An Appeal and a Couple Announcements

Matters charitable and personal

Buis (Sextidi), 16 Pluviôse, CCXXXIII

1. One of my brothers, Robert, is the rector of St. Benedict’s Anglican Church in the Research Triangle in North Carolina; he and his parish are much involved in assistance for those in need and suffering disabilities. To that end, the church has a benevolence fund that it runs through GoFundMe. Just at present, my brother has issued an appeal for one Kathryn Campbell, a disabled woman facing eviction and caught up in the impossibly byzantine bureaucracy of application for public assistance (which in NC can take as long as seven years to complete, God bless America). He has asked me to share the appeal here. The benevolence fund can be reached with this link. Any help you might be able to give would be greatly appreciated. My brother’s description of the case is as follows:

Kathryn Campbell is disabled and we have helped her before. Court papers for eviction were filed on Monday Feb. 3 and a minimum of $2,000 is required. Immediately she will owe rent again, $1,000. This update is being sent to a larger number of people than past updates with the help of my brother David Bentley Hart who is passing it along to people he knows as well.

2. I have received several inquiries about my recent surgery. I’m afraid it will take some time for me to judge how efficacious it was, as that is the nature of the beast, but I can report one or two promising signs. I am grateful for the concern, and of course for continued prayers, and as the weeks and months ahead unfurl I shall try to keep you all informed of any developments.

3. One article regularly requested from me is some kind of account of my personal faith, and especially of what it is that binds me to Christianity. I have resisted writing such a piece, in part because I have a peculiar distaste for indulging in confessional religious writing (which I attribute to the Anglo-Saxon in me), and in larger part because I’m aware of certain peculiarities of temperament on my part that others might find a wee bit irreverent, or even sacrilegious. Even so, I have decided to write such an article, because it occurs to me that I have a larger point to make about the nature of faith specifically in Christ. It should appear here a couple weeks hence. My request is that all of you undertake in advance not to be scandalized by anything I might divulge about myself or might say about Christian tradition.