Do You Outline, or Do You Write into the Dark?

A problem developed while I was writing my fifth novel. The problem had to do with what I conceived as a minor character – a four-year-old boy who would grow to adulthood during the story. But he wasn’t the main character; far from it, in fact. He was supposed to have a bit role. 

Unfortunately, he had a different idea.

 

I kept floundering with the manuscript because this kid kept sticking his head in. It was as if he was demanding a bigger part of the story. I was hitting dead end after dead end, and my writing was going nowhere.

 

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

 

Photograph by Steven Houston via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Battle of the Wilderness with Chris Mackowski – American Civil War & UK History.

 

How French Intellectuals Ruined the West – Helen Pluckrose at Quillette.

 

Doing Theology with Poetry – Abram Van Engen at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

When Less is More – A Haiku / Sonnet Poetry Challenge – James Tweedie at the Society of Classical Poets.

Poets and Poems: Anna Lewis and "Memory's Abacus"

One of the strongest memories I have of my paternal grandmother is her writing the notes for the ladies Sunday School lesson she’d be teaching on the coming Sunday. She’d sit in the easy chair in her large bedroom, intently writing in her small, black-leather ringed notebook, completely focused on the task at hand. I’d sit quietly nearby, reding my book and occasionally looking up to watch her. I knew not to disturb her while she prepared her lesson. As she wrote, she’d occasionally mention names of the ladies in the class, as if anticipating their questions. 

I was reminded of this while reading Memory’s Abacus, the new (and first) poetry collection by Anna Lewis. In the title poem, she recounts a memory of her grandmother, tapping her fingers on the Christmas tablecloth, speaking the name of each of 10 cousins with each tap. “Dispersed now or dead, her childhood kin / reunite as a line of names / along her swollen knuckles.” Associating the tapping and reciting of family names with an abacus is an image almost crystallized in memory – and as a memory. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Lost Time – poem by Paul Wittenberger at Paul’s Substack.

 

Who Should Write Poetry? – Glenn Arbery at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Sonnet 19: On His Blindness by John Milton – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Press – poem by Richard Maxson at Everyday Poems. 

Wallace Stevens, ‘The Reader’ (1935) – Adam Roberts at Adam’s Notebook.

"The Aleppo Codex" by Matti Friedman

It’s one of the most famous books on the planet – the Aleppo Codex, often called the Crown of Aleppo. It is the Hebrew scriptures – what Christians would call the Old Testament – written by, or under the direction of the Hebrew scholar Aaron Ben-Asher about 930 A.D. It was composed in the city of Tiberias, located in what today is the state of Israel.  

In the 1400s, it was transferred to the care of the Jews of Aleppo (now a city of Syria) and stored in the main synagogue. There it remained until 1947. That year, the United Nations approved the partition of the British Mandate in Palestine, creating the nation of Israel. The new nation was even out of the cradle when it was forced to fight its Arab nations, who would not tolerate a formal Jewish nation.

A page from the Codex (Wikimedia)

Riots against the Jews happened in cities all over the Mideast and Egypt. The Jews of Aleppo faced their own pogrom, which included attacks against Jews, ransacking and looting of businesses and homes, and a major attack on the synagogue. The first reports said the Codex had been burned among a host of other books and scrolls. What had happened was that it had been damaged but gathered together and taken to safety and hidden (in the home of a cooperative Christian). There it remained, until 1957, when the political situation in Syria for the dwindling number of Jews looked increasingly dire. 

 

The official story was that a decision was made to remove the Codex from its hiding place, place it in the care of a family fleeing Syria, who took it (and themselves) first out of Syria into Lebanon and then into Turkey. There it stayed for a few months, when it was transported to Israel and presented to the nation’s president. It was a story of the Codex coming full circle, returning to the land of its composition after a journey of almost a thousand years. The Codex as presented was not a complete 

 

Matti Friedman, then a reporter for Associated Press based in Israel, became interested in the story in 2008 – some 50 years after its return to Israel. But almost as soon as he began looking into the story, he began to sense that something wasn’t quite right about the official and widely believed account. The Codex was definitely back in Israel and in the hands of the government, and elements of the official story were true, or close to true.

