Do good, and suffer

After 1 Peter 2:18-25

It is inevitable, and 

time will come or

has already, that you

do good or you do

right and you suffer

as a result. Or you say

no, this is wrong. Or

you speak against

an evil committed or

contemplated. Even

an ungodly man 

might protest evil,

but it is the godly

man who counts 

the cost and protests

evil anyway. Faith

is suffering; the world

demands it.

 

Photograph by Emiliano Vittoriosie via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

The Prosperity Gospel We Sometimes All Believe In – Tim Challies.

 

Recognition – poem by John Leax at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

We’ve Won. Now What? – Andrew Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

 

A Famous Poet, KFC, and Peace with My Past – Rebekah Matt at Great and Noble Tasks.

 

Please don’t sing ‘Imagine’ at funerals – Murray Campbell.

Epigrams and Epitaphs: Martin Armstrong and “Fifty-Four Conceits”

I was looking through the poetry section at a bookstore. I noticed a small volume with the engaging title of Fifty-Four Conceits by Martin Armstrong. Extracting it from its shelf, I saw the full title – Fifty-Four Conceits: A Collection of Epigrams and Epitaphs Serious and Comic. This sounds weird, but I wondered how long this little book had been waiting for someone to buy it. Being something of a sucker for epigrams, I could say its wait was over. It joined several others I was holding in my hand, found itself scanned and placed in a bag, and was soon out the door. 

I’d never heard of Armstrong (1882-1974). So, I turned to Dr. Google. A graduate of Cambridge, Armstrong served in the British Army in World War I and was best known as a writer of stories and novels. He was also a poet, officially listed in the 1922 (and final) anthology edition of Georgian Poetry. He married Canadian writer Jessie McDonald, the ex-wife of the American poet and writer Conrad Aiken. (Aiken included Armstrong in his 1952 autobiographical “narrative” Ushantbut under a disguised name.)

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

“Snow,” poem by Charles Bertram Johnson – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

How Exactly Did the American Civil War Start? – Sally Lee a Columbia Magazine.

 

Writing Poetry with the Greats – Megan Willome.

 

“The Cremation of Sam McGee,” poem by Robert Service – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Faith – poem by David Whyte.

Some Wednesday Readings

Things Worth Remembering: The Dangers of Multiculturalism – Douglas Murray at The Free Press. 

Exchanging Insults Rather Than Soldiers: Solomon Merdeith, Robert Ould and the Breakdown of the Civil War  Prisoner Exchange System (Part 1)  and (Part II) – Kevin Donovan at Emerging Civil War.

 

Cabinet of the Canceled – Abigail Shirer at City Journal. 

 

Hollywood’s Dumb Scare – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

 

A pause – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

A Dystopian Novel for the Machine Age – Josh Pauling at Mere Orthodoxy. 

 

A Brief History of Literary Forgers and Forgery – Bradford Morrow at CrimeReads. 

 

The Tiger Mother Roars Back – Peter Savodnik at The Free Press. 

 

A Unique Opportunity to See Rembrandt’s ‘The Night Watch’ – Michelle Plastrik at The Epoch Times.

Painting: The Night Watch, oil on canvas (1642)  by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669). 

Poets and Poems: Michael Favala Goldman and "Destinations"

Families who disapprove of a choice of spouse. War refugees debating what to take with them. A boy navigating his parents’ divorce. A lost friendship. A child born with a physical impairment. A romance going awry. The physical pians that often accompany emotional ones. The special dinner that grows cold. Trying to help a friend with dementia. A father suffering a brain tumor.  

This is the world of Destinations: Poems, the ninth poetry collection by Michael Favala Goldman. It’s a world of brokenness and people managing through it, sometimes well and sometimes not. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

New Year Prayer – poem by David Whyte.

 

Los Angeles – poem by Alex Dimitrov.

 

Wombwell Rainbow Book Interviews: Paul Robert Mullen – Paul Brookes.

 

Exodus – poem by Megan Merchant at Every Day Poems.

 

“Never Enough of Living,” poem by Leonie Adams – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

'"Murder on the Golf Course" by Roy Lewis

A promising archaeological site has been uncovered near a quarry, and the nearby landowner has been more than accommodating with both access and financial support. But the team needs more, and Karen Stannard, Arnold Landon’s boss at the Department of Antiquities & Museums in Morpeth, Northumberland, develops a great idea – apply for a grant from the Lottery. The Morpeth Council is impressed, but instead of giving to the boss to follow through, the council ends up hiring an outside consultant. 

 

The outside consultant is a former journalist, accountant, and general jack-of-all-trades. And he’s known – unfavorably known – to the archaeological team. In fact, he’s known to a lot of people involved, and no one seems to like him. When his body is discovered on a golf course a few days after an archaeology conference, the list of suspects is theoretically more than 200 people long. Even narrowing it down, it’s still a lengthy list.

 

Roy Lewis

Murder on the Golf Course is the fourteenth Arnold Landon mystery by British writer Roy Lewis (1933-2019). It’s an unusual entry in the series, as Landon doesn’t play an even minor role in the solution of the crime.  But then, neither do the investigating police – the solution will happen almost by accident. 

