More than bread

After Matthew 6:11

Bread is basic

but more is required

to live a day, one day,

daily. Bread is

sustenance, it is

health, it is provision,

it is love, it is life,

it is work, it is all

the things we need

to live a day, not

the things we want.

And to ask for it is

also a a metaphor.

a symbol of dependence

upon the source who

provides the bread,

daily.

Photograph by Helena Yankovska via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads

The study of literature at American universities is in trouble. And it's not only because of declining enrollments in degree programs. The Chronicle of Higher Education published a rather lengthy series of essays about what’s been happening, and it starts by saying that the academic study of literature is no longer on the verge of collapse – the collapse is already well underway. The catastrophe is happening before our eyes. Read “Endgame: Can literary studies survive?”

Sir Roger Scruton dies this past week. The prolific writer, essayist, novelist was called the last conservative intellectual in Great Britain. He also got himself arrested by the Czechoslovak communist regime back in the 1960s. At The Imaginative Conservative, Paul Krause wrote a memorial of the man. And the publication posted a transcript of his last speech, “A Thing Called Civilization.”

In the last few months, I’ve been following a blog called “A London Inheritance.” The unnamed author focuses on a particular area or feature of London and then takes a deep, often historical, dive. This past week, for example, the focus was the Hungerford stairs on the Thames, and comparing what it looked like in 1985 with 2020. Then the author took a winter walk along the Thames from Tower Bridge to Westminster. I’ve done that walk along the South Bank many times. 

More Good Reads

Writing and Literature

Do writers really need to do *all the things* for a successful career? – Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

Rupi Kaur is the Writer of the Decade – Rumaan Alam at The New Republic.

Is this the most powerful word in the English language? – Helene Schumacher at BBC.

Flannery O'Connor: Prophet in Her Own Land – Sean Johnson at Forma Journal. 

Vive Maigret! – Adam Kirsch at Airmail Weekly,

Faith

New Year, New Fears – Eleazar Maduka. 

Significant Lights – Rebecca Martin at The Rabbit Room.

Life and Culture

No, George Will, Individual Freedom Is Bigger Than Market Choice – Josh Hawley at The Federalist.

Education and Men without Work – Nicholas Eberstadt at National Affairs.

Marxism Died in the East Because It Realized Itself in the West – Augusto Del Noce at Church Life Journal (Notre Dame). 

British Stuff

A Walk Through Dickens’ London – Spitalfields Life.

Poetry

Norther – Daniel Leach at The Chained Muse.

An American in Rome: Five Sonnets – Peter Bridges at Society of Classical Poets.

Desk Clerk – R.S. Gwynn at E-Verse Radio.

Art and Architecture

Details of the Spire, St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Oratory – Chris Naffziger at St. Louis Patina.

Mondrian Before Abstraction – Tim Keane at Hyperallergic.

American Stuff

A Portrait of John Cuppy – Gabriel Neville at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

Life of the Civil War Soldier in the Army – Sharon Denmark at American Battlefield Trust.

Be a Mr. Jensen – Clint Pulver

Painting: Woman reading a book, oil on canvas by William Oliver (1884). 

Bread

After Matthew 6:11

It’s not a reference

to rolls or brioche

or a French baguette

or Italian or sliced,

or whole wheat or rye

or corn or any other

variety or variation;

instead, it’s a symbol,

a metaphor, standing in

for what provides

sustenance and life

each day. And

each day, we are

to pray for it.

Simple.

Photograph by Miti via Unsplash. Used with permission.

"Flotsam & Jetsam" by Keith Moray

When you live by the seashore or on an island, a lot of things tend to wash up on the shore: driftwood, the debris from shipwrecks, the proverbial bottles with their messages, perhaps a dead body, a collie tied with ropes to wooden planks. 

Wait, what? A collie?

Inspector Torquil McKinnon of the West Uist police in the Orkney Islands finds the dog, barely alive. Dogs seem to be disappearing, but no one has come across this kind of barbaric behavior. There’s also a rash of burglaries happening, a television program is broadcasting from the island for a week, and some shifty-looking businessmen are hosting a Scottish football star. All kinds of things are washing up on McKinnon’s island.

