Week 32 (2025)
local geography, family doctors & guardians of place, dust, fragility & seeking sleep
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 Place of Tides — James Rebanks — I often forgot it wasn't a Niall Williams novel. This one washed over me with subtle, biting glimmers of beauty like the tides themselves. (Very different than his other books on shepherding, but I heartily recommend those as well.)
“But it wasn’t just that I was tired. I was lost. I’d begun to avoid other people. Just speaking to others emptied me out. I felt overwhelmed and angry at everyone around me. I was in trouble and I didn’t know what to do about it. That was why I’d been drawn to Anna. She had seemed so happy, so sure… radiating a sense of purpose and sureness.”
"I had been drawn to Anna because she seemed heroically tough — and she was tough, but her real superpower was forgiveness. She knew that a life full of other people meant accepting their weaknesses and still being there for them… Anna showed me how much we all need each other, and how empty it is to be alone."
“Human life is full of projection, like we are constantly being filmed in the movie of our own lives. We endlessly shape and reshape our own stories to make ourselves feel relevant or seen, desperate to be the major character. But we don’t end up feeling seen, we end up drowning in noise because everyone else is as desperate to be heard as we are. The world has become a mad shouting match, making us distracted and anxious. I’ve done all these things as foolishly as anyone else and it was exhausting. I was just another duck, huffing and puffing on the foreshore. Anna, by contrast, simply morphed into her surroundings, into the world she had chosen. She wasn’t interested in projecting how important she was. She was whatever was around her, whatever she was doing, whatever filled her eyes. I would ask her thoughts about something and she would shrug and point to whatever the ducks were doing on the foreshore. Her meaning was clear. Focus on this world instead—what is—not on what you think about it. Anna was not a poet… her poetry was her life, her work, and her depth of love for the island. She didn’t give a damn what anyone else thought or whether they listened to her… She was the guardian of this place.”
to read: essays, articles, newsletters
The Shepherd and the Duck Woman —
, Mere Orthodoxy (you’ll need a free login to access this older post) — “But there is something saintly about Anna’s calm and prayer-like persistence in caring for these ducks, and the work of faithful saints has never made sense in the world’s economy.”Punching Blind — Robert Joustra, Comment — “When it comes to what the problem is with the church in these times, we are left with a crisis of geography and scale in our discernment. Even if we all want to follow Jesus, we do not live in the same places mentally, intellectually, or geographically.”
The Return of the Family Doctor — Brewer Eberly, Plough — “Take away the powers and principalities of modern medicine; reify the aims and double down on fidelity; and you are still left with the human heart, struggling to find the real work. Whatever the framework, we doctors are still left with the sick who come to us hoping for healing, until the fever of life is over and our work is done. As one of my first patients told me, “I look forward to dying with you.” That feels like a call to doctor the way Jayber barbered.”
(related: Brewer Eberly speaking at the Veritas Forum, shared previously — plus numerous Eberly essays in the archives here)
Dust Prayer — Emily Herring,
—“Hope eats its weight in darkness.
Seven billion clay pots walk the
dirt that was their beginnings,
And God's spit makes up the difference.”
- , Reality Theology — “But the single thing that’s helped more than anything is mentally receiving the sleeplessness as an invitation into God’s presence rather than a shackle toward a heightened heart rate.”
- —
“God bless the hearty marriage
that can squabble without fear,
and let the balloon float up to
the ceiling, knowing that it will
eventually come back down for
morning coffee”(also, buy her new children's book)
How To De-Addict Gen Z From Porn — Sean Fischer,
— “How do you destroy society?” McLaren asked toward the end of our conversation. “You destroy society by destroying men. If every man is addicted to porn, it ruins their relationships. It ruins their lives,” he said.”(From this week’s roundup by , which also included yours truly)
- , Patterns For Life — “The conversation about pornography recovery reveals deeper questions about human nature, moral responsibility, and how we should relate to one another. Too often, our approaches reinforce harmful stereotypes about uncontrollable sexuality and dangerous bodies while avoiding the real work of character development, ethical reflection, and spiritual growth.”
![the [desecrated] body: a compilation](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dRya!,w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5c9d3ae9-c6b3-42ba-a5db-f5b7f91da982_555x600.jpeg)
to watch, listen to
This Talk (with transcript) from
— “That’s how transhumanism started. 50 years in, how’s it going?” I love her. She’s like the Paul Kingsnorth of ladies, down to the British accent.If I may, from my Ideology of Machines piece: “Where do medical techniques, procedures, and approaches go beyond assisting toward health, wholeness, and dignity? When do they cross into the realm of creating new narratives—about the givenness of life? The reality of human nature? The meaning and purpose of our physical bodies?”
![the [female] body: a compilation](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$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)
Continuing On:
Woven Well Podcast with
— Episodes 91-93 — Ovarian Wedge Resection, Glucose Is For Everyone, Client Story: Hannah
to glean from
Something Beautiful
God's Got My Back from Forrest Frank — He has no business being this good at crafting earworms. Been playing this every time we get in the van for the past several days. Anyways, my husband couldn’t stop laughing at a video of him replaying the footage of him rollerblading himself into a back injury… and then creating this song from his bed like a legend. It may have a funny origin story, but is truly a flawless summer song.
Something Helpful
This Curated Agrarian Reading List from
— There is, I think, much fruitful cross-pollination to be had between Hadden’s wheelhouse and the wheelhouse I seem to gravitate towards (women’s health, medicine, sexual and reproductive ethics, etc.) I even quote Wendell Berry in the female body compilation! We need people pressing into the humane and dignifying wherever it can be found. Because limits are for our good and air-tight control a destructive illusion. True health is what we’re after, flourishing wholeness the goal.
The Return of the Family Doctor - Today I went to see my rural hospital-based FP doctor for prenatal care. I brought Jayber Crow with me, and when he saw me put it in my purse, he exclaimed, “Is that Wendell Berry??” He said he enjoyed his essays but had never tried his fiction. I said Jayber Crow is good so far and recommended the short story Fidelity, which was my introduction to Berry during my nursing practice. He jotted it down on his pocket notebook for later (which he also used to note my favorite iron supplement to recommend to other women). He explained why he enjoyed Berry’s work so much. Then he laughed and said, “I’ve never had a patient reading Wendell Berry here. More people should read him around here.”
And then the rest of the appointment happened and I felt very…human. Even when being seen by the pretty-much-only-choice for OB hospital providers.
So I printed off the article to pass along at my next appointment.
Thanks for helping further the connection! That article was perfectly timed for me.
Agreed Haley, there is much fruitful cross-pollination to be had between our respective areas of study - especially as concerns the goodness of limitations.
And glad to see Place of Tides on your list, a brilliant book.