Poets and Poems: Ollie Bowen and “On the Occasion of a Wedding”

The ancient Greeks taught the existence of three kinds of love. Eros was intimate love, including the kind caused by infatuation. Philia was brotherly (or sisterly), the kind felt toward a close or best friend. And agape was a more general love, bestowed freely on someone regardless of whether or not a relationship existed.

Poet Ollie Bowen embraces all three kinds of love in her debut poetry collection, On the Occasion of a Wedding. Dedicated to a couple as a wedding gift, the collection of 74 poems is drawn largely from her own marriage. And Bowen engages with the spiritual, physical, emotional, and mental ways two people can engage and express their love for one another. 

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

“In Search of the Common Good” by Jake Meador

A general consensus exists among Americans, including church-going Americans, that the “church” in America is in serious decline. The mainline Protestant denominations are a shadow of what they once were; the Catholic Church is beset by both declining attendance and the clergy scandals. Evangelical churches seem to be holding their own, but there’s little growth. 

In society at large, civility is dying. The federal government lurches from budget crisis to budget crisis because of deep and widening political divisions. Supreme Court nominations have become occasions for grotesque political theater. Society seems drowning in opioid addiction. Movies and popular television drown us in profanity, gratuitous sex, and political correctness. The news media has forgotten how to report news and instead offers up political opinion barely masquerading as news. 

The two developments – the decline in the church and the decline in society – are connected.Jake Meador, editor-in-chief of Mere Orthodoxy and vice president of the Davenant Institute, points to the failure of modern liberalism as the cause. It’s certainly true for the decline of society and it’s at least a significant factor in the decline of the church as well. So what do we do?

In Search of the Common Good: Christian Fidelity in a Fractured World is Meador’s answer to that question. He doesn’t advocate throwing our hands up in surrender and hiding out in our various bubbles. Instead, he looks at how the Christian community might respond, and that’s whom he’s talking to here.

He looks first at the problem – the decline of the church and common life in America. He considers what problems for achieving community exist with the loss of meaning, wonder, and good work. He shifts to a look at what community practices might have application to the problem – the Sabbath (and the chief end of man; look at your Westminster Catechism); community; and work. And then he projects the promise, including how all this might work with political doctrine and civil virtue.

Jake Meador

Meador has made a reasoned, considered argument, and he’s largely right (although non-Christians might object to that). I have two minor quibbles. First, in any discussion on this topic, too much of a reliance upon news media reports and opinion columnists can undercut an argument. The media have become a serious part of the problem of America’s decline. Second, and this is really minor, quoting an anthropologist about what jobs could disappear that no one would mind losing may be a case of “Sir, you might look in the mirror first.”

Still, these are minor issues. Meador makes a good argument. He presents good ideas and possibilities. And he’s made an important contribution to the discussion that’s just not getting underway among Christians. In Search of the Common Good is well worth our time to read, ponder, and determine what we might do to reinvent and restore community.

Top photograph by Mario Purisic via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The classroom

After Psalm 25:1-10

Noisy and shoving,

we crowd

into the room;

the teacher stands,

frowning and mute.

Noise and shoving

continue. I catch

his eye as he catches

mine.

The question asked.

My nod responds.

I want to know,

I want to learn,

I want to hear

his instructions

to know the truth

of what is right.

Photograph by Church of the King via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads

One of my U.S. senators, Josh Hawley, gave a speech at the National Conservatism Conference, and from all accounts, it rocked the meeting. It wasn’t a barn-burning jeremiad; that’s not his style. Instead, he pointed the way to the future of conservatism, noting that the great divide in America isn’t between right and left but between elites and the American middle. (The link has both the text and the video recording of the speech.) And Brad Littlejohn at Mere Orthodoxy has a summary report on what happened at the conference.

Benjamin Myers writes poetry, loves poetry, teaches poetry, and believes in poetry. His recently published poetry collection Black Sunday is a marvel. In “How Poetry Can Save Us in Our Age of Superficiality,” he argues that teaching poetry is more critical than ever before.

St. Louis photographer Chris Naffziger spends an enormous amount of time taking pictures of St. Louis architecture – office buildings, homes, churches, even cemeteries. He also takes photos of buildings in decay, which St. Louis seems to have an abundance of, unfortunately. One street that has withstood the ravages of time and survived quite well is Kingsbury Place, one of the “private streets” that dot the city’s Central West End and tell a story of the great wealth that once was found here. 

More Good Reads

Culture

Against Pop Culture – Brad East at Mere Orthodoxy and Responding to “Against Pop Culture” – Zak Schmoll at Entering the Public Square.

The Question Abortion Advocates Won’t Answer – Scott Klusendorf at Desiring God.

British Stuff

The Many Faces of Arthur - 3 Historical Candidates – Chris Thorndycroft at English Historical Fiction Authors.

The History of English Part II: From Conquest to Printing Press – Annie Whitehead at Casting Light upon the Shadow.

Elihu Yale and His “Wicked Wife” – David Ebsworth at English Historical Fiction Authors.

Poetry

Daffyd ap Gwilym – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

Mary Magdalene – Malcolm Guite at The Imaginative Conservative.

Was the poet John Keats a graverobber? – Kelly Grovier at BBC Culture.

American Stuff

The First Battle of Bull Run, 1861 – Samuel English, Second Rhode Island Volunteers at Eyewitness to History.

A Conversation with Author Robert Conner on Grant’s Dying Days – Chris Mackowski at Emerging Civil War.

New Media

Is Reality Only for the Privileged? – Samuel D. James at Letters & Liturgy.

Writing and Literature

Children’s Book Author Sharon Stohler’s Path to Self-Publishing – Ann Kroeker.

