The sounds of chains

After Romans 8:12-23

The chains leave stains

of dirt and rust upon the wrists

and ankles, and a soreness

of the weight carried, a weight

so heavy that it seems to have been

always there, a physical defect,

with its pain, discomfort, a binding

that chafes, has chafed.

In the distance we hear

the sounds of chains breaking,

cracking, the metal fracturing

open, until it reaches these wrists,

these ankles, and splits, dropping

aside. The stains of rust and dirt

remain until washed by the rain,

cooled by the wind rustling the trees,

the groaning displaced by a song.

Photograph by Joshua Hoehne via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads

Another week, another mass killing. And another. The reaction from the news media is predictable. In fact, the reactions from everyone are predictable. Blame guns. Blame Trump. Blame social media. Blame video games. Blame marijuana. The real causes, however, are deeper, and until we come to grips with that, nothing else is going to help much. Thane Bellamo at The Federalist points to what these deeper causes are. We may not like the truth, but it’s staring us in the face. 

I took Latin in high school, and it taught me a lot about language and English. Even way back then, it was considered a dying language – in a high school of 2,100 students, we had 10 in Latin I and five in Latin II. So, you might think Latin really couldn’t engender any controversy. And you would be wrong. Ian Mosely at Mere Orthodoxy writes about Latin for Politics: When the World of Spoken Latin Goes Woke.

Amy Medina remembers the summer she turned 16, and her father told her she was getting a job. We all know how much 16-year-olds love what their parents tell them to do. But she did it, and she learned something vitally important. See “You Were Right, Dad.”

Poetry

On the Anniversary of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Birth – Daniel Leach at The Imaginative Conservative. 

Westminster Abbey – Catherine Morgan at Catherine’s Letters.

The Birthday Boy – David Mason at The Hudson Review.

Faith

God Created Family to Picture His Truth – Tim Challies.

Picking Up the Pieces – Sarah Houser at Coffee + Crumbs.

Culture

The Problem with Individualizing Truth – Zak Schmoll at Entering the Public Square.

Republican, Catholic – and a Union Man – Rod Dreher at American Conservative.

NASA, Woodstock and The Search for Identity – Stephen McAlpine.

American Stuff

Yellow Fever and Reconciliation – Sean Michael Chick at Emerging Civil War. 

The 400^thAnniversary (of slavery) – Thomas Kidd at The Gospel Coalition.

Writing and Literature

Middle-Earth: A World with Purpose – Zak Schmoll at Rebuilding Hollin.

Curiosity's Lure from Dante to Moby Dick – Brendan Case at Church Life Journal.

Why Write Medieval Mysteries? – Priscilla Royal at English Historical Fiction Authors.

The Best One-Star Reviews of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment – Dwyer Murphy at CrimeReads.

The Beating Heart of Jerusalem

Painting: Portrait of a Young Man Reading, watercolor by Henry Scott Tuke (1858-1929).

Hawthorne and Suspense

The end is near. Or getting nearer. And the suspense is mounting.

Events in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter are accelerating. It’s been seven years since Hester Prynne sewed the scarlet A on her dress, seven years since Roger Chillingworth began his disguised torment of the Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale, and almost seven years since the birth of Arthur and Hester’s elf-like child Pearl.

The community has reached the point of almost-acceptance of Hester, and she’s just pulled the A from her dress and tossed it in the forest. Dimmesdale encounters Hester in the forest and decides to throw over everything and flee with her and Pearl to Europe; there’s even a ship anchored in the harbor that could take them. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Adopted child

After Romans 8:12-23

Abandoned, and left

alone, the crowd moving

on, the child looks and

stares, concern mounting

to desperation, mounting

to fear, until a hand

reaches out, touches

the child’s forehead,

the touch imparting

a spirit of place, of time,

a spirit transferring

ownership of belonging.

The child reaches 

to the hand 

of its new father.

Photograph by Joel Overbeck via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Murder at the Old Abbey” by Pippa McCathie

Fabia Havard is a former police superintendent now working as a full-time artist in southern Wales. Her former subordinate, Matt Lambert, still works for the police; he was instrumental in clearing Fabia’s name in a police corruption case. He’s seven years younger than she is, and the two are slowly (and rather irritably) falling in love.

