Submit. What?

For Rev. Chris Baker

After I Peter 3:1-7

 

It’s that word, the one

that guarantees flashes

of anger and bile:

submission.

Worse still, it’s couched

in terms of what wives

are to do with husbands.

Submission! Bah, humbug!

It’s all humbug!

 

And yet, whatever you

think, or think you know,

submission is a picture

of what we do, what we’re

expected to do, what is

required of us to do, with

one another, with those

we love, with those

who love us.

 

If it works for wives,

it must work for husbands,

too. Giving honor

to each other lifts

our souls to heaven.

 

Photograph by Victoria Roman via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Astonished by Prayer: Poetry to Combat Prayerlessness – Clinton Manley at Desiring God.

 

Remnants – poem by Richard Osler at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

The Middle of Somewhere – Andrea Sanborn at A View of the Lake.

 

“The Wise Men” & “A Song of Gifts to God,” poems by G.K. Chesterton – Dovy Ilardo at Power & Glory.

Poets and Poems: Louis MacNeice and "Autumn Journal"

Belfast-born Louis MacNeice (1907-1963) tried his hand at all manners of writing. His novels were unsuccessful; his plays not well received. His poetry, however, was something else. It caught the eye of T.S. Eliot, MacNeice’s editor at Faber & Faber. He seemed to have held his own with W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender (a personal friend), and other poets who remain better known from the period. Even today, critics consider his poetry not quite successful (see the biographical listing at the Poetry Foundation). One area of writing where he excelled was in radio plays, and he was a scriptwriter for BBC from 1941 until his death from pneumonia in 1963. 

Autumn Journal, published in the spring of 1939, may well be MacNeice’s poetic high-water mark. 

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

The Settlers – poem by Matin Rizley at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Winter Walk – poem by Seth Lewis.

 

Romanticism and the Soul of Learning – Campbell Frank Scribner at Front Porch Republic.

 

Literary culture can’t just dismiss AI – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Here We Still Stand – Joseph Bottum and Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Research for a Novel Upended a Family Civil War Legend

In writing Brookhaven, one of the sources I relied upon for research, book referrals, and general information about the Civil War was a web site called Emerging Civil War. Its official description is “a public history-oriented platform for sharing original scholarship related to the American Civil War.”  

Because the site is aimed at the general reading public (people like me), the articles include historical research, memory studies, travelogues, book reviews, personal narratives, essays, and photography. The writers include professors, National Park rangers, teachers, historical authors, and even general writers (like me).

 

I can’t say enough about how helpful the site has been to my research and my general understanding of the war and the people who fought in it. And now I’m one of their guest authors, with “Research for a Novel Upended a Civil War Legend.” 

Photograph: My great-grandparents, Samuel and Octavia Young, about 1880. The photograph was rather clumsily repaired after suffering some damage.

Some Wednesday Readings

Why Literature Still Matters – Louis Markos at The Imaginative Conservative. 

Horrific Price: The Unlimited Courage of Apollo 1 – Jason Clark at This is the Day.

 

When art goes to war – James Panero at The New Criterion.

 

Spin – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Walking the Fault Line – Srikanth Ready at the Poetry Foundation.

 

Immigration – Kit Swartz at Gentle Reformation.

 

Book Interviews: Iron Harvest by Mick Jenkinson – Paul Brookes at The Wombwell Rainbow. 

 

On Courage – Adam Smith at Front Porch Republic. 

 

Going Medieval – Andrew Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

 

“A Flower Given to My Daughter,” poem by James Joyce – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Biggest Policy Change of the Century – Christopher Caldwell at The Free Press. 

 

Photograph: James Joyce (1915) by Alex Ehrezweig.

 

“What Remains: The Collected Poems of Hannah Arendt”

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) is perhaps best remembered today as the political scientist and philosopher who studied Hitler’s Germany and other totalitarian regimes and described “the banality of evil.” Born in Germany, she earned a Ph.D. degree from Marburg University but was forced to flee to Paris when the Nazis rose to power. She and her husband Heinrich Blucher were forced to flee Paris after the fall of France and eventually settled in New York City.  

She became the research director for the Council on Jewish Relations, editor of Schocken Books, and executive director of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, described by Britannica as created to “salvage Jewish writings dispersed by the Nazis.” Later, she taught at the University of Chicago and the New School of Social Research in New York.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

‘A prince of the English language’: Tributes as poet Michael Longley dies aged 85 – Adrian Rutherford at the Belfast Telegraph. 

