"Out Walking" by John Leax

 

I’ve read Nightwatch, the young adult novel by John Leax (1943-2924), and I’ve read his collection of short essays on writing, Grace is Where I Live and Remembering Jesus: Sonnets and Songs, one of his poetry collections. And now I’ve figuratively walked with him through the woods and fields, called Remnant Acres, near where he lived in upstate New York.

Out Walking: Reflections on Our Place in the Natural World is a collection of essays first published as columns in the Wellsville (NY) Daily Reporter. It is also a collection of poems on the same natural theme, because Leax found that nature spoke of God and faith and sometimes that discovery could only be expressed in poetry.

The subjects of each essay and poem are simple – a dead squirrel, a heron, stones, salamanders, the kitchen garden (and protecting it against the birds and critters), fishing, watching the moon, and more. Yet in simplicity one often finds clarity and truth, and Leax finds it in abundance. What he finds moves him to praise and prayer.

A prayer for order

Father of all creatures,

whose dwelling extends beyond this world,

let no one trivialize your being.

Let your order prevail.

Let your intentions come to be

for creation and for yourself.

Give us, each day, no more than we need,

and forgive us when we take for ourselves

the well being of others,

as we forgive others who seek to take ours.

Lead us away from our dreams of power

that we might be whole,

satisfied in you.

John Leax

It’s not my imagination that in this poem I find echoes of the Lord’s Prayer in the New Testament.

From 1968 to 2009, John Leax (1943-2024) was an English professor and poet-in-residence at Houghton College in New York. He was a poet, an essayist, and the author of one novel, Nightwatch. Leax’s poetry collections include “Reaching into Silence,” “The Task of Adam,” “Sonnets and Songs,” and “Country Labors.” His non-fiction writing and essay collections include “Grace Is Where I Live,” “In Season and Out,” “Standing Ground: A Personal Story of Faith and Environmentalism,” “120 Significant Things Men Should Know…but Never Ask About,” and “Out Walking: Reflections on Our Place in the Natural World.”

Out Walking is a quiet, thoughtful, faithful work, a guide to what the natural order can and should mean. It may be a slim volume (140 pages), but it is packed with insight and truth.

Related:

Grace Is Where I Live by John Leax.

Nightwatch by John Leax.

Some Monday Readings

Darker – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

Bone Into Stone: On translating Ovid’s Metamorphosis – Jhumpa Lahiri at The Dial.

Not So Close: Two different looks at Henry David Thoreau – Ashley Barnes at Commonweal.

The Importance of Walking a Battlefield – Doug Crenshaw at Emerging Civil War.

The Inflection Point – Michael Oren at Clarity.

If you suffer

After I Peter 4:12-19 

If you suffer

for his name’s sake,

be unashamed,

be alert, be awake.

 

If suffering comes,

then glorify God;

trust your creator,

continue to do good.

 

Your behavior is spared

from judgment to come;

the godless will perish,

all, not only some.

 

Hold fast to your Lord,

stay strong in the word;

your suffering is short,

your cries have been heard.

 

Photograph by Abishek via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

Do ye the little things – David Warren at Essays in Idleness.

Glorious, Obvious Difference: The Complementary Souls of Men and Women – David Mathis at Desiring God.

Following No Other Way – Nathan Beacom at Comment Magazine.

Own Your Faith – Jacob Crouch.

Stones and Fonts – Barb Drummond at Curious Histories.

Saturday Good Reads - March 1, 2025

Pew Research has issued its periodic study on religion in the United States, and it appears something is changing. The decline of Christianity appears to have leveled off, and the reason might be due to the growing interest by young men.  

The memo heard round the world: Jeff Bezos told the Washington Post staff this week that the opinion page would have two pillars – personal liberties and free markets. Reaction was swift. Some 75,000 subscribers canceled their subscriptions; the journalism community was outraged. 

Add that to the upheaval going on in television news and commentary – in just the past week, Joy Reid lost her show on MSNBC, Lester Holt announced his retirement from NBC, and Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar learned their contracts on The View would not be renewed. The media landscape is fundamentally changing. 