 

Through scores of interviews and extensive research into government files and documents, Friedman pieced together what likely really happened. The story he tells in The Aleppo Codex: A True Story of Obsession, Faith, and the Pursuit of an Ancient Bible documents what he was able to learn, far beyond the official account, and what might never be fully understood.

 

Matti Friedman

Friedman is a journalist and author. He’s worked for the Associated Press; contributed to the New York Times Opinion Page; written for Smithsonian Magazine, The Atlantic, and several other publications; and currently writes for Tablet Magazine. He’s published four works of non-fiction: The Aleppo Codex (2012); Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story of a Forgotten War (2016); Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel (2019); and Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai (2022). His books have received numerous awards and recognitions, and The Aleppo Codex has been translated into seven languages. He lives in Toronto and Jerusalem.

 

Written 12 years ago, The Aleppo Codex does more than tell a story about an important Hebrew Bible. Friedman explains how the Codex fared during the Israeli war for independence and the decade after. By extension, it all tells the stories of the Jews of the Mideast diaspora, once numerous throughout the region and now almost completely gone (they, like the Codex, were forced to travel). He discusses the role high-level politics played, and even when old-fashioned greed entered the picture.

 

It's a fascinating story, and it still has relevance to what is happening in the Mideast today.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Changes – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Jane Austen versus virtue signaling: What Mansfield Park can tell us about contemporary politics – Stephen Wigmore at The Critic Magazine.

 

British Empire Exposition, Wembley, 1924 – A London Inheritance.

 

At the Ragged School Museum – Spitalfields Life.

 

Travels in New France – Jonathan Geltner at Slant Books on historian Francis Parkman.

It wasn't the law

After Hebrews 7:11-28 

It was set early on:

the priests were of the tribes

Levitical, named after Levi,

Jacob’s son. If this had been

sufficient, if the law has been

sufficient, if perfection could

have been attained through

this priesthood, nothing else

would have been needed. But

the priests were men, types

signifying who the real priest

was, indicating the priest

to come, the priest after

the order of Melchizedek.

This was the king who was,

is, a priest, the priest there 

from the beginning,

Only this priest alone was, 

is, sufficient.

 

Photograph by Elimende Inagella via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Non-Boring Poetry Books (for Children) to Make You Love Poetry – Erica at What Do We Do all Day.

 

Andy Crouch: In a Time of Culture Collapse, Build Friendships – Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition.

 

The Mystery of Father-Son Relationships – Benjamin Myers at Plough Quarterly reviews An Ordinary Life: Poems by B.H. Fairchild. 

 

Whatever Comes, Get Wisdom: AI, the Future, and Our Chief End – Owen Anderson at Christ Over All.

 

What About Abortion in the Case of Rape? – Jonathan Noyes at Stand to Reason.

Saturday Good Reads - May 4, 2024

Growing up, I often worked at my father’s printing business in downtown New Orleans. And I was often employed to deliver finished jobs and pick up new ones. Many a time I passed the corner of Gravier Street and St. Charles Avenue and saw a plaque on a small building wall. It simply read: “The Paul Morphy Chess Club.” I was reminded of that plaque this week when I read “America’s Greatest Chess Player Was a Confederate?” by Evan Portman at Emerging Civil War. The Historic New Orleans Collection also has an article about how Morphy brought chess to New Orleans.  

With all the news coverage of the pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, what’s being lost, or conveniently overlooked, is what happened on Oct. 7. Sheryl Sandberg, the former COO of Facebook, is promoting a documentary about that day, entitled Screams Before Silence. If Hamas was set on outdoing the Nazis, they at least came close. And I ask myself, if it’s the Palestinians the protestors are so concerned about, why aren’t they screaming about what Hamas has done to them: stealing billions in aid, using women and children as shields, placing missiles and weapons in schools and hospitals, indoctrinating children in hating Jews (with a little help from the United Nations). Instead, all we see and hear are college students (and outsiders) chanting the slogans of Hamas and Hezbollah.