 

To Break a Promise – poem by David Whyte.

 

50 States of Generosity: Montana – Sandra Heska King at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

English Breakfast – poem by Henrietta Lovell at Every Day Poems.

 

“A Winter Blue Jay,” poem by Sara Teasdale – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

"Murder in the Parish" by Faith Martin

Retired DI Hillary Greene, now a civilian consultant to the Thames Valley Police on cold cases, has a new mystery to unravel with her team. And she has the mystery of her own health. 

Thirty years earlier, right before Christmas, a parish vicar was murdered in the doorway of the vicarage. The medical examiner suggested the means was something like a common garden shovel, but the weapon was never found. And many of the people interviewed at the time have died or moved away. Yet two of the potential suspects start receiving blackmail notes, and it appears that the cold case crime is now getting bound up with a wholly new crime.

 

But who would want to kill a vicar, reportedly liked by everyone, some to the point of having major crushes on the man? For Greene and her team, this looks like a personal crime, but there’s nothing in the vicar’s background that offers a clue.

 

At the same time, Hillary’s nagging cough, though to be a chest or lung infection, is turning into something else entirely. And now she has to have tests run, the results of which she may not be ready for.

 

Murder in the Parish is the twentieth DI Hillary Greene novel by British writer Faith Martin, and it’s unusual in the series in that the cold case involved is really, really cold and offers virtually no clues as to a possible solution. The reader gets hints that the investigating team doesn’t get, with some of those involved in or affected by the original crime having conversations or doing things the police are unaware of. But it’s an engaging, riveting story, not the least reason being what is happening to Hillary herself.

 

In addition to the DI Hillary Greene novels, Martin (a pen name for Jacquie Walton) has also published the Ryder and Loveday novels as well as the Jenny Sterling mysteries. Under the name Joyce Cato, she has published several non-series detective stories. Both Cato and Martin are also pen names for Walton. (Walton has another pen name as well – Maxine Barry, under which she wrote 14 romance novels.) A native of Oxford, she lives in a village in Oxfordshire.

 

Related:

 

Murder on the Oxford Canal by Faith Martin.

 

Murder at the University by Faith Martin. 

 

Murder of the Bride by Faith Martin.

 

Murder in the Village by Faith Martin.

 

Murder in the Family by Faith Martin.

 

Murder at Home by Faith Martin.

 

Murder in the Meadow by Faith Martin.

 

Murder in the Mansion by Faith Martin.

 

Murder by Fire by Faith Martin.

 

Murder at Work by Faith Martin.

 

Murder Never Retires by Faith Martin.

 

Murder of a Lover by Faith Martin.

 

Murder Never Misses by Faith Martin.

 

Murder by Candlelight by Faith Martin.

 

Murder in Mind by Faith Martin.

 

Hillary’s Final Case by Faith Martin. 

 

Hillary’s Back! by Faith Martin.

 

Murder Now and Then by Faith Martin.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Agatha Christie, Below the Equator – Naomi Kaye at CrimeReads.

 

Saving Classical Music: A Return to Tradition – Andrew Balio at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Gulf of Mexico / Gulf of America : Highlighting Civil War Era Location Literacy – Neil Chatelain at Emerging Civil War. 

 

Last Boys at the Beginning of History – Mana Asfari at The Point Magazine.

 

Ethan Haim: ‘We Took On the Federal Leviathan and We Won’ – Emily Yoffe at The Free Press.

Suffering sojourners

After 1 Peter 2:21-25

We are sojourners,

strangers in this world,

sheep called back

to the shepherd, sheep

so loved that the shepherd

suffered and died for them.

We return home, and

we hold fast to the shepherd,

sharing the suffering,

the wounds, the insults,

the hurts, the rejections,

the ridicule, the scourging,

suffering because he

first suffered for us.

We are sojourners,

called to serve,

called to suffering,

suffering servants

healed, suffering

sojourners filled

with joy.

 

Photograph by Fabian Albert via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Five Things You Can Control – Jill Noble. 

 

To the Parents of Wild Ones – Melissa Edgington at Your Mom Has a Blog.

 

Saturday Good Reads - Jan. 25, 2025

You might think that because it’s history, all the basic facts of an era, an event, or a person have been written down, at least somewhere. That’s what I thought when I wrote my historical novel Brookhaven, trusting Dr. Google and Mr. DuckDuckGo at least to point me to the right sources or general directions. I discovered my assumptions were largely wrong. Sometimes, what should have been a no-brainer took hours (and, in one case, days) to track down. Erin Cotter at CrimeReads would likely commiserate, and she offers a basic primer with Historical Fiction 101. 

