Saturday Good Reads - Jan. 8, 2022

  

This past Monday marked the 130^th anniversary of the birth of J.R.R. Tolkien, which would be somewhat middle-aged in Hobbit years. David Engels at The Critic Magazine asks what can we learn from Tolkien (we Ringheads know the answer to that: everything!), while Devin Brown at The Gospel Coalition goes searching for God in Middle-Earth. 

 

On one of his regular visits to St. Tikhon’s, a Greek Orthodox monastery in Pennsylvania, writer Thom Nickels discovers stillness in the Poconos. 

 

Neil Chatelaine took his dog on walk in the French Quarter of New Orleans, and he discovered all kinds of connections to the American Civil War. 

 

Theologian Carl Trueman, author of the highly regarded The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, takes the culture head on and asks, can we reshape ourselves into whatever we want to be?

 

More Good Reads

 

Writing and Literature

 

What If? New Insight into the Friendship of Virginia Woolf and T. S. Eliot – Megan Quigley at Los Angeles Review of Books.

 

Dostoevsky’s Favorite Murder – Jennifer Wilson at The New Republic.

 

The Light of Wisdom’s Face: Sophia in Exile by Michael Martin – Tara Ann Thieke at Front Porch Republic.

 

Poetry

 

The New Year – A Poetic Prayer – Marianne Farningham via Tim Challies.

 

Patterns (Tree and Leaf), a poem about Tolkien – Malcolm Guite.

 

The Journey of the Magi – T.S. Eliot at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

Meditations on Ecclesiastes – Cynthia Erlandson at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Life and Culture

 

Anti-Constitutionalism, in the Name of Democracy – Patrick Garry at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

Humor and Humanity – N.S. Lyons at The Upheaval.

 

Faith

 

When God Hacks into Life: The Freaky Doctrines of Providence, Concurrence, and the Miraculous – Clint Archer at The Cripplegate.

 

Tim Keller on the Church Crisis That He Never Had to Face as a Pastor – But You Do – Justin Taylor at The Gospel Coalition. 

 

Into the Waves – Andrea Sanborn at A View of the Lake.

 

Nature Can Teach: A Biblical Introduction to Natural Law – Steven Wedgeworth at Desiring God.

 

I Wanna Remember – Need to Breathe

 Painting: Study of a Girl Reading, oil on canvas (ca. 1870) by Valentine Cameron Prinsep (1838-1904).