Where wisdom is not

After James 3:13-18 

If you see jealousy,

if you experience it 

yourself, you will

not find wisdom.

If you feel selfish

ambition in your heart,

a desire for glory,

recognition, praise 

of others, you will

not find wisdom.

Jealousy and selfish

ambition produce

disorder and vileness.

That’s the wisdom

of this world, unspiritual;

that’s the wisdom

of this world, demonic. 

 

Photograph by Priscilla Du Preez via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Eusebius, Early Christianity’s Historian – Michael De Sapio at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

“She Prays,” poem by Ella Higginson – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

The Distance We Keep – Michael Mellette at Mockingbird.

 

The Life God Didn’t Let You Live – Katie Kaitkep. 

Poets and Poems: Diana Lockward and “The Color Wheel”

I don’t recall where I read it, but some blogger or publication or Substack posted a poetry prompt: write about a color without ever mentioning the name of it. It’s both easier and harder than it looks. To make it more difficult, try writing a poem about a color with mentioning the color or an associated feeling or emotion. 

An exercise like that does make you immediately aware of the importance color can have in poetry and even in everyday conversation. We feel blue. We see red. We’re in the pink. That potato salad made me feel green. His mood was black. 

 

Poet, editor, and publisher Diana Lockward says she’s long had an attraction to poems that use color. Over the years, she kept a folder of poems that did exactly that. And then, she had an idea – an anthology of poems that make strategic use of color. She put out a call for submissions. 

 

And poets responded. At least 117 of them did, and likely more, each by a different poet. And The Color Wheel: Poems was born. And the result is, well, more diverse and colorful than you might expect.

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

Some Thursday Readings

“The Ballad of the Dead Ladies,” poem by Dante Gabirel Rossetti – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

“The Cottage on the Ridge” and “The Garden Hermit’s Confession” – poems at Martin Rizley at Society of Classical Poets.

 

“And if I Did, What Then?”, poem by George Gascoigne – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

The Strangest First Day on the Job I Ever Had

I felt more than a little apprehension. I was in morning rush hour traffic, driving to downtown St. Louis from the close-in suburb where I lived. It was something of a new experience. I hadn’t driven in rush-hour traffic since leaving Houston 25 years earlier. The apprehension wasn’t about traffic; I had stepped outside my career experience and accepted a job with St. Louis Public Schools. And I was early; the hours were 8 to 5, but I decided to be there by 7:30. 

Except for nine months at a newspaper straight out of college, my career had been exclusively corporate communications: employee communications, crisis communications, media relations, environmental communications, and speechwriting. Especially speechwriting. Even for the three years I had had my own consulting business, I worked for companies, doing mostly speechwriting. 

 

Corporations have their moments of craziness and crisis, but they pale in comparison to urban school districts. And yet, here I was, driving to my first day on the job at the largest school district in the state of Missouri, a district that had been in crisis for years and was now in hyper-crisis. 

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

Photograph via St. Louis Public Schools.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

End Game at Appomattox – Mike Phifer at Warfare History Network. 

 

Millennials Tried Being Angry. It Didn’t Work – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

 

A Memo in the Wilderness: Why does the Church of England now sound like an HR department? – James Martin Charlton at the Critic Magazine.

Poets and Poems: Joanne Esser and "Nothing Is Stationary"

Something happens when you read a poetry collection, while you watch soft rainfall outside the kitchen window, raindrops making tiny splashes in the birdbath. The birds have taken cover somewhere. So have the squirrels, especially the one who likes to dig up the zinnias. The young rabbit who finds the rose bush – with all its thorns! – delicious is missing. And you find yourself slipping into reflection.  

If the poetry collection is one like Nothing Is Stationary, the new publication by Joanne Esser, your reflections are not only sharpened but also take you down paths you didn’t expect to go. Esser is realizing that most of her life is behind her, and she’s thinking about where she came from and where she is. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The Sowers – poem by Gabriele D’Annunzio.

 

Mr. Pope – Poem by Allen Tate at Academy of American Poets.

 

“Dover Beach,” poem by Matthew Arnold – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Dark Green, Forest Green – poem by Linda Nemec Foster at Every Day Poems.

 

Stern Shoots Marilyn – poem by Mauren Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

 

“Sheep,” poem by W.H. Davies – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient an Modern.

 

“The City of Ephesus” by Sandra Glahn

Today, the city of Ephesus may be mostly ruins investigated by archaeologists and tourists. But at one time, it was the chief city of what we call Asia Minor. Rome made it the capital of the province of Asia, and it was an important center of religious worship of the goddess Diana or Artemis.  

Ephesus was also a significant setting for the Apostle Paul’s missionary journeys. In the Book of Acts, it’s known for a riot caused by silversmiths angered by Paul’s healing of a possessed slave girl, for Paul’s letter to the church there, and his farewell discussion with the Ephesian elders, the one in which he warned about the wolves devouring the lambs. Timothy ministered there.

 

Dr. Sandra Glahn, who’s written more than 20 books and aims to make research accessible, has written The City of Ephesus: A Short History, a concise, well-written account of the story of Ephesus, focusing on the period from 100 B.C. to 100 A.D. 

