Week 38 (2024)
road-trips, appification & humanized learning, orphans, widows & abandoned infants, suffering women & holy weirdness, rules of life, enchantment & the papacy
Click title to open in browser.
You can reply directly to this email if received in your inbox.
to read: books
Rebel In The Ranks — Brad S. Gregory — Thanks to
for the recommendation. Enjoyed it.
to read: essays, articles, newsletters
Safe Havens For Abandoned Infants — Grazie Pozo Christie, First Things — “What we can be certain of, though, is that the child’s safe surrender, like my daughter’s unlikely survival, is a victory over the darkness that resides in every human heart, in every age.”
(related: ’s We Are Repaganizing, shared previously — also reminded of Destroyer Of The Gods on the to-read list, and having come across the incredible Safe Haven organization a couple years ago)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and the Lives of Catholic Women —
, Paging Dostoevsky — “One might say that the Church is deeply interested in women and how they suffer… A woman knew Jesus better than any other person. Perhaps that heritage is the greatest gift of all.”Be Weird. Be A Holy (M)other. —
, Writer’s Blog(ck) — “Lauryn Hill doesn’t end her song with a boast about how she managed to blend motherhood with her career, as if to justify her son’s value by appealing to the gods of commercial success. Neither does she complain about the suffering she’s had to endure in order to stick to her principles. Instead, she ends by praising God for the clarity of the divine image in Zion’s little face.”(memories)
Where Are The Orphans And Widows? — Katerina Kern, Circe — “I would go so far as to say classical education cannot thrive in America without attending to the single mom... but I cannot stop wondering, how can we invite these women into classical education?”
(related: on Montessori education in one low-income neighborhood)
Rehumanizing The Humanities — James Hankins, First Things — “But the humanities, it turns out, do not need the academic-industrial complex, with its multibillion-dollar endowments, to succeed.”
Enchantment & Enchantment Redux — Brad East, Alan Jacobs — “They feel condescended to, coerced into pretending that life is nothing but atoms and energy, when they know in their bones the open secret that this world is charged with the grandeur of God… we don’t want a social imaginary built on the lie that there is no God, that this world is all there is, that any hint or echo or sense or experience of the invisible, the mystical, the transcendent is nothing but the mind’s projection of daily life onto the screen of eternity.”
(related: this book and ’ Dark Enchantment, shared previously — yet to enjoy, but bought this audiobook after seeing ’s high praise)
Unblemished — Mary Clement Mannering, Ekstasis —
“The grass a carpet of peaches
Rotted and wasped
We were too late
too late”On Not Losing Our Minds To Technology —
, Front Porch Republic — “While technology could, perhaps, provide safety in that cold, sterile way—the baby in Snoo, for instance, is strapped in very safely—it cannot provide “positive experiences.” Only interactions with live people can offer those. This means that the work of care that we do for others, including babies, is about much more than just performing the tasks.”(hats off to Rob’s reply underneath it — additional comments here)
- , Hedgehog Review — “I have been reading novelist and essayist Paul Kingsnorth’s chronicles of his visits to the holy wells of Ireland, as a way into the meaning of memory and place and holiness. For me, a road trip down the coast of California likewise has an aspect of pilgrimage. I don’t use the term flippantly.”
(this conference retreat including Matthew, Paul, and I see , and looks to be delightful)
In Defense Of A Rule Of Life —
, Mere Orthodoxy — “Truth alone cannot lift our minds and wills to the heights of godliness… We follow God not simply in our brains but in our conscious and unconscious habitual actions.”(related: musings from )
- — “The office of the Papacy, however, cannot be disproven in the same way that these other doctrinal claims can be due to the Roman Catholic definition of authority.”
(h/t for sharing)
(related: this essay and this debate, shared previously — thoughts from here, here, and a message from a Catholic trained in theology essentially confirm this line of thought, observing “Even Aquinas’s five proofs [for the existence of God] are not proofs in the way the author seems to use the word in this piece.” I’m concluding that different traditions give different weight to whether church authority/structure should be thought of as being “falsifiable” in the first place, or if it’s ultimately more a mystery of the faith.)
to watch, listen to
Chris Arnade Walks The World — Front Porch Republic’s Cultural Debris w/
— His book Dignity is beautiful, gritty, and tender in more ways than one. (Our toddler pulls it off the shelf constantly, but perhaps that’s more because of its nice, weighty feel.) Here and there for the past few years, I’ve also enjoyed his unique walking endeavors, as chronicled on his substack. Had literally never heard him talk before (not uncommon for writers) so this was a treat.
to glean from: tip, product, resource
Pregnancy and Infant Loss Artwork — Paige Payne — These prints are breathtaking and would make a thoughtful gift. Take a peruse through any of the categories, really, and you’ll find an abundance of gorgeous paintings.
I'm so glad there was an audio version of Rebel in the Ranks!! Even as a Catholic who knew a decent amount of history around the Reformation, I really enjoyed the way Gregory honed in on the person of Luther. It was really insightful to get to know Luther in an almost personal way, and see his progression.
I also happened to be reading a biography on the painter Raphael at the time I read Rebel in the Ranks, and Raphael died about 9 months before Luther was excommunicated. But it ended up being an interesting snapshot into the Roman world at the time, and Raphael's patronage from the pope, Leo X. It was so interesting to realize these stories were going to have overlap, and then to think about the papacy in that broader context.
I think it's easy to wonder, if you're Catholic, why the pope didn't do more right away about Luther. But the books on Raphael and Luther really broadened my perspective on what was going on in Germany and in the Vatican in the first place.
I wonder whether you've heard of the podcast Haunted Cosmos. It's a bit sensationalist, but I've found it fascinating. Two Reformed Christian dudes from Utah (I think) research and present ghost stories, legends, and other stories of the supernatural from a theologically-informed perspective. Seeing the essays on paganism, enchantment, etc. I thought you might find it interesting.