Fabia lives near White Monk Abbey, the ancestral family home of the Mansell family. Octogenarian Caradoc Mansell dominates the family, always threatening to change his will. The estate is entailed, meaning it will go to the first-born son when Caradoc dies. But then there’s the contents of the house – paintings, antiques, silver, a stamp collection, and thoroughbred horses. A few small items have gone missing; the chief suspect is the brother of Caradoc’s daughter-in-law. 

A new family member arrives from the island of Mauritius via London. The young woman turns out to be Caradoc’s granddaughter, whose grandmother had been in love with Caradoc when he was stationed there with the Royal Army. The old man decides to change his will and signs the new will right before he’s found dead. It appears to be heart failure; it turns out to be murder. Fabia knows the family, and she begins to help Lambert with his investigation.

Pippa McCathie

Murder at the Old Abbey by Pippa McCathie is the second novel in the Lambert and Havard detective series. The first, Murder in the Valleys, was published in 2018. The mysteries are officially classified as “cozy,” a la Agatha Christie, but thery’re also solidly in the detective mystery class. 

McCathie was brought up in Mauritius, so she knows of what she writes. She’s published poetry and short stories, and two of her children were born in Wales. She currently lives on the island of Guernsey.

Murder at the Old Abbey is as much a romance as it is a mystery, and McCathie’s two detectives are as engaging with each other as they are with the crime. It’s a fun story, with criminal low-lifes, an old spooky mansion, an unexpected will, and nicely drawn suspects.

"Adam" by Chris Keniston

I bought this novel thinking it was a Christian romance. By the second sentence of the first chapter, I had figured out that it was indeed a romance novel, but not likely Christian. I continued reading and discovered a mostly clean good story.

Veterinarian Adam Farraday has had a long night with an ailing horse. He’s on his way home in the dark of the morning when he sees a fancy red sports car on the side of the West Texas road, with a flat tire and some additional damage. And the person getting out from the car is wearing a white wedding gown.

Margaret Colleen O’Brien, known as Meg, is spitting nails. She discovered her imminent husband-to-be is a fraud and a crook, fled her wedding right before the ceremony, drove like mad out of Dallas and ended up with a flat tire on a back-country road. Her credit card was maxed out by the fiancée, she’s tossed her cell phone out of the window of the card, and she has exactly one pair of jeans and a blouse in a bag. She needs to lie low for a while, and what better place than this small town in West Texas, whatever its name is.

Meg gets a job as a waitress in the town’s one café, Adam discovers he is strongly attracted to this redheaded stranger, and the town wonders what her back story might be. Meg discovers she’s falling for Adam, one of the six Farraday brothers, but she wants nothing to do with men after what almost had happened to her with that crook.

Chris Keniston

One of the Farraday brothers is the town sheriff. He gets a visit from the FBI. They’re looking for Meg.

Adam by novelist Chris Keniston is the first in the multi-volume Farraday Country romance series. It’s a rather fun story, with vivid secondary characters (Adam’s Aunt Eileen is a classic), an interesting plot line, and, as noted before, mostly (but not entirely) clean romantic scenes.

Keniston is the author of numerous romance novels and stories. She has nine books in the Hart Land series; eleven in the Farraday Country series; nine in the Aloha Closed Door Series; six in the Surf’s Up series (episodes); nine in the original Aloha Series; six in the Family Secrets series; two in the Honeymoon Series; and one in the Main Street Romance Flirts Series. She and her family live in suburban Dallas.

The ending of Adam can be guessed; this is a romance novel, after all. But Keniston keeps some mystery until the end – what will the FBI do? What happens to Meg’s almost-husband? Will she return to Dallas? Or will she throw everything over for the handsome veterinarian? 

Editing as Writing, and Writing as Editing

A friend and fellow writer asked me if I edited my writing as I wrote or after I finished a draft. My answer was yes. I do both. I edit as I write, over and over again, and I edit once the draft is “finished,” if that’s possible. 

The question provoked a deeper thought. Is it possible for me to separate editing and writing?

The answer is no, and I suspect computers have something to do with it.

I was trained in journalism. At the time, classroom technology consisted of Royal manual typewriters. Electric machines were available, but my journalism school couldn’t afford them. I taught myself typing on a portable electric typewriter, but in-class assignments and tests were done on the manual Royals. I can still remember the sound of 20 journalism students pounding on typewriter keys. 

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

Photograph by Stanley Dai via Unsplash. Used with permission.