 

Still, it’s a fast-paced, intricate story about local politics, internal bureaucratic politics, and politics within the archaeology community. Lewis knew how to write a smashing good story, filled with interesting characters and underlined by an archeology project. And Landon may seem a mild, unassuming man, but he can be as tenacious and determined when the situation calls for it.

 

Lewis (1933-2019) was the author of some 60 other mysteries, novels, and short story collections. His Inspector Crow series includes A Lover Too Many, Murder in the Mine, The Woods Murder, Error of Judgment, and Murder for Money, among others. The Eric Ward series, of which The Sedleigh Hall Murder is the first (and originally published as A Certain Blindness in 1981), includes 17 novels. Lewis lived in northern England. 

 

Related:

 

Murder in the Cottage by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder Under the Bridge by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the Tower by Roy Lewis. 

 

Murder in the Church by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the Barn by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the Manor by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the Farmhouse by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the Stableyard by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the House by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder by the Quay by Roy Lewis.

 

Error in Judgment by Roy Lewis. 

 

Murder at the Folly by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the Field by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder at Haggburn Hall by Roy Lewis.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Wendell Berry’s New Decade of Sabbath Poems – Shirley Kilpatrick at Current.

 

5 Things Every Creative Person Should Consider (Inspired by Wendell Berry) – Joshua Heath Scott (video).

 

When the Horse Has Left the Barn – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

 

Colonization, Replaceable Man, and Love of One’s Own – N.S. Lyons at The Upheaval.

 

Alderman Stairs – Artificial Intelligence, Historical Accuracy and Copyright – A London Inheritance.

An act of love

After I Peter 2:18-25

An act of love,

an act of obedience:

the act is submission,

and not to the just master

(an easy thing to do), but

also to the unjust.

Submission to the unjust

does not mean you

acquiesce in doing wrong

or engage in injustice

yourself. It does not mean

you approve of the evil

inflicted. It does mean

you are willing to submit

to the suffering that will

result when you simply

say, "This is wrong."

 

Photograph by Larm Rmah via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Haunted by Home: Rediscovering Auden the Englishman – James Chappel at Commonweal.

 

Where the Magic Doesn’t Happen – Andy Crouch at After Babel.

 

Flop Sweat in Edinburgh – Andrew Osenga.

 

A Doctor’s Depression: How God Became My Healer – Kathryn Butler at Desiring God.

 

Emergent Occasions – poem by Maura Harrison at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Saturday Good Reads - Jan. 11, 2025

Tim Challies is a Canadian who writes on faith and theology. I’ve been following his work for a decade or more, and I can’t remember a time when he commented on politics. That changed this week. Read his Trump, Trudeau, and the 51^stState. The Trudeau government has been up to no good when it comes to churches in Canada. 

The FBI finally released its Inspector General’s report on the origin of the so-called Russiagate story that so dominated the first Trump Administration. What was known before the report that the FBI didn’t exactly cover itself in investigative glory; in fact, it looked like an arm of a political party. Well, the report was released. Sort of. Matt Taibbi at Racket News asks the salient question: Why is Russiagate’s Origin Story Redacted?

 

If I had a list of my Top 10 all-time favorite books, then Peter Brown’s biography of St. Augustine would be on it. I read it about 40 years ago, and I still have it. It’s a combination of history and biography that reads almost like a novel. Case Thorp at Mere Orthodoxy looks at Brown’s autobiography, and it sounds like it reads the same way.

 

More Good Reads

 

British Stuff

 

The liberal establishment is to blame for public outrage – Sebastian Milbank at The Critic Magazine.

 

The Biggest Peacetime Crime – and Coverup – in British History – Dominic Green at The Free Press.

 

The gardens that had to make way for London’s growth – Damian Thompson at Apollo. 

 

Faith

 

Is The Sea of Faith Coming Back In? Or Is It a Spiritual Tsunami? – Stewart McAlpine.

 

Is Eastern Orthodoxy the Next Big Thing for Young Men? – Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition.

 

Life and Culture

 

‘Globalize the Intifada’ Comes to New Orleans – editorial by The Free Press.

 

A Future Worthy of Life: Houellebecq, Decadence, and Sacraments – Brad East at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Poetry

 

The Poet and the World, Nobel Prize lecture by Wislawa Szymborska – Poetic Outlaws. 

 

At Hand – Luke Harvey at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Keeping Anna Akhmatova Alive – Sandra Heska King at Every Day Poems.

 

“Now Winter Nights Enlarge,” poem by Thomas Campion – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Home Burial – Robert Frost at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

American Stuff

 

War Power: Literature and the State in Civil War by Philip Gould – reviewed by Stephen Cushman at Emerging Civil War.

 

Booknotes: Building a House Divided: Slavery, Western Expansion, and the Roots of the Civil War by Stephen Hyslop– Civil War Books and Authors. 

 

Writing and Literature

 

The Editor Who Drove Hemingway Away – Emily Zarevich at JSTOR Daily.

 

One hundred years of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy – D.J. Taylor at The Spectator.

 

The Colour Out of Space – Sara Barkat.

 

Photograph: The Painter’s Wife, Reading, oil on canvas by Carl Holsoe (1863-1935).