Week 5 (2024)
The Betrothed & O'Connor's prayers, anger & the solitude of writing, matriarchs & three pillars of education, the cloud vs. the machine, sacred time & startling beauty
(Click title to open in browser, on the Substack website)
to read: books
The Betrothed, Alessandro Manzoni — audio — This is one I’d like to revisit in the future (like all rich, classic stories) after being helped by the interview and review below. I come into many novels sight-unseen!
For The Children's Sake, Susan Schaeffer Macaulay — audio — This is the OG gateway book to Charlotte Mason’s philosophy. But of the very few related ones I’ve read, I think Consider This was the most rich, clear, and illuminating. (Mason’s original volumes are on my bucket list.)
to read: essays, articles, newsletters
A Masterpiece Novel That Should Be An Instant Classic — Jessica Hooten Wilson, The Public Discourse — “We have journeyed with the betrothed, their enemies, their family. We have experienced their hunger, their battles, and an uncontainable pandemic. How then should we live in the face of our own crises? The Betrothed is neither a memoir nor a realistic narrative, but an epic comedy that invites us into a larger cosmos. On its pages, we can rage at injustice, repent of our guilt and complicity with the cowardly, but hopefully also display our courage in perseverance.”
Wildcat: The Frenzied Prayer Of Flannery O'Connor — David Griffith, Church Life Journal — “Though O’Connor is on record saying, in one of her most famously testy and controversial letters, that she thought it best to “observe the traditions of the society that I feed on,” she nonetheless reserved her reverence for the “lonesome place” of being a writer.”
(related: Jessica Hooten Wilson’s got some great lectures and teaching videos on her novels — in addition to publishing O'Connor's unfinished work)
On Community And Solitude In The Work Of Writing — Ben Palpant, The Rabbit Room — “Ironically, with this decrease of solitude has come an increase of isolation. The differences are subtle but important. Both words describe time alone. Solitude is sought by those who want mental space to think and fill the heart’s tank before returning to community. Isolation, however, is sought by those who want to be alone and who will put up any wall to stay there. Solitude does not push others away like isolation does. Or look at this way: love desires solitude, selfishness desires isolation. Christ desired solitude, an angry teenager wants isolation.”
It's Fine. Everything's Fine. (Except I Lit The Fire.) — Holly Forseth, Mothering Spirit — “Mary is not the model of motherly perfection because she spent hours on the floor playing with baby Jesus, or because she cooked the family’s meals, or because she raised a well-behaved little boy, but because when God revealed his hopes for her, Mary responded with an emphatic Yes. Mary’s fiat is her claim to fame. She showed us that a critical tenet of motherhood is listening to and saying yes to God… Those bouts of explosive anger were a sign that something was wrong. My body knew before I did that allowing myself to melt into the background of my life was not the answer.”
(related: The Year Of Madeleine, shared previously)
Reclaiming The Matriarch — Lucy Dearden, Fairer Disputations — “We should not seek to trap our youthful selves in amber, or pretend that atomisation is optimal for the elderly. Bonds with our kin and clan are essential, and—contrary to the tenets of modern progressivism—they are both healthy and liberating. It may sound morbid, but it’s worth asking yourself: how would you like to die? I don’t mean physically, but rather, in what role do you see yourself when your time inevitably comes?”
(related: One Chapter In A Long Story and We Will All Become Boring, shared previously)
Three Pillars Of Education — Heinrich Arnold, Plough (audio version available) — “Children are special. They speak a universal language of joy, wonder, inquisitiveness, mischief, and love. They respond to a mother’s nurture and a father’s loving firmness. They have a natural hunger for learning and an instinct for truth, and flourish when they know they have a place in a community.”
Laughter — Bryan Halferty, Ekstasis — “I—like you Sarai,
have eyed the clay bottom
of my cup,
as some would a telescope
spying the approach
of the impossible”Ekstasis And The Chicken Truck — John-Paul Heil, Genealogies Of Modernity — “But whatever walls we try to build around it, no matter what we do to try and control it or reduce it to a comfort or turn it into a status symbol, beauty is relentless. It is coming for us. It will find us when we least expect it, when we pump the brakes, let go of our right-lane rivalries, look up from our lives, and see it, love it, are hurt by it, and lose our heads because of it.”
The Cross, The Machine, The Cloud — Karen Swallow Prior, Comment — “The twentieth-century Jesuit priest Karl Rahner famously predicted that the Christians of the future will either be mystics or cease to be. If that future is now, then the cloud is a fitting symbol for the church to remember and by which to be guided forward, just as the faithful among the ancient were. If “modern” means “of the time” or “of the moment,” the church will always be that on this side of eternity—but we must not be just that.”
(related: A Wild Christianity, Atheists In Space and The Cross And The Machine, shared previously)
Keeping Sacred Time — Elizabeth Oldfield, Comment — “It feels like a welcome counter-formation, a form of resistance to secular time… people do seem to be drawn to what we’re doing, want to join the monastic rhythms… Like Burkeman, they are burned out by conveyer-belt time. Our home is becoming a tiny, faltering attempt at keeping sacred time, and I can feel the difference.”
(related: This gorgeous book that arrived in our mail recently)
to watch, listen to
Book Presentation: The Betrothed — A fascinating discussion with the translator (Michael F. Moore) of the most recent edition of the book.
Continuing On:
Verity with Phylicia Masonheimer — Episode 129 — Advent Special: Not-So-Silent Night
The Commonplace with Autumn Kern — Why We Read Fairy Tales (Part One) — Okay, one of my favorite explainers so far. And it doesn’t only apply to children or parents, but anyone reading novels in our materialist, modern world.
to glean from: tip, product, resource
Cleaning Faucet Heads — Did you know we’re supposed to be cleaning those things? Our kitchen faucet aerator was disgusting and apparently you can just twist it off and soak in vinegar for a few hours, brush it off, and it’s a whole new little guy. (My cleaning products have whittled down mostly to vinegar—and/or baking soda—for many things. They won’t let you down.) One can, and probably should, also do a version of this with shower heads and bathroom faucets.
This Italic Nib Fountain Pen — Finally jumped on the fountain pen train a few weeks back, and have already exhausted the two refill cartridges thanks to some intensive notebooking. (This was the other pen I got, but realized I very much prefer the italic version.)
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.
Tell me more about the vinegar and baking soda! Is that how you clean your kitchen counters? And floors? Bathtubs?
I'm itching to minimize the dozens of cleaning supplies I have!
“For the Children’s Sake”--what a blast of good memories : )