Week 52 (2024)

transformation in music & quiet, creating out of darkness & counterfeit mysticism, birth's effort & hope, ordinary Joseph & Christmas pain

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to read: books

• For The Life Of The World — Alexander Schmemann — Paired with this interview Hans Boersma did on the book at Mars Hill Audio a few years ago. (Yes I want to be Ken Myers when I grow up.)

  This was a beautiful book… which I know people of all stripes have opinions about. But he sure gives the reader enough to chew on without being unduly academic. Specifically, his thoughts on how we do or don’t include baptism into the congregation’s liturgical worship (as opposed to off in a corner by appointment, etc.) bearing witness to the whole of its purpose. Also, the ontological nature of the sacraments (particularly the eucharist), and Mary’s default description and place in the church. This wasn’t meant to be an East/West polemic at all, but the few comments peppered throughout jumped out at me. An intriguing read. Interested to glean from more Orthodox writers. As a reminder, this is not meant to be a theology blog. he he

  (I’m reminded of Andrew Wilson’s book, God of All Things, which was simply astonishing… and specifically this conversation where Matthew Lee Anderson congratulates him for writing a book about finding meaning of the things in the world without once using the word ‘sacramental.’ Also food for thought.)

to read: essays, articles, newsletters

• An Inconvenient Demand — Jessica Lynne Henkle, Dappled Things — “And yet, I cannot help but think again of Ridler’s poem: “It is good that Christmas comes at the dark dream of the year / That might wish to sleep ever. / For birth is awaking, birth is effort and pain. How easy it is (for me, at least) to stay in darkness. How much safer it feels to curl inward, especially when everything outside of me seems beyond protecting. But what I know of Jesus is that He is uninterested in the easy route, for Himself or for His followers, and is instead determined, as Ridler puts it, ‘to force the glory into frozen veins.’”

• This Coronet — D.S. Martin, Fare Forward —

  “For when an artist intricately weaves
  a chaplet for the king from tender strands
  she pictures her own head with laurel leaves”

• Counterfeit Mysticism —

  Josh Nadeau
  , Every Day Saints — “Counterfeits always go down easy, but they’re all poison. Sometimes, they’re active poison - infecting us and killing almost immediately. Sometimes, however, they’re passive - starving us because we no longer have a taste for that which is good…

  And if we ever want to get back to something true, something good, something beautiful, some transcendent experience of our Christ, well - you know what you have to do. And it’s not easy. You have to starve those little critters to death, kill everything that has an appetite for the fake, for the simulated, for the counterfeit.”

  (related:

  E.M. Welcher
  ’s Dear Richard, shared previously)

Still Life with Oranges - Paul Gauguin

• A Searching Movement — Byung-Chul Han, The Lamp — “If the good news of the Christmas story, “A child has been born unto us,” is a message of hope, mankind’s sterility represents complete hopelessness... In Children of Men, humanity falls into collective depression. The act of birth, a synonym for a future whose task is to create the new, no longer takes place.”

  (

  Ian Harber
  shared this video which gives a taste of his work)

• Pain At Christmas — Charles Jacob, Mere Orthodoxy — “Hear God’s graphic language in Isaiah 42:14, about what He himself goes through in bringing his salvation justice and shalom into the world… Our Father and Elder Brother have gasped and panted to make everything guilting, shaming, isolating, impoverishing, enslaving, immiserating and deadening come untrue.”

• Joseph The Protector — Kathleen Brady, Commonweal — “…it was Joseph’s entrance into Nativity scenes that completed the image of family and introduced an ordinary, flawed human into the moment of the divine miracle.”

The Garden in Winter - Paul Gauguin

• Creating From The Darkness — Isaac Hans, Anselm Society — “It wasn’t something I set out to create; it felt like it had to be made. My body physically needed it — a way of facing and processing emotions… The photos, taken over the three weeks that followed, helped me explore the dualities of my homecoming amidst a crisis. Each image contrasts the familiar landscapes and places around my hometown with the profound emotional upheaval of the moment.”

• The Anticipation Of The Boy In Winter —

  Hadden Turner
  , Clay Jar Review — “His room is aglow with a dappled light straining to shine

  through the curtains - the glimmer from snowflakes innumerable,

  each one a down payment for this boy’s joy.”

• The Messiah Project — John William Trotter and Mark Clemens, Comment — “Though music does lots of things, the thing it’s for is transformation.”

  (related:

  Shannon Hood
  on The Story and Beauty of Handel's Messiah)

• In Winter Quiet —

  Sarah Finley Purdy
  , Clay Jar Review — “…I took half my lunch break and went down to the galleries to view a small show on the medieval Book of Hours. Quiet can be found in an absence of sound, or, I believe, in a kind of focus that takes an eye off the self and places it firmly on something beautiful. My responsive body was immediately taken by the jewel tones of Albert Bouts’ The Annunciation. The deep blue/green of Mary’s garment as she stands reading is dazzling to my modern eyes.”

  (related: her essays Perfect Garments in New York and A Somebody with a Body, shared previously)

Vaugirard Church - Paul Gauguin

to watch, listen to

Continuing On:

• The Natural Womanhood Podcast with

  Grace Emily Stark
  & Cassondra Moriarty — Season 2, Episode 3 — PCOS and Nutrition — Trying really hard to get through these episodes without asking how we got traditional medicine so aggressive, yet often ignorant and disconnected from the whole of the body?? Actually… more on this later.

• Woven Well Podcast with

  Caitlin Estes
  — Episodes 24-25 — Postpartum Fertility 101 and Client Story: Kate (Unexpected Pregnancy) — Caitlin is the real MVP in more ways than one. Doing the Lord’s work.

(more resources on female embodiment in the Big Ol' Compilation)

Garden Under Snow - Paul Gauguin

to glean from: tip, product, resource

• Seed Of The Woman print — “Every year or so, a picture of Eve and Mary circulates online. At first glance, it is a moving drawing. However, the theology of this imagery has bothered me so much recently that I created a different version, which is what you see here.”

  (Discuss. Or don’t, and do some Mary-like pondering. Admittedly, I’ve had an obscure version of the aforementioned painting—by another artist—as my laptop background for a couple years. So my eyeballs were interested in this one.)

• Simple Acts Of Sanity: A Seed Catalogue —

  Ruth Gaskovski
  and
  Peco
  reupped this popular post from last year — If you have a printer, and you really should (I use ours constantly) you can print off the pdf and stick that bad boy on your refrigerator… something I do with many of those papers I print off in fun colors. Consider it for the new year.

  (After half-joking with

  Emily Hancock
  that someone needs to riff off of Wendell Berry’s ‘What Are People FOR?’ with an essay titled ‘What Is Women’s Health FOR?’ ….well, perhaps the most basic, anti-machine thing girls and women can do for themselves is learn how to chart their cycles for health and/or family planning — in lieu of pretending the body’s functions are inconsequential, a thing to be shut off or treated in a set-it-and-forget-it fashion. Consider that my contribution to the list! Truly… we can’t all be Paul Kingsnorth, so we plant the little anti-cyborg seeds we can, ya know??)

Bouquet - Paul Gauguin

to look back on

Week 52 (2023)

Week 52 (2022)

Week 52 (2021)

Weeks 51-52 (2019)