And then there’s a murder, or two.

Keith Moray

The appropriately named Flotsam & Jetsam is the fourth mystery in the Torquil McKinnon series by British writer Keith Moray. Like its title implies, it meanders in a number of directions, until the bodies begin to turn up. Then it turns into a tightly written police procedural – with always a bit of Scottish humor thrown in (usually courtesy of Torquil’s priestly uncle).

Moray has published six Inspector MacKinnon novels. He’s also published three historical novels, The Pardoner’s Crime, The Fool’s Folly, and The Curse of the Body Snatchers; non-fiction books (under the pen name Keith Souter); and several westerns as Clay Moore. When he’s not writing, he practices medicine as a part-time doctor and medical journalist (he studied medicine at the University of Dundee). He lives in Yorkshire in England.

Flotsam & Jetsam is another solid entry in the series, with well-drawn characters, considerable games afoot, and long-buried secrets finally seeing the light of day.

Related: 

The Gathering Murders by Keith Moray.

Deathly Wind by Keith Moray.

Murder Solstice by Keith Moray.

“The Prison Meditations” by Father Alfred Delp

Alfred Delp (1907-1945) was born in Manheim, Germany (on the Rhine River near Heidelberg) of a mixed marriage – a Catholic mother and a Protestant father. His schooling was primarily Lutheran, until a falling out with the local pastor. He joined the Catholic Church, where his priest saw his promise and guided him in his education. In 1926, Delp became a Jesuit. He was a teacher, first in Austria and later in Germany. 

The ascent of Hitler changed everything for Delp. He began to develop along Catholic humanist lines. Frustrated in his attempt to study for a Ph.D., he began working for a Jesuit journal from 1939 to 1941, until the Nazi government shut it down. He joined the staff of a church, and quietly began helping Jews escape to Austria.

Delp’s legacy is two-fold. First, He became a leading figure in the Catholic resistance to Hitler. And second, when he was falsely accused of participation in the 1944 to assassinate Hitler, he was imprisoned in Berlin, and began to write. He wrote letters, reflections, meditations, and a few essays, all of which were (somehow) smuggled out and given to friends for safekeeping.

The prosecutor dropped the assassination plot charge, essentially trying Delp for his resistance activities, his being a member of the Jesuits, and his beliefs and philosophy. In the dying days of Nazi Germany, the charges were sufficient to result in the death penalty. Delp was executed by hanging on Feb. 2, 1945. His body, and those of the other prisoners executed at the same time, were ordered to be cremated.

His writings from prison have been collected and published a number of times. This particular edition is the ebook version of the collection, entitled The Prison Meditations of Father Alfred Delp. First published in 1962, it includes extracts from his diary, an introduction by Thomas Merton, worth reading by itself alone, and a number of representative writings. The diary entries provide an insight into Delp’s mind while he was imprisoned, showing doubt, fear, acceptance, resignation, and hope. He remained hopeful until shortly before his official trial that he would be found innocent and released. But a day or so before he started, he realizes what really lies ahead.

His meditations and reflections include a number of discussions about Advent, Christmas, epiphany, humanism, a wonderful series on the Lord’s Prayer, and the Holy Spirit. There is nothing in these writings to suggest that the man is writing them in prison; they are a rather quietly joyful discussion. 

At the end, however, back in the diary, we read his final thoughts. The trial is over, and the sentence handed down, and now he has but to wait. The pre-trial tension that was building is gone, replaced by acceptance and a strong resolution. 

Father Alfred Delp

“It is so easy,” he writes, “to get used to existence again that one has to keep reminding oneself that death is round the corner. Condemned to death. The thought refuses to penetrate; it almost needs force to drive it home. The thing that makes this kind of death so singular is that one feels so vibrantly alive with the will to live unbroken and every nerve tingling with life.” He knows that, at any time, the door will open and the jailer will tell him to pack up, for the transfer to the hanging.

And he goes on to question his actions, his life, his motives, and God. He finally knows that the one thing he has to do is surrender himself completely. And then he writes a letter to his fellow Jesuits.

