Stories, Tales, and a Few Small Lies of a Country Parson

Stories, Tales, and a Few Small Lies of a Country Parson. By Robert B. Horine. Cincinnati: Forward Movement Publications, 2002. vii + 204 pp. $10.00 (paper).

The country parson is a recurring type much beloved in Anglican spirituality. Chaucer enshrined him in the fourteenth century in the Canterbury Tales. George Herbert defined him profoundly and beautifully in the seventeenth century. Percy Dearmer painted a delightful, if slightly dotty, portrait of him in the early decades of the twentieth century. But, for the modern Episcopalian, the country parson is probably an ideal figure, remote and more longed for than experienced. In our contentious church it is tempting to look at the parson and say, "They just don't make them that way anymore."

Robert Horine has an answer for that longing. In his new book, Stories, Tales, and a Few Small Lies of a Country Parson, he announces to the world in general and the church in particular that the country parson is -alive and well and living in Lexington, Kentucky. Horine is a gifted editor, preacher, and writer who, in a long career, served many parishes, large and small, urban and rural, in central and eastern Kentucky. The book is an anthology of his essays, sermons, and articles culled from that experience.

The locales of the stories are as colorful as can be imagined. The Church of the Advent in Cynthiana is a case in point. Halfway between Hell's Half Acre and Devils Backbone, services at Advent are frequently halted for trains blowing their whistles as they pass behind the church on the CSX tracks that run through the town. It sounds like an excerpt from a Hollywood comedy; but it is a real place and the train tracks are still there. It is the flavorsome personalities of his friends and parishioners, however, that give the book its charm and authenticity. Who can resist the proprietor of a piano store who only stocks one notfor-sale piano, because the store is a front for a bookie joint, or the anxious hostess whose dinner guests, in full evening dress, end up in the back forty chasing livestock in the pouring rain? Horine loves and learns from these and others. Perhaps most moving is his letter to a dying child who asks him, "Why are we born?" His answer is as honest as he can make it, and as profound as the boy deserves. "Life is good." he says, "Even when it is hard." And indeed it is.

Horine is a man on whom much rain has fallen. His struggles with a disability that make it impossible to speak above a whisper are clear in many of the stories. His bemused affection for the crazy characters that surround him rings true throughout. This modern country parson might be startling to a lover of Chaucer or Herbert, but he is the real thing. He moves through a sometimes gritty landscape. He deals with real, and often difficult, people who have real problems and does so with intelligence and verve. At the end of it all he can still say, "Me? I believe in Love." fie offers no small grace to a troubled church in a troubled world.

JOHN DEWS

Ascension Church

Mt. Sterling, Kentucky

Copyright Anglican Theological Review, Inc. Fall 2002
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved