Week 10 (2024)
chaos, magic & speaking plants, modernity's Fiddler On The Roof & Brave New World, lambs & the virtue of sheep, contending with IVF, questions & answers
(Click title to open in browser, on the Substack website)
to read: books
The Picture Of Dorian Gray — Oscar Wilde — Bleak.
Orthodoxy — G.K. Chesterton — My second time through.
to read: essays, articles, newsletters
Do You Believe In Magic? — Cornelia Powers, Comment — “When we experience awe, all vanity and cynicism vanish as the walls that separate us dissolve into what feels like a thick, golden liquid, renewing us from the inside out. Mysterious and fleeting, this awe reawakens what G.K. Chesterton once called our “ancient instinct of astonishment.” If only for a moment, it enables us to remember what we have forgotten… Lewis applied this thinking to his creation of Narnia, which he filled with magical characters who broadened our conception of the possible, having been liberated from the prison of the pragmatic.”
(related: G.K. Chesterton And The Use Of The Imagination and Let Them Be Born In Wonder, shared previously)
The Plants Can Talk — William Thomas Okie, Plough — “Adults do sometimes recover the sense of wonder, though – often, it seems, by way of sorrow… And so I’ve begun collecting again, trying to pay attention, remembering, however falteringly, that there’s always more going on than I can perceive.”
Two Inches From Van Gogh — Joe Plicka, Ekstasis — “This thirst for goodness and excellence can tip into a need, and finally an obsession, with control. If only we could control our environment, our circumstances, and even other people, then we would never lose what we love. Any good mystic will tell you: This is an illusion. As the ancient traditions (and even modern physics) seem to indicate, the underlying fabric of reality is more akin to . . . dare we say it? Chaos. Out of which the ordered beauty of creation rises and then—like a curling wave—crashes, melts, and slides back down to the deep.”
The Virtues Of Sheep — Nadya Williams, Front Porch Republic — “But enough about bad shepherds. Let us come back to the virtues of good sheep. There is an important truth that emerges even in the common caricatures about them, these mocking tales about sheep who are indeed out to lunch in more ways than one. They are, except when terrified and in truly hairy situations, deeply happy creatures. They are content to enjoy the simple pleasures in life and do not aspire to a station far above one for which they are qualified—for which they were created.”
(related: God's Question And Mine, shared previously)
Lambing Season — Norann Voll, Plough — “I looked at my father and thought again how much I loved him, and how much I loved this place where he had taught me what he knew about how life works… And in the dim barn light, under the swallow’s nest, I noticed his face was wet with tears.”
What Makes 'Fiddler On The Roof' So Sad — David Mills, Pittsburg Post-Gazette — “The world moves on however strongly we resist, rolling over even Tevye’s Tradition! the way the Ohio would roll over a child’s stick dam. Tevye gives in…but he was always going to lose. What the scholars call modernity has its benefits, of course, but also its losses. The world gets better in some ways and worse in others. We win and we lose.” h/t Jeffrey Bilbro
(related: We Will All Become Boring, shared previously)
Alabama Rules That Embryos Are Children — Emma Waters, First Things — “Indeed, many countries regulate IVF… Italy prohibits the freezing of human embryos except in rare circumstances, and Germany limits how many embryos can be created at a given time to 2–3. Alabama—and other states—should consider similar laws to ensure that this decision does not further contribute to the more than one million embryos frozen in the United States.”
We Must Contend With IVF — Autumn Mackenzie, The Credo Catholic — “Unfortunately, the moral ambiguity bill is coming due.”
IVF: Questions And Answers — Emily Stimpson Chapman, Through A Glass Darkly — “In order to understand the Church’s concerns with IVF, it’s important to recognize that the Church teaches that the ends can never justify the means… We are in such a pickle on these issues, with such poor formation given for so long…”
(related: Matthew Lee Anderson’s writing on infertility & procreation)
Humanae Vitae And The Brave New World — John Cavadini, Church Life Journal — “So we have come full circle. We have seen that thinking about the connection between sex and procreation is the same as thinking about the shape of society of the future… “O brave new world!” to quote Miranda from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, ironically banned in Huxley’s utopia. “O brave new world”—it is brave—but is it human?”
to watch, listen to
The Picture Of Dorian Gray: Q&A Episode — Close Reads — I didn’t want to listen through the all episodes, as I wasn’t super invested in the book itself (the conversations are always insightful, though.)
Continuing On:
The Commonplace with Autumn Kern — 5 Surprising Consequences After Getting Rid Of My Smartphone — “Can you tell I’ve been reading a lot of Paul Kingsnorth lately?” (Also everyone after October’s Front Porch Republic Conference.)
to glean from: tip, product, resource
This Reading List To Keep You Human — Print it off and stick it somewhere for reference.
This Slow Read Through Cultural Christians In The Early Church — With the author! I love this idea, as people put so much research, blood, sweat, and love into the writing of their books.
This Instrument Set — Combined with a thrift store “guitar” and xylophone, we are basically a cacophonous band in a basket. (An amazing variety of nice kids instruments at this website, too, but with three boys four and under we are starting small and low-stakes.)
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.
I have bookmarked an irresponsible amount of these links lol, thanks Haley!
The Picture of Dorian Gray was such a… book. I feel weird saying I loved it, but it was so insightful on sin, corruption, influence, and how we face our own sin. So many discussions could be had from this book.