 

As I was working on my novel Brookhaven, published in December, I accidentally rediscovered Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It wasn’t that he’d gone anywhere, but since the advent of modernism a century ago, his poetry hasn’t been held in the same regard it was in the 19^th century. What happened for me was to see the 2022 movie I Heard the Bellsand reread Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2020) by Nicholas Basbanes. And then a character in the story began to recite Longfellow. This week, at Poems Ancient and Modern, Sally Thomas looks at Longfellow’s poem “The Children’s Hour,” and I find myself becoming re-enchanted.

 

More Good Reads

 

Israel

 

The Life and Death of the Oldest Hostage in Gaza – Matti Friedman at The Free Press.

 

American Psychological Association Slammed for ‘Virulent’ Jew Hate – Sally Satel at The Free Press.

 

British Stuff

 

Cloud control – Abhishek Saha at The Critic Magazine.

 

In the Roof of St. Paul’s Cathedral – Spitalfields Life.

 

Ex-church of England head Carey among clergy facing possible punishment over abuse scandal – Muvija M at Reuters.

 

Faith

 

The Depth of J.I. Packer’s Legacy – John Piper at Desiring God.

 

Good to Go – Mark Daniels.

 

Dumb Church – Stephen McAlpine.

 

Poetry

 

Detective Fiction Is the Purest Literature We Have – poem by Elizabeth Scott Tervo at An Unexpected Journal.

 

“The Leaden-Eyed,” poem by Vachel Lindsay – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Desert Power – Erik Coonce at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

The 3 Lost Pieces of a Good Romance – Chloe Ann at The Radical Reader.

 

Understanding Evil with Cormac McCarthy and John Frame – Seth Troutt at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Life and Culture

 

The Right is Changing Cancel Culture’s Rules – Christopher Rufo.

 

Adults with Disabilities Deserve to Work – Jill Escher at The Free Press.

 

The Documentary That Investigates Jerry Lewis’ Never Released Nazi Camp Clown Movie – Keith Roysdon at CrimeReads.

American Stuff

 

Grief in the White House – David Bannon at Front Porch Republic. 

 

Thomas Jefferson’s Library – Neely Tucker at Library of Congress Blogs.

 

Lincoln’s “Second thoughts” on the Emancipation Proclamation – Kevin Donovan at Emerging Civil War.

 

Art

 

A Van Gogh drawing – with what is almost certainly the artist’s fingerprint – goes to auction at Sotheby’s – Martin Baily at The Art Newspaper.

 

Inside the Shadowy World of a Notorious Art Looter Who Evaded Justice – Min Chen at Artnet.

 

By focusing on Edvard Munch’s portraiture, London’s National Gallery reveals a different side of the Norwegian Expressionist – Alexander Morrison at The Art Newspaper.

 

Run and Run – Matt Papa, Matt Boswell

 Painting: Man Reading, oil on canvas (1851) by Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891), The Clark Museum, Williamstown, Mass.

Managing expectations

After I Peter 4:12-19 

On the horizon

and in your face,

the trials will come,

so bear with grace.

 

The fires will test,

the trials will harm;

no need to fight,

no need to arm.

 

Reviled for his name,

suffering for belief,

the fire brings joy,

set aside your grief.

 

The judge is coming,

judgment draws near;

you’re godly, not godless,

with nothing to fear.

 

Photograph by Jan Tinneberg via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

Photo with Bald Heads – poem by Marjorie Maddox at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin). 

Why I Complain – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

The Indispensable Inefficiency of Prayer – Seth Lewis.

A Sonnet for George Herbert – Malcolm Guite.

10 Things (about grief) That Are Different Than What I Expected – Kirsten at Faithful Paradox.

Spires of City Churches – Spitalfields Life.

Poets and Poems: Marjorie Maddox and “Seeing Things”

I try to avoid reading blurbs before I start reading a poetry collection. And I did that, successfully, with Seeing Things: Poems, the latest collection by Marjorie Maddox. This is a case of realizing I should have read the blurb first, to prepare for what I was about to read.

Maddox tells a story with the 61 poems she’s included in the collection. It’s not a narrative or told like a story. Rather, collectively the poems themselves present a story that is as hard to read as it is too gripping not to. It is a story of three generations of women, a story of depression, abuse, and dementia. If I gave the story a title, it might be “Broken Things, Mending.” 

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

Some Thursday Readings

You Probably Won’t Get a Book Deal. We Still Need You to Write – Darryl Dash at Dashhouse.

I’ve Got a Bad Case of Poetry – Rachel Donahue at Story Warren.

