Succession

After 2 Samuel 2:1-5:25 

A succession marked 

by turmoil, rivalries,

murder, deceit, betrayal.

The one anointed

to be king prevails,

first for Judah, then

for Israel. God’s choice

was clearly made, man’s 

choice was made with

deception, to the point

of death. The blessing

remained with the one

chosen, as it has since

he prophet’s anointing

all those years before.

The chosen one becomes

king, as provided before

the beginning of time.

 

Painting: Bringing Up the Guns, oil on canvas by Sir. John Gilbert (1817 -1897); Birmingham Museums Trust.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Moses on Mount Pisgah – poem by Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

‘Peanuts’: Suffering, Baseball, and Religion – SDG’s Dailies & Sundays. 

 

Newly Grown Grass with Last Year’s Seed – Jacob Crouch.

 

Advent Sunday – poem by John Keble at The Imaginative Conservative.

Saturday Good Reads – Nov. 29, 2025

A couple of weeks ago, I included a link here from The Wall Street Journal – an op-ed by a therapist who said that the so-called Trump Derangement Syndrome was a real thing. Now, he reports that, because of the article, he’s been receiving death threats. Which I suppose proves his point. 

Sarah Ashbach at New Verse Review has a rather wonderful review of the poetry of Benjamin Myers, comparing the collections’ themes to Vergil. Black Sunday, describing the 1930s Dust Bowl in Oklahoma, remains one of my favorite contemporary collections. 

 

David Warren is a writer who lives in the Toronto area, and he can often be found casting a contrarian eye toward what his government is up to. This week, he turned to a different subject. His father had accepted a teaching job in Pakistan, the family moved, and his father promptly got deathly sick. The school promptly cut off his paycheck, since he wasn’t teaching. The family was in dire straits – a sick father, no income, eviction looming, not to mention hunger. And then the American imperialists arrived.

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

The Greatest Sentence Ever Written – Walter Isaacson at The Free Press.

 

Nathaniel Greene: Washington’s Strategist or Pioneering Operational Artist – Ben Powers at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

American Spies and Sympathizers at Fort Detroit – Geoffrey Hoerauf at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

The Bible, the Pilgrims, & Our Liberty – Jerry Newcombe at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

 

The First Presidential Thanksgiving: Washington’s Vision for a Grateful Nation – Jason Clark at This is the Day.

 

Writing and Literature

 

How Dostoyevsky dissected activistic hypocrites – James Martin Charlton at The Critic Magazine.

 

David McCullough’s History Matters – Church Chalberg at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

The Logical Triumph of English – Henry Oliver at Works in Progress.

 

Faith

 

How Science Confirms a Literal, Historical Adam and Eve – Terry Mortenson at the Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood. 

 

Deep River, the spiritual – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

The Kind of Service God Requires – Simon Liu at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

News Media

 

Americans’ Social Media Use 2025 – Pew Research Center.

 

Art

 

Frenemies or rivals? The Britain show explore Turner and Constable’s turbulent relationship – Henry Tudor Pole at The Art Newspaper.

 

Life and Culture

 

Everything Was Once a Place – Brandon McNeice at Front Porch Republic.

 

Poetry

 

“A Certain Young Lady,” poem by Washington Irving and “Spellbound” by Emily Bronte – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Passage to Joy: The Use of Poetry – T.M. Moore at Front Porch Republic.

 

British Stuff

 

In defense of jury trials – Jame Price at The Critic Magazine.

 

Preaching is not a crime – Andrea Williams at The Critic Magazine.

 

American Stuff

 

One Immigrant Boy’s Journey from Cuba to the CIA – Martin Gurri at The Free Press.

 

Slow Down – Chuck Girard

 Painting: Portrait of a Young Man, oil on canvas (1517-18) by Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530); National Gallery, London.

In the pale light

After Romans 13:12 

In the pale light

of early morning,

before the crowds 

stir and assemble,

before the cars 

and cabs and

buses packed

with tourists with

their necklaces

of camera straps,

the church stands

silent, unmoving,

a testimony to its

builders from

a millennium 

before. They built

to last, stone rising

on pale light, its

presence sufficient

here in the morning,

here in the pale light.

 

Photograph: Early morning at Westminster Abbey, London. I took a long walk for exercise very early one September morning in 2024. I had never seen the Abbey without throngs of tourists and traffic jammed on the streets around it. The entire area looked deserted.

