"The Joy of Advent" by Rebecca and Stephen Grabill

Start with the Jesse Tree, an old tradition centered on Advent that connects the story and characters of the Old Testament to the birth of Christ. It takes its name from Jesse, the father of King David, through whose root or “stump” the Old Testament prophets said would come the promised Messiah. Over the years, the tradition grew to include ornaments, much like what we think of as a Christmas tree, except these were ornaments connected to or illustrating the Old Testament characters – Adam and Eve, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, and more. 

In their new devotional, The Joy of Advent, Rebecca and Stephen Grabill have used the Jesse Tree as an organizing principle for daily readings, study, and discussion. Like the Advent season itself, the readings stretch from the fourth Sunday before Christmas to the traditional date for Epiphany, or Jan. 6. It’s also designed for family use.

 

Rebecca Grabill

Each daily devotional follows the same format. First, teens and adults have a short Scripture passage to read followed by a personal reflection. A family celebration follows, with a Scripture passage, a specific Jesse Tree symbol and description, a song, a family reflection, a together time to discuss specific questions, and then an ending with prayer.

 

The book includes instructions for setting up a Jesse Tree, holiday recipes, background on key dates within the period, It’s aimed at Catholic families, but any Christian family can use it and find value.

 

Stephen Grabill

The Grabills, parents of six children, are the cofounders of The Joy of Advent, a program which has taken them from churches and schools in the United States to Sub-Saharan Africa. Rebecca Grabill is also the author of several children’s books, and she blogs at The Joyful Mess. The Joy of Advent book is beautifully illustrated by Clare Therese Gray, an author, illustrator, and pattern designer. 

 

If you’re looking for a family resource for Advent, The Joy of Advent is a great possibility. And you can learn about the Jesse Tree, and the connections between the Old and New Testaments.

Some Monday Readings

 

Democracy in America: An Introduction – Roger Kimball at The New Criterion.

 

Me and McCloskey – Glenn McCarty at Story Warren.

 

St. Michael, St. Galgano, and the Sword in the Stone – Dwight Longenecker at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

The Return of Benjamin Pollock – Spitalfields Life.

 

Unmasking Evil: The Startling Revelations of a WWII Massacre – Jason Clark at This is the Day.

The light burst

After Isaiah 7:14, 9:2-7

The light burst

upon the darkness.

The people who had walked

in darkness suddenly could

see the yoke, the burden,

has been broken and

removed. The child is born,

born of a virgin;

a son is given,

born of a virgin;

a birth like no other

before or since has

happened, a son born

to rule, to govern,

to bring peace,

to be forever.

 

Photograph by Casey Horner via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

“Gerontion,” poem by T.S. Eliot – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

A Concise Theology of Failure – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

 

Dear Josephine – Sarah Dixon Young at Story Warren.

Saturday Good Reads - Sept. 28, 2024

You read a story like this, and you just want to weep. You want to believe that the FBI is all about nabbing the bad guys and keeping Americans safe, and then you read a story about Marcus Allen, an FBI man who did his job and questioned with FBI Director Christopher Wray had said under oath about Jan. 6. The FBI tried to obliterate him. The Inspector General of the Department of Justice investigated, and the net result was the FBI reinstated Allen’s security clearance, paid him 27 months of back pay, and proved to the American people that our premier law enforcement organization can no longer be trusted. You can watch his testimony before Congress, and you just mourn what our government has become.

Joe Carter at The Gospel Coalition explains how to understand the debate about late-term abortion.

 

More Good Reads

 

Life and Culture

 

Legends of the Fall – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

 

How Harvard Divinity Teaches Hate – Robert Friedman at The Free Press.

 

British Stuff

 

Reading Winston Churchill – Peter Caddick-Adams at The Critic Magazine.

 

Art

 

Marie Lenclos’ Still Light – Spitalfields Life.

 

Writing and Literature

 

The Reader’s Quest: How literature helps us find meaning and understand the world – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Tolkien Criticism Today, Revisited – Dennis Wilson Wise at Los Angeles Review of Books on two new books on J.R.R. Tolkien.

 

Poetry

 

“The Pitcher’s Arm,” poem by Benjamin Myers – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Seven Secret Poets Everybody Should Know – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

Dusk – C. Walker at Society of Classical Poets.