“Winter-Time,” poem by Robert Louis Stevenson – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

The Well – David Whyte.

Let the Heavens Turn Around – poem by Elise Meredith Jimison at Rabbit Room Poetry.

Some Wednesday Readings

The Most Valuable Class I Ever Had – Chris Martin at FYI.

The Nazis Did Not ‘Weaponize’ Free Speech. They Crushed It – Andrew Roberts at The Free Press.

Catchin’ Sheeps: The Value of Hard Work – Kirk Brooks at Front Porch Republic.

No winners in Germany – Elisabeth Dampier at The Critic Magazine.

Bedazzled by Brainwork – Andrew Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

Here and There: Reading Hannah More – Joseph Bottum and Karen Swallow Prior at Poems Ancient and Modern.

A BBC Documentary – Brought to You by Hamas – Adam LeBor at The Free Press.

Lydia Maria Child and the Anguish of War – Frank Cirillo at Emerging Civil War.

“End of Winter,” poem by Luise Gluck – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

The Jumblies Sail Again – poem by Jennifer Trafton at Rabbit Room Poetry.

Engraving: Lydia Maria Child.

Religion and Poetry Do Mix – and Mix Well

A statistic that even people familiar with the Bible find rather startling is that more than half of the Old Testament is poetry. The Psalms are the most obvious, but large parts of the major prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah and his Lamentations, and Ezekiel are written in poetic form as well. Even the New Testament has poetic sections, including the Sermon on the Mount of the Gospel of Matthew.

But it’s been my own experience – mostly in Protestant denominations but with a not-insignificant overlay of Catholicism – that poetry is rarely if ever mentioned within the church context. My own eyes were opened only a decade ago, when I took a weekend seminar with poet Scott Cairns at a writing retreat. That seminar not only introduced me to Cairns’ poetry but to that of Luci Shaw, Mark Jarman, Dana Gioia, and several others. A door in my mind was suddenly flung open.

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

Some Tuesday Readings 

Exile’s Journey – Jeffrey Bilbro at Current Magazine on writing and publishing amateur poetry.

“On My First Son,” poem by Ben Jonson – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Passage at Nineteen – poem by Donna Hilbert at Every Day Poems.

"The Engine House" by Rhys Dylan

Detective Chief Inspector Evan Warlow retired from the Welsh police force, and no one is quite sure why. His former boss knows, but none of the people Warlow worked with have a clue. He had years left to work, and he was excellent in his job. No one knows about the medical diagnosis he received.

He’s been spending his time on restoring his somewhat isolated stone house and walking his dog. He and his wife are long divorced, but he does stay in close contact with his sons. But even they don’t know about his condition (and don’t hold your breath if you think the reader is going to find out, either).

A landslide on a mountain path reveals the bodies of a man and a woman, and suddenly Warlow is very much in demand. This might be the seven-year-old case he never solved – what happened to an older couple who went hiking and disappeared? Autopsies confirm their identities; they also confirm that the two were murdered, most likely with numerous hammer blows. But how did get crammed into the side of a mountain reachable only with ropes?

Rhys Dylan

Warlow’s former boss convinces him to join the investigating team, and the case soon becomes a roller coaster of developments. And not the least chilling concerns the young couple who moved into the dead couple’s home; someone is watching then, just as someone watched the now-dead couple.

The Engine House is the first in 15 of the DCI Evan Warlow crime novels by Rhys Dylan, and it’s chock full of tension and suspense. It’s an absorbing story, and Dylan artfully uses the young couple to build the air of growing menace.

Dylan has published 14 novels in the DCI Evan Warlow series. A native Welshman educated in London, Dylan wrote numerous books for children and adults under various pen names across several genres. He began writing the DCI Warlow series in 2021; The Engine House was published in 2022. Dylan lives in Wales.

Some Monday Readings

“To a Skylark,” Poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley – Sally Thomas t Poems Ancient and Modern.

Burdekin’s London Nights – Spitalfields Life.

Gentleness in Academia – Elizabeth Hoare at Plough Magazine.

The Immense Call of the Particular: A Conversation with Robert Haas – Chard Deniord at Literary Matters.

The Internet Needs to be Smashed and Rebuilt – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

Trip instructions

After I Peter 4:7-11 

This journey we’re on,

moving forward as

the end of all things

is here, this journey has

only a few instructions,

instructions to learn and

follow as we travel

together. Be self-controlled,

and be sober-minded,

which is how you pray.

