Protected

After 2 Samuel 9:1-13 

Protected by his friend,

saved to avert his murder

at the hands of the king,

he shares a covenant,

house to house, a love

again demonstrated 

by the acknowledgement

of what had to happen.

The relationship was sealed

in promise and love, and

he showed that love and

he showed that faithfulness,

by protecting the son

of his friend, and more so,

by blessing the son

of his friend.

 

Photograph by Jed Owen via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Into the Unknown – Melissa Edgington at Your Mom Has a Blog.

 

Is Joy in Jess a Christian Obligation? – John Piper at Desiring God.

Saturday Good Reads - Dec. 13, 2025

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 19^th 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.)

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

The Continental Army’s Medical Crisis: Benjamin Rush’s Whistleblowing in 1778 – Haley Fuller at Military.com.

 

Facing Washington’s Crossing: The Hessians and the Battle of Trenton by Steven Bier – review by Sam Short at the Journal of the American Revolution.

 

The Battle of Great Bridge — Mark Maloy at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Lafayette and the Journey to Yorktown – Shaun Cero at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

Was the Battle of Point Pleasant the First Battle of the American Revolution? – Evan Portman at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

The 50 Years That Made America – Max Edling at History Today.

 

Videau’s Bridge: An American Disaster After Yorktown – Joshua Wheeler at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

Faith

 

Learning by Experience – Seth Lewis.

 

My Top 10 Theology Stories of 2025 – Collin Hansen at The Gospel Coalition.

 

Loving Aging Parents Well – John Piper at Desiring God.

 

American Stuff

 

Freedom to be Bound: Religious Liberty from Moses to Madison – Ian Speir at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

British Stuff

 

Britain is facing a crisis of state legitimacy – Chris Bayliss at The Critic Magazine.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Miraculous Love: "Gifts of the Magi” – Jason Clark at This Is the Day.

 

Herakles’ 6^th Labor: Clear Away the Mind’s Chaos – James Sale at The Epoch Times.

 

Life and Culture

 

Revenge of the Climate Realists – Peter Savodnik at The Free Press.

 

Pro-Life Pregnancy Center Case: Even the ACLU Calls NJ Actions ‘Censorship by Intimidation’ – Lorie Johnson at Christian Broadcasting Network.

 

Russell Kirk’s Challenge to Liberalism, 1950-1960 – Bradley Birzer. 

 

Maria Corina Machado: The Nobel Speech I Couldn’t Give in Person – via The Free Press.

 

Art

 

The New Faces of Anselm Kiefer’s Art – Melissa Venator at the St. Louis Art Museum.

 

Poetry

 

“In Drear-Nighted December,” poem by John Keats and “In Memoriam XXVIII,” poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson– Malcolm Guite.

 

Seamus Heaney: a jobber among shadows – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

“The Need of Being Versed in Country Things,” poem by Robert Frost – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Ascensus Christi: A Piano Rhapsody – Paul Cardall 

 Painting: Self-Portrait, oil on canvas by Émile Friant (1863-1932).

A kindness shown

After 2 Samuel 9:1-13 

A kindness shown,

a steadfast love displayed,

to the son of his friend

slain in battle,

the grandson of the man

who tried to kill him,

a kindness shown

because it was time 

to forgive.

 

And more than kindness,

an honor, a tribute

to the friend he loved,

one soul in two bodies,

severed. Some might

have eliminated all and

any potential rivals;

instead, he showed

kindness, she showed

mercy, he showed

blessing.

 

Photograph by Masjid Pogung Dalangan via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“A Message for the New Baby,” poem by Luci Shaw – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

Four Advent Villanelles by Anna Friedrich – The Rabbit Room.

 

“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” – Anthony Esolen at Word and Song.

 

The Empty Chair at Christmas – Daniel Darling at One Little Word.

 

“On Change of Weather,” poem by Francis Quarles – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Poets and Poems: Ann Keniston and "Somatic"

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. 

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

“To a Wreath of Snow,” poem by Emily Bronte – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Poet Laura: Pelican Brief, Pod, Pouch, Scoop, or Squadron – Donna Hilbert at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

A Ghibli Advent: Peace – Megan Willome.

 

“The Owl,” poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

"A Month in Siena" by Hisham Matar

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.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Rise of AI Book Slop – Tim Challies.

 

The shame of Britain – Sebastian Milbank at The Critic Magazine.

