Some Monday Readings - May 11, 2026

Revolting England – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Not-so-bookish thoughts about book clubs – Kelly Belmonte at Bandersnatch Books.

 

Serious Reading Was Always a Minority Sport – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Back When the Pulitzer Meant Something – Liel Leibovitz at The Free Press.

 

When You Hear Crickets – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

The Spitalfields Roman Woman – Spitalfields Life.

 

The Royal Festival Hall at 75 – A London Inheritance.

 

The Gratitude Shift – Melissa Edgington at Your Mom Has a Blog.

 

Photograph by Clay Banks via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Cultivating, Winter 2026: Renewing Gratitude

The winter issue of Cultivating Oaks Press is live, and the theme is renewing gratitude. This issue includes some wonderful essays, articles, and stories by Rob Jones, Annie Nardone, Sheila Underwood Vamplin, Adam Nettesheim, Christina Brown, Lara d'Entremont, Kelly Keller, Maribeth Barber, and many more. I have a short story, "Grateful for the War." 

Some Monday Readings

 

C.S. Lewis Returns to Earth – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

Dispatch No. 4: Jayber Crow – Amelia Friedline at Dispatches to Jack.

 

Don’t Quit Your Day Job – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

Poets and Poems: Jessica Cohn and "Gratitude Diary"

We express gratitude for many things – recovery from an illness, a thankful child, the generosity of a friend, and a recognition at work, to mention only a few. But have you thought about being grateful for a jar of buttons on the dresser, the smell of toast, how to preserve lemons, the satisfaction of making a list, or an empty box?

These are a few of the things coursing through Gratitude Diary: Poems, the debut collection by Jessica Cohn. Structured within a 10-day cycle, the poems focus on unusual items for which one might be grateful, but some explain themselves. The objects are themselves symbols of something else, something fundamental in a person’s life. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

Letter to a Middle-Aged Poet – poem by Matthew Buckley Smith at First Things Magazine.

Five Quintilla Poems – Cheryl Corey at Society of Classical Poets.

Giving Voice: Interview with Karla Van Vliet – Tweetspeak Poetry.

Immolation – poem by Anne M. Doe Overstreet at Every Day Poems.

“Ode to the Confederate Dead,” poem by Allen Tate – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

The Beauty and Importance of Gratitude: “My Heart Overflows”

Our world seems a little short on gratitude. We have expectations and demands, and we have entitlements. But we have so much to be thankful for. Perhaps that’s the problem – so many blessings and forgetting what the source is. 

My Heart Overflows: A Treasury of Readings, Poems, and Prayers on Gratitude is a relatively small but beautiful book that reminds us to be grateful. Assembled by the editors of Paraclete Press, the work is 144 pages of artwork and text that each speaks to gratitude, why we feel it and show it, and how we can be thankful for it.

 

You can pray with Francis of Assisi, observe Walden Pond with Ralph Waldo Emerson, celebrate beauty with Gerard Manley Hopkins, consider what you mother has done for you with Maya Angelou, and be thankful for the rain with Luci Shaw. Helen Keller is here, as is John Greenleaf Whittier. 

 

You can feel the evening wind with William Cullen Bryant, read what G.K. Chesterton said about St. Francis, see why you should enjoy life (Charlotte Bronte did), and discover what George Washington was grateful for about his new nation. Emily Dickinson believed there was nothing without gratitude (and she wrote a poem about it). And you can pray and be thankful with Jane Austen and the church father Clement of Alexandria and discover what Abraham Lincoln was so thankful he declared a national day of Thanksgiving (as did James Madison). 

 

The paintings included in the artwork includes those by Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Claude Monet, Albert Bierstadt, Jan Steen, Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Gustav Klimt, Giotto, and John Constable, among many others. The book is profusely illustrated, each painting chosen to illustrate the themes of thankfulness and gratitude.

 

I love beautiful books, and My Heart Overflows is a beautiful book. In fact, you could say I’m grateful for the time, care, and attention the editors at Paraclete used to create this volume.

 

Painting: The Thankful Poor, oil on canvas (1896) by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), one of the illustrations used in the book. 

Some Monday Readings

 

Chaos in Aurora – Christina Buttons and Christopher Rufo at City Journal. 

 

The Imminent Russia-US War – Christopher Caldwell at Compact Magazine.

 

Kristallnacht – The Night of Broken Glass – poem by Brian Yapko at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Writing for an Audience of One – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

Things Worth Remembering: The Imperfection of America – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.

It’s Poetry at Work Day – Discovering the Poetry of Gratitude

Today we celebrate Poetry at Work Day – the day each year we bring poems to work, share them with colleagues, read them aloud in small (or large) groups, perhaps leave a few on cafeteria tables, wallpaper them on our computer screens, and generally celebrate poetry in the workplace.

Last spring, I found myself rediscovering poetry at work. And rediscovering a sense of gratitude about work.

Three years previously, I had retired (a bit early). It was one of those “You know, it’s just time to go” kind of decisions. I still had much to offer, but, well, I’ll just leave it at that. It was time to go. I can truthfully say I have never regretted the decision. I miss the people I worked with, but I didn’t miss the organizational politics, the constant internal upheavals, and the frenzied “every day a new crisis” atmosphere. And I put my newly found free time to good use – writing, including two novels; editing; work with online publications; and spending more time with the grandchildren.

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

A National Scarcity

The CEO of the corporation I was working for had agreed to be part of some prestigious national commission, and needed to have a staff person assigned who could do research, assemble reports, write speeches, and basically “staff” the CEO on the project. It would be a six-month assignment.