 

“Song in the Key of Autumn,” poem by Scudder Middleton – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Faith

 

Slow and Costly in a World of Fast and Cheap – Darryl Dash at Dashhouse.

 

Life in the Rear View – Greg Doles at Chasing Light.

 

Why Do the Evangelicals Rage? – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

 

American Stuff

 

A Thousand Words a Battle: The Underground Railroad – Chris Heisey at Emerging Civil War.

 

Once Upon a Time in America: Deborah’s Theme by Ennio Morricone, Eunice Cangianiello violin

 Painting: Man Reading Newspaper, il on wood (circa 1900) by Konstantin Stoitzner (1863-1933). 

To keep in mind

After Philippians 2:5-11 

More than a thought,

passing, more than an idea,

considered. Instead,

a guiding principle always

to keep in mind, in heart,

in soul, among yourselves:

the person, through God,

emptied himself to serve;

the person, through God,

obeyed to death on the cross;

the person, no longer man,

was exalted and glorified.

At his name, we bow.

At his name, we confess

who he is, who we are,

what he has done.

 

Photograph by Rohan Makhecha via Unsplash. Used with permission.

On the Long Station: 50 Holy Wells, #50 – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

 

A While List of Reasons to Consider Marrying Young – Tim Challies.

 

After the Murder – poem by Luke Harvey at Kingdom Poets (D.A. Martin). 

 

Harry T Harmer, Artist – Spitalfields Life.

Some Thursday Readings

The kindest of ghosts: A new history of childhood reading is a treasure – Simon Evans at The Critic Magazine. 

Jeffrey Archer: My 10 Favourite Agatha Christie Books – at CrimeReads.

 

University Cancels Panel Because Author is a ‘Zionist’ – Joe Nocera at The Free Press.

 

John Thomas Smith’s Rural Cottages – Spitalfields Life.

 

J.D. Salinger and the Wounds of War – Via Soho at CrimeReads.

 

Discovering a Classic: The Mass of Brother Michel – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

September Sketches – Brian Miller at A South Roane Agrarian.

 

When Did You Stop Writing? – Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

 

An Artist in the Ghost Army – Mikall Venso at Missouri History Society.

 

Of Course It Still Matters! Why Story Literature Today – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review talks with Henry Oliver.

 

Photograph: Agatha Christie.

Redcar Collector, a short story by Glenn McGoldrick, is free on Amazon Kindle today.

 

The Anonymous Spot with an Incredible History

If you like Brutalist architecture, and I don’t, an excellent example of it is the U.K. Ministry of Justice Building in London. It’s located near Buckingham Palace, where the streets of Petty France and Broadway converge. I’ve passed the building dozens if not hundreds of times, on my way to and from the St. James’s Park tube station. It’s right around the corner from where we stay when we visit London.

The complex was designed by Sir Basil Spence, a celebrated architect associated with the Modernist / Brutalist style (some call it the Soviet style). In fact, Spence has a plan to replace most of the government buildings in Whitehall with buildings like this one. Fortunately, the plan never became reality, except for this building which at its top resembles Darth Vader. At least Darth Vader had a personality.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

We Are in a Writing Renaissance – San Kahn at Compact Magazine.

 

Fall – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Twilight of the Hacks – Fred Skulthorp at the Critic Magazine.

 

Poets and Poems: Emily Patterson and “Haiku at 5:38 a.m.”

The simplest form of poetry, and, indeed, one of the simplest forms of all written communication, is the haiku. Derived from the Japanese hokku, it became a serious art form in the hands of the Japanese poet Bashō (1644-1694). The traditional form of a haiku is three lines of 5-7-5 syllables. Originally, it was confined to observations of nature, and while that’s still a common subject today, we use the form to describe all kinds of themes and subjects. 

Like to describe each hour of the day. That’s how poet and writer Emily Patterson uses the haiku in Haiku at 5:38 a.m. In her collection of 24 poems, she has one haiku for each hour of the day. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The Future of Book Publicity, Part 1 – Kathleen Schmidt at Publishing Confidential.

 

Roads, Dead Ends, and Endings – Nadya Williams at Current Magazine.

 

Notre-Dame restoration reveals Renaissance poet’s coffin – Hugh Schofield at BBC. 

 

Why Chinchilla is My Favorite Fur – prose poem by Tina Barry at Every Day Poems.

 

It Happens to Those Who Live Alone – poem by David Whyte.