In recent years, broad interest has grown in the stories of prisoners of conscience during the Third Reich. We’ll never know how many, or how few, there really were. But the examples of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Franz Jagerstatter (the Austrian farmer who refused to fight for the Nazis and whose story is told in the movie A Hidden Life), and Alfred Delp bear witness to those who know that, sometimes, conscience must be followed, even when it leads to death.

Looking for Workplace Wisdom: It’s Poetry at Work Day 2020

It’s Poetry at Work Day 2020, and I went looking for wisdom literature about work. Many of us have had experiences with works, jobs, employment, and bosses that might make us doubt if the word “wisdom” even belongs in the same sentence with “work.” And while we all have stories to tell, it’s clear that wisdom can be found in the workplace. One of the best pieces of advice I was given as a developing corporate speechwriter was to read the poetry of T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and Dylan Thomas. These three high priests of modernist poetry offered more than their profound poetic insights and how things could be said in a speech; they offered a way of looking at and understanding the world. 

My search took me to lists of great books about business and work. Fortune has a list. CNBC has a list. Amazon has a book about the top 100 business books of all time. Bloggers have lists. I found almost as many lists of best business books as I did books. 

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

The Dark Stories of Glenn McGoldrick

The Teesside region of the United Kingdom is in northeastern England, north of York and south of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Traditionally, it was a heavily industrial area, home to steel and chemical manufacturers. That era has long passed; today it has a more high-tech, science, and services-based economy. But the dislocations and loss of traditional manufacturing jobs have left their impact, not unlike large parts of the American Midwest.

It is here that British author Glenn McGoldrick sets his stories, both those in the Dark Teesside series as well as others – although all of the stories tend to lean to the dark side. We find people struggling to cope with loss – a loved one, employment, a sense of self – at a time when the big growth industry is casino gambling (this sounds a lot like the American Midwest). You read these stories, and you gain an understanding of part of what fueled Brexit, even though Britain’s divorce from the European Union is never mentioned. 

In Thornaby Accident & other Dark Teesside stories, three stories chronicle people who’ve lost hope or face increasingly difficult situations. In “Darling Wife,” the husband of a straying wife considers what options he has before him. She blames him for their childlessness, and he’s thinking about what to do about it. None of the possibilities are good. In “Thornaby Accident,” the live-in partner of an attorney has begun to hear voices, and they seem to be coming from the radio, even when it’s unplugged. Worse still, the voices are actually one voice – the attorney’s former partner who died accidentally from a fall in the kitchen. “Losing It” tells the story of an aging man, mourning the loss of his wife, and seemingly struggling with the onset of memory loss or dementia. 

“Rosebery Topping” is a short story about a young man who loses his wife in an accidental fall. He blames himself, and his parents are worried about his state of mind, especially after he quits his job. Now he’s trying to figure out how to make amends. 

Glenn McGoldrick

Nightmare Waiting & other dark stories is comprised of 10 stories. A serial killer is waiting for his next victim. A woman dies in a kayaking accident, and her husband believes he killed her. Two thugs are waiting to pick out just the right victim to rob. Someone is killing cats in the area, and woman is determined to find the culprit; in another story, someone is poisoning ducks in a pond, and perhaps more than ducks. An old man dies accidentally when trying to board a boat to take him to an offshore casino, but what kind of accident was it, actually? A woman gets a terminal cancer prognosis, and she and her husband decide what to do about it. A man finds the son of his former partner washing clothes to remove the blood on them. And in the title story, a man knows he owes a debt, even if he’s not quite sure what the debt is for.

McGoldrick specializes in short stories, which he’s been writing since 2013. He worked for both land-based casinos and cruise ships for a time, using those experiences for many of his stories. He currently lives in northeastern England.

His stories are dark, gritty, often involve a twist, and inevitably open insights into the human psyche. 

Related:

 4 Stories by Glenn McGoldrick.

3+ Stories by Glenn McGoldrick.

Five Mysteries: 2 Short Stories, 2 Novellas, and a Long Story.