to read: books
Walking Through Deconstruction — Ian Harber — As with Alan Noble’s On Getting Out of Bed, this was an intensely cathartic listen for a particular moment in time. Some brief thoughts.
Heavenly Participation — Hans Boersma — “But what do I know, I'm just your friendly neighborhood laylady.”
Forbearance: Poems — Cameron Brooks — These are attentive to the particular—to the fleeting and very real moments that make up a life—as all good poetry is. Some were snapped and sent along to a family member spending her winter in the hospital, because beauty speaks in its own way in sterile places. The Mower and the Nun has my heart as an absolute favorite. (Also: Write like you’re dying, because you are.)
The Iliad — Homer — I’m a first-timer, I think. Allow Meredith Hinds to give you a chuckle on this one.
Till We Have Faces — C.S. Lewis — This was my second or third time reading as an adult, and aside from those banger quotes it often felt like chewing gravel. This is a personal flaw.
A Reading Companion: Till We Have Faces — Christine Norvell — …but not because we don’t have great guides! This one asked excellent questions and I would recommend it! Peter Kreeft also recently came out with his own, as well. The greatness of the novel is just “hard to access” I guess? But if that’s the case, as I heard someone say, is it really great? C.S. Lewis himself even said Plato was great because he could stand on his own and be enjoyed more than his interpreters. Will try this novel another time.
Acedia and Its Discontents — R.J. Snell — This was thick with meandering riches and got heavily marked up. I could hardly believe I saw others mention loving this very obscure little book during the time I was reading. For more on the topic, I enjoyed Acedia & Me a few years ago, and have The Noonday Devil: Acedia, the Unnamed Evil of Our Times on my list to read.
Natural Law: A Short Companion — David VanDrunen — I’m not sure how to rate this, having read no other such books. It was definitely a primer, though. On the docket in this vein are Natural Law from Davenant Guides (thanks to Hannah Lang for the literal stack of books) as well as Faithful Reason (written by the one who assigned the aforementioned stack of books.)
Descent Into Hell — Charles Williams — His books aren’t exactly landing for me. But I will press on intermittently throughout the year, because he was part of the Inkling Squad. Some quotes.
bonus
Some friends of Life Considered have books I’d like to put on your radar.
Samantha N Stephenson’s Grow Where You’re Planted (which I was able to read and endorse.)
Dixie Dillon Lane’s Skipping School (who I’ve been reading for a few years, respect a ton, and have met in real life - which counts for something these days, right?)
Katy Carl’s Fragile Objects (from Wide-Eyed with Wiseblood Books.)
These two ladies I also enjoy reading, and admire their dedication to seeing worthwhile words (whether their own or others’) go forth into the world and into hands. In the last few months, they each had a copy of their recent books sent my way. Do take a look.
to read: essays and articles
on the body, sex, and procreation—in medicine, society, and our own lives:
Shock & Awe — Hope Fischbach, Attention Span — “We don't get to worship the Baals for half a century and act surprised to find ourselves in Babylon… We live in a culture that will not punish the wicked because we are the wicked.”
Women Need to Stop Reading Porn — Autumn Mackenzie, The Credo Catholic — “Unfortunately, vanishingly few women around me see this as a problem. In their minds, it’s a bit of harmless fun.”
Samuel James on the issue: “…as I’ve mentioned before, women’s ministry tends to cash out very differently than men’s ministry. Men are invited toward accountability and sharpening. Women are invited into fellowship and encouragement. This should probably be turned around a little bit. Men could really use some friendship right now, and it seems like women could use some tougher love.” More on the pornification of women's literature.
The Case for (a New) Purity Culture — Samuel D. James, First Things — “But rarely do they articulate a positive vision of what Christian discipleship should look like.”
I already told him it was great—yet is also begging for some sort of response. Because, if my survey responses are any indication, talking about sex in its true fullness (not just in regards to premarital sex/lust/pornography) in any kind of discipleship framework continues to be… tough going.
All added to the [desecrated] body compilation.