Some Friday Readings

 

Depart From Me, Lord – poem by Br. Peter Coyette at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Holy Joy – Ben Graber at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

“Prayer for Creation,” poem by David Adam – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

The Shepherd of Hermas – W. Winston Elliott III at The imaginative Conservative.

Happy Thanksgiving, from Tweetspeak Poetry (and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

I went looking for a Thanksgiving Day poem, specifically one by Henry Wadswoth Longfellow (1807-1882). As much as I’ve read Longfellow over the past five years, I thought I remembered one. I found one that wasn’t about the day but about giving thanks in general.  And I found one about the harvest, which we’ve featured here at Tweetspeak Poetrybefore for Thanksgiving Day. 

As it turns out, Longfellow never wrote a poem for the day. He was alive at the time President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving to be a National Day of Observance in October of 1863, after the strategic Union victories in the Civil Wat at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Like so much else that happened during the Civil War, the holiday was federalized. Previously, it had been left largely to the individual states.

 

But if there was a poet widely loved during that period and much of the 19^th century, it was Longfellow. He helped create national myths like Paul Revere’s ride and the story of Miles Standish; he introduced America to the story of the expulsion of the Acadians from Canada; and he depicted a native American as something other than a “noble savage.” He was America’s poet, and that was the reason I wrote his poetry into my historical novel Brookhaven.

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

Photograph: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Some Thursday Readings

 

Gratitude Is Not Just One Day – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

2025: Ten Reasons I’m Thankful This Thanksgiving – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

 

What to be thankful for – Bill Grandi at Living in the Shadow.

 

America’s First Thanksgiving Almost Didn’t Happen – Doug Spurling at Spurling Silver.

 

A President’s Thanksgiving Call to Grace and Gratitude – The Coolidge Review.

 

Why Did FDR Change the Date of Thanksgiving? – Tim Ott at History.

 

Why We Celebrate Thanksgiving – Dancing Priest (first posted in 2022).

"Winston and the Windsors" by Andrew Morton

In late October, we were back at the St. Louis County Library. We had previously attended the talk by mystery writer Elizabeth George; this time it was the British writer, Andrew Morton. 

Morton became an almost-household name in Britain in the 1990s when he wrote not just “a” book but “the” book about Princess Diana – the one she agreed to do. Diana: Her True Story nearly toppled the British monarchy – or at least Diana’s revelations seriously damaged the institution. 

 

Morton has since written books about Monica Lewinsky, Madonna, David and Victoria Beckham, Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie, and William and Catherine when they were still the duke and duchess of Cambridge. You might say he’s an A-List celebrity biographer.

 

But his more recent attention has turned from contemporary celebrities to those who are more historical. And that’s what we were there to hear him talk about –Winston and the Windsors: How Churchill Shaped a Royal Dynasty. 

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

Some Wednesday Readings

 

15 Things a Writer Should Never Do – Zachary Petit at Writer’s Digest.

 

Elitism is good – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

Finding Poetry in an Anselm Kiefer Art Exhibition

In 2014, I was in London, and I’d just recovered from my back going out that I spent a good 24 hours immobilized on the floor of our hotel room. A house doctor was called in, and he gave me a muscle relaxant via hypodermic. My back “felt like a solid brick,” he said. It took about 10 hours to work, but I could finally start moving around again.  

The floor of a hotel room is not the way to experience London. The maids were, however, very polite as they vacuumed around me. 

 

Two days later, I was moving normally again, and I went to see an exhibition at the Royal Academy. I’d heard of the German artist Anselm Kiefer; the St. Louis Art Museum has two of his works. One is a massive painting called “Fuel Rods.” The other is a sculpture, entitled “Breaking of the Vessels,” comprised of a huge shelf of burned books and thousands of pieces of glass scattered on the floor. It commemorates “Kritstallnacht,” or the “Night of Broken Glass,” when German Nazis attacked Jewish businesses, buildings, homes, and people across Germany on Nov. 9-10, 1938.

 

The London exhibition was simply entitled “Anselm Kiefer.”

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

Photograph: One of the Anselm Kiefer paintings in Sculpture Hall at the St. Louis Art Museum.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Winter penance – poem by Franco Amati at Garnage Notes.

 

The Kreutzer Sonata – poem by Donna Hilbert at Every Day Poems.

 

Into the Wasteland – Malcolm Guite at The Rabbit Room (video).

