The Nicene Creed is 1,700 years old this week. Dennis Sansom at Mere Orthodoxy explains how it came to be created, and why it’s still important.
A local note: St. Louis Patina is a site dedicated to preserving local architecture – and sometimes preserving the memory of it. This week, the posts included Grace Episcopal Church in our suburb of Kirkwood, which a few local wags refer to as “St. Roofus.” It’s a large A-frame structure, built in 1961 when the congregation moved a few blocks east. The original building sits directly across the street from the Kirkwood Farmers Market.
In 2017, we visited Two Temple Place in London, built in the late 19th century by William Waldorf Astor, an American who much preferred to live in London. It was open during September’s London Open House Festival, and it was an incredible place to visit. Recently, the Gentle Author at Spitalfields Life took a tour, and it’s decorated for Christmas. (If you visit London in September, you should take advantage of Open House, during which many of the city’s normally closed architectural treasures are open for tours.)
A psychosomatic illness is one in which an individual imagines a sickness; it may be as real to the person as a real illness. A somatic illness is a real one, with real symptoms, but it, too, can be associated with a disorder, when the response to the symptoms is out of proportion to the reality.
I’ve been fortunate with not having been directly affected by a relative or friend having been affected by either a psychosomatic or somatic disorder. But I’ve heard of or known people who have. And it’s all too true that just because “it’s only an illness in the mind” doesn’t mean it can be ignored or discounted; the impact on the individual and those around him or her can be devastating.
In her new collection, Somatic: Poems, Ann Keniston explores these illnesses. And she does so from what seems clear as first-hand experience with a close family member.
Hisham Matar won the Pulitzer Prize for biography for The Return, the story of his search for his father, who’d been kidnapped and presumably killed by the Libyan government. His first novel, In the Country of Men, won several recognitions and awards. Virtually every book he writes wins awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for his novel, My Friends, in 2025.
There’s one exception, and it’s a gem of a story.
In 2014 or 2015, Matar traveled to Siena, Italy, as something of a retreat or rest. He was still recovering from the intensity of writing The Return, not to mention the number of widespread accolades it received. Siena was meant to be a respite, and it was. He describes that respite in A Month in Siena, a non-fiction work about his own life, the churches in the town, and the artwork contained in those churches and the local museum.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.
Poet Luci Shaw died last week, age 96. She would have turned 97 on Dec. 29. The news prompted an outpouring of memories, comments, shared experiences, and posts about how important she’d been in the lives of so many poets and writers.
I never met Luci, and yet it seems like she was an old friend. I never thought of her as a mentor, and yet she influenced my own writing.
I knew Luci Shaw by reading her poetry. And I read her poetry because I visited a place that knew her and that she knew.
The Christmas issue of Cultivating Oaks Press is now online, and I have a short story, “The Christmas Nobody Wanted.” It includes essays, reflections, and even a recipe by Andrew Roycroft, Amelia Friedline, Annie Nardone, Junius Johnson, Matthew Clark, Adam Nettesheim, Marbieth Barber, Hillevi Anne Peterson, and several others.
