Saturday Good Reads

I’ve been reading about World War I, and what should I stumble upon online but a story about “No Go Land” in northeastern France on the border with Belgium. It’s an area roughly the size of Paris (although not as compact) that is fenced off to keep people out. It’s the region that saw some of the heaviest fighting in both world wars, and it is filled with unexploded shells, old mines, and toxic materials (like arsenic). It’s a kind of memorial to humanity at it’s worst.

And then there’s poetry (good stuff this week), letting children do dangerous things (within reason, of course), and C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien on vocation and work, all of which speak to the “better angels of our nature.”

Poetry

Discharging Toggle Annie: Mediterranean Theater, 25 March 1945 – Mary H. Sayler at In a Christian Writer’s Life.

Choose to Hear – Lise at All the Words.

Paul Quenon – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

Attention: Road Work Ahead – Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

Summer rain – John Blase at The Beautiful Due.

Erebus – Brendan MacOdrum at Oran’s Well.

Life and Culture

First Annual Day of Ignorance – David Zimmerman at Loud Time.

The worst and the luckiest and Playing with Fire – Kelly Chripczuk at A Field of Wild Flowers.

A letter to me – Billy Coffey at What I Learned Today.

Let the Thieves Come: Everything is Already Taken – Shawn Smucker.

Critics of the Benedict Option – Rod Dreher at American Conservative.

Art and Photography

It looks like an old rotten tree trunk, but it’s something epic – Likes.com.

More Spiderworts at Sugar Creek – Tim Good at Photography by Tiwago.

An Encouragement to Visual Storytellers – Joe Sutphin at The Rabbit Room.

Faith

Controversy or Complacency – Tim Challies at Informing the Reforming.

Worry, Sticks, and Boulders – Jason Stasyszen at Connecting to Impact.

Why We Must Be Imperfect to Love Well – Mick Silva.

All About That Book – Shelly Richardson at Beyond Borders.

Pope Apologizes to ‘First Evangelicals” for Persecution – Christianity Today.

A Word on Commitment and Vocation from Lewis and Tolkien – Greg Ayers at the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics.

A Story I Never Heard Before

The Real “No-Go Zone” of France: A Forbidden No Man’s Land Poisoned by War – Messy Nessy Chic.

Painting: “Gassed,” oil on canvas, John Singer Sargent (1919); Imperial War Museum, London.