In the run-up to the November election, a flood of articles inundated newspaper op-ed pages, magazines, online publications, and the air waves about one topic: the Electoral College. In general, I’d say they were about 98 percent in one direction: the Electoral College should be abolished. I suspect the motivating idea was that one candidate might win the popular vote, and another the electoral vote, and that was deemed wrong. Then came the election, one candidate won both, and, suddenly, it was crickets. Chuck Chalberg at The Imaginative Conservative returns to the basic question: Does the Electoral College Still Work?

 

The grooming gang controversy rages on in Britain, and someone needs to tell the British government that you don’t address and calm a crisis by throwing gasoline and lit matches at it. Laurie Wastell at The Critic Magazine discusses what she calls Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s “political prisoners,” and then follows it up with a second round. Ben Sixsmith weighs in, saying Starmer’s scapegoating is downright silly. Douglas Murray at The Free Press says what the British government wouldn’t say, and the New Criterion delivers a rather pointed editorial: Don’t let’s be beastly.

 

On Jan. 22, 1938, one of the most iconic American plays ever made its debut in Princeton, New Jersey – Our Town by Thornton Wilder. I saw it first in high school when I was all of 16, way back in 1968, and even at that age I thought it was marvel. Jason Clark at This Is the Day recalls the play’s debut, and how it created magic, even without props.

 

More Good Reads

 

Poetry

 

My Daughter Asks about Some Bombs in Europe – Ben Myers at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

‘Rattler,’ on Wyeth’s ‘Master Bedroom’ – Carl Kinsky at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Constellation of Genius: Milosz, Camus, Einstein, and Weil – Cynthia Haven at Church Life Journal. 

 

“Bellbirds,” poem by Henry Kendall – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Rediscovering the Golden Age Novels of Dostoevsky Translator David Magarshack – Martin Edwards at CrimeReads.

 

Unthorough Thoughts on Thackeray – Adam Roberts.

 

Ralph Wood on Flannery O’Connor and the Church – David Moore at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Faith

 

Hitting the Bullseye May Take Awhile – Judy Allen at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

 

God Doesn’t Work for Me – Seth Lewis.

 

The Theology of Music – Peter Leithart at First Things Magazine.

 

The Opposite of Politics – Spencer Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

Prison and the Progress of the Soul – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Never Alone – Belinda Carlisle & Nicholas Hamilton, from the movie “Brave the Dark”

Painting: Beatrice, oil on canvas (1895) by Marie Spartali Stillman (1844-1927). 

Called to suffer

After I Peter 2:21-25

As he was called,

so, too, are we called,

called to suffer. Sinless,

committing no wrong,

he was called to suffer

to the point of death.

He provided the example

to follow:

Reviled, do not answer

back in kind. Suffering,

do not threaten. Trust

the just judge. Die to sin.

Live to righteousness,

His wounds have

healed us, brought

the strays back

into the fold, back

to the overseer,

back to the shepherd.

 

Photograph by Levin Anton via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

The Gift – poem by A.F. Moritz at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin). 

 

The Darkness of Winter – Vanessa Doughty at Fields and Valleys.

 

Faith and the American Founding – Barbara Elliott at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

Psalm 5 – poem by Megan Willome (with Callie Feyen) at Poetry for life.

The Collected Poems of J.R. R.Tolkien

The first time I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (about 1970), I committed the expected faux pas – I skipped most of the poems and songs. I was so engaged in the story itself that I wasn’t about to slow done for a poem. 

When I read the books again about a decade later, I’d learned. This time, I read the poems. And the next two times, I read the poems as well, sometimes twice. I’d been educated.

 

The poems are more than worthwhile reading. They’re an integral part of the story, reflecting, enriching, and helping to explain the world of Middle-earth.

 

I saw the first notice last August, about two weeks before we were leaving for London. Tolkien’s poems had been collected. It was a three-volume set, soon-to-be published in Britain (Sept. 12) and a little later (Sept. 17) to the United States. The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien. I stared in wonder.

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

You Should Be Writing Instead of (or at Least Before) Podcasting – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

 

Infinity Split – poem by Jerry Barrett at Gerald the Writer.

