History, Real Life and Faith
Last week we looked at Biddy’s birthday, this week we celebrate Oswald’s! The two were born 11 days shy of nine years apart–Oswald entering the world in Scotland on July 24, 1874. The seventh of eight children of Reverend Clarence and Hannah Chambers, Oswald had four sisters and three brothers. Oswald grew up in a busy household, and there’s no telling how…
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It’s summer and I’m enjoying my eight favorite memoirs. It’s important to remember memoirs and biographies are different. While biographies tell an entire life’s story, a memoir generally limits itself a slice of time, or a particular event. I love memoirs even more than biographies, in part because narrative non-fiction is my favorite genre. (Memoirs also fall into the narrative…
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It’s birthday week for Biddy Chambers as I write this post. Born July 13, 1883 in Woolwich, Kent, England, Gertrude Annie Hobbs grew up to become Biddy Chambers. Henry and Emily Gardner Hobbs gave their third of three children a popular and conventional first name and a family name for the middle. Coming in at #22 out of the top…
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The word amateur comes from the Latin base, amator, to love. We’ve taken that word and turned it into a person who loves something so inordinately passionately that they don’t care if it has any monetary value. Amateurs love something for the sake of loving it–and they usually want to share that passion with everyone they meet. Civil War amateurs…
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America held a special spot in Biddy and Oswald Chambers‘ hearts. Oswald Chambers visited the United States four different times. Biddy visited twice. They loved Americans and they enjoyed traveling in the country. The new world gave Oswald and Biddy their first international publication opportunities. His first two books, Biblical Psychology in 1912, and The Sermon on the Mount in…
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Many years ago, we spent our 4th of July in Maine. As I told the kids at the time, “this is a real, old-fashioned, American 4th of July. Enjoy it.” Staying with friends not far from Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, we began the morning with a drive to the coast. We hiked at Rachel Carson National Wild Refuge, admiring the views and…
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