The July 1 edition of The Living Church is available online to registered subscribers. This edition includes Kirk Petersen’s survey of the charms awaiting bishops and deputies in Austin:

The travel site Expedia.com ranks Austin as the coolest city in the country, based on a variety of factors, including arts and entertainment, dining options, and the like. The official city motto is “Live Music Capital of the World,” and the city boasts strong ties to musicians, including Willie Nelson, Janis Joplin, Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan, and the Dixie Chicks.

The original Whole Foods Market is about a 20-minute walk west from the convention center on North Lamar Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. The store also houses the Red Okra Restaurant, where the most expensive item is the $11 Gorgonzola Mushroom Burger, and you have your choice of three local beers.

If you want to see weirdness, there’s a Museum of the Weird less than half a mile from the convention center, featuring “authentic freak animals, real mummies, fiji mermaids, shrunken heads, and life-size wax figures of historic sideshow celebrities.”

You could get your weird on by watching more than a million bats flying out every evening from under the Congress Avenue Bridge, less than half a mile from the convention center.

Want to swing on a trapeze? Bring $10 to Trapeze Texas, a mile and a half east of the convention center.

News

  • What May Be Hot in Austin
  • Till Marriage Do Us Part?

Features

  • Austin Loves Weirdness | By Kirk Petersen
  • Change in the Heart of Texas | By G. Jeffrey MacDonald
  • Add Origen to the Calendar | By Mark Stanley
  • Twenty Minutes with Mary Kate Wold | Meeting Clergy’s Financial Needs

Books

  • Phyllis Tickle: A Life | Review by Phoebe Pettingell

Catholic Voices

  • Radical Hospitality | By Steven R. Ford

Other Departments

  • People & Places
  • Sunday’s Readings

This post appeared here first: New: 7/1 TLC Online

[Living Church General Convention]