 

“The Shadow on the Stone,” poem by Thomas Hardy – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

"Shadows of Tokyo" by Matthew Legare

It’s Tokyo, 1931. An economic depression is on, and times are desperate. Farmers sell their daughters into prostitution. Crime gangs are flourishing. Resentment is growing against the zaibatsu, the top corporate and banking czars. The Japanese army has staged an incident in Manchuria in China, prompted followed by a military invasion. Assassinations, and plots, are becoming common. Democratic government seems on life support. 

Inspector Kenji Aizawa of the Tokyo police has his hands full. He’s also something of an odd duck – he believes in democracy and enforcing the law, regardless of status and position. His boss, unfortunately, is not of the same persuasion.

 

Aizawa receives an anonymous phone call from a woman, saying that Baron Onishi, an aristocrat widely believed to be the next prime minister, will be assassinated. The inspector acts on the tip and foils the killing. But circumstances allow the would-be assassin to be released, and the baron is still under threat. More anonymous phone calls follow.

 

Matthew Legare

The voice on the other end of the phone belongs to Reiko Watanabe, a geisha who’s also the mistress of a fascist writer plotting to overthrow the government. The baron is only one target; the aim is to establish a fascist regime in Japan. 

 

Shadows of Tokyo by Matthew Legare is the story of Inspector Aizawa and Reiko the geisha, and the intense work they do to try to keep Japan from falling into fascism. The story has more action scenes than a Japanese (or American) video game, including narrow escapes from death for both the hero and heroine. And the tale is saturated with the history of Japan as the run-up to World War II begins.

 

Legare has written three novels in the Aizawa / Watanabe series: Shadows of Tokyo, Smoke Over Tokyo, and Treason in Tokyo. He’s also published An American Putsch, set in New York City in the 1930s, and Shanghai Twilight, set in the same time period. His web site includes a blog, where he reviews suspense novels and historical books about Japan, China, Korea, and the World War II period.

 

One of the appeals of Shadows of Tokyo is that Inspector Aizawa makes mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes should have been obvious. He tends to go off on his own, without proper backup, but then he’s in the predicament of never knowing when his backup might shoot him in the back. But he’s human, with human failings, and he’s pitted himself against the pull toward dictatorship. And he loves his city.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

In the City of the Dead – Wiseblood Booka.

 

Wendell Berry’s Epilogue – Nadya Wiliams at Law & Liberty.

 

Before We Make a Roux – Brian Miller at Hearth & Field. 

 

The King’s Chapel of the Savoy – A London Inheritance.

A heart of stone

After 1 Samuel 25:1-44 

He hears from her lips

of his narrow escape

from destruction and

death, and the guilty

man quakes, realizing

how closely it came, how

closely his words nearly

brought his destruction. 

His heart dies within him,

paralyzed with fear. Gripped

by paralysis, unable to move,

he turns to stone, dead within

ten days, struck down not

by the man he insulted,

but by the God the man

served. Judgment belongs

to the Lord.

 

Photograph by Toni Reed via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Grief, Memory, and the Hope We Hold in Christ – Staci Eastin.

 

Duty and Delight: C.S. Lewis on Beauty in the Psalms – Michael De Sapio at The Imaginative Conservative.

Saturday Good Reads – Nov. 22, 2025

I first came across writer Paul Kingsnorth through his fiction (Beast, The Wake, and Alexandria) and then his poetry. He’s also written non-fiction (works like Savage Gods and Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist). In recent years, he’s turned to reading and writing about what he calls “the machine,” not a mechanical device but a way of describing the force that has taken over culture and society. His first full work on the subject is Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity, and Mere Orthodoxy has published two reviews of it: “Imagining Life Outside the Machine” by Jeffrey Bilbro and “After the Machine” by Rhys Laverty. 

Most if not all of us know the story of Paul Revere’s ride (“The British are coming! The British are coming!”). At least, we know the version we learned from reciting (and often memorizing” the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The historical ride didn’t happen exactly as Longfellow described. Karissa Waddick at USA Today rode along the actual route to determine what really happened. Me, I prefer Longfellow’s version.

 

Sixty years ago, a television program aired that became one of the most popular Christmas shows ever, so popular that it’s been repeated every year since. Carolyn Pirtle ay Church Life Journal asks, and answers, what made “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

The Search for Shirer’s Ferry, South Carolina – Stephen Khn Katzberg at the Journal of the American Revolution.

