In A Collegial Advent

Dr. Loomis served as a college English and Literature professor for 41 years. Besides his instruction of much college composition, he taught courses in dramatic, international, and religious literature, and he published a scholarly book on the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins -- while also reviewing others' Hopkins studies, for 14 years, in the journal Victorian Poetry. He served multiple terms as a board member for both the Comparative Drama Conference and the Robert Frost Society, and he directed 15 university plays and sang regularly in symphonic choirs. For 22 years, Dr. Loomis organized an annual Advent Lessons and Carols service for his Episcopal church. Thus he senses Advent as a special penitential service in the Christian church year, yet he additionally intuits that all of life serves as a human existential advent - a time for preparing all persons potentially to encounter and dwell in an eternal resurrectional season. Accordingly, this book also records its author's experience (whether it occurred with full or more accidental consciousness) of coming to know many colleagues in the spiritual life. These folks have vitally shown him how "deep care" for others centrally vitalizes any worthy aspirations for heavenly sanctity.