"Death and Papa Noel" by Ian Moore

In a small town in France, transplanted Englishman Richard Ainsworth operates a bed-and-breakfast inn. It’s Christmas, and there are no guests, so he’s looking forward to a long holiday of binging on his favorite movies. 

His plans are not only upset but incinerated with the arrival of Valerie d’Orcay, a private detective who is currently on a most unusual mission. She’s representing a dead person, attempting to identify who perpetrated the murder. And she’s enticed a group of suspects to meet at Richard’s B&B to play a mystery game, with clues scattered around the town. Richard himself gets to play Papa Noel, or Father Christmas, at least until he realizes that the costume is about three sizes too small. Her goal: determine who killed her client.

 

Ian Moore

It's a generally unlikeable group, and no one divulges their real name. Instead, they use the name assigned to them by d’Orcay, Like Madame Rouge and Monsieur Vert (the detective has a penchant for using colors for the names of suspects). And then the mayhem and the comedy begin.

 

Death and Papa Noel by British author Ian Moore is that story of 

mayhem, comedy, murder, and flushing out the killer. It’s funny, but in the British sense of the word. Quite a few of the lines sound like a comedy sketch, and that reflects Moore’s career as a comedian. The story is novella in length, a rather quick and rather fun read.

 

Moore has published several short mysteries in this series, including Death and Croissants, Death and Fromage, and Death at the Chateau, as well as The Man Who Didn’t Burn, the first in the Juge Lombard thriller series. Moore is also a standup comedian and chutney maker. He lives in France.

Some Monday Readings

 

Writing Tempest: John Haley’s Soundbite Wins the Title – Chris Mackowski at Emerging Civil War.

 

A Word About (Book) Dedications – Sophie Masson at Writer Unboxed.

 

Magnetic – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Church Visits and Garden Walks – James Stevens Curl at The Critic Magazine reviews A History of English Churches in 100 Objects by Matthew Byrne.

 

Things Worth Remembering: ‘A Time for Choosing’ – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.

Two men

After John 1:1-14 

Two men are sent.

The first is a witness.

The second is the light.

The first announces 

the light is coming.

The second is

the light arrived.

The first is of flesh.

The second is

made flesh.

The first baptizes.

The second is

the baptism.

The first is the herald.

The second is the news.

The first testifies.

The second is

the testimony.

 

Photograph by Rafael Garcin via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

The Kingdom Didn’t Come for Daughters Like Me – Heidi Tai at Letters from Heidi.

 

Essential Church – Stephen Kneale at Building Jerusalem.

 

Pay Attention to What You’re Singing – Todd Alexander at Ligoiner.

 

Storytelling: The Parenting Tool You Didn’t Know You Needed – Betsy Childs Howard at The Gospel Coalition. 

Saturday Good Reads - Sept. 21, 2024

Interest in Sherlock Holmes stories seems to come and go in waves. Steven Doyle at Crime Reads argues that, for the last 50 years, it’s been one big wave that has never stopped – and it started in 1974, with a book: The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer. 

It was one of those headlines that, in these days of carelessly tossing around charges of “Hitler!”, caught my attention: Jonathan Kantor at Listverse cites ten companies that supported the Nazis and that are still around. I expected to see German companies on the list (no surprise there), but the one coming in at Number 10 was a real surprise.

 

Our State Department, back in 2016, the last year of the Obama Administration, got itself in the combating misinformation business. It set up a small center to supposedly counter misinformation on the global scene. Well, like all good government projects, it kept growing and extending its reach, really taking off in the last three years. And much of its activity has gone domestic and is aimed at news media who don’t tow the media narrative. Life is full of surprises. A House committee reports on what the State Department has been up to, despite the ongoing resistance to releasing information it has to under law, and which includes how it has tried to smear journalists for doing their jobs.

 

More Good Reads

 

American Stuff

 

The Spirit of American Constitutionalism – Gregory Ahern at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

Faith

 

Thinking Biblically in All Areas of Life – Doug Eaton at Fight of Faith.

 

Lose the Gospel, Return to Childishness – Carl Trueman at First Things Magazine.

 

Appreciate the Days He’s Ordained – Melissa Edgington at Your Mom Has a Blog.

 

“I saw myself a mass of sin”: the real battle in Western culture – Michael A.G. Haykin at Historia ecclesiastica.