 

Life Under British Occupation During the American Revolution – Deborah Lynn Blumberg at History.

 

In Colonial America, Patriots Flocked to Coffeehouses to Debate Politics and Sow the Seeds of Revolution – Laura Kiniry at Smithsonian Magazine.

 

Thomas Paine, Common Sense, and a Plan for America – Jett Conner at the Journal of the American Revolution.

 

British Stuff

 

Speechcrime: On Britain’s Authoritarian Turn – Theodore Dalrymple at City Journal. 

 

George Cruikshank’s London in Winter – Spitalfields Life.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Art of Living (and Dying) – Trenton Olsen at Literary Hub.

 

C.S. Lewis’s Aeneid: A Labor of Love – Anthony Esolen at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

In Norman Maclean’s Life, There Was No Clear Line Between Beauty and Tragedy – Gen Sharp at Front Porch Republic.

 

Faith

 

The Belgian Priest who Saved 400 Jews – Menucha Chana Levin at Aish.

 

Poetry

 

Longfellow – poem by Kevin Parks at Society of Classical Poets.

 

“Talk,” poem by Stephen Vincent Benet, and “Sea-Fever,” poem by John Masefield – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Two Crooked Streets: A Proposed Genealogy of Noir Poetry – Boris Dralyuk at Liberties.

 

American Stuff

 

On the Road to Atlanta: Am English Poet at Peach Tree Creek – Dave Powell at Emerging Civil War.

 

Life and Culture

 

Is our education system radicalizing young men? – Michael Young at The Spectator.

 

‘A Recipe for Idiocracy’ – Rose Horowitch at the The Atlantic (via MSN). 

 

Fading to Dust in Slow Motion – Jeff Johnson

 Painting: Reading the Story of Oenone, oil on canvas (1883) by Francis David Millet (1846-1912); Detroit Institute of Arts.

Turning aside anger

After 1 Samuel 25:1-44 

An arrogant, unthinking word,

spoken without care or thought,

evokes a response of revenge

and destruction, swords belted

and unsheathed, their bearers

determined to cut a swath,

hew down, destroy in anger

and recrimination. And yet

a voice, a single voice,

meets the sword head on,

risking her own life, seeking

forgiveness for one who

didn’t deserve it. Anger

seeking vengeance for arrogance

and insult is set aside. The voice

is heeded, the petition for mercy

granted. And it is God who

answers the sin with judgment.

 

Photograph by Marcus Paulo Prado via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“Rock of Ages,” hymn by Augustus Toplady – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

Why Euthanasia Feels Intuitive – Time Challies.

 

“God, that Madest Earth and Heaven,” hymn by Reginald Heber and Richard Whately – Anthony Esolen at Word and Song/

 

The Other Side of Human Rights – Seth Lewis.

 

Hilda and Caedmon – poem by Malcolm Guite.

Poets and Poems: Autumn Williams and "Clouds on the Ground"

Myalgic encephalomyelitis, or ME, is also known as chronic fatigue syndrome. Its symptoms include extreme exhaustion, memory problems, dizziness, and muscle and joint pain. It can also cause sleep problems. The cause is unknown, but it’s believed to result from a combination of factors, including genetics, infections, trauma, and body metabolism.  

Poet Autumn Williams has ME. She’s had it for 11 years. In 2021, her condition worsened to the point where she became almost completely bedbound. She turned to writing poetry. It is not so much poetry about ME as it is poetry inspired by the condition. To date, she’s published two collections, a chapbook entitled Wave and Clouds on the Ground.

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

Seeking Out Time – poem by David Whyte.

 

“The Map of Places,” poem by Laura Riding – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“I Have Been Acquainted with the Night,” poem by Robert Frost – Anothony Esolen at Word & Song.

"White Week and Other Stories" by Wojciech Chmielewski

The Polish writer Wojciech Chmielewski isn’t exactly a household name in America, and for a very good reason. Up to now, none of his writing has been published in English. Wiseblood Books has changed that with the publication of White Week and Other Stories, translated by Katarzyna Bylow.  

Chmielewski is best known in Poland for his short stories, which have won awards in his home country. But he’s also an essayist, literary critic, and playwright for Polich Radio Theatre. This collection of stories, many previously published in Polish literary journals and anthologies. Re largely about Warsaw, a Warsaw that is there and the city that used to be. (Much of the city was destroyed during World War II and then rebuilt under communist rule.)