The search immediately focused on the speechwriting team – three of us who wrote for a dozen executives, did issue papers, prepared the quarterly financial reports, and generally any other kind of writing project the executives needed. (In addition to speeches, it fell to me to write the quarterly reports, a few issue papers, and the chairman’s annual United Way message to employees.)

One of my colleagues was chosen for the CEO’s assignment. He was even physically moved to an office in the executive building. The six months actually was closer to eight. His normal work – a full-time job – was given to the two of us who remained. Most of that extra work fell to me.

The special project came to an end, and our colleague returned. Two or three weeks later, the entire department was called into a meeting, where my colleague received a special recognition for the work he had done for the CEO, i.e., a special bonus check.

For the two of us who had carried the load of the department, who had picked up the extra work, there was – not even an acknowledgement.

This is not unusual in corporate America, then or now. Gratitude always seems to be in scarce supply. Had we not done what we did, our supervisors would have had a major mess on their hands. As it was, no one said a word. I was disappointed. My other colleague was furious, and went to the head of the department. Nothing came of that, however.

Gratitude is always in short supply.

I’m not sure why. Thanking someone is not a big deal. Even recognizing good work should not be a big deal. But it is.

In Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus, Christopher Smith, John Pattison and Jonathan Wilson-Hargrove say this scarcity of gratitude comes from forgetfulness, a kind of national or cultural affliction. I suspect it also comes from the disconnect between the blessings we enjoy in our lives and understanding who the source of those blessings is. We like to think of ourselves as doing it all on our own, but that’s rarely if ever true.  

But there’s something worse, the authors say. “Gratitude is perhaps the most important way we practice recognizing the enough all around us. If lack is the root of injustice, than gratitude is the root of justice.”

This seeming inability to express gratitude, this national, cultural and individual forgetfulness, plays havoc in our lives. We can do better.

For the past several Mondays, I’ve been discussing Slow Church. This week’s discussion is about the chapter entitled “Gratitude.” Next week, the discussion will be on “Hospitality.”

Photograph by Anna Langova via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

So I Say Thank You

Bridget Chumbley is hosting the One Word Blog Carnival (links go live tonight about 9:30 central time), and the word this time is gratitude, something you can never express too much.

I’ve thought about that word, and how to blog it, and the answer came very clear on Sunday as I listened to our minister preach on Romans 12:9-16, with the Apostle Paul’s 17 individual commands all relating to love, commands like “Honor one another above yourselves.”

I started thinking back to all of the people who contributed something – usually themselves – for me to learn and grown in faith. People like:

Pastor Louis Nelson, the minister at our family church (Faith Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod) in New Orleans. He taught me catechism for two years when I was in 7th and 8th grades.

Josh McDowell, the apologist and evangelist, who said something to me in haste that so offended me that I demanded a meeting with the staff director of Campus Crusade for Christ at LSU.

Earle Carpenter, that staff director, who met with me for an hour – I’ve posted a photo of the lecture classroom where we met – and I came out of that meeting a Christian. Earle went on to lead Campus Crusade at SMU, attended Dallas Theological Seminary, and eventually returned to his hometown of Birmingham, Ala., to found Christian Medical Ministry, from which he “retired” a few years back. Earle is working just as hard as he ever did, preaching and teaching the Word.

Pastor Joe Wall, who was one of the pastors at Spring Branch Community Church in Houston and set up classes for college credit that were held at the church (I earned a total of 12 hours). The classes I took in Old Testament Survey, New Testament Survey, the Gospels and Bible Study Methods gave me a phenomenal grounding in the Bible. I still have my research project from Old Testament Survey – a study of the high priests. And I still remember my final exam in Bible Study Methods – an explication of John 11:35, the shortest verse in the Bible (“Jesus wept”). We lived in Houston more than 30 years ago.

Pastor Tim Fortner and his wife Anna, who embraced a young pregnant couple in dire financial circumstances and just loved us. Tim was the pastor at our first church in St. Louis, Covenant Presbyterian Church.

Gery and Linda Kotthoff, who befriended us at Covenant and were our first babysitters for our oldest. You can’t find better examples of selfless love.

Bruce Roquet, whom we first met as a Sunday School teacher at Chatham Bible Church in St. Louis and with whom we joined at First Evangelical Free church years later. Bruce was the youth minister when our oldest was in the youth group, and convinced us to allow him to go with the youth group on a missions trip to Haiti in 1995, shortly after the government had been overthrown and President Clinton had sent U.S. troops in to maintain order. Bruce had as much of an impact on my wife and me as he did on our oldest son.

Professors George Pepe and Ed Weltin at Washington University. I studied under both of them in my masters program. I had two classes with Pepe – “Athens and Jersualem” and “The Idea of Rome in the Western Imagination.” Pepe introduced me to the writings of Tertullian, the Ante-Nicene father who became something of a heretic. And I took a class in early church history with Weltin – and still remember the argument that ensued when I presented my paper on the rise of the monarchial episcopate (the bishops). He disagreed with everything I said, gave me an A for making a convincing case, and even tried to find a journal that would publish my paper.

My family – my wife and two sons. My wife listened to the rants and issues of what had to sound like a crazy person searching for meaning – and then I became a Christian. My two children taught me more about God than I can explain.

The authors I have read: C.S. Lewis, Philip Yancey, J.I. Packer, Charles Williams, F.F. Bruce. N.T. Wright, Sir William Ramsay, Alfred Edersheim, Josh McDowell (yes, I got over the hasty comment) and Charles Swindoll. There are others – but these stand out.

To all of these people living and dead, I owe a debt of gratitude that I can never repay. But I think they all know that.

Photograph: Cross by Piotr Wojtkowski via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.