Week 42 (2024)
Mary Poppins & growing home decor, at-home parents & drop-in friendships, symbolic flames & apple trees, Comer & the conversion of public intellectuals
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to read: books
- — I’ve been carrying these beauties along on car rides and around the house for months (and his music for about a decade). Seering, tender, radiant gems.
to read: essays, articles, newsletters
Until The Morning Star Rises — Maria Khell, Theology of Home — “Candles speak to deep longings on many levels, and awaken in me a desire to have a spiritually-alive home, full of light and glowing joy, most especially during encounters with exterior darkness and cold. A seraphic glow that stands confidently in the presence of God, a vigil lamp kept lit and waiting for the returning Lord, and a shining sign of what we love and live for.”
Comfort Me With Apples — Peter Hitchens, The Lamp — “The painter Roger Wagner learned the art of stained glass to complete this project. It shows the figure of Christ hanging from a tree, on the top of a green hill far away, but a tree which has exploded into a joyous cloud of apple blossom, and from whose roots flows a river of blessings, filled with fish, on whose banks seven sheep and one lamb graze. I suppose some people may not like it, on doctrinal grounds, but I have several times stood for long minutes in front of it, compelled into thought, as the clear north light pours through it.”
- , The Interior Life — “The following are a few ideas I’ve collected during my amateur forays in gardening, directed more toward growing attractive bouquets for indoors rather than garden design. Perhaps they will be helpful for creating your own arrangements rather than buying pre-made ones or for planting a garden in the future. I hope they at least draw back the mystique of cultivating your own decor.”
- , Ekstasis — “Enter,
climb the altar, drink the holy cup,
preach a homily of all good things,
preach how, to know this hidden kingdom,
of plasma, marrow, rum, all below
must now turn lightward, heatward,
like twice-born little children.” The Cramped Universality Of Calvinistic Baptists — Jake Meador, Mere Orthodoxy — “For Comer, the chief problem of our day is not actually political in nature… The chief problem is primarily spiritual and is downstream of the spiritually enervating world of late secularism that deprives us of what we need to define or experience spiritual health and then tells us to go out and define our own truth and our own best life while giving us a multiplicity of choice but no actual counsel or aid.”
(related: In Defense Of A Rule of Life, shared previously)
The Conversion Of Public Intellectuals — Luke Bretherton, Comment — “Baptism also makes explicit a dynamic central to the theology of conversion, one that St. Augustine articulates forcefully in his own conversion narrative: conversion represents a movement from dispersion, alienation, and disassociation—both individually and collectively—to communion.”
(related: Remembering Our Names, shared previously — also, I had much internal pushback with Bretherton at many points throughout… but still worth a read)
- , The Public Discourse — “Yes, we need to study great thinkers like Wollstonecraft and Stein, but we also need to shift our cultural imagination, and stories and art are an essential part of that.”
(related: ’s How We Can Make Women Great Again, both essays giving nods to Erika Bachiochi, author of the masterpiece The Rights of Women — and you should feel validated in saying the movie is deeper than it seemed back in Week’s 40 comments… plus, our family is going on several weeks of the soundtrack on repeat like we’re prepping for a musical)
Childcare Policy Shouldn't Forget Stay-At-Home Parents —
, Newsweek — “Despite their crucial role, our polling overwhelmingly showed that stay-at-home parents do not feel respected or supported.”(and her reminder of the vital roles non-wage-working women among elite and upper classes have provided)
Fostering Drop-In Friendships —
, Other Feminisms — “I do think inviting two or more families is lower stakes than inviting one. It’s easier to say yes to something that’s ongoing, once it gets going.”( also made the connection between this quote and ’s piece on the travel benefits of bigger extended families — also asked for reading recommendations so here was my contribution of, yes, a list)
to watch, listen to
I’ve previously gone slowly and sequentially through some podcasts and/or videos, and it’s undeniable one gets a more well-rounded grasp of the person, project, or topic at hand than one-off episodes (which do have their place). So I’ve tried to incorporate this patient and plodding, focused way of interacting with the medium. Previous, thorough listens over the years include: Love In A Cottage (she has since had a second interview with Michelle Garrels I’ve been meaning to catch), Managing Your Fertility, Verity with Phylicia Masonheimer, 100 Days of Dante (here’s the website to sign up for emails), and The Commonplace.
Starting Up:
Genealogies of Modernity — Season 1, Episode 1 — Ryan McDermott: On Genealogy and Theology
The Natural Womanhood Podcast with
& Cassondra Moriarty — Episode 1 — Introducing The Natural Womanhood Podcast: Who are we, and how did we get into Fertility Awareness? — “Because it’s something not available to us all the time… it’s set apart.”Woven Well Podcast with
— Episodes 1-4, BASICS — How Your Body Works, Fertility Method of Choice: Creighton, Reproductive Hormones, Can You Avoid Pregnancy Naturally?
(more resources on female embodiment in the Big Ol' Compilation)
to glean from: tip, product, resource
Chai Layer Cake — I changed the recipe in our recipe binder… including not making the suggested buttercream, opting for a quick honey-vanilla whipped cream instead… so I’m just going to generally suggest the flavor, bidding you good luck on finding a recipe that looks agreeable. (We are still obsessed with this book we got at the library months ago. Even the two-year old cracks himself up quoting some of the lines that have made it into our family’s vernacular.)
Stations Of The Cross — by French artist Bruno Desroche
(h/t )
Thanks for sharing the Mary Poppins essay, it expresses perfectly what I was fumbling towards in my comment on Week 40! I am especially glad that you shared it because I was wondering about expanding my comments on Mary Poppins and feminism into an essay and I am very relieved that now I don’t have to because that essay already exists.
It was so wild to see Leah Libresco Seargent share my comment about our open invite dinners!
Here's our story and encouragement to everyone to try experiments in hosting:
https://faithandwitness.org/2024/07/16/how-about-dinner/