 

Writing and Literature

 

The Magic of Maigret – A.E. Gauntlett at Crime Reads.

 

Life and Culture

 

Mistaking Politics for Religion – Martin Gurri at The American Spectator.

 

Poetry

 

“Mists in Autumn,” poem by James Thomson – Salley Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Raft – Ted Kooser at Literary Hub.

 

Art

 

The Big Review: Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers at the National Gallery, London and Ten surprises at the National Gallery’s five-Star Van Gogh exhibition – Martin Bailey at The Art Newspaper.

 

Notes on darkness – Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

British Stuff

 

Reject the culture of death – Jacob Phillips at The Critic Magazine.

 

Pastores Dance – Igor Moiseev Ballet

Painting: La Lecture, oil on canvas (1888) by Berthe Morisot (1841-1895). 

All the things

After John 1:1-14 

All the things

the word is:

The word is spoken.

The word is thought.

The word is felt.

The word is experienced.

The word is heard.

The word is read.

The word is shouted.

The word is understood.

The word is convicting.

The word is illuminating.

The word is judging.

The word is saving.

The word is enlightening.

The word is redeeming.

The word is creative.

The word is stabilizing.

The word was in the beginning.

The word is born.

The word always was.

The word always is.

 

Photograph by Bruno van der Kraan via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Reason and Faith – poem by Adam Mickiewicz at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

Who’s Afraid of Romans 1? – Andy Hood at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

What Matters Most: The Little Things – poem by Joy Lenton at Poetry Joy.

"Murder at Haggburn Hall" by Roy Lewis

An ambitious Morpeth councilman, eying a close reelection race, takes on an investigation into the bureaucracy, and for some strange reason, the Department of Antiquities & Museums is the first in the barrel. In seemingly no time at all, Arnold Landon’s boss Karen Stannard is suspended with pay pending the investigation’s outcome. That’s followed by the suspension of the director himself. No charges have been made public, but the implications are rather ominous.

 Mild-mannered but stubborn on matters of principle, Landon is incensed at the treatment of his superiors, much as he dislikes both. When he’s offered the interim directorship, he refuses, and punches home the point by asking for two weeks of vacation leave he’s due.

 

At the invitation of his professor friend, he’s off to Haggburn Hall, where Karen Stannard is also temporarily working on a dig. She’s not exactly pleased to see him, but she’s taken aback when she realizes he’s there as a protest against the investigation.

 

Roy Lewis

The Hall is owned by an eccentric elderly lady, who has various hangers-on enjoying her hospitality, including a kind of wastrel nephew who expects to inherit her wealth and a charlatan looking for money to fund his reincarnation study center. When a young man seen hanging around the local village is found in the Haggburn stable with his head bashed in, the signs seem to point to the reincarnation charlatan. But the police are having a dickens of a time determining motive and opportunity.

 

But then, Arnold Landon is on the scene, and it’s Landon who’ll figure out what actually happened.

 

Murder at Haggburn Hall is the 13^th Arnold Landon mystery by British writer Roy Lewis. It represents something of a change from its predecessors. Landon and his boss are becoming something less than adversaries, although animosity is present as an ongoing condition. Ad Landon seems to be moving in a direction away from his museum work. It’s a good story, and it’s interesting to watch the change in Landon.

 

Lewis (1933-2019) was the author of some 60 other mysteries, novels, and short story collections. His Inspector Crow series includes A Lover Too Many, Murder in the Mine, The Woods Murder, Error of Judgment, and Murder for Money, among others. The Eric Ward series, of which The Sedleigh Hall Murder is the first (and originally published as A Certain Blindness in 1981), includes 17 novels. Lewis lived in northern England. 

 

Related:

 

Murder in the Cottage by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder Under the Bridge by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the Tower by Roy Lewis. 

 

Murder in the Church by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the Barn by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the Manor by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the Farmhouse by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the Stableyard by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the House by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder by the Quay by Roy Lewis.

 

Error in Judgment by Roy Lewis. 

 

Murder at the Folly by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the Field by Roy Lewis.

 

Some Thursday Readings

 

The Funniest Things Dorothy L. Sayers Said About (and in) Detective Fiction – Olivia Rutigliano at CrimeReads. 

 

Courage in the Swamp: Nicholas Fox’s Port Hudson Medal of Honor – Peter Vermilyea at Emerging Civil War.