 

More Good Reads

 

The Campus Protests 

 

An explanation of the campus protests – Charles Lipson at The Spectator.

 

There Are Two Set Rules of Speech – Abigail Shrier at The Free Press.

 

The ‘Micro-Intifada’: How American Protestors Are Being Trained in ‘Militancy’ – Francesca Block at The Free Press.

 

Parent Call to UCLA Police – via X (formerly Twitter).

 

Life and Culture

 

Understanding Russell Kirk: A Bold Biography by Bradley Birzer – Robert Stacey at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

A True Bipartisan Scandal – Matt Taibbi at The Free Press. 

 

Writing and Literature

 

WITD (Writing into the Dark) is Not the Only Way – Harvey Stanbrough at Harvey’s (Almost) Daily Journal.

 

The Rare Entertainments of E.C.R. Lorac’s Death of an Author – Martin Edwards at CrimeReads.

 

2024 Edgar Allan Poe Award Winners – Mystery Writers of America.

 

Poetry

 

Canterbury Tales: The General Prologue – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Two poems by Christian Lehnert – a new translation by Richard Sieburth at New Criterion.

 

Judas in the Upper Room – Michael Stalcup at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

3 sentient blues – Franco Amati at Garbage Notes.

 

Israel

 

Israel and the making of nations – Daniel McCarthy at The Spectator.

 

Faith

 

Antisemitism is the Devil’s Flagpole by Andrew Klavan, and The Tide of Battle Turns by Spencer Klavan,-- at The New Jerusalem. 

 

There’s a Religious Earthquake Coming. Can You Feel It? – Stephen McAlpine. 

 

Falling Slowly – Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova

 Painting: Old Man Reading a Book, oil on canvas (19^th century), artist unknown but associated with the American School. 

The oldest priesthood

After Hebrews 7:11-28 

Before the Levites.

before the sons of Aaron,

it was, and is, the oldest

priesthood. An order

of one, one person,

one man, the one sent

to serve, to minister, 

to save, one sent

to live and die and

rise again. This is

the priesthood, older

than Abraham, older

than Terah, older

than Adam. This is

the priest who created

the world; this priest

saved the world.

This priest is a king.

 

Photograph by Michel Grolet via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Sunday News – poem by Brad Davis at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin). 

 

The Good in Regret – Seth Lewis.

 

“Sonnet Reversed,” poem by Rupert Brooke – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

How ‘apocalypse’ became a secular as well as religious idea –Erik Bleich and Christopher Star at The Conversation.

 

“The Bag,” poem by George Herbert – Rabbit Room Poetry.

"A Novel Way to Kill" by Benedict Brown

Eighteen-year-old Christopher Prentiss is visiting his grandfather, retired Scotland Yard Superintendent Lord Edgington. An unexpected invitation arrives, one marked urgent, from the Shipley sisters, who live in Suffolk. The three are well-known, except to young Christopher. One writes historical biography, one is a mystery novelist, and the third (and youngest) is a travel writer.  

The invitation doesn’t explain the urgency, but Lord Edgington and Christopher quickly pack up and head to Suffolk.

 

The three, now in their 50s and 60s, live together with their elderly father at the large family estate. Only the youngest is married. The conversation at dinner still doesn’t explain the urgency, but it does focus on how to commit the perfect crime. When old Mr. Shipley is found dead the next morning, seemingly having fallen from a window during the night, Lord Edgington quickly sizes up the situation. It was no accident, and it was definitely murder.

 

A Novel Way to Kill is a novella in this 1920s Lord Edgington series by British author Benedict Brown. It falls about halfway in the (so far) 12-book series, the twelfth being the recently published The Puzzle of Parham House. The story told in the novella is essentially a murderer testing how much the great Lord Edgington still knows about the business or murder. It’s a rather fun read, and a quick read.

 

In addition to the Lord Edgington stories, Brown has written seven Izzy Palmer mystery novels and three novellas. A native of south London, he lives with his family in Spain. The Lord Edgington mysteries are likely aimed at both the general reader as well as the young adult audience. And they’re well-researched stories, full of information about the mid-1920s.

