Week 18 (2024)
abandoned places & repurposed buildings, living the lessons, poetry & gatherings, contraceptive side effects & control, pruning & numbering our days
(Click title to open in browser, on the Substack website)
to read: books
I Cheerfully Refuse — Leif Enger — A pleasure.
God Of All Things — Andrew Wilson — Also a pleasure.
to read: essays, articles, newsletters
What We Can Learn From Abandoned Places — Ben Abramson, Strong Towns — “…he’s realistic that while “it'd be cool if every abandoned church could become a neat bookstore or brewery,” it takes a wide range of factors for a successful reuse project, including cooperative local government, a developer/owner “that is operating in good faith and willing and capable,” and of course, money.”
Skateparks, Gyms And Breweries: The Right And Wrong Way To Repurpose A Closed Church Building — John M. Miller, America — “Sacred places have always served as de facto community centers.”
(related: Mega Churches And Reformed Catholicity, shared previously)
And God Said, Let There Be Housing —
, Resident Urbanist — “Similarly, churches whose congregations have shrunken may have trouble downsizing, and the YIGBY bills could aid them in unlocking cash for a more appropriate site as well as unlocking their old spaces for needed housing.”America Is Full Of Abandoned Malls: What If We Turned Them Into Housing? — Rachel M. Cohen, Vox — “Following the pandemic and the growth of remote work, policymakers grew more interested in converting empty office buildings into housing… But such conversions have often been harder and more expensive than leaders originally envisioned. Strip malls, on the other hand, offer some unique opportunities.”
(related: Arbitrary Lines, shared previously)
Listen To Women: Birth Control's Side Effects Are Real —
, Newsweek — “While the cultural shift on hormonal birth control may be a recent phenomenon, the harms and dangers associated with these drugs have been known for years.”(related: my big ol’ compilation, to which this has been added)
- , Fertile Faith — “What once felt overwhelming and fearful (because the weight of these things was on our shoulders alone) now feels properly shared with the One who is ultimately trustworthy. Yes, we can still make decisions that help us to avoid or conceive, but it’s not from a place of control, authority, or assumption.”
Teach Us To Number Our Days: Health Anxiety And Faithful Participation — Brewer Eberly & Ben Frush, Mere Orthodoxy — “…to render something a “problem”…is to intentionally make it an object of control. A mystery, on the other hand, is something we ought to behold and wonder at. That’s not to say medicine does wrong when it seeks to name and alleviate problems, only that its default position is to see only problems that need fixing.”
(related: Three Challenges For Talking About Health, Saving Friends, What Is Medicine For?, Bring Back Hippocrates, Dying, But Not Alone, shared previously)
Allegories Of Pruning: Cutting For Growth — Megan C. Brand, Front Porch Republic — “…our growth is enmeshed in a larger habitat dependent on ordered others. Wisely and regularly cutting away the dead, diseased, and overcrowded areas in our lives, and being in the company of others taking similar actions, yields healthy fruit.”
Mother Scholar — Leilani Mueller, First Things — “At the end of the Divine Comedy, Dante sees the love that moves the universe; I too believe I am upheld by that love and headed toward it… in many ways, I am a scholar still, concerned with my own flourishing and, more importantly, that of my children. The humanities must always be a twofold work. They must simultaneously inform and enrich, but then their lessons must be applied and joyously lived out. That is the life worth living.”
At A Gathering — Samuel Heart, Ekstasis — “For sharing this same body and same blood
Has made the taste of laughter come anew
To us, the frozen ones. At once, the blood
Is thawed, the bodies stirred, the cup now raised,
All truth now laughter, all laughter now praised.”How To More Deeply Delight In Poetry — Lindsey Weishar, Verily — “I invite you to rediscover your first delight.”
(related: Poetry Is A Holy Waste and In Praise Of Reading Aloud, shared previously)
A Scene Report From A Literary Gathering —
, Ekstasis — “Let our meetings burgeon and be immediate, unobstructed by screens. Let our meetings join those in the seats and those on the stage, so the distance between them dissolves. Let the artists of our faith be insect-speckled, free to testify like John the Baptist. And, by God, let there be a beautiful harvest.”
to watch, listen to
Leif Enger on I Cheerfully Refuse — Poured Over
Andrew Wilson on God Of All Things — Mere Fidelity
to glean from: tip, product, resource
Two places to send your dollars:
Mere Orthodoxy — They have an urgent appeal for support. It would mean very much if some of y’all would give towards it, seeing as they’ve been a frequently shared publication around here over the years. And we need to support the organizations, publications, endeavors we want to see continue.
- — I’ll spare you the musical memoir of how I’ve reveled in Zach’s music over the past 10 years (as a glimpse, this album got me through some hospital laboring in the time after my Kristin Lavransdatter audiobook became a little much for the situation, but before the epidural). Anyways, he has a new album you can stream (or better yet, purchase). Here’s his website where you can also find the book of poetry I’m going through.
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.
In your years of reading, have you come across the reason why multi-family residential units are often prohibited in commercial zones? What was the idea behind these common regulations?
My sons and I love Anno!