Week 20 (2025)
communal spaces & public transit, material vs. spiritual and relational riches, end of life care & Christian virtues gone mad
Click title to open in browser. You can reply directly to this email if received in your inbox.
Enjoy this collection of digitally scrapbooked resonances… this attempt to weave unexpected connections… this Imaginary, Weekly Magazine I’d Like To (Or Need To) Read gleaned from other magazines, journals, writers, creators of good things. Perhaps it is many things. I can’t guarantee a niche (my life story, amiright) but I can guarantee the equivalent of a satisfying charcuterie board. Comments are imagined to be around a conversation table. Cheers.
to read: books
The Wise Woman — George Macdonald — Not a story I’m itching to revisit, but there’s some lovely quotes in here.
Destroyer Of The Gods — Larry W. Hurtado — Quite fascinating. Here's a good summary.
to read: essays, articles, newsletters
Materially Rich And Spiritually Emaciated: On 'Progress' — Kevin Brown, Mere Orthodoxy — “And, of course, to live a life bereft of moral consideration is to live answers to questions we have never paused to ask. Medical ethicist Lydia Dugdale has reflected on her many “end of life” patients who spent earlier decades of health living scripts they seldom paused to consider, only to spend the final moments of life reflecting on morality (was I good?), meaning (did my life count?), relationships (did I matter to others?), and destiny (what will happen to me when I die?).”
Fragments For The End Of Life — Justin Hawkins, Hedgehog Review — “It appears, then, that the imperative to do all that we can to extend life—allegedly a distinctive of modern mastery and control—has been retrofitted with Christian theological justification.”
(related: The Lost Art Of Dying (book), The End Of The Christian Life (book), Hospice Care And The Denial Of Death, as well as numerous archived essays on euthanasia/physician assisted suicide, shared previously)
- , The Critic — “…I’m not sure which is ultimately more threatening: a return to outright paganism or a disdain for human life justified by Christian virtues gone mad.”
(related: ’s We Are Repaganizing, shared previously)
These rest of these pieces are a mosaic of musings on public vs. private spaces, collective vs. individual goods, and the potential for humanizing, shoulder-rubbing conviviality while existing in public.
The previously shared article The Vital Pleasure Of Existing In Public has colored my lense of these topics of the public realm ever since I read it, as it rings true in many ways. (Ex: Who my husband and I most frequently see utilizing the library, or the nice public parks and playgrounds in our city.) How do ideas of class color our perception of certain activities, our experience of particular places?
“There's a class dimension here. Public life is a leveler, but it's also a divider between those who can choose to opt out of it and those who cannot… Urbanism is a lifestyle choice for the well-off, but a necessity for the poor.”
Is It Euro-Poor, Or Ameri-Poor? —
Walks The World — “You don’t need to be in a picturesque Lombardy village with a six-hundred-year-old church to find a genius loci (although that does help), rather what you need is Europe’s culture of respect for the collective good, and an understanding of the value in unquantifiable non-material wealth.”(related: his gorgeous book Dignity and this interview, shared previously)
Swing Sets Aren't Just For Kids Anymore — Alexandra Lange, Bloomberg — “At a time when many cities and business owners seem to want nothing to do with teenagers, it is refreshing to see a brand new public space issue them an invitation—and to go there and see that happening.”
(h/t ’s recent newsletter)
Good Wells And Safe Streets — Norm Van Eeden Petersman, Comment — “Streets, bus stops, and libraries serve as markers of how much we, as a society, value the public realm and the people who use it. The quality of these shared spaces depends on our collective contributions. These contributions may include taxes, labour, and civic pride, but their vitality also relies on our willingness to engage with and support them.”