How Fertility Awareness and NFP Healed my Views on Sexuality and Marriage — Frances P. Starr, Natural Womanhood — “However, I firmly believe that if I hadn’t been charting, which allowed me to become in tune with my body, sex would have been much more difficult for me in our early marriage…”
A Look Inside the Endometriosis Epidemic — Merlot Mary Fogarty, Public Discourse — “I’m incredibly grateful that I’m finally healing—but what about the other women? The girls in middle and high school who are suffering through their classes; the women in college wondering why their bodies are turning on them; the women pushing off their pain and symptoms to deal with when they’re ready to have kids? There aren’t enough doctors trained to help them, and most insurance networks won’t accept this kind of care as medically necessary. We have to care about the women suffering now, not wait until they’ve made it through years of suffering and their infertility forces the issue.”
More on the experience of endometriosis in the “physiology” section of this compilation.
Infertile but Fruitful: The Devil and Delay — Leigh Snead, Church Life Journal — “They are victims of poor—or nonexistent—instruction in the culture of life. They are prisoners of our secular “science-y” culture. And they are left, suffering and alone, to face this temptation, surrounded by the walls of beautiful baby pictures and the special financial guarantees.”
I appreciate the inclusion of how they were mocked by medical professionals for wanting to use a morally licit and more dignified method of obtaining sperm. Clinical masturbation is common practice for this and… let’s acknowledge that is degrading? As Kerri put it in Our Bodies, Our Anger: “When it does work, IVF bequeaths to a child some uncomfortable truths: that he has his origins in an act of masturbation rather than sexual union…” Anyways. *edited to add, after someone shared privately, that not all clinics are condescending about desiring to use other means of sperm collection.
Her husband is the author of What It Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics, which is quite good. Her book Infertile but Fruitful is now in the compilation, alongside Walking Through Infertility—additional practical resources on moral, restorative options are in the compilation, but I would certainly point anyone toward Caitlin Estes for starters.
Is There a Right to Have Children? — Matthew Lee Anderson, Plough — “If we look beyond the industrialization of fertility, though, we will find that we are all implicated in the impulse to escape the limits of our flesh of which artificial reproduction is only the outer edge. This issue merely makes the refusal to honor our bodies more transparent.”
Some may remember his TGC article on IVF a few years back, followed by his final, stunning response to Grudem. He has also written on Why the Church Needs the Infertile Couple. It’s been a few months, but I’m also still working through his academic book on procreation.
Blessed Is The Fruit of Thy Test Tube? — Will Anselm, The Pallinode — “There is a structure of reasoning that appears again and again in moral debates, and it deserves a name. Call it the ‘exception at the point of maximal difficulty’. It works like this: a principle is affirmed as binding in general, but when the circumstances become sufficiently painful or complex, the principle is quietly redefined as an obstacle rather than a truth, and an exception is carved out in the name of compassion.”
Each of my three long-form essays have touched on this very idea, though using different language. Thanks to Hannah Lang for sending my way.
Big Tech Meets Big Fertility — Patrick T Brown, Public Discourse — “In a world in which pre-implantation screening becomes widely practiced, will there be support and research funding for parents of children born with those disabilities? Or will those parents face an undercurrent of suspicion and social approbation for having not been prudent enough to screen out their embryos carrying those genetic abnormalities?”
All added to this compilation—alongside other reads and resources on assisted reproductive technology. That list needs major attending to and rethinking. Alas, I cannot muster the energy to overhaul that part of the house at the moment.
For Whom Christ Died — Sharon Rhyne — “But the problem is, they’re people. They act like it. I knew when these people acted like real people, the chaos of my own pain would sorely tempt me to lash out… The pain is exotic. The obedience is a bit out of the ordinary for your previous life. You can begin to believe that you are special. This is poison. Do not swallow it. You and I are ordinary. It is good to speak plain language when you find yourself in this emotional state.”
More in the updated “miscarriage, child loss” section of this compilation.
Highly recommend her meditation on the human body, as well.