 

Related:

 

Murder at the Spring Ball by Benedict Brown.

 

A Body at a Boarding School by Benedict Brown.

 

The Mystery of Mistletoe Hall by Benedict Brown.

 

 Death on a Summer’s Day by Benedict Brown.

 

The Tangled Treasure Trail by Benedict Brown.

 

The Curious Case of the Templeton-Swifts by Benedict Brown.

 

The Crimes of Clearwell Castle by Benedict Brown.

 

The Snows of Weston Moor by Benedict Brown.

 

What the Vicar Saw by Benedict Brown.

 

Blood on the Banisters by Benedict Brown.

 

A Killer in the Wings by Benedict Brown.

 

The Christmas Bell Mystery by Benedict Brown.

 

Some Thursday Readings

 

On the Invention of M. Dupin – Olivia Rutigliano at CrimeReads.

 

‘France! à l’heure où tu te prosternes’ (1853) by Victor Hugo – Adam’s Roberts at Adam’s Notebook.

 

The State of the Crime Novel, Part 1: The Writing Life  and Part 2: The Future of Crime Writing – Molly Odintz at CrimeReads.

 

“Confused about the Ivy League,” poem by A,M Juster – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Mr. Bates v. the Post Office

For the last four Sundays, we’ve been watching Mr. Bates v. the Post Office on PBS, starring British actor Toby Jones as Alan Bates. It’s a four-part dramatization by ITV of the true story of what happened when the British Post Office adopted a computerized accounting system called Horizon. Developed by Fujitsu, Horizon was supposed to be a significant cost savings and huge increase in efficiency. 

That’s not what happened. Horizon was also full of bugs and glitches. The way the bugs worked, it looked like the subpostmasters – the people operating the postal stores on all the High Streets in Britain – were stealing money. The system kept identifying shortfalls.

 

Frustrated subpostmasters would call the Help Line, to be told they were the only ones reporting a problem. The Post Office sided completely with Fujitsu. And the subpostmasters were expected to reimburse the post office for the shortfalls. Because the Post Office, a government monopoly, had the legal authority to conduct its own criminal investigations and court proceedings, it took people to court. More than 900 people were convicted, in fact. More than 2,750 others paid from their own savings. 

 

Some went to prison. Some killed themselves. People’s lives and reputations were ruined. And it was all because Fujitsu wouldn’t acknowledge the program’s errors, and post office executives supported Fujitsu. Even when they all knew better.

One man, Alan Bates, a subpostmaster in Wales, took the system on – and wouldn’t let go. It took 20 years, but eventually the courts recognized “the greatest miscarriage of justice in British legal history.” The saga continues; court judgments against former defendants are being appealed and vacated. Parliament is holding hearings. And the British Government has to answer the uncomfortable question of what responsibility it has. 

 

The Post Office’s CEO from 2012 to 2019, Paula Vennels, stoutly maintained that the Horizon system s robust.” Her husband advised against using “emotive” words like “bugs.” She knew that Horizon had problems, and ignored her own management who urged that the prosecutions stop. She was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) when she retired in 2019. 

 

The ITV program, which aired in January in Britain, created a huge wave of outrage. Within days, a million people had signed an online petition that she be stripped of her CBE honor. King Charles didn’t wait. He ordered it returned for “bringing the honours system into disrepute.”

 

Paula Vennels also happens to be a priest in the Church of England.

 

PBS is airing a one-hour documentary on the scandal. There will be no second series of the dramatization; the producers said it’s time for the documentaries to take over.

 

Fujitsu has a statement posted from the home page of its web site.

 

The dramatization may be one of the most horrifying things I’ve watched on PBS. Each episode starts with the words “This is a true story.” It shows what happens when a government agency – a government monopoly – is give too much power and becomes too arrogant to acknowledge it’s made a mistake. Instead, it keeps compounding the mistakes. 

 

And lives were destroyed. 

 

Top photograph by Johnny Briggs via Unsplash. Used with permission.

 

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Life and Land in Anglo-Saxon England – Eleanor Parker at History Today.

