This morning's colloquium

When the kids and I gathered for our morning time today, I brought with me my Chuch Year Calendar (published by the Ashby Publishing Co.) so I could look over the saints who are commemorated this month. Not that I'm perfectly consistent in this by any means, but I like to pick out one or two saints each month to study with the children because it's so important for them to know their family history, including our fathers in the Faith. And given that we live in such security, ease, and plenty, it's all the more important that we should remember our brothers who have suffered and died for the Faith.

So, as I was flipping it open, I noticed for the first time that the beheading of Charles I is commemorated - that is, that his martyrdom on the 30th of January is noted on this calendar! Up until recently, we've been using the Episcopal version published by Ashby, but since we joined an Anglican church here last month, I've picked up the Anglican version, which is considerably more high church than our family is.

Since we were still waiting on one or two children to gather, I took the opportunity to mention this fact, and of course, you can't talk about Charles I and William Laud without talking about the Puritans, and the conversation continued for about an hour, at which time we closed with Morning Prayers. I can't possibly recreate that conversation here, but I thought it would be fun to list the range of topics we covered in roughly the order they came up.

- Charles I
- Cromwell
- Puritans
- Divine Right of Kings
- Norman Conquest
- Pre-Norman Britain
- the Witenagamot
- benefits of a decentralized, confederated government with an elected federal head
- religious causes of the Norman Conquest
- religious differences between Pre-Norman Ireland and Britain
- historic politcal relations between Scotland and Ireland
- family history (Scots-Irish and Welsh)
- Wales
- Welsh language
- Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

At this point we went into hysterics and couldn't procede with the discussion, so we collected ourselves went to prayers as it was already nearly eleven o'clock. Unfortunately I was still so giddy from the end of the conversation that I prayed "Let not the greedy, O Lord, be forgotten," instead of needy.
=8^o

P.S. I've settled on St. Alban, a British martyr who died in 304, because I know nothing about him other than that.