Herman Melville at Home – Jill Lepore at The New Yorker.

Land as Literary Character – Christine Norvell at The Imaginative Conservative.

What is the Aim of Christian Writing? – Cody Cunningham.

Faith

One Man’s Fall is Another Man’s Warning – David Qaoud at Gospel Relevance.

What I Found in My Grandfather's Amazing Journals

Painting: Portrait of a Man Reading a Book, oil on canvas by Karl Aksel Jorgenson (1920).

The path

After Psalm 25:1-10

Looking for a way, a path,

through this thicket of lies

and deception, I stumble,

often, and find dirt

and pieces of leaves

in my mouth, 

a tannic taste. 

Looking for a stream to wash,

to cleanse myself, I hear

its sound, a bubbling,

a rushing and falling

upon rocks and stones.

I find a path to the water.

I drink, deeply.

I hear them after me,

chasing, but they miss

the path and pass on. 

Here, by the stream,

is an upright stone,

chiseled. I touch 

the letters and words,

my fingers finding

the crevices of meaning,

of memory.

Photograph by Joan Oger via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The Mystery Story That Ripped Me Off

Each Thursday, I usually have a review of a mystery or crime novel. I’ve read mysteries since I was six years old, stating with Trixie Belden, graduating to the Hardy Boys, then Agatha Christie, and on from there. Today, some of the best writers our there can be found penning mystery novels – Anne Perry, Ian Rankin, Louise Penny, William Brodrick, and more.

It was with some eagerness that I started reading the book I planned to review this week. It was set in the town where I grew up, it was in a series of which I’d read the first (a big award winner) many years ago, and it had an interesting premise.

I do not have a review of this book, this week or any week. I will not mention the title or the author, to protect the guilty. But what a profound disappointment.

When I buy a mystery novel, I want to read a mystery novel. I don’t want to read what begins as a good story and then is marred by the author’s political prejudices. I’m not interested in the author virtue signaling as to how “woke” she or he is. I don’t want characters stereotyped into cardboard cartoons, and whole classes of people dismissed as ignorant, so the author can let his or her friends know how cool they are. 

And it didn’t have to be this way. The novel has an interesting premise, several original supporting characters, and a knowledge of the geography and how people talk. But where it went awry was with the main character, the investigating police detective, who comes from a wealthy family but is hip, woke, aware, perceptive about privilege, and lives with a lover in the politically cool part of town. All of the politics flowed through this character, and it became tiresome.

I read the story to the end, even as the narrative started to collapse in on itself. The ending was contrived; the killer turned out to be a minor character who has a brief mention in the story. I think what happened is that the author got so caught up in politics that he (or she) lost control of the story and had to figure out a way to end it. 

The reader, or at least this reader, got shortchanged. Which is a nice way to say I was ripped off.

This past weekend, in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, I read a review of a local production of A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams in which the reviewer made the claim that all men in the 1950s wanted to be Stanley Kowalski, the sexy and abusive character played by Marlon Brando in the movie. On the same page, in a story about the new Gauguin exhibition opening at the St. Louis Art Museum. the writer included a sentence about how the legal age for women to marry at the time of Gauguin was 13, “a law written by men, likely, to benefit themselves.” No source was cited for either statement; they were included as bald statements of fact when they were nothing more than political statements castigating a particular group of people, in both cases, white males.

Our culture has allowed politics to saturate everything. Everything we do has become a political act fraught with implications. Everything we say is judged through a political prism. And everything I read in the newspaper has to be deconstructed to understand the writer’s (and the editor’s) political bias.

It doesn’t have to be this way. 

My worry is that this is just beginning.

Photograph by Brian Wertheim via Unsplash. Used with permission.

"Charming the Troublemaker" by Pepper Basham

Rainey Mitchell leads a hectic life. She’s divorced and raising her daughter on her own, while hounding her ex-husband for child support. She’s working full-time in speech therapy at Blue Ridge University. She helps manage an outreach clinic for troubled teens and others needed special attention, and funding cuts loom for the college and the clinic. And the former husband of a client is harassing Rainey and making threats of bodily harm.

The last thing she needs is romance. And especially romance in the form of Dr. Alexander Murdock, the charming and flirtatious new professor who drives a red Mercedes and obviously thinks he’s god’s gift to women. 

For his part, Alex Murdock maintains a tough, outward façade. His father considers him a failure for teaching instead of working the family business. His sister and niece are in a witness protection program, and only Alex knows they not dead, as everyone else has been led to believe. He’s trying to find his inner hero, and all he’s seems to manage finding is his inner flirt. And then he meets Rainey Mitchell and her daughter Sarah.

Sparks fly. Misunderstandings ensue. And two broken people gradually come to discover each other and themselves.

Pepper Basham

Charming the Troublemaker by Pepper Basham is the second book in her Mitchell Crossroads series. The story includes many of the same characters from the first book, Twist of Faith (Alex and Rainey were minor characters in that story) and the same settings of town, university, and the Mitchell farms. Once again, the Mitchell clan matriarch will play a pivotal role in helping a boneheaded child see what’s really happening in their love life.

Basham is the author of numerous historical and contemporary romance novels, novellas, and stories. Second Impressions is one of two novellas by Basham involving the work of Jane Austen, the second being Jane by the Book. Basham and her family live in Asheville, North Carolina. 

Charming the Troublemaker is an enjoyable read. Yes, we suspect we know how the story will turn out, but the fun is seeing how the characters get there.

Related:

My review of A Twist of Faithby Pepper Basham.

My review of Second Impressionsby Pepper Basham.

My review of When You Look at Meby Pepper Basham.