A conscious choice

After Galatians 5:16-25 

We make a conscious 

choice, whether to walk

the path of the flesh or

the path of the spirit.

We have no excuse;

we choose one or

the other, knowing 

full well that one path

leads to destruction

while the other leads

to life. No one decides

for you, for me, for us. 

We decide. We choose.

We die, or

we live. 

Some Sunday Readings:

 

Piety, Technology, and Tradition – Jon Askonas at Mere Orthodoxy. 

 

I’m Not Fatherless Anymore – Samuel Sey at Slow to Write.

 

“The Test” and “Deathbed Request” – poems by Alan Steinle at Society of Classical Poets. 

Saturday Good Reads - June 17, 2023

The writer Cormac McCarthy died this past week. The author of such novels as The Road, No Country for Old Men, and Blood Meridian, he was known for his precision in writing, his writing style, and his apocalyptic / dystopic themes. Lincoln Michael at Counter Craft discusses his precision and writing style. Aaron Gwyn at the Spectator considers his literary legacy. Casey Spinks at Front Porch Republic writes about his literary impact. And Robert Lee Brewer at Writer’s Digest lists 15 lasting quotes from The Road. 

Fox sent its “cease and desist” letter to Tucker Carlson, who promptly ignored it and continued his highly watched broadcasts on Twitter (you can watch it, without either signing in or having an account). One thing is known from the controversy – the ratings for Fox News are down substantially, often as high as 40 percent down. Chadwick Moore at The Spectator asks the question: Tucker Carlson can live without Fox News, but can Fox News live without Tucker Carlson?

 

When life (or Twitter) hands you lemons: I’ve been suspended from Twitter, for reasons unknown other than the nebulous “violated Twitter rules.” I’ve been on Twitter for 13 years, and I had this happen once before – back in 2011 or 2012, when Twitter changed its algorithm and inadvertently bumped a whole bunch of people (including me) off the platform. Then, it took a friend of a friend who knew someone at Twitter to get it fixed. Recently, Twitter did it again, and I suspect the same thing happened. This time, I decided it was time to walk away.

 

It’s been weird, not checking in and tweeting each day. But it’s given me more time to think and plan. I’ll be trying some new things with this blog, and we’ll see what happens.

 

More Good Reads

 

Life and Culture

 

The Varykino Gambit - at Sippican Cottage.

 

The Foothills of the Ozarks – Zephram Foster at Front Porch Republic.

 

First People Sickened by COVID-19 Were Chinese Scientists t Wuhan Institute of Virology, Says US Government Sources – Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, & Alex Gutentag at Public.

 

What is spring to you? – Kelly Belmonte at All Nine.

 

British Stuff

 

London in the 1920s – at A London Inheritance.

 

London shines in the spring – Henry Oliver at The Critic Magazine.

 

Poetry

 

Saint Paul Talks Strategy – Zach Czaia at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

 A guided tour – Jane Dougherty at The Four Swans.

 

Out Like a Lamb – Misky at It’s Still Life.

 

The Bible and Poetry – Michael Edwards at The Paris Review.

 

Emptiness – Cathy McDonald at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Faith

 

Who Was Robert Jermain Thomas? – Joo Young Kang at Ligonier.

 

Tolkien’s (Catholic) Traditionalism: Conveniently Forgotten? – Julian Kwasniewski at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

The Seeds None Could Afford: How Martyrs Built the Early Church – Gerald Bray at Desiring God. 

 

The Day I Told God No – Seth Lewis.

 

American Stuff

 

Address from the Officers of the Virginia Regiment: December 31, 1758 – Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Commanding the Regiment: Major Roberdeau Wheat, 1^st Louisiana Special Battalion – Bert Dunkerly at Emerging Civil War.

 

News Media

 

Partisan journalism doesn’t help Ukraine – William Trainer at The Spectator. 

 

History

 

Escaping the Train to Auschwitz – Althea Williams and Sarah Ehrlich at BBC News. 

 

You Say – Lauren Daigle

 Painting: A man reading a book by lamplight, oil on canvas (1839); British School. 

Two walks

After Galatians 5:16-25

Two walks, starting

together but quickly

diverging, a sharp

separation, leading

in different directions,

stark, utterly unlike

each other, at war

with one another,

in fact. Discern

the paths by what

they produce.

 

One: immorality, impurity,

sensuality, idolatry,

sorcery, enmity, strife,

jealousy, fits of anger, 

rivalries, dissensions,

envy, drunkenness, orgies,

and more.

 

The other: love, joy,

peace, patience,

kindness, goodness,

faithfulness, gentleness,

self-control.

 

One is flesh.

The other is spirit.

Choosing the spirit

crucifies the flesh.

 

Photograph by Oliver Roos via Unsplash. Used with permission. 

“Murder at Work” by Faith Martin

Detective Inspector Hillary Greene is retiring. 

She’s handed in her notice, made her plans for what she’ll be doing afterward (exploring England’s canals in her boat), and finding herself unable to imagine her existence post-retirement.

 

Her old team in slipping away. One is getting married; another has already gone off to be a sports agent. The third is almost too new to be “the old team.” Her boss is transferring back to York. One internal nemesis is being transferred (in something approaching disgrace), and he’s determined to bring DI Greene down before he goes. Another nemesis, Greene’s Detective Sergeant Frank Ross, has been forced to retire and is now working as a night security guard at a business complex, where he’s helping to orchestrate a bit of theft.

 

Her boss’s boss, Superintendent Marcus Donleavy, is not happy with Greene’s decision to retire. He devises a plan that he thinks will change her mind – he tells her boss to assign the next murder case to her. Donleavy knows she can’t resist a murder case, and he knows it will likely the case will push past Greene’s retirement date.