 

Bird in hand – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter,” poem by John Crowe Ransom – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Among the missing, among the dead: black poetry in America – William Logan at New Criterion. 

Poets and Poems: Paul Willis and "Losing Streak"

Free verse has reigned supreme in poetry for more than a century. It’s difficult for my contemporary mind to experience a formal, more traditional poem (the kind written for at least 3,000 years) as either “that’s how they used to write poems” or “this is going to be a humorous poem.” Rhyming poems seem to lend themselves to humor (think limericks), irony, or even popular songs. 

Yet I know full well that contemporary formalist poetry lives and flourishes; it’s even considered something of a movement. Simply read Dana Gioia, Mark Jarman, Brad Leithauser, or Mary Jo Salter, to mention only a few formalist poets. And Losing Streak, the new poetry collection by Paul Willis, falls comfortably into that category of formalism.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Emily Dickinson was no recluse – Claire Lowdon at The Spectator.

 

Robert Frost’s accidental late start – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Watching My Children Play in a Graveyard – poem by Shaun Duncan at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Rain on Us (A Sunday Psalm) – Jerry Barret at Gerald the Writer.

 

Three Poets Painting with Agnes Martin’s Brush – Heidi Seaborn at The Adroit Journal.

 

At Six Months – poem by Pia Purpura at Every Day Poems.

“T.S. Eliot: Culture and Anarchy” by James Matthew Wilson

From the beginning of his poetry and writing career, T.S. Eliot was considered of a similar mind as the poet and cultural critic Matthew Arnold (1822-1888). One of Arnold’s best-known works was Culture and Anarchy (1869), in which he presented culture (and poetry) as the replacement for religion as the bulwark against anarchy.  

However associated they may have been, Eliot spent a great deal of time and effort correcting what he saw as Arnold’s misunderstandings, especially about religion and the idea of culture substituting for it. The poet wasn’t so much in the business of substitution as he or she was in recovering the idea that it wasn’t only the natural that composed the world; it was also the supernatural, and it was the supernatural that had been lost.

 

In the 46-page essay (with 16 pages of notes) T.S. Eliot: Culture and Anarchy, poet and professor James Matthew Wilson explores the similarities and differences between Arnold and Eliot, explains where Eliot sought to correct what he saw as Arnold’s errors, and in the process provides an excellent introduction to Eliot, his poetry, and the thought that lies behind it. Wilson focuses on Eliot’s major poems – The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, the poem that made Eliot famous; The Waste Land, which solidified his poetic reputation; The Hollow Men; and Four Quartets, which likely played a major role in Eliot being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

 

James Matthew Wilson

Wilson, the Cullen Foundation chair in English Literature and the founding director of the MFA program at University of St. Thomas in Houston, is both a poet and a poetry critic. His poems and articles are published in such magazines and journals as The New Criterion, Front Porch Republic, Hudson Review, Raintown Review, The Weekly Standard, Dappled Things, and other literary and political publications. Her serves as poet-in-residence of the Benedict XVI Institute, scholar-in-residence of Aquinas College, editor of Colosseum Books, and poetry editor of Modern Age Magazine. 

He’s published 14 books, including his first full-length poetry collection, Some Permanent Things; The Catholic Imagination in Modern American Poetry (2014); The Fortunes of Poetry in an Age of Unmaking (2015); and The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition (2017). The Hanging God: Poems was published in 2018. 

The publisher of Wilson’s monograph, Wiseblood Books, has published several of these essays in affordable editions. The essays cover a variety of authors and topics under the general heading of faith, culture, and literature.

Related:

James Matthew Wilson and The Hanging God.

 

James Matthew Wilson and Some Permanent Things.

 

James Matthew Wilson and The Strangeness of the Good.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

It Didn’t End with Lee’s Surrender at Appomattox, Part 1 and Part II – Tonya McQuade at Emerging Civil War.

 

George Ticknor: The autocrat of Park Street – Michael Connolly at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

Bookish Diversions: The Puzzle of Publishing – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Things Worth Remembering: Allan Bloom on the “Charmed Years of College” – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.

