Every year come early August, you can find me in the main drag of the
Indiana State Fair, contemplating whatever new fried food they have
come up with that year. This past August it was chocolate-dipped
bacon, and the year before that, deep-fried cobbler.
Deep-fried fair food is just one part of the State Fair tradition for my
family – for the last quarter century, we’ve visited the same exhibits and
eaten more or less the same food, though the marquee performers have
changed and the fairgrounds have grown slightly more worn.
Starting at the animal barns, we visit the cows, sheep, goats, horses, and
llamas, always saving the World’s Biggest Pig for last. Then we head to
the Pioneer Village, where we watch watch the making of sweet-
smelling beeswax candles, listen to jug bands and church hymns, and
run our fingers over the smooth, hand-made wooden bowls and clay
pots.
My favorite part of the fair, though, is the Home and Family Arts
Building. While my mom wanders around upstairs looking at the
photography competition, I often sit in silence in the stained-glass
cathedral made by the prize-winning quilts.
Hung from the second-story balcony, far away from grimy hands
covered in cotton candy, these quilts are awe-inspiring to an amateur
quilter like me. Covered in blue ribbons, the quilts depict intricate
patterns of doves and rings, flowers and stars, which often take my
1
breath away. They are perfect and pristine in their beauty, and I am
sure that I will never so much as attempt to make a quilt so beautiful as
these.
I am similarly awed and paralyzed when faced by the masterpiece that
is the life of Lancelot Andrewes, whose feast we celebrated yesterday in
the Episcopal Church. In the great communion of Saints and Sinners
from Anglican history, Lancelot Andrewes stands out as a particularly
wholesome specimen. Born in 1555 in London, Andrewes was known
early on to be a brilliant student, entering Cambridge at the age of 16.
Following a spectacular university career in which he w