Logical progression

After Ephesians 1:15-22

He was nothing if not

logical, speaking and

arguing with that razor

sharp mind of his, and

the logic continues,

even though it’s not

an argument or

discussion, but a report,

some welcome news,

so he gives thanks,

he prays for them,

he prays very generally

and very specifically,

for them to receive

a spirit of wisdom 

and revelation, so that

hearts are enlightened,

hearts know the hope,

the hope that is calling,

the riches of inheritance,

the power extended,

the power of a death and

resurrection extending

above all other power

and authority for all time,

and all that in one breathless

this-follows-that sentence.

Photograph by Jeff Frenette via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads - May 15, 2021

It was a unique photograph – Queen Elizabeth II sitting by herself in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle for the funeral service of her husband, Prince Philip. Mark Meynell at The Rabbit Room was struck by that photograph, and what it says about a private grief expressed in public and the universality of human experience. 

Kit Wilson at The Critic Magazine has an interesting idea about fiction: the decline of the English novel is contributing to a decline in empathy and the rise of “stay in your lane” identity politics. 

 

Paul Kingsnorth (who writes strange, brilliant novels) published an article at First Things Magazine this week, explaining how a journey that started with atheism, meandered through Buddhism and witchcraft, finally came to land and be anchored in Christianity. At his own site, The Abbey of Misrule, he continues his discussion about the long decline of Western culture.

 

New York attorney Joshua Raff decided to do something different during the pandemic lockdown – he reads the novels of Jane Austen. Now he’s wondering why he waited so long to do it.

 

More Good Reads

 

Writing and Literature

 

What the Fountain Pen Told Me – Annie Nardone at Literary Life.

 

About all those unproduced screenplays William Faulkner wrote – Walker Caplan at Literary Hub.

 

Gabagool and Malapropisms: Dialogue Lessons from The Sopranos – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.

 

The Enduring Mystery of Mary Roberts Rinehart, America’s Answer to Agatha Christie – Otto Penzler at CrimeReads.

 

Poetry

 

‘The Praise of Age’ by Walter Kennedy (1450–1508) – translated by Margaret Coats at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Fusion – Laura Reece Hogan at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

Icarus – Robert Cording at Poetry Daily.

 

Life and Culture

 

Is ‘Woke’ Broke? The Perils of Living in a Parallel Universe – Jon Horvat at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Precious Procedure and Process – Joseph Salemi at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Op-Ed: When reading to learn, what works best for students — printed books or digital texts? – Naomi Baron at Los Angeles Times.

 

Faith

 

Why We Still Need St. Damien of Molokai – Lisa Lickona at Church Life Journal.

 

The Anger of Man Does Not Achieve the Wisdom that God Requires – Samuel D. James at Insights.

 

I Thought You Should Know – Kristin Couch at The Palest Ink.

 

American Stuff

 

“This Sudden Expedition”: The Capture of Fort Ticonderoga – 246 Years Later – William Griffith at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Battle Belongs – Phil Wickham

Painting: Reading Girl, oil on canvas (1828) by Gustav Adolphe Hennig (1797-1869).

The plan

After Ephesians 1:1-14

It was a plan,

it is a plan

for the fullness

of time. Envisioned

and created before

time, it had an aim,

a purpose, a means

and an end: unity,

oneness, union

of all things,

things in heaven,

things on earth.

It’s all rather

stunning, when

you consider it:

a plan for all time,

created before time

began, a plan 

to unify all things.

Photograph by Eleventh Wave via Unsplash. Used with permission.

"A Patient Man" by Charlie Garratt

It’s September 1939, and Inspector James Givens of the Warwickshire Constabulary is having something of an existential crisis. He’s barely recovered from the wounds (physical and mental) he received in his last case, his boss has assigned him the duty of organizing old police case files, his Jewish family is pressuring him to find his missing uncle somewhere in Paris, Germany invades Poland, and Givens is ready to chuck it all in with the police.  

He goes to Paris to find his uncle but has no luck. He’s called back home; what had appeared to be a suicide by an Anglican clergyman turns out to look like something else, and Givens is needed to sort it out. The case is difficult; the minister was found hanging in a room behind a brothel. Givens soon learns that this was no suicide. Finding the killer, however, is nothing but a series of dead ends.

 

A Patient Man by Charlie Garratt is the third in the Inspector James Givens series, and it’s a cohesive blend of murder investigation and personal crisis. Givens has adopted an English name and identity to avoid the anti-Semitism which seems as much present in England as it is in Germany. But too many things force the detective to keep grappling with who he is and where he comes from. 