 

James Fenimore Cooper is a more honest writer than Mark Twain – Naomi Kanakia at Woman of Letters.

 

“January 22^nd, Missolonghi,” poem by Lord Byron – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Overlooked First Battle of the Retreat from Petersburg – Aaron Stoyack at Emerging Civil War.

Kindness on the Mountaintop

The Winter 2025 edition of Cultivating Oaks Press is now online, and the theme of this issue is kindness. You can read a number of essays and articles on the subject, and the authors include Annie Nardone, Amelia Friedline, Tom Darin Liskey, Rob Jones, Amy Malskeit, Lara d’Entremont, Matthew Clark, Christina Brown, Junius Johnson, Kirk Manton, Sam Keyes, Sheila Vamplin, and several more. 

I have a short story on the theme, “Kindness on the Mountaintop,” and you can read it here.

 

Photograph by Jess Zoerb via Unsplash. Used with permission.

 

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Things Worth Remembering: The Zionism of Martin Luther King, Jr. – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.

 

Onward – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Winter’s Cold and Storms in Civil War Art – Brian Swartz at Emerging Civil War.

 

Diaspora 64 – poem by Oliver de la Paz at Literary Matters.

 

Trump is Uncool. And That’s a Good Thing – Peter Savodnik at The Free Press.

 

“I Sought the Wood in Winter,” poem by Willa Cather – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Poets and Poems: Luke Harvey and "Let's Call It Home"

 Luke Harvey and his wife have two daughters. His first collection of poetry, Let’s Call It Home, is dedicated to his family. If you skipped the dedication page, you would soon figure out that this collection is about that family, and especially about his daughters. 

Harvey watches a child learn to crawl. He walks with a toddler in the living room (over and over again). He watches her read a book upside down. He steps carefully around the random bits of toys on the floor. He’s followed wherever he goes in the house. He hears the cry demanding release from the crib. He watches a daughter running around outside.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

On David Bottoms: Hymns to the Unknown – Edward Hirsch at Literary Matters.

 

Newly discovered poems show Virginia Woolf as a fun aunt – Andrew Linbong at NPR.

 

Close and Slow – Andrew Roycroft on Collected Poems by Louis MacNeice.

 

“As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

“A Rumour of Adventure” by Kees Paling

It’s May 1938. Four friends embark upon a spring walk, something various members of their group usually do. This time, since the tradition is England, they choose Somerset. This walk is different from its predecessors; the threat of Germany is hanging over Czechoslovakia, and at least two members of the group still have strong memories of the horrors of the Great War.  

The four are members of the Inklings, a group of Oxford dons and various friends who usually meet twice a week at The Eagle and Child pub in in one of the member’s rooms in Magdalen College. The four are C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams. A Rumour of Adventure by Kees Paling is the fictional account of such a walk, which never occurred in that year with those participants (Williams wouldn’t become associated with the Inklings until more than a year later). But this is fiction, a novella or short novel, in fact, so it’s okay to invent.

 

It's a charming and engaging story, true to the teachings, beliefs, and personalities of the four. Paling has done a considerable amount of reading and study to get this as right as he does. And that includes works they wrote and biographies and accounts about them.

 

Kees Paling

Of course, the four don’t just walk; they stop at pubs and drink a lot of beer (and hey drink a lot of beer, except for Williams, who drinks a lot of tea). And they talk. Oh, how they talk. 

Their conversations about literature, writing, the growing threat in Europe, imagination, the faerie folk, and more is the heart of the story, and this is what makes the account so true to the real people. And while Tolkien in particular likes his adventures in oral and written stories only, the four will experience an adventure or two along the way. While it’s tempting to compare, the adventures bear almost no similarity to that of the four hobbits in The Lord of the Rings. Note that I said “almost.”

 

Paling has published several books in Dutch on subject ranging from the fall of Prussia and culture on the eve of the new millennium to learning problems in children. He’s contributed to several books on communication and published a rather vast number of newspaper articles. He received a degree in sociology from Utrecht University, served as a lieutenant and counsellor at the Dutch Royal Military Academy, and worked at the Dutch Ministry of Culture and Netherlands Institute for Social Research. He serves as a communication consultant for the Dutch government.

 

A Rumour of Adventure is a delightful story of four men who were good friends and companions in writing (it was Lewis who so strongly encouraged Tolkien to writ The Hobbit and the work that Tolkien called “The New Hobbit”). As the story makes clear, they were also teachers, great conversationalists, and beer drinkers (lots of beer). 