 

Glahn details the importance of the temple of Artemis. The goddess was believed to protect the city, women in childbirth, and even a protector of wealth, serving as something like a depository. People came, she writes, from Europe, Asia, and Egypt to pay homage. When Paul cast the demon from the slave girl, it didn’t take much for the girl’s owner, resenting the loss of income, to transfer his anxiety to the silversmiths who profited from the Artemis cult.

 

She details the social, political, and religious contexts for the city during the 200 years between 100 B.C. and 100 A.D. And then she briefly describes what happened to Ephesus after the time of Paul. 

Sandra Glahn

 

Glahn has published a number of Bible studies on the books of Jonah, Ruth, Judges, Esther, Song of Solomon, Malachi, Luke, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philippians; the letters to the seven churches in Revelation and the Sermon on the Mount; several books on women’s issues; and even novels. She had a column on Substack and her own blog. Her podcast on Youtube is called The Chick Report with Dr. Sandra Glahn. She also conducts student tours or workshops in Italy, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Calvin College’s Festival of Faith and Writing.

 

The City of Ephesus isn’t an exhaustive study of the city and the times in which it flourished. But succeeds, and succeeds well, in its aim to provide a detailed overview. 

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Murders for June – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine.

 

Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House: A Redemptive, Modern Novel – Daniel Sundahl at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

The 120^th Anniversary of Vauxhall Bridge – A London Inheritance.

 

The Stamp Act and the American Revolution – Kyler Burd at Journal of the American Revolution.

The source of wisdom

After James 3:13-18 

Where does wisdom

come from? Does it

arise from years

of study and

research, from

experience, from

living day to day?

Whi is wise

among you? Is

wisdom crowdsourced?

 

Wisdom comes from

above; it’s the only

source. It’s displayed

by your conduct, by

its own meekness. It

doesn’t boast; it’s not

false to what’s true.

Wisdom comes from

outside you; it comes

from above. 

 

Photograph by Alex Shute via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Labour and Legacy – Jeremy Walker at The Wanderer.

 

Gen Z and Belonging to the Church – Alan Noble.

 

A Sonnet for Trinity Sunday – Malcolm Guite.

Saturday Good Reads – May 30, 2026

I don’t select my “favorite story of the week,” but if I did, this one would be it. If you read nothing else here today, or anywhere else, read this. Bring tissues. And feel gratitude, and perhaps some wonder: Judson’s Last Ride by Sean Trende. 

You have a book idea. You start researching and perhaps even writing. You’re excited about it. And then, in a bookstore or an online column or post, you see it. Someone has already published a book that sounds like what you’re working on. Your response is something like feeling all four of your car tires deflate at once. What do you do? Writing coach Ann Kroker has some suggestions.

 

The controversy over writing and artificial intelligence continues to rage. A prizewinning article in a literary magazine that may actually have been written by AI. Books in which quotations of other works turn out to be invented by AI, Books written partially or more than partially by AI programs. Writing using what suspiciously looks like AI-pirated plagiarism. But with all this, not unusual when a new technology is developed, Joel Miller suggests that perhaps writers are focused on the wrong AI battle.

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

Why 1776 matters to modern Britain – Clement Knox at The Critic Magazine.

 

This Jewish Community in the Caribbean Smuggled Gunpowder to the Patriots During the Revolution – John Hanc at Smithsonian Magazine.

 

The Sound of Independence – Lois Bliss Herbine at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

The Constitutionalism of The Federalist Papers – William Allen at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Treason on the Floor: Patrick Henry’s Defiant Challenge to King George – Jason Clark at This Is the Day.

 

Faith

 

What’s Wrong With Boys? – R. Scott Clark at The Heidelblog.

 

American Stuff

 

Property No More: The Quiet Emancipation of Dred Scott – Jason Clark at This Is the Day.

 

Dolley Madison’s World – Catherine Allgor at American Heritage.

 

The Lobby, Fox Theater – Chris Naffziger at St. Louis Patina.

 

Writing and Literature

 

The Return of Buccmaster – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abby of Misrule.

 

An Ounce of Clarity vs a Pound of Cleverness – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

 

Film

 

“Les Miserables:” A Rousing Tale for Slumbering Souls – Barbara Elliott at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

News Media

 

Stephen Colbert Didn’t Get Cancelled – Mass Culture Did – Aaron Renn.

 

The Media’s Inversion pf Hezbollah’s War Against Israel – John Spencer t the Mir Yam Institute.

 

Poetry

 

“Sea-Shell Murmurs,” poem by Eugene Lee-Hamilton and “The Ecchoing Green,” poem by William Blake – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Bell Ringer – David Whyte.

 

Life and Culture

 

The Dignity of Dependence: How the Vulnerabilities We Share Become the Ties That Bind – Alisa Ruddell at Front Porch Republic.

 

Christ Our Hope in Life and Death – Jordan Kauflin

 Painting: Books and Reading, illustration by Norman Rockwell (1894-1978).