 

Charlie Garratt

And an additional complication arises. In the course of looking for the missing Kindertransport girl who’d been staying with his parents, he meets her music teacher, Rachel Stevens. Rachel is also Jewish; and Givens finds himself doing what he thought he could never do again – fall in love. But er brother expects any potential husband for his sister to be a practicing and faithful Jew. 

 

Garratt is the author of four Inspector Given mysteries, including A Shadowed Livery, A Pretty Folly, A Patient Man, and Where Every Man. He also published several community participation guides, until he retired and began writing short stories. One of those stories led to his first novel, A Shadowed Livery. He lives in Shropshire in England.

 

A Patient Man is a good mystery, depicting the frustrations of the job of a police inspector who’s struggling with his own identity. And the threat of war has now become something more than a threat.

 

Related:

 

Where Every Man by Charlie Garratt.

 

A Shadowed Livery by Charlie Garratt. 

 

A Pretty Folly by Charlie Garratt.

Writing is a Lot Easier than Editing

In late December, a story idea took possession of my head, and I began to write. The narrative flowed like it never had before with five previous novels. This one was different; its predecessors had been part of a series, while this one was a completely different story. 

On Feb. 18, I write this note in my writing log: “Reach 90,543 words. First draft is completed.” While I can’t say it was effortless, the writing of this story was surprisingly easy. I knew from the beginning how the story would end, and, working without an outline, I kept moving toward that end.

 

Then came the formal editing.

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW Blog.

Photograph by Andrew Neel via Unsplash. Used with permission.

An Ode to Poetry: "How to Write a Form Poem" by Tania Runyan

I start this review with a disclaimer. How to Write a Form Poem: A Guide to 10 Fabulous Forms by Tania Runyan includes a poem I wrote. I also once tapped some lively feet to a performance by Runyan when she played the fiddle. Neither affected my judgment about the book.  

Well, the fiddle might have.

 

If you like form poems, Runyan has some advice. And a guide. Even if you don’t like form poems, Runyan has some advice. And a guide. And for those who like form poems and those who don’t, she offers this seeming contradiction: form poems are liberating. Liberating? Who knew?

 

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

"Inside the Nazi Ring" by H.M. Denham

H.M. Denham had enjoyed a successful naval career. After graduating from the Royal Naval Colleges at Osbourne and Dartmouth, he served on a number of Royal Navy ships, including as captain. Then, in 1939, with war looming, he joined Naval Intelligence.  

In 1940, he was sent to Sweden, a neutral country that appeared to be staying neutral only with Hitler’s indulgence. To get there, he traveled by boat to northern Norway, then occupied by the German Army. He found his way to Finland, from which he was able to cross the border into Sweden and make his way to Stockholm. His journey was actually easier than that of a colleague, a woman assigned to the Stockholm embassy who traveled there via Capetown, various African railways, a ship from Cairo to Istanbul, and eventually into the Soviet Union and on to Finland and Sweden. The trip took six months.

 

Inside the Nazi Ring: A Naval Attaché in Sweden 1940-1945 is Denham’s account of his years in Stockholm (six years in all, during which he did not see his wife back in England). As a neutral country, Sweden hosted embassies from all recognized countries, so that Denham often found himself pursuing similar ends as his German counterparts. 

 

He tells a story that is rarely emphasized in historical accounts of World War II that focus more on military actions or life in occupied countries. Denham’s story is about ball bearings, iron ore, port facilities, and how the British (and presumably the Germans) often resorted to smuggling and deception to ensure needed supplies left Sweden and arrived in the U.K. This is the industrial counterpart to the military aspects of war.

 

H.M. Denham

Not that the military situation is ignored. Denham tells the story how, two days before the invasion of Norway by the German Army, Winston Churchill discounted the reports from his own intelligence agents. And Denham himself played a critical role in alerting the British of the movement of the German battleships Bismarck and Prinz Eugen into the Atlantic Ocean, where they met their ends at the hands of the Royal Navy. He also describes his experience of having his Stockholm apartment bugged and his movements watched – by the Swedish intelligence forces. And he must have done an effective job for the British, as the Germans and others were routinely seeking his expulsion.

 

Denham (1897-1993) wrote a number of military memoirs as well as travel books, including Dardanelles: A Midshipman’s Diary 1915-1916; The Aegean; The Adriatic; The Ionian Islands to Rhodes; The Tyrrhenian Sea; and Southern Turkey, the Levant, and Cyprus. After retiring from the Royal Navy in 1947, Denham became a travel writer and published a number of sea guides. He died in London in 1993.

 

Inside the Nazi Ring, first published in 1984 and now reprinted by Sapere Books, is a fascinating account of diplomatic life in wartime Stockholm, with its successes, failures, and dangers, and how “war” was waged even in neutral countries.