Love one another, and

keep loving one another,

because love covers it all,

everything, just as love

covered over our own sins.

Show hospitality, gladly,

using it to serve each other.

Speak and serve so as

to glorify God, even as 

and especially in these

last days.

 

Photograph by Neil Mewes via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

Going Against the Grain – Blake Long at Theology and Life.

Why Did Judas Betray Jesus and What Has It Got to Do with Us? – Mark Daniels.

“Window Weather,” poem by Gaynor Kane – Andrew Roycroft at The Sounding Board.

Augustine’s ‘Ordo Amoris’ and Immigration Policy – J.V. Fesko at The Gospel Coalition.

 

Saturday Good Reads - Feb. 22, 2025

It’s easy to get angry and vengeful about the Bibas family, the mother and two children who were kidnapped on Oct. 7 and whose bodies were returned by returned by Hamas some 500 days later. The body said to be the mother turned out to be that of some unknown woman; the bodies of the two children showed they had been killed by hand and then mutilated to simulate death by an airstrike. Worse things happened to mothers and children on Oct. 7, but if we ever needed a reminder that Hamas and its supporters are psychopaths, it’s difficult to ignore the evidence now. Read Matti Friedman’s “The Family That Never Came Home” at the Free Press and Seth Mandel’s “The Meaning of Kfir Bibas.” 

My 1970 AP Stylebook

For those of us who attended journalism school before the 2000s (long before), the “class bible” was the Associated Press Stylebook. We were required to memorize it in our first introductory journalism course; a style error on an assignment was an automatic F. (We could also keep it with us during assignments and tests.) I still have my copy, a small paperback pamphlet about one fourth of an inch thick. But over the years, AP made changes. The first one I really noticed was that pro-life groups could no longer be referred to as that but instead had to be called “anti-abortion groups.” The pace of change quickened after that. The subject of the Style Book has come up oddly enough because of the spat President Trump is having with AP over the “Gulf of America.” Marc Caputo at Axios notes that the spat is about far more than what to call the Gulf, because the Stylebook has become far more than news writing style.

 

Some 20 years ago, I had a project “forwarded for handling” (aka “dumped in my lap”) by the assistant to the company’s CEO – several letters from a middle school English class in San Francisco. A cover letter by the teacher explained this was a class assignment to protest something they believed the company was doing, and she was proudly joining their protest. It was my second direct experience with learning something had happened to the teaching of English; the first had occurred some years earlier when my oldest son was in sixth grade, and I discovered his English teacher couldn’t spell. The San Francisco letters, including the teacher’s, were filled with spelling errors, dangling participles, grammatical mistakes, and incomplete sentences. The response sent back was thanking her and the class for their concern, pointing out the company wasn’t doing what they thought. We included a red-marked correction of the teacher’s letter. I wish I had had Liza Libes’ post entitled “Why Did English Departments Abandon Ideas for Ideology?” 

 

More Good Reads

 

Faith

 

American Revival: A nation with the soul of many churches – Spencer Klavan at The New Jerusalem. His dad responds: Salvation the American Way by Andrew Klavan.

 

An irreducible minimum – Andrew Roycroft at The Sounding Board.

 

News Media

 

How the U.S. Government Controls the Ukrainian Media – Tanya Lukyanova at The Free Press.

 

Art

 

How the St. Louis Art Museum accumulated a world-class German art collection – SLAM Blog.

 

A glimpse at Picasso and Pollock masterpieces kept in Tehran vault – Armen Nersessian at BBC.

 

Could this Van Gogh come from Nazi Germany? – Martin Bailey at The Art Newspaper.

 

Writing and Literature

 

5 Reasons to Write in Your Books – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Farewell, Peak Literacy, We Hardly Knew You – Brian Miller at The Wood Between the Worlds.

 

Life and Culture

 

Against the Vandals – Bari Weiss speech at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship.

 

Vance’s truth bombs – James Price at The Critic Magazine.

 

Student Recounts Five Days of Flame – Avedis Maljanian at Hillsdale Collegian. 

 

The museum’s lost craft – Lola Salem at The Critic Magazine.

 

American Stuff

 

A Short History of the Electoral College – Miguel Faria at Real Clear History.

 

British Stuff

 

The Royal Society should not expel Elon – Freddie Attenborough at The Critic Magazine.

