Week 4 (2024)
limitations of place & money, thrift & beauty, ecclesial landscapes & pastoral pay, children at home & boarding school, men, boys & physical risk
(Click title to open in browser, on the Substack website)
to read: books
The Comfort Of Crows, Margaret Renkl — audio — A comforting, meditative collection of observations and musings sparked by the natural world. Let the author read it to you in her own voice!
The Machine Stops, E.M. Forster — audio — Brief thoughts.
to read: essays, articles, newsletters
How Not To Be A Schismatic — Jeff Reimer, Comment — “My response to Christ—to whom shall I go?—is in effect to place myself within this community. If I can’t yet claim to possess that reality in its fullness, I hope to one day, and I can’t help but think that’s the right answer, and that my Savior would be pleased with it.
I suppose all that just makes me a Protestant, though maybe a weird one.”
Where You Are Is Where You Are — Hadden Turner, Over The Field — “You are not responsible for the whole world—far from it. But you are responsible for the local places in front of you… This is a burden heavy enough for us. This is a burden that matches our limitations. This is a burden that we can faithfully discharge. And this is a burden that will present us with a lifetime of opportunities for doing good.”
(related: For more discussion of themes found in this writing, Hadden recently made a podcast appearance)
Keep Your Money Close — Jane Clark Scharl, Plough — “This year, I’ll be looking for more ways to keep my money in my local community—to apply the principle of subsidiary to my purchasing—and not just because I don’t like Amazon. It’s because love often looks much less polished and much more homemade than our culture would have us believe.”
(related: Tsh on 6 Months In A 100-Mile Radius, shared previously)
Expensive Does Not Mean Beautiful — Mary Catherine Adams, The Interior Life — “So if money does not necessarily buy beauty, what makes for beautiful pieces and spaces?”
Embracing A Lifestyle Of Thrift — Mary Elizabeth Thérèse Brodeur, Verily — “While having a thrifty mindset is commonly motivated by personal finances, it’s about so much more than saving money. The beauty of thrift is that at its core it begets presence. Thrift challenges us to pause as much is necessary to go deeper and ask questions of ourselves.”
Government Policy Should Enable Mothers To Care For Their Young Children At Home — Erica Komisar, Institute For Family Studies — “Rethinking child care funding is essential to prioritizing the well-being of our children and empowering mothers to make choices aligned with their family values. Every mother has the right to care for her children, and every child has the right to be nurtured by his or her own family.”
(related: Raising Young Children At Home as well as Reframing Family Policy & Supporting American Homemakers by Ivana Greco)
We're All Muzzled Oxen Now — Rhys Laverty, The New Albion — “…regarding pastoral salaries, I have seen next to no consideration of the bigger social issues which seem most pertinent to the question. This seems too important not to discuss… My concern, really, is not with pastoral wages at all, but with evangelical awareness of the powerful undercurrents in our society which are destroying family life and the wider social fabric with it.”
Gift — Kenneth Steven, Ekstasis — “Where have we not wandered since
putting those horses into mines to drag our coal
or through the shriek of war to drown in mud?”The Data Are Clear: The Boys Are Not Alright — Andrew Yang, The Washington Post — “But male achievement—alongside that of women—is a condition for a healthy society. And male failure begets male failure, to society’s detriment.”
(related: Schools Are The Wrong Shape For Boys, shared previously)
The Hollow Boys, And Girls: Restoring Risk, Efficacy, And The Small Triumphs of Life — Peco & Ruth Gaskovski, Pilgrims In The Machine — “In fact, it’s only when the winds die down, and the ship sits idly in the hot sun for days on end, that the crew begins to crack under the pressure of having nothing to do—as if idleness, rather than war, is the greater threat in life.
(related: Let Them Live Dangerously and How Teen Boys Can Bridge A Gap In Elder Care, shared previously)
Boys In The Boarding School — Elizabeth Stice, Front Porch Republic — “All boarding school stories make painfully clear the importance of caring for young people, even if they are not “ours.” Entering adulthood is hard, and it shouldn’t be done alone. Young people need to be raised, they need to be socialized, they need to be both disciplined and encouraged.”
(related: This promo video for a dream boarding school, found in the comments of a previous FPR essay)
to watch, listen to
Shia Lebeouf on Real Ones — Thanks to this from Amber Adrian.
Continuing On:
Verity with Phylicia Masonheimer — Episode 128 — How The Early Church Did Church (Church History Series) — I know there’s a lot of church history books to read and learn from… like a lot! And from various streams of Christian thought and tradition! Trying to remedy this by slowly going through Justo Gonzalez’ The Story Of Christianity (Vol. 1). His book Worship In The Early Church was also interesting.
The Commonplace with Autumn Kern — Best Podcasts For A Classical Charlotte Mason Mom
to glean from: tip, product, resource
Masculinity Resources — From one of our household’s favorite scholars, Dr. Anthony B. Bradley. He also has a podcast that discusses many of these themes, and his most recent book Heroic Fraternities looks great.
These Nametag Keychains — I had these personalized with our boys’ names for their matching backpacks. Classy, durable, and not expensive.
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.
The Schismatic article... yeesh. Yes. Sometimes I wonder if looking around for the perfect church is a little like the child of a divorce hoping and hoping that his parents will get back together. Because I think that really is what I want. Just a happy family (idealism!) and maybe that’s not the reality this side of heaven. But sometimes it feels an awful lot like strange family dynamics that have gone so far wrong they’re irreparable.
Haley, your recommendations and attention to detail are amazing. Thank you