 

How to Create a Great Villain – Nathan Bransford.

 

Year of the Monarch – A Visit to the Craik-Patton House – Laura Boggess at Tweetspeak Poetry.

The Random Act of (Finding) Poetry

My love for poetry developed in three critical times. First was discovering T.S. Eliot in high school, introduced by a wild and larger-than-life English teacher who wore turbans and proclaimed that Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann was the greatest work of American literature. Well, no, but she was right about T.S. Eliot.

 

The second critical period was through a friend in the early 1980s, who said I couldn’t be a “real speechwriter” unless I read Eliot, William Butler Yeats, and Wallace Stevens. I don’t know whether he was right or wrong, but I took his advice to heart and started reading them.

 

Third was the year 2009. Idly searching on the web for something unrelated, I found The High Calling Blog, which mostly focused on the daily practice of faith in our work but also had a regular poetry feature, “Random Acts of Poetry.” 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Twenty-six Theses on Textual Technologies – Jeffrey Bilbro at Front Porch Republic.

 

A Popular Defense of Our Undemocratic Constitution – Pavlos Papadopoulos at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

To All the Books I Published Before – Ann Patty at The Millions.

 

The Melancholy Year is Dead with Rain – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Poets and Poems: Tina Barry and "I Tell Henrietta"

I Tell Henrietta by Tina Barry may win my “most creative idea for a poetry collection” award for the year. 

It is a poetry collection, comprised of free verse and prose poems. 

 

It also might be a collection of micro-fictions. 

 

And it is a collection of arresting and often startling artwork by artist Kristin Flynn. The artwork might illustrate the poems, or the poem might explain the artwork. Maybe both. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The Collected Poems of J.R. R. Tolkien, edited by Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond – Adam Roberts at Adam’s Notebook.

 

Gather Ye – poem by Ryan Wilson at First Things Magazine. 

 

The Word within the World – James Matthew Wilson at Plough on four new poetry collections. 

 

“The Highwayman,” poem by Alfred Noyes – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Checkpoint – poem by Jeffrey Johnson at Every Day Poems.

 

Glass and Gardening: Interview with Poet Jules Jacob – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

The Beauty and Importance of Gratitude: “My Heart Overflows”

Our world seems a little short on gratitude. We have expectations and demands, and we have entitlements. But we have so much to be thankful for. Perhaps that’s the problem – so many blessings and forgetting what the source is. 

My Heart Overflows: A Treasury of Readings, Poems, and Prayers on Gratitude is a relatively small but beautiful book that reminds us to be grateful. Assembled by the editors of Paraclete Press, the work is 144 pages of artwork and text that each speaks to gratitude, why we feel it and show it, and how we can be thankful for it.

 

You can pray with Francis of Assisi, observe Walden Pond with Ralph Waldo Emerson, celebrate beauty with Gerard Manley Hopkins, consider what you mother has done for you with Maya Angelou, and be thankful for the rain with Luci Shaw. Helen Keller is here, as is John Greenleaf Whittier. 

 

You can feel the evening wind with William Cullen Bryant, read what G.K. Chesterton said about St. Francis, see why you should enjoy life (Charlotte Bronte did), and discover what George Washington was grateful for about his new nation. Emily Dickinson believed there was nothing without gratitude (and she wrote a poem about it). And you can pray and be thankful with Jane Austen and the church father Clement of Alexandria and discover what Abraham Lincoln was so thankful he declared a national day of Thanksgiving (as did James Madison). 

 

The paintings included in the artwork includes those by Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Claude Monet, Albert Bierstadt, Jan Steen, Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Gustav Klimt, Giotto, and John Constable, among many others. The book is profusely illustrated, each painting chosen to illustrate the themes of thankfulness and gratitude.

 

I love beautiful books, and My Heart Overflows is a beautiful book. In fact, you could say I’m grateful for the time, care, and attention the editors at Paraclete used to create this volume.

 

Painting: The Thankful Poor, oil on canvas (1896) by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), one of the illustrations used in the book. 

Some Monday Readings

 

Chaos in Aurora – Christina Buttons and Christopher Rufo at City Journal. 

 

The Imminent Russia-US War – Christopher Caldwell at Compact Magazine.

 

Kristallnacht – The Night of Broken Glass – poem by Brian Yapko at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Writing for an Audience of One – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

Things Worth Remembering: The Imperfection of America – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.