Saturday Good Reads

I finished reading a book about Brexit this week. In fact, it was a novel by Anthony Cartwright called The Cut, and specially commissioned by the publisher. The idea was to understand why a majority of British voters said they wanted to leave the EU. One of the key themes is how easy it is to see the prejudice in others and completely overlook the prejudices in ourselves. It has lessons for people in the United States. I’ll be writing more about it next month.

Tessa Carman at Mere Orthodoxy reads The Gospel in George Macdonald and considers the reality of creeks. Fred Sanders talks about the Biblical paintings of Henry Ossawa Tanner. An anti-slavery campaigner you may never have heard of is Benjamin Lay, and it’s a fascinating story.

A lot of good poetry this week, including a story from The Guardian on T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” and how it remains one of the finest reflections ever written on mental illness.

And the video is a song we sing often at our church.

Life and Culture

Earning the Tradition – Glenn Arbery at The Imaginative Conservative.

The Death of Newsweek – Jonathan Alter at The Atlantic.

How to Stay Informed Without Staying Glued to the News – Scott Slayton at One Degree to Another.

Art and Photography

Ferns and Poinsettias and Snow Day – Tim Good.

Achieving a Luminosity: Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Biblical Paintings – Fred Sanders at The Scriptorium Daily.

Hiking Northbrook Gorge – Neil Ennis at Musings.

Poetry

Relic – Matthew Thorburn at Image Journal.

Annabelle Moseley – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

The cause – Troy Cady at T(r)oy Marbles.

The Language of the Dead – Brendan MacOdrum at Oran’s Well.

The Eleventh of January – Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

Headlong into Light – Jason Ramsey at Altarwork.

TS Eliot's The Waste Land remains one of the finest reflections on mental illness ever written –  Jonathan McAloon at The Guardian.

Faith

The Factitude of Creeks, or, Loving the Real – Tessa Carman at Mere Orthodoxy.

Tears of Hope – Kayla Hodges at Literary Life.

Christendom in 1200 Words (Give or Take) – Jake Meador at Mere Orthodoxy.

Faith & Reason vs. Mush – Rod Dreher at The American Conservative.

A Blessed Lent – Martha Orlando at Meditations of My Heart.

American Stuff

Benjamin Lay: The Quaker dwarf who fought slavery – Nic Rigby at BBC (Hat tip: J of India).

British Stuff

How to do things – David Warren at Essays in Idleness.

Writing and Literature

'I really want to find it before I die': why are we so fascinated by lost books? – Lorraine Berry at The Guardian.

Behold Our God – Praise and Harmony Singers

Painting: A Woman Reading, oil on canvas by Jean Francoise de Troy (1679-1752).