Saturday Good Reads

Jen Avellaneda is a writer, speaker, wife, mother, foster mother, and likely a number of other things. She and her husband had fostered some two dozen children over the years. She lives in Washington State, and right now, she and her family are on lockdown due to the coronavirus. She’s been writing about their experiences, and she’s well worth reading. 

All of the entries below under the title of Faith are about the coronavirus, because that is what on the minds of people of faith. There are some really good things being written – on the fear-driven life, on pursuing community when community cannot come together, about when life becomes like war, and how we may actually be becoming more like the New Testament church.

More than one person has observed that our cities in 2020 are looking more and more like paintings by Edward Hopper – lots of buildings and very few people. Ephemeral New York makes this point about New York City. And while it was accepted for publication sometime before coronavirus became a household word, James Matthew Wilson had a poem published in The North American Anglican that has a Hopper painting for illustration and oddly seems to anticipate the change that’s coming.

And last year, as the St. Louis Blues skated and battled their way to the Stanley Cup, a little girl in a hospital became a symbol, a mascot, and virtually a member of the Blues team. The video below shows what happened when Laila met the young man who donated his bone marrow to her and saved her life.

More Good Reads

Poetry

Ebenezer 2020 – Joe Spring at Joe Spring Writes.

'The Soul Waking Up' by Veniamin Blazhenny – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 A Poem on the World Health’s Organization Praise for Beijing – Bruce Dale Wise at Society of Classical Poets.

Writing and Literature

Wendell Berry: The Poet of Place – Silas House at Garden & Gun.

An Exile’s Return: Hugo and the Paris Commune – Tom Darin Liskey at Literary Life.

On Tolkien’s “Fairy Stories” – Nayeli Riano at The Imaginative Conservative.

Faith

The Fear-Driven Life – Jared Wilson at The Gospel Coalition.

Pursuing Community When We Cannot Gather – Michael Kelley at Forward Progress.

Like lovers, parted by war – Rebecca McLaughlin.

When Corona Makes Us More Like the New Testament  – Andrew Wilson at Think Theology.

Life and Culture

Rainy Nights, NYC: Portraits – Jennie Cesario at Dappled Thoughts.

Are We There Yet? – Seth Lewis.

For the Moms and Dads Schooling at Home for the First Time – Jen Oshman.

American Stuff

The 245th Anniversary of "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" – Phil Greenwalt at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

Babe Ruth and the Moment American Baseball Changed Forever – Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith at Literary Hub.

Monumental Madness: On the Neglected Solders’ and Sailors’ Monument in Riverside Park – James Panero at New Criterion.

‘Til Secession Do Us Part: A Citizen of Rome, Georgia Faced A Schism In Business, Life, and Marriage – David Dixon at Emerging Civil War.

British Stuff

The Pearl of York, Treason, and Plot: Political Intrigue in Tudor York – Tony Morgan at English Historical Fiction Authors.

Laila meets her bone marrow match

Painting: Woman Reading, oil on canvas by Susan McDowell Eakins (1879-84).