*Sentimental Nostalgia Alert* The Amtrak and Greyhound pieces unearthed a tender place in my memories. The MegaBus was something I utilized with friends, going from our Tennessee college to our home in Minnesota and back. We napped on benches in Chicago’s Union Station. We reveled in the ragtag college student life of traveling for so cheap with so many strangers, making hilarious memories to boot. Then there were the for-fun travels in my twenties, traveling via train between and around Portland and Settle, soaking in that breathtaking scenery… probably journaling and listening to music to *feel something.* There were the few months in 2017 living in New York City, traveling constantly by subway among the boroughs, rubbing shoulders with more strangers than I have ever been exposed to at once, fascinated by it all and feeling so alive in many ways, lonely in others — but always, at the end of the day, feeling more dirty than I ever have. And then there was the experimentation with amatuer street photography. (Of course I cringe at this now… but you have to realize street photography was a whole THING among the artsy filmmaker and photographer types I was soaking in at the time. Yes, I contain multitudes.
A Romanticized Defense Of Trains —
, Morning In The Broken World — “Efficiency is kind of a joke with Amtrak, but our world is obsessed with efficiency. It felt healthy (sometimes it felt healthy in the way that eating lima beans feels healthy) to do something in the least efficient way possible and appreciate the opportunities that I was given as a result.”Riding The Greyhound — Sarah Ball, Plough — “I get on the bus wanting so many things. I want my mother to live forever. I want that one person to write me back. I want love. My heart stirs madly. I get on the bus, strapped up with all these other crazy people, their own desires sloshing within, sometimes overflowing and spilling out grossly before me, all of us caught in the jaws of fate, knowing it, saying it, living it. Riding with the poor. The poor, the so-easily-bereaved. The poor, that is, us.”
(h/t for the recommending)
Honda Odyssey / To My Alleged Accomplices — Carla Galdo, New Verse Review —
“This strategy might work, she thinks—
just get out of the house, buy drinks,
stare as the surf turns green to red,
breathe as the sun slow-sinks.”
(also from her: Easter Triduum and Strength To Stay, shared previously)
to watch, listen to
Continuing On:
The Natural Womanhood Podcast with
— Season 3, Episode 12 — The NFP Support Group of Your Dreams is Here with Katie Collins — “I only trust God so much… I trust God to follow my plan, and I was gonna make my plan happen… I was in such a level of idolization of what this family was going to be for me, that I couldn’t see past that.” // “It’s opening up these dialogues between husband and wife… that’s where you see the healing if there is damage.”Woven Well Podcast with
— Episodes 64-65 — Unexplained Infertility and Nicole Clark and Twelve12 Ministries (Infertility/Loss) — “[Seeing and understanding the body’s signs] transforms how you see yourself as a human, how you connect with your spouse, how you value and respect your own body, but especially for those walking through infertility it puts critical information about your fertility in your hands.” // “We work closely with doctors who deeply value the way your body was designed to function. Who work to identify anything that could be hindering that functioning and who restore your health…” // “There is always a cause to a couple’s infertility, and that’s because infertility is not a diagnosis, it’s a symptom… When combined with your body’s charting and that trusted, curious medical provider, you have the tools to point in the direction of the root cause.”
(more resources on female embodiment in the Big Ol' Compilation — now unlocked)
to glean from: tip, product, resource
Pair this depiction of Christ the Good Shepherd with these renditions of Psalm 23 —good for holding close, whether listening or spontaneously singing—from:
Jon Foreman — Remember that guy? For some reason—well okay, there’s a reason—this was my morning-drive-to-the-park-with-the-kids-jam last summer and fall.
Zach Winters — Aka:
. And how after years of listening to him am I just now seeing this heartbreakingly beautiful rendition of Lamentations 3? Just discovering this Verses project and anticipate being obsessed.Poor Bishop Hooper — See also: every other Psalm they put to music. They continually slay me.
your ability to process & share valuable work is amazing
Love all the pairings this week! I had never read that "Vital Pleasure of Existing in Public" piece before, but I like how it explains urbanism as how it feels, rather than what it ~is~. And, naturally, I love the pieces about the bus and the train. :)