 

Three Speeches That Savid the Union: Clay, Calhoun and Webster and the Crisis of 1850 by Peter Charles Hoffer – book review by Codie Eash at Emerging Civil War.

The Poetry of Luci Shaw

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.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

“You cannot extinguish,” poem by Emily Dickinson – Padraig O Tuama at Poetry Unbound.

 

When the Wind Flows – poem by David Whyte.

 

“A Hymn of Heavenly Love” by Edmund Spencer – Malcolm Guite.

 

“Barnfloor and Winepress,” poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“Poem to Fit a Matchbox” by Luci Shaw – Every Day Poems.

The Christmas Nobody Wanted

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.  

The theme of the issue is “Making Room to Receive,” and you can access all the posts here. 

 

Photograph by Jessica Fadel via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Avi Lanir: A Short Life Story” by Yael Yannay

Born in 1940 in what was then the British Mandate and what would become the state of Israel, Avi Lanir enjoyed only a short life. He died in 1973, tortured to death by the Syrians after he was captured during the Yom Kippur War. (“The Geneva Convention is for Europe, not here”). And yet he’s remembered as one of Israel’s most famous fighter pilots.

 

Author Yal Yannay had published a full biography of the man. But Avi Lanir – A Short Life Story: The Courage and Capture of an Israeli Fighter Pilot is not only a biography; it is also a history of Israel through 1973. And that’s because Lanir lived that history from his birth in 19340 to his death in 1973. Yannay also writes the story in the present tense, which places the reader right there in the midst of the narrative. 

She weaves a complex story. You move through the 1940s, when Lanir had family members and relatives involved in both fighting for the British and working in groups like the Irgun against the British. As a teen, Lanir’s father is given a diplomatic post in the United States, and his son’s experience was very different from peers in Israel. (When the family returned to Israel, Avi was the only one of his friends who had a driver’s license, for example.) 

 

Avi Lanir

Avi joined the military and specifically the Israeli air force. He not only loved his job; he was outstanding at it. He gradually became a squadron leader. He fought through the Six Day War in 1967, the three-year War of Attrition that followed, and then the Yom Kippur War in 1973. What becomes clear as you read is that Israel is never really not at war. Not during the lifetime of Avi Lanir, and not now.

 

Yannay, an author, writer, editor, and lexicographer, has done extensive research on Avi’s life. That includes ancestors, in-depth descriptions of military procedures and operations, and interviews with family members, including his widow, son, and daughter. What emerges is a complex man with both nerve and courage. 

 

After his capture, some were concerned that the Syrians would realize just how much the pilot knew; it could have materially harmed Israel’s military defense. But those who knew him weren’t worried; they knew that Avi was one man who wouldn’t break. And they were right, no matter what torture methods were employed. The state of his body when it was returned showed just how horrific the torture was.

 

Avi Lanir – A Short Life Story is a remarkable account of a courageous man, and a story of how a country can always be at war.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

The Exhibition of Industrial Power and London Archaeology – A London Inheritance. 

“The Good Riddle,” poem by G.K. Chesterton – Malcolm Guite. 

You have spoken

After 2 Samuel 7:18-29 

You have spoken, and

it will be as you say,

as it has been before

time. You spoke life

into creation; you

anointed me before

time was born. There

is none like you, no

god like you. You

promise to me,

a mere man, a house

that will live forever.

I bow to your grace,

to your provision,

to your protection,

to your love,

to your love for me.

 

Photograph by Mila Young via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Two Wedding Aisles to Walk Down – Stephen McAlpine.

 

“To Heaven,” poem by Ben Jonson – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

On the Lord’s Nativity – Cody Ilardo at Power & Glory. 

Saturday Good Reads – Dec. 6, 2025

When you’ve lived long enough, you begin to see a pattern. In the 1970s, it was Paul Ehrlich’s “population bomb” followed quickly by “the new ice age.” Things seemed to calm until the late 1980s, when “global warming” was the new existential threat. When all of the predicted catastrophes failed to materialize, global warming morphed into “climate change.” This past week, a major climate change study published in Nature Magazine was retracted for serious errors. If all this did was to help to convince credulous reporters and sell newspapers, it would be one thing. But as an editorial in The Free Press points out, there is a cost to confused climate science. 

American governments and politicians can engage some idiotic behavior, but the British are proving they’re masters at it. In the current Labor government, more than 6,000 people are employed in scanning social media posts. People are being arrested and given jail terms for pointing out the obvious. In Scotland, you can’t pray silently in your own home if you’re within a certain distance of an abortion clinic. (How do they know?) People are beginning to fight back, but the response of the highly unpopular government suggests this won’t end well. Writing in The Free Press, writer and journalist Dominic Green wonders if a new English civil war has already started. 

