HILLSPEAKING
from The Anglican Digest 

PENTECOST A.D. 2008

THE spring 1985 selection of the Anglican Book Club was Richard Holloway’s Suffering, Sex and Other Paradoxes.  In the Foland Library, there are a half-dozen books with the word “paradox” in the title. They range from 1958’s Further Paradoxes by Henri de Lubac to 2002’s Paradoxes for Living: Cultivating Faith in Confusing Times by N. Graham Standish.

     Nineteen fifty-eight, of course, marked the beginning of THE ANGLICAN DIGEST (TAD) in a garage in Nevada, Missouri. And that raises the question: Is TAD, is Hillspeak itself, a paradox? If we adhere to the strict definition of the word perhaps not. On the other hand ...

     Here is the home of a little magazine printed not on glossy stock but on plain paper that for half-a-century has proclaimed itself a “miscellany reflecting the words and work of the Churches of the Anglican Communion.”  That home is neither in a large city nor close by a seminary or theological college, but out in the countryside where its closest neighbor is a town of less than 2500, noted for its Victorian architecture and artists’ colony.

     Neither is that home in a modern office building -- much less a skyscraper -- but in a converted dairy barn built in 1923.  Nor is there a large professional staff but a work force of seven oddly-matched people, six of whom work at Hillspeak with the seventh working from South Carolina.  Four cats, four dogs and a volunteer make up the rest of the crew.

     Yet from that converted dairy barn the Ministries of Hillspeak reach out across the world.  From the Himalayas to the South Pacific to the Arctic there are churches, clergy, and lay folk who have benefited from Operation Pass Along (which, in turn, benefits from the generosity of its donors).  TAD finds its way from Yokohama to London to Cape Town, and Book Club selections are received in Chilliwack, Canada as well as San Francisco and New York.

     All of this from an Ozarks hilltop that is not accessible by air, train, or major highway.

     Maybe Hillspeak is a paradox. Come see for yourself -- you are always welcome.



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