 

Poetry

 

“I would I might forget that I am I,” poem by George Santayana – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Gerard Manley Hopkins: “The Lantern Out of Doors” – Andy Patton at Rhyme & Reason, a Rabbit Room podcast.

 

The Last Goodbye – Billy Boyd (from The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies)

Painting: Reading Lady, oil on canvas by Caspar Ritter (1861-1923).

Not for this life

After I Peter 4:1-6

Live not for this life,

as you live in this life,

for to live for this life

is to live for self,

indulging human passions.

Set the life of this life

aside, with its passions,

sensuality, drunkenness,

and debauchery. Yes, you

will be maligned for not

going with the flow;

the darkness of this world

is strong. But you have

made a different choice,

to turn away from

the passions of this life,

to live in the spirit

given you, the spirit

of salvation.

Some Friday Readings

That Blessed Hope – poem by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper at Kingdon Poets (D.S. Martin).

Sleeping with the Gospels – Michael J. Kruger at Canon Fodder.

Everyone Should Believe in God – Ross Douthat at The Free Press.

Perspicuity – poem by Seth Lewis.

What is Truth? – Andrew Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

Poets and Poems: Ryan Ruby and "Context Collapse"

I’ve never read a poem quite like Context Collapse: A Poem Containing a History of Poetry by Ryan Ruby. I would expect that you haven’t either. Written in unrhymed pentameter, this is a poem about the history of poetry. It is also a poem about literary theory. It’s a poem that reads like what you might find in an academic journal on linguistics or communication technology. In other words, unless you’re familiar with literary theory and can translate academese, you’re going to find this poem a tough go.

I admit it: I found it a tough go. If I pretended anything else, I wouldn’t just be posing as an idiot. Remove the returns after each line, turning it into paragraphs, and you have an academic paper.

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

Some Thursday Readings

The Power of Research – Allen Eskens at CrimeReads.

“Now at Liberty,” poem by Dorothy Parker – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

“A Flowering Absence,” poem by John Montague – Andrew Roycroft at The Sounding Board.

Some Wednesday Readings

The speech Vice President J.D. Vance gave at the Munich Security Conference last week continues to reverberate. I don’t think I can recall a recent speech that has had as much reaction and response as this one, and it was on top of the one Vance gave at the Paris meeting on artificial intelligence. The Critic Magazine in the UK said Europe deserved it; The Spectator says it sent shockwaves across the continent. Matt Taibbi at Racket News looked at the reaction and said the mask has dropped. 

To prove Vance wrong, CBS followed German police who made arrests for violations of speech, and somehow managed to prove Vance right. Ben Domenech, a former CBS newsman, wonders why CBS has developed a penchant for censorship. 

Meanwhile, the new Administration in Washington makes its first move against sex trafficking. Oliver Wiseman at The Free Press describes what’s happening overall in Washington as the “everything is broken” administration. 

More Good Reads

Patrick Colquhoun and the Thames River Police – A London Inheritance.

Mud – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

The (British) police are ruining their reputation – Fred de Fossard at The Critic Magazine.

5 Tips for Writing Page-Turning Historical Fiction – Julie Hartley at Writer’s Digest.

“Street Light,” poem by John Crowe Ranson – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Photograph: Poet John Crowe Ranson in 1941.

Poets and Poems: Jessica Cohn and "Gratitude Diary"

We express gratitude for many things – recovery from an illness, a thankful child, the generosity of a friend, and a recognition at work, to mention only a few. But have you thought about being grateful for a jar of buttons on the dresser, the smell of toast, how to preserve lemons, the satisfaction of making a list, or an empty box?

These are a few of the things coursing through Gratitude Diary: Poems, the debut collection by Jessica Cohn. Structured within a 10-day cycle, the poems focus on unusual items for which one might be grateful, but some explain themselves. The objects are themselves symbols of something else, something fundamental in a person’s life. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

Letter to a Middle-Aged Poet – poem by Matthew Buckley Smith at First Things Magazine.

Five Quintilla Poems – Cheryl Corey at Society of Classical Poets.

Giving Voice: Interview with Karla Van Vliet – Tweetspeak Poetry.

Immolation – poem by Anne M. Doe Overstreet at Every Day Poems.

“Ode to the Confederate Dead,” poem by Allen Tate – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.