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Does America Still Do Federalism? – Tony Woodlief at Law & Liberty.

 

Cui Bono? – Alan Jacob at The Homebound Symphony.

 

Notes on the Great Vibe Shift – Ian Leslie at The Ruffian.

 

Is Atlas Shrugged the New Vibe? – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Shrouded Veterans: The Untold Struggles of an Iowa Colonel’s Widow – Frank Jastrzembski at Emerging Civil War.

Healed by wound

After I Peter 2:18-25

A slap, a punch,

a spitting upon,

a beating, ridicule,

chains on wrists

and ankles, jeering,

stripped bare, laid

against wood, nails

in hands or wrists,

display for the mob,

the terrible thirst,

the stain of blackness,

the turning away,

the piercing of the side,

the fleeing of friends,

the death. It is 

by these wounds that

we are healed. 

Nothing else suffices. 

 

Photograph by Soheyl Dehghani via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Why a Jealous God is the Best Kind – Sani Langston at Becoming Rooted in Your Identity.

 

Biblical Theology Is for Nerds – Joe Carter at The Gospel Coalition.

 

The Quiet Time Kickstart – Tom Challies.

 

Death Is But a Passing – poem by Roy Peterson at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Exemplary – poem by Glenn Arbery at First Things Magazine.

Saturday Good Reads - Jan. 18, 2025

It started during the Christmas holidays. A 20-something “influencer” on X was shocked to learn that the new Christopher Nolan film was based on a 2,000-year-old poem he had never heard of. The poem was Homer’s The Odyssey, and he had never heard of Homer, either, which may tell you about the state of education in the United States more than it does about the influencer. Spencer Klavan, who co-writes “The New Jerusalem” at Substack with his father Andrew, weighed in. So did Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft. (For the record, I studied The Iliad in ninth grade and The Odyssey in tenth. I was educated in public schools.) 

It's a good thing that the debate over grooming gangs in Britain is still generating controversy, argument, and upset for the British government, but you don’t want to know the sickening details of what went on for far too long and was aided and abetted by police departments, town councils, social workers, the news media, and the national government as well. Sam Ashworth-Hayes and Charlie Peters at The Telegraph explain how the grooming gangs scandal was covered up. Victoria Smith at The Critic Magazine discuses how the grooming gangs scandal upends virtually all of the establishment’s accepted narratives, while Luca Watson takes on the people who are still trying to deny anything happened.

 

Some 40 years ago, I first read Norman Maclean’s short novel A River Runs Through It. It’s a beautifully written book about a Presbyterian minister and his two sons – and fly fishing. I’m not a fisherman, but I loved this book. Last year, a biography of Maclean was published, and Ralph Wood at Church Life Journal has a rather beautiful review.

 

More Good Reads

 

Life and Culture

 

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

 

The Machine in the Garden – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

 

When is a fire an earthquake? – Charles Lipson at The Spectator.

 

The Hope of the American Republic: Local Coffee Shops – Dennis Uhlman at Front Porch Republic.

 

British Stuff

 

Archbishop of Canterbury no longer world Anglican leader in shake-up plan – Kaya Burgess at The Times of London.

 

Anglican Church reforms signal Britain’s fading power – Niall Gooch at UnHerd.

 

Art

 

Louis Leopold Boilly – Monochrome masterpiece – George Bothamley at Art Every Day.

 

Flashing – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Writing and Literature

 

I’m ready for you! – Raymond MacKenzie at London Review of Books on Honore de Balzac. 

 

The Russian Roots of American Crime Fiction – and the O.G. – Joseph Finder at CrimeReads.

 

Poetry

 

Song Version of ‘The Day the Poetry Died’ by Steve Shaffer – Society of Classical Poets.

 

“Winter: A Dirge,” poem by Robert Burns – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Building the Trampoline – Luke Harvey at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

“Eldorado,” poem by Edgar Allan Poe – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Faith

 

Facing a New Year of Grief – David Bannon at Front Porch Republic.

 

The Illusion of Freedom in the Digital Age – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

 

Should We Pray for Presidents with Whom We Disagree? – Mark Daniels.

 

Defense Secretary Pete Hesgeth’s Doctrine of Christian Warfighting – Miles Smith at Providence Magazine.

 

Faith More Precious Than Gold – Mission House

 Painting: Portrait of a Man, oil on canvas (circa 1828) by Sheldon Peck (1797-1868).