 

Bradley Birzer, professor at Hillsdale College, has a new book on J.R.R. Tolkien coming out next year. In the meantime, he has an article at The Imaginative Conservative on how he grew up with the creator of hobbits, orcs, and ents. Read “My Life with Tolkien.” (And more Tolkien links are below.)

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

Vanishing Ranks: Rawlings’ Rifle Regiment and the Struggle to Recruit for the Frontier – Tucker Hentz at the Journal of the American Revolution.

 

A Letter from William Prescott to John Adams – Phill Greenwalt at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

The New Dominion: Virginia’s Bounty Land – Gabriel Neville at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

Writing and Literature

 

What Is Christian Literature? God’s Truth, Wherever You Find It and J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Against the World– Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Conjurer of Worlds: The writer who made fantasy history – Michael O’Donnell at The American Scholar.

 

Jane Austen’s first biographer – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Life and Culture

 

‘We’re All Just Winging It’: What the Gender Doctors Say in Private – Leon Sapir at The Free Press.

 

American Stuff

 

The Shrewd Doctrine That Launched American Dominance of the Americas – Jason Clark at This Is the Day.

 

Step inside the lost Native American city that rivalled medieval London – James Osborne at History extra.

 

Democrats, Press Gloss Over Original “Double Tap” Operations – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

 

Poetry

 

In Memory of Luci Shaw: A Conversation with Ben Palpant – The Rabit Room.

 

The Shapes of the World – poem by David Whyte.

 

“Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare,” pom by Edna St. Vincent Millay – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“Stubbornness is essential”: An interview with Daniel Cowper – Jason Guriel at New Verse Review.

 

50 States of Generosity: Indiana – Sandra Heska King at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Rise with the Sun – City Alight & Tim Challies

Painting: Woman Reading, wood print (1881)  by Erik Wrenskiold (1855-1938).

Not you, but me

After 2 Samuel 7:1-18 

The desire to build

a house for me is

a noble one, coming

from your heart, the heart 

after my own. But it is

not yet time to build

my house, and when it is,

you will not build it.

Instead, I will build

a house for you, a house

that you will live in

forever. Your desire

to build a house for me

will be fulfilled, but

by your son, your own son,

and I will establish

his kingdom forever.

For now, I will build,

not you but me.

 

Photograph by Syed Ali via Unsplash Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

The Tune of Things: Is consciousness God? – Christian Wiman at Harper’s Magazine.

 

“First Sunday,” poem by Sally Thomas – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

“The King Shall Come When the Morning Daws,” hymn by John Brownlie – Anthny Esolen at Word & Song.

 

“Annunciation,” poem by John Donne – Malcolm Guite.

 

Thanks in Advance – poem by Seth Lewis.

 

The Bible Is on Trial in Europe – Kara Kennedy at The Free Press.

“Everybody in Amsterdam Speaks English.” Not.

It was our 25^th anniversary trip – a week in Amsterdam and then a week in Paris. My wife had been to Amsterdam some years before on a business trip; I’d been to neither city. 

We arrived early one May morning. It turned out to be Ascension Day, a public holiday in the Netherlands. We’d reserved seats for a shuttle bus, but as we neared the city center, everything looked like an early Sunday morning. Many shops were closed; little traffic was moving on the streets. Our shuttle driver dropped us off across the canal from the hotel; he decided the street wasn’t wide enough to accommodate his (very small) bus.

 

We had a lot of luggage. I mean, a lot of luggage. Even then, we didn’t really travel; we migrated.

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

Photograph: The Prinsengracht Canal in Amsterdam, via Unsplash.

Some Thursday Readings

 

A Genuine Petrarchan Note on William Wordsworth’s Ecclesiastical Sonnets – poem by Tom Riley at Society of Classical Poets.

 

“The Moons” by Grevel Lindop – Malcolm Guite.

 

Burdens – poem by Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

 

A king goes out to cheer his men on the night before battle – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Top 10 Dip into Poetry – Tweetspeak Poetry.

Books I’m Not Recommending This Christmas

It’s my annual list of the some of the best books I read this year. I call it “Books I’m Not Recommending” because I’m personally resistant to recommendations. But I can tell you what I consider to be the best books I read.  

