Week 47 (2024)
the resonance of theatre, cathedrals & learning music, flying saints & embracing candlelight, modernity's self-destruction & raising kids who have kids
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to read: books
Vipers' Tangle — François Mauriac — Big “Death of Ivan Ilyich” vibes. I also discovered after completing it why I had been seeing this book around, and it’s because
recently went through it for the podcast. Might need to listen to some of those.
to read: essays, articles, newsletters
The Prophetic Theatre — Christina Bieber Lake, Comment — “I think we would do well to instigate a revolution in the one form of art that resists this shift more powerfully than any other: live theatre. Theatre foregrounds art as event and experience—particularly the experience of someone else’s story. The sociologist Hartmut Rosa argues that modern society is characterized by a lack of resonance, which he defines as a mode of relating to the world that involves being affected and responding, feeling alive and a part of things.”
(related: The Highest Form Of Narrative Art, shared previously)
Learning The Violin — Maria Baer, Plough — “I am not a utilitarian, I am a Christian. I believe being earnestly, uncynically excited by and about something beautiful simply because it’s beautiful is deeply Christian. Beauty is never a waste. Wildflowers grow in abandoned fields that no one ever sees.”
A Great Rock In A River — Peter Hitchens, The Lamp — “What would abide would be the great mysterious church, filled with disturbing proclamations of seemingly absurd propositions, like a great rock in a river, with ordinary time rushing past it on either side.”
Christus, Objectum Amoris Mei — Spencer Barnhill, Ekstasis —
“I am the object of your search.
I will mend the marrow of your mind,
And clothe you in the goodness of rebirth!”What Flying Saints Are Teaching This Protestant —
, European Conservative — “…while claiming that God could not (or would not) do anything that wasn’t explicitly detailed in scripture, the Devil—a creative artist—was able to do much more than is written. Not only did they deny the Holy Spirit the power to continue working new mysteries, they claimed any such signs were purely and completely of Satan. According to this way of thinking, the Devil—not the Holy Trinity—had more creative license.”Embracing Candlelight In Darker Days — “The Church blesses candles, remembering Christ as the light of the world.”
(related: Until The Morning Star Rises, shared previously)
And Is It Not Enough? — Malcolm Guite, Plough (audio reading available) — “And is it not enough that every year
A richly laden autumn should unfold
And shimmer into being leaf by leaf,
Its scattered ochres mirrored everywhere
In hints and glints of hidden red and gold
Threaded like memory through loss and grief”
Modernity's Self-Destruct Button —
, First Things — “A common assumption among people who are relaxed about low fertility in the rich world is that life will remain much the same, just with a smaller population. We will still enjoy all of the nice things we currently enjoy—a welfare system, hospitals, sophisticated infrastructure—but there will be fewer people around, and so less pressure on all of these resources.”(related: We Will All Become Boring, The Age Of Depopulation, Remaking The World (book), and her interview with Paul Kingsnorth, shared previously)
The Social Injustice Of Social Security — Kevin Schmiesing, The Public Discourse — “Thus, U.S. Social Security, like government pension plans the world over, is built on a fundamental and poorly understood contradiction: it reduces the economic incentive within a family to invest in children even as it remains ever-dependent on a new generation of productive workers to keep the program afloat.”
(not in complete agreement with its entirety, as I don’t have to be to share here, but it brings up intriguing points and concerns about demographic sustainability)
Debunking The ‘Stork Theory’ — Pieter Vanhuysse, Institute For Family Studies — “If societies do not fully value the transfer cost of childrearing, they risk producing too few productive adults. This puts the intergenerational social contract under severe strain.”
Can You Prevent A Childless Old Age? —
, Nuclear Meltdown — “Of course I’m not going to solve this entire issue right now in a blog post, but the Times piece offers an opportunity to conduct a thought experiment in how to resist these obstructions via parenting.”
to watch, listen to
Continuing On:
Genealogies Of Modernity — Season 2, Episode 2 — What Is Modernity?
The Natural Womanhood Podcast with
& Cassondra Moriarty — Episode 6 — What does FAM have to offer relationships? An interview with NW board member Jackie Aguilar — “They look back and they will express remorse or regret to me that they didn’t have more children, but it wasn’t even a conversation for five years… because [contraception] was in, and that was done. And so they didn’t even talk about what their dreams might have been… we had this in so we didn’t even talk about it.”“It makes men better spouses.”
And for the physical, psychological, relational issues stemming from hormonal contraception and being gaslit by medical providers about it, this book mentioned is excellent.
Woven Well Podcast with
— Episodes 12-13 — Growing Your Family Part 1 and Part 2
(more resources on female embodiment in the Big Ol' Compilation)
to glean from: tip, product, resource
Poor Bishop Hooper — All their music is beautiful, but lately I’ve been soaking up the instrumental versions of their EveryPsalm project.
Well. Louise’s article was definitely the most depressing thing I’ve read this year. Really insightful! But… wow. Depressing.
Thank you for sharing Louise Perry's article. I agree with Kerri that it was depressing. But, I guess, it also makes me hopeful. We who are discontent with the technocratic, sterilized, godless modernity might just have the chance to build something new - or old - through our children, or their children. It got me excited as I read about Britain's pre-industrial TFR and her commentary on Amish communities. Those were the communities that built, and build, lasting civilization (national scale) and legacy (local scale). I guess I'm encouraged that someone else thinks it's weird that cats have replaced babies and that life-prolonging healthcare well into a chronically diseased, ninth decade of life is a universal good to which I must be entitled.