I No Longer Have an "Ideal" Number of Children — Liora Lee, Musings from the Hearth — "But a true Christian life is an examined life. And my life choices have tended to be imitative, inherited, and unexamined. My instincts have been wired to avoid scarcity, secure stability, and to minimize risk and discomfort. Sometimes what feels like wisdom could be a cultural reflex… I suspect that my reflections may not land as gently as I intend, which is not to burden one’s conscience, but to encourage us all to be honest with our motivations and to expand our hearts.”
Added to the updated “family planning” section of this compilation.
more resources:
![the [female] body: a compilation](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!wWgM!,w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4915e0a2-6b60-42c4-93c8-748af2fa1f4c_480x360.jpeg)
![the [desecrated] body: a compilation](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dRya!,w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5c9d3ae9-c6b3-42ba-a5db-f5b7f91da982_555x600.jpeg)
to watch, listen to
Why Protestants Need a Theology of the Body — Ericka Andersen and Katelyn Walls Shelton — “He didn’t make us arbitrarily. God does nothing without purpose, and every created thing has an end in mind.
There is a divine order to the way of creation and, as Andrew Walker writes in his book, Faithful Reason, ‘human beings cannot flourish apart from obeying God’s order of creation.’”
“Pastors don’t know how to handle the issue… the people who are primarily influencing women are the doctors in the doctor’s offices.” (A chilling statement.)
“The time is now, more than ever, to try to catch up on our moral reasoning.”
“If we are going to meet our sex-obsessed culture with grace and truth, we need to think really, really clearly about issues of the body.”
Do follow Katelyn’s ongoing work in the area of reproductive technology. I might frame this badboy from a while back, when I was in a mood and we briefly bantered about academic vs. popular level streams of thought and their audiences. (A funny story is that we went to the same school for undergrad a few years apart and found this out on the internet years later. What a world.)
Continuing On:
Mere Fidelity — Replay: Reading Advice (How I treasure Alastair’s anecdote of having previously had 9 hours a day of manual labor with which to just listen to stuff.) / Jesus and the Law of Moses / How Do We Change Our Minds?
Woven Well Podcast with Caitlin Estes — Episodes 134-137 — Realistic Cycle Syncing for Every Woman / Can I Trust These Methods? / ”I Can't Participate in Creighton" (Anna's Story) / Fertility Myths 003
“Almost 70% said they started out with a Grand Plan for their family… but when asked if it actually went according to plan, not one single person said yes… It’s become less a dream and more an expectation [to have a Plan]… but there’s a difference between control and influence. We are given a say, even though it’s not the final say… and it’s not from a place of control or authority or assumption. Instead we are open-handed with our family, prayerful about our participation, and trusting in the Creator of all life.”
I've started to see cycles of deconstruction (and hopefully the after part - reconstruction) as a natural, largely inevitable, fact of life. I wrote a whole post about it but then scrapped it, but I do think there's something to that seven year cycle (I was 7 years a Catholic this past fall). All that cell division and replacement might actually have an impact, ha. I think it's healthy and natural to deconstruct, because it forces us out of complacency - though it can be painful and disorienting as you go through it (there now). when you have faith though that there is a loving God on the outside of it all, you realize that these 'leaps' mimic the 'developmental leaps' of our children - times when emotions run high, there are sleep disruptions, it seems endless - and then suddenly... something has changed. that child has grown up significantly. Often we find we too have grown up significantly. On another note - the family planning idea feels so fundamentally 21st century to me. Of course people have always tried to manipulate their family size (understandably!!!) but this idea of "I will have x amount of children at x time" is so radical. I hadn't quite realized I had breathed that air so long I believe it myself! I have a newfound peace in total abandonment - a luxury perhaps - but I can only call it Grace to be perfectly happy with my two girls, and perpetually open to the idea of more children if that is God's will. That is not a peace I have had long, and never known before, so I can only say that giving up control is - cliche though it may seem - the key to freedom.
Thanks so much for sharing about my book, Haley! It means a lot. And I am so grateful for your work.
I wonder when there will magically be another FPR conference that is somehow within driving distance of both me and you :)