Poetry

 

The largest single category of my 2025 books is, as it has been for several years, poetry. I read a considerable number of really fine poetry collections, and my reviews end up at Tweetspeak Poetry. If I had to pick one, it would likely be an older one – Autumn Journal by Louis MacNeice. 

 

Three books about poetry that I enjoyed are Dante’s Divine Comedy by Joseph Luzzi; An Axe for the Frozen Sea by Ben Palpant; and Ambiguity & Belonging: Essays on Place, Education, & Poetry by Benjamin Myers. 

 

Fiction

 

I OD’d on Wendell Berry year, reading three of his numbers (not to mention his Mad Farmer Poems). Without question, I enjoyed Remembering, The Memory of Old Jack, and Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story. Berry is still writing, and I’m hopeful I haven’t seen the last of the Port William novels. 

 

Foster by Claire Keegan is a short novel that packs a powerful wallop; her 2021 novel Small Things Like These is also rather amazing. And the (longish) short story Abscond by Abraham Verghese is a wonder. I also read an older short novel, A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr, that was published in 1980 but speaks to us today.

 

Art and Architecture

 

Art continued to be an interest, and three books I would not only say were among the best I read overall but I also wouldn’t hesitate to recommend. Van Gogh’s Ear by Bernadette Murphy explains how the author researched and tracked down the real story of his ear (and his art). Christopher Gorham’s Matisse at War is meticulously researched and focuses on Henri Matisse and what he and his family did during World War II. And Russ Ramsey followed his wonderful Rembrandt Is in the Wind with the equally good Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart.

 

I’m not a major (or even minor) reader of books about architecture, but one I read this year that was excellent was Forgotten Churches by Luke Sherlock. (It probably helped that I had visited some of the ones cited in the book.)

 

Civil War

 

Last December, my historical novel Brookhaven was published by T.S. Poetry Press. The research that went into it – nine pages of bibliography – was extensive. But publishing a historical novel doesn’t mean the research stops. Two books about the Civil War I read this year and I really liked were Glorious Courage: John Pelham in the Civil War by Sarah Kay Bierle and Fred Grant at Vicksburg by Albert Nofi. (I reread Brookhaven, too, and I highly recommend it.)

 

Mystery

 

Willliam Kent Krueger’s mysteries have been around for many years, and I’d read his more literary novels. I finally read Iron Lake, the first in the Cork O’Connor mysteries, and then the second, Boundary Waters. I’ve bought the third and can’t wait to read it. (There are some 20 or so in the series.)

 

I also liked London Blue, the latest in the Lord and Lady Hetheridge mysteries, and Tides of Death by Luke Davis, the first in the DI Gareth Benedict series. I also reached the current end of the Pete Brasset mysteries featuring DI James Munro (Ruse), and the current end of the Hillary Greene mysteries by Faith Martin (No. 21, entitled Murder on the Train). And I enjoyed Suffer the Dead by Rhys Dylan, the fourth of 21 in the DCI Evan Warlow mysteries.

 

And that’s the list for 2025.

Top photograph by Olena Bohovyk via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

At the Savoy Chapel – Spitalfields Life.

 

“Oh I could raise the darken’d veil,” poem by Nathaniel Hawthorne – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Dropped without Joy – Alexander Fayne on the poet R.S. Thomas.

Poets and Poems: Hedy Habra and “Under Brushstrokes”

Sometimes I find myself backing into a poet’s work – starting with the most recent work and then working my way backwards to earlier works. Such is the case with Hedy Habra, whose Or Did You Ever See the Other Side? (2023) I considered here last year. 

Then I read her first collection, Tea in Heliopolis (2013). I realized she has been writing about art – paintings, sculpture, music, architecture, and history from the beginning. Her background suggests this is not by accident; she’s been exploring the cultural heritage of her family through poetry from the beginning. 

 

Under Brushstrokes was published in 2015. As the title suggests, may, or most, of the poems are about art. Habra is going to take us on something of a tour, with our informed tour guide showing us what is and isn’t obvious.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

mist\’mist\ n. 1,3,4 – poem by M.L. Brown at Every Day Poems.

 

“A Christmas Carol,” poem by G.K. Chesterton – Kelly Keller at On the Common.

 

“Winter Wakeneth al my Care” – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

A Quarrel with the World: Milosz’s complicated Second World War – Alan Jacobs at The Hedgehog Review.

 

A Review of The Teller’s Cage: Poems and Imaginary Movies by John Philip Drury – Carla Sarett at New Verse Review.