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

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Brotherhood of the Byline: Andrew and Lee Child on Jack Reacher, Past and Present – John Valeri at CrimeReads.

 

Inside the Workings of Joel J. Miller’s The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future – Suzanne Smith at Front Porch Republic.

 

The Nights of Old London – Spitalfields Life.

The Manuscript of "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot

A favorite place of mine to visit in London is Waterstone’s Bookstore in Piccadilly. reputedly the largest book shop in Europe. The store has eight stories but only five floors. Because the building includes a lower ground floor (we Americans would say basement), a ground floor (our first floor), a mezzanine level followed by four official floors and the official fifth floor being the restaurant. 

The restaurant looks down to Jermyn Street and south toward Trafalgar Square. From a window table, you can see some of the famous St. James-area shops below, and a straight view from the window depicts rooftops and spires of some of the best-known buildings in Westminster. Piccadilly Circus is about a block east, and Hatchards Bookstore and Fortnum & Mason a block west. The Royal Academy of Arts is across Piccadilly, and the Ritz Hotel is about a two-minute walk away. St. James Palace, which fronts the complex that includes the royal residence of Charles III at Clarence House, is “down the block and around the corner,” give or take a couple of blocks.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Leaving the Island (Inishbofin) – poem by David Whyte.

 

When Enemies Forgive Each Other – Spencer Klavan at the Free Press on The Iliad.

 

Three Acorns from Emily’s Yard – poem by Andrea Potos at Every Day Poems.

 

“Life and Art,” poem by Aldous Huxley – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

"Boundary Waters" by William Kent Krueger

A popular singer who goes by one name, Shiloh, quietly returns to the Aurora area. No one knows she’s there; she’s enlisted the help of Uncle Henry, an older and local native American, to hide her away in a cabin in the remote area known as the Boundary Waters, reachable only by canoe (or possibly helicopter) through several lakes and portages. It’s an isolated wilderness area, exactly what Shiloh was seeking.  

Since the story opens with the torture and presumed death of Uncle Henry, by someone seeking Shiloh, you know trouble is ahead, likely for the singer but likely for a lot of other people as well. When she was a very young child, Shiloh witnessed the death of her mother but was never able to recall what she’d seen. That is, until as an adult she had been taken through memory regression by a therapist. And now she’s in hiding.

 

The young woman’s stepfather arrives in Aurora and asks Cork O’Connor to help find Shiloh. Two FBI agents approach the local sheriff with the same quest. Cork enlists the help of local tribe member and his young son; the boy has been trained by Uncle Henry and knows the Boundary Waters region as well as anyone. And he knows where Shiloh is likely to be found.

 

William Kent Krueger

As their team sets out by canoe, other men come looking for Shiloh as well. But they’re hired to kill her – and anyone who might stand in their way. They’re followed by a wheelchair-bound man who’s a borderline gangster. He claims to be Shiloh’s father, and he wants her found as well.

 

Boundary Waters, the second in the Cork O’Connor mysteries by William Kent Krueger, keeps the reader guessing to the end. Who is it really who wants Shiloh dead? What does really know? Who tortured Uncle Henry to death? Krueger keeps moving the chess pieces around the board to make a feint here and throw a red herring there. Placing a child at risk layers in another element of suspense and tension. And Krueger cleverly keeps the story moving between the journey in the Boundary Waters and what’s happening back in Aurora.

 

Krueger’s Cork O’Connor novels are all set in the North Woods of Minnesota. Krueger’s also published three standalone novels: Ordinary Grace, The Devil’s Bed, and This Tender Land. He’s received several awards and recognitions, including the Minnesota Book Award, the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award, the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, the Dilys Award, the Friends of American Writers Prize, and the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. His last nine novels were all New York Times bestsellers. Krueger lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

 

Related:

 

Iron Lake by Wiliam Kent Krueger.

 

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger. 

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger.

Tamarack County by William Kent Krueger. 

Lightning Strike by William Kent Krueger.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

“When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” song by Patrick Gilmore – Debra Esolen at Word & Song.

 

New Grub Street: George Gissing’s Novel of the Writing World – Tim Page at The Wall Street Journal.

 

Mr, Popular Sentiment – Ferdinand Mount at The Lamp on the contemporary critics of Charles Dickens.