 

And sure enough, a murder case arrives. A man is found bludgeoned to death at the very same business complex where Frank Ross works. And it’s Frank Ross who finds the body. And, just at Donleavy hoped, the case looks for all the world that it will last beyond Greene’s retirement date. The victim was divorced, something of a man about town with an eye for women, a fairly successful gambler. He seemed to have been well liked, except by his former lovers. It’s hard enough to find decent suspects, and this case, Greene and her team can’t even find a motive.

 

Faith Martin

Murder at Work is the eleventh mystery novel in the DI Hillary Greene series by British author Faith Martin. It’s full of twists and turns, but with a major difference from its predecessors. Will retirement bring an end to the Hillary Greene series? Will one of our favorite detectives go sailing off into the canal sunset? And will she and her team solve the crime in time for her retirement to happen?

 

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. 

 

The short answer to Greene’s retirement question is, if she does or doesn’t, there are still eight more in the DI Greene series to come. I know, because I looked at the listings on Amazon.

 

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.

“The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl” by Eliza Frances Andrews

In late 1864, Eliza Frances Andrews (1840-1931) began keeping a journal. The young woman lived with her father and younger sister in Washington, Georgia, a town due east of Atlanta between Athens and Augusta. Washington had been fortunate, but William Tecumseh Sherman’s army was approaching as it swept southwest from Atlanta to Savannah in the famous “March to the Sea.” Their father has been a known opponent of secession, but Eliza’s two older brothers had both enlisted in the Confederate Army. 

The two young women traveled to the home of their older sister, who lived on a plantation in southwest Georgia near Albany. Initially opposed to their leaving, their father finally relented, and the family found friends and acquaintances who could serve as escorts.

 

First, however, they had to cross the some 60-mile swath that had been in the path of Sherman’s army. And it was every bit as bad as they’d heard. Destroyed railroad track, burned towns, villages, and homes, the countryside picked clean of anything resembling food – the sisters were as stunned as they were outraged.

To continue reading, please see y post today at Dancing Priest.

Rediscovering Seneca: Dana Gioia Translates "The Madness of Hercules"

I took two years of Latin in high school. Even (way back) then, Latin was a dying subject. Nine of us took Latin I. Five of us took Latin II. That was out of an all-boys public high school of 2,000 students. Our Latin teacher was passionate about the language; I can still vividly remember him almost bouncing as he paced in front of the blackboard, always holding a piece of chalk.  

I learned more about English grammar in my Latin classes than in any English class I took. I also unexpectedly learned about the history and literature of Rome. That was because we translated sections of the writings of famous Romans like Julius Caesar, Virgil, Cicero, and a Roman born in Spain named Seneca.

 

Seneca, or Lucius Annaeus Seneca (the Younger), was a Stoic philosopher, poet, playwright, satirist, and, surprisingly, advisor to the Roman emperor Nero. To Seneca’s credit, he was more influential with Nero in the first five years of emperor’s reign; eventually, accused of involvement in a conspiracy to assassinate Nero, Seneca did what many well-known and suddenly-out-of-favor Romans did and committed suicide. I once thought this was a rather extreme practice, but suicide meant the individual’s estate would remain with the heirs and not be confiscated by the state. And the times were such, and the emperors were such, that most of the best people ended up doing that.

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

"Letters to Doctors" by C. Earle Carpenter

Jan. 26, 1973, 8:30 p.m., basement lecture room, Lockett Hall, LSU: I’m talking with C. Earle Carpenter, campus director for Campus Crusade for Christ. We’re talking about a recent visit to campus by Christian speaker Josh McDowell. By the time we finish, I’ve prayed to become a Christian. Nothing will ever be the same again. 

I am one of likely thousands of stories that Carpenter could tell. From LSU, he and his wife Judy went on to Dallas Seminary where he became an official “reverend,”, and then returned to their native Birmingham to care for elderly parents. In Birmingham, a group of dentists and physicians, along with Carpenter, started the Christian Medical Ministry of Alabama. And Carpenter became the CMMA’s first director, touching thousands of more lives, directly and indirectly, all over the United States and the world.

 

Judy and Earle Carpenter

For 37 years, Carpenter served the CMMA. Part of his work was writing a devotion for the monthly CMMA newsletter. Some 119 of those devotions have been gathered together to form Letters to Doctors. While the primary audience may be those in the medical community, they’re applicable to anyone, in any walk of life, because Carpenter never limited himself to only one profession or one specific audience. There was a world of lost souls to save, and “Earle and Judy” (it’s difficult for me to think of one without the other) were ready to talk with, visit, counsel, and pray with whomever might be brought into their path.

 

The devotions, which are each about a page to a page-and-a-half long, are organized into four divisions: Walk, Warfare, Word, and Worship. They generally cite a particular verse of the Bible, and then take the reader into what the verse might mean and how it applies to daily life. Many include short anecdotes from Carpenter’s own life and experience. 

 

Carpenter’s voice is consistent and unmistakable. It’s more than 50 years since that night in Baton Rouge, but when I read these devotions, I hear the same voice I heard that night. The same voice, the same heart, the same faith.

 

While each devotion might tell you something about Carpenter, that isn’t the point. In fact, it was never the point. He wants you to know his Lord. That’s the point. It’s not about Earle Carpenter. It’s about his Lord. It’s always been about his Lord. 

 

To read Letters to Doctors is, for me, to experience a personal blessing. If you’ve never met Carpenter, read it to experience a spiritual blessing. This man cares about your soul.