Week 1 (2024)
Refugia & expectant hibernation, disability & the Incarnation, farm work & the loss of adult friendships, Curiositas & the art that mends
(Click title to open in browser, on the Substack website)
to read: books
On The Incarnation, St. Athanasius — paperback/audio — A perennially appropriate classic.
Parenting From The Inside Out, Daniel J. Siegel & Mary Hartzell — audio — I’m really appreciating Siegel’s work.
to read: essays, articles, newsletters
Hiver, The Eve Of Everything — Benjamin Scott Campbell, Anselm Society — “Let me forage the frigid chaff of this ephemeral world. Cold creation is enough; it is enough for the beasts; it was enough for His flesh; it is blessedness indeed. Winter’s bitterness does but sweeten the drops of the Holy Spring, when the Almighty Equinox—the “sunrise from on high” shall again visit us, never to leave again…!”
Curiositas Killed The Cat — Kirsten Sanders, In Particular — “What a gift it can be, to be accosted by your own ignorance! In an online-only reading and writing space, we are now seldom accosted by our own stupidity. We must seek out the knowledge of our own vapidity. Much online writing perfectly fits Griffith’s account of Curiositas… Studiositas is a form of knowledge that might lead to an awareness of the world and its gifts, but also an awareness of ourselves as creatures.”
Friendship And The Common Good — Andrew Willard Jones, The Hedgehog Review — “What does all this have to do with economics? Everything. Modern economics is almost universally at war with subsidiarity…”
America's Friend Famine Is Worst Among Male Professionals — James F. Richardson, Homo Imaginari — “Recent research suggests that American men of all social classes have an intimacy problem with their friends… But my experience living and working among the professional elite of high-earners for twenty-five years now is that men in this urban ‘tribe’ compound the American lack of deep, reciprocal work and their very male avoidance of emotional intimacy with a specific lifestyle.”
(Which reminds me I need to read Dr. Anthony B. Bradley’s book Heroic Fraternities — he’s such a proponent of helping create whole men and healthy male relationships)
Deworm The Goat — Zane Mabry, Front Porch Republic — “In this place between places, we are given a glimpse of viridescent life that allows us to see what modern life wants us to relinquish. We are given a glimpse of real things. We get to see and interact with true creation, but that interaction entails a conscious choice of the natural over the artificial, the real over the fake; true creation over crude creation. Making this choice helps us to see the world, and those in it, more clearly.”
Making Art To Mend Culture — Makoto Fujimura w/ Susannah Black Roberts — “Art can bring somatic, reflective, deeper contemplation that moves us away from blaming others (or any politicians) to asking instead, “What is in me to mend, to make new?” When we do that, when we behold deeply of our own souls and the edges of our fractures, we will find that we need each other and communities (even our enemies) to find complete healing.”
He Came So We Could Be Like Him — Rachel Roth Aldhizer, Mere Orthodoxy — “Christ’s preoccupation with nearness to poor, lame, and sick people pushes me to go deeper and further. Have extra? Give to the poor. Have power? Lift up the weak. Have strength? Carry your brother. Christ’s earthly walk, begun with the Incarnation, leads straight to the Cross. David, by virtue of his limits, is much closer to the Cross than I. A poor brother, or a sister in prison, is closer to the feet of Christ than I.”
Necessary Secrecy — Sara Kyoungah White, Ekstasis — “Each time I find myself carried off by the swelling waves of social media with its follower counts and hopes for virality, its solitary swiping and tapping, I think about this monthly email and find myself anchored once again. Every word is a drip of honey on my famished tongue, and prayer becomes concrete. In this day, emails like these are one of the last remaining ways I can encounter the art of writing privately, catch a glimpse of secrecy’s power to shelter and protect that which is most precious.”
to watch, listen to
Bulwarks Of Unbelief with Joseph Minich — Mere Fidelity — On technological modernity and the experience of God’s existence. (Matthew Schultz tipped me off to his review of the book, which sounds like another great one in the kaleidoscope of thought on Disenchantment, The Machine, and faith in the modern west.)
Continuing One:
Verity with Phylicia Masonheimer — Episode 125 — The World Of The Early Church (Church History Series)
The Commonplace with Autumn Kern — How I Organize My Mother-Teacher Notebooks (Planner, Commonplace, Journal, + More)
to glean from: tip, product, resource
Reflections for The Year Behind and The Year Ahead
Tsh Oxenreider and Jen Pollock Michel have some great ones (both of whom have Rule Of Life workshops which look quite valuable.) I printed off Tsh’s questions, and my husband and I worked through the reflecting back questions while on a rare night out. We’ll do the looking forward questions soon.
Zach Winters also has a list of 21 questions to print out, and Kerri has a Series on New Year’s Resolutions.
to look back on
This Week:
You can reply directly to this email if received in your inbox — I always enjoy hearing from y’all that way.
Beautiful piece here! I clicked through to the Ploughshare article. I loved what was said here “Makoto Fujimura: Yes, repair can be generative, but only if we first learn to behold the fractured pieces to be beautiful in themselves.”
Necessary Secrecy was so, so moving -- offering some prayers for those tremendously faithful people.