Saturday Good Reads - April 5, 2025

The New York Times had a surprising report this week about the war in Ukraine. The newspaper reported that the United States was far more deeply involved from the beginning, and that the Biden Administration both misled and outright lied to the American people about U.S. involvement and the threat of nuclear war. As one pundit noted, it was U.S. General Mark Milley who was calling the shots. 

Still another international surprise: Western media have been criticized for accepted war casualty figures reported with both immediacy and specificity by Hamas (or its health authority) in Gaza. One example: some 70 percent of the deaths have been reported to be women and children. This week, Hamas quietly revised the numbers; 72 percent of the deaths turn out to be combat-aged men. Notice the widespread coverage of the revision in American media? I didn’t either.

 

I’ve been watching a “equal protection under the law” train wreck approaching in Britain. The Sentencing Council, essentially a group of British judges who issue guidelines and polices for the court system there, was proposing a two-tier sentencing system – more lenient sentences for minorities and harsher sentences for whites for the same crimes. It was so bad (and causing such a bad public reaction) that even Keir Starmer’s Labour government was compelled to oppose the plan, even saying it would introduce legislation to stop it. Thankfully, the Sentencing Council has backed down. For now.

 

More Good Reads

 

Art

 

The art of experience: Caspar David Freidrich – James Steven Curl at The Critic Magazine.

 

Neater – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Faith

 

What is Man? – Carl Trueman at The New Jerusalem.

 

Maintaining Friendships in a Lonely Age – Thomas Kidd.

 

Why Hospitality in the New Testament Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does – Michael Kruger at Canon Fodder.

 

Be Wary of 1%-er Rhetoric – Just Poythress.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Demons and Monsters in George Bernanos – Cyril O’Regan at Church Life Journal.

 

Life and Culture

 

Secularist Violence in Modern History: An Interview with Thomas Albert Howard – Nadya Williams at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

The Other Cancel Culture – Dixie Dillon Lane at Front Porch Republic.

 

Restoring the Humanities: An Education That’s Not for Dummies – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

American Stuff

 

Jay Bhattacharya Was ‘Dangerous.’ Now He Leads the NIH – Bari Weiss at The Free Press. 

 

Stacking Arms: The Cockade City Unravels – Aaron Stoyack at Emerging Civil War.

America 250

 

Mapping the American Revolution and Its Era  – John Sellers at the Library of Congress.

 

Patrick Henry: From the American Revolution to Saving the Union – John Ragosta at Ben Franklin’s World.

 

Poetry

 

Ad Astera – Jack Baumgartner at The School for the Transfer of Energy.

 

“Wind in the Grass,” poem by Mark Van Doren – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Planets: Jupiter – Berklee Contemporary Symphony Orchestra Flash Mob

Painting: Woman at a Window, oil on canvas by Albert Andre (1969-1954, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Waiting

After James 5:7-11 

We want this over,

whatever this is:

an illness, persecution,

a hurt, a traffic jam,

a trial, a tribulation,

a suffering. Get it over

and we’re back in

control.

But it doesn’t quite

work that way; it never

has. Wishing and 

wanting and hoping

doesn’t equate to instant

or any other kind 

of fulfillment. Instead,

wait like the farmer

waits for the rain. Wait

on each other. Wait on

the Lord, for his return

is his timing, not ours.

And remember that

patience is another form

of forgiveness, just as

forgiveness is another

form of patience.

 

Photograph by Zac Ong via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Send Our Best to the Nations: Missionary Education with Henry Martyn – Jon Hoglund at Desiring God.

 

Even Me – J.E. Kestner at Story Warren.

 

Traveling light – poem by Suzanne Underwood Rhodes at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

Christian Artists Are Not Priests – O. Alan Noble at You Are Not Your Own.

 

A Poem About Life – Seth Lewis.

 

It’s Never Too Late to Learn How to Pray – Casey McCall at Remembrance of Former Days.

Poets and Poems: Luci Shaw and "An Incremental Life"

Luci Shaw has been writing poetry for more than half a century. She’s seen poetic fads, trends, and movements come and go. And she’s seen what endures. With that experience has come insight, an insight she distills into the 72 poems of her newest collection, An Incremental Life. 

Shaw might be what I’d call “the poet of the quiet.” This isn’t the quietness of meekness or shyness. Hers is the quietness of the spirit, of experience lived and learned. This experience shines throughout the collection.

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

Who Made the Stars? – poem by David Whyte. 

 

“Magnification,” poem by Maryann Corbett – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Poet Laura: The Beats, National Poetry Month, and Earth Day – Sandra Fox Murphy at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

The curious rebirth of the Gregorian chant – Adam James Pollock at The Critic Magazine.

 

“A Boy’s Song,” poem by James Hogg – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Meeting with a Monthly Book Club on "Brookhaven"

Last week, I sat with seven or eight members of a local St. Louis book club. I was there at their invitation to discuss my historical novel Brookhaven, which they’d chosen for their monthly reading. I was there to talk about the book and answer their questions. 

The hostess was more than knowledgeable about the Civil War, having an ancestor who served on the Union side. She even had his picture and other memorabilia. Her husband had an ancestor who published Origins of the Late War in 1866.

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

Photograph: The Brookhaven, Miss., train station about 1915.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Le Pen mightier than the sword? – David Warren at Essays in Idleness.

 

Another Look at Ulysses Grant – review by Gould Hagler at Emerging Civil War.

 

Contemplation in Action: Booth Tarkington and the Art of Business – Steve Soldi Jr. at Front Porch Republic.

"An Axe for the Frozen Sea" by Ben Palpant

Occasionally, you come across a book that feels like old home week, like you’ve returned to your college alma mater and almost nothing has changed. Poet and writer Ben Palpant has written a book just like that. 

The book is An Axe for the Frozen Sea: Conversations with poets about what matters most. Over the course of many months, Palpant interviewed 17 poets. He talked to them about what they write, why they write, how they view poetry (their own and others’), and generally focusing on the question most poets likely ask themselves throughout their writing careers: Why poetry?

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

A Seeming Stillness – poem by David Whyte.

 

“The Restoration” and “Quo Vadis?” – poems by Brian Yapko at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Estuary – poem by Luci Shaw at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Pansies – poem by Kate Seymour MacLean at Every Day Poems.

 

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