 

The London Data Store – A London Inheritance.

The kind of Salem

After Hebrews 7:11-28 

A few, fleeting references:

a blessing, a tithe, a king.

He was a king, not

a priest, and yet a priest,

who gave his name

to an order, an order

of one king, one priest,

one man, one man who

lived and died, one man

who gave his name

to one king, one priest,

one man who lived and

died and lived and lives

forever. It is the order

we are called to, the order

of Melchizedek.

 

Photograph by Pro Church Media via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Expectation – poem by Sarah Spradlin at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Song of the Week: “I Know That My Redeemer Lives” – C. Christopher Smith at The Conversational Life.

 

The Prophets: René Girard – Cynthia Haven at The Free Press.

 

In Memoriam: Janet Reid. Literary Agent. 

Saturday Good Reads - April 27, 2024

In 1874, a group of friends, fellow painters all, decided to hold an exhibition for their work, which wasn’t exactly accepted by the art world’s mandarins at the time. They didn’t know what to call themselves; a writer, Emile Zola, associated with them, suggested the name “the Actualists.” It didn’t stick. A critic, intending an insult, called them another name. This time it stuck, or the painters embraced it. Michael Prodger at The Critic Magazine considers the first exhibition of the Impressionists held 150 years ago on April 15, 1874. 

Hilary Cass, a highly regarded British pediatrician, was asked by the National Health Service in England to review gender care, following a scandal involving the NHS’s medical hospital that performed such care (it’s been suspended). Her report, based on extensive review of studies, practices, and other data, was not favorable. As The Free Press reported, the UK mistreated kids with gender dysphoria for years. The reaction from gender care supporters was not unexpected. A few members of Parliament called the review inaccurate and “unforgivable.” Cass herself discovered she can no longer travel on public transport in London. Helen Saxby at The Critic Magazine asks where is so much gender confusion coming from? Rebecca McLaughlin at The Gospel Coalition gives a succinct summary of the Cass study. And Scotland has now also suspended treatments for children.

 

There’s a new term in town – reverse gaslighting. This is when authorities attempt to convince you that what you know is crazy is actual normal. Roger Kimball at The Spectator describes it.

 

More Good Reads

 

Israel

 

The Jews Who Didn’t Leave Egypt – Alana Newhouse at Table Magazine.

 

Camping Out at Columbia’s Communist Coachella – Olivia Reingold at The Free Press.

 

Behind the mask: Why the new US campus protestors cover their faces – David Weigel at Semafor.

 

British Stuff

 

And Did Those Feet? In search of the English Soul – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule. 

 

The enigma of Englishness – Luca Johnson at The Critic Magazine.

 

American Stuff

 

Webster’s Dictionary 1828: Annotated – Liz Tracey at JSTOR Daily.

 

The Last Witness to the Shot Heard Round the World – John Kaag at Time Magazine.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Writer, Treat Your Words as Offerings – Kathryn Butler at Story Warren.

 

Shakespeare’s Grief – David Bannon at Front Porch Republic.

 

A Pair of Moles: Robert Penn Warren & William Styron – Robert Cheeks at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Life and Culture

 

The Intifada Comes to America: Now What? – Frank Miele at Real Clear Politics.

 

Kids Are Giving Up on Elite Colleges – and Heading South – Eric Spitznagel at The Free Press. 

 

Toxic: How the search for the origins of COVID-19 turned politically poisonous – Dave Kang and Maria Cheng at Associated Press.

 

Faith

 

Climate Anxiety Paralyzes. Gospel Hope Propels – Andrew Spencer at The Gospel Coalition. 

 

Devotions and the professional life – Thomas Kidd at Thomas Kidd’s Substack.

 

“Why All the TVs? The Death of Attention and Our Loss of Ability to Listen” – Bryan Schneider at Gentle Reformation. 

 

News Media

 

The Rise of Independent Journalism – Alison Hill at Writer’s Digest.

 

Poetry

 

Love (III), poem by George Herbert – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

I Believe – Phil Wickham

Painting: Woman Reading, oil on canvas (1885) by Childe Hassam (1859-1935).