
Or in the piety of the convert
Which may be tainted with a self-conceit
Displeasing to God and disrespectful to children
(And here I remember also with gratitude
St.Lucy, her carol, and her crown of fire):

So that before the end, the eightieth Christmas
(By “eightieth” meaning whichever is last)
The accumulated memories of annual emotion
May be concentrated into a great joy
Which shall be also a great fear, as on the occasion
When fear came upon every soul:
Because the beginning shall remind us of the end
And the first coming of the second coming.

Nativity
John Donne, 1572 – 1631

Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,
Now leaves His well-belov’d imprisonment,
There He hath made Himself to His intent
Weak enough, now into the world to come;
But O, for thee, for Him, hath the inn no room?
Yet lay Him in this stall, and from the Orient,
Stars and wise men will travel to prevent
The effect of Herod’s jealous general doom.
Seest thou, my soul, with thy faith’s eyes, how He
Which fills all place, yet none holds Him, doth lie?
Was not His pity towards thee wondrous high,
That would have need to be pitied by thee?
Kiss Him, and with Him into Egypt go,
With His kind mother, who partakes thy woe.

A Christmas Hymn from Germanus