Living to the law

After Romans 7:1-6

Living to the law

is abiding in death,

for the way of the law

is the way of death,

the path to oblivion.

The law brings knowledge,

like the bite of the apple, and

it brings passions, and

passions take control and

command us to death.

Released from the law,

our chains broken and

cast aside, we walk in

a new way, the new way

of that Holy Wind.

Who knew?

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads

If there is one endlessly repeated mantra about COVID-19, it’s “Follow the science.” Initially, the virus was downplayed – by the World Health Organization, by the Centers for Disease Control, and others. Dr. Anthony Fauci told us January and February that it was no big deal and wouldn’t have a big impact in the U.S. Things got more serious, more was learned, things started blowing apart in Europe, and it hit home. It was like the plague, but it wasn’t. You couldn’t compare it to the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-1919, unless you needed to. 

And then came the Black Lives Matter protests, and suddenly all the advice, all the restrictions, and all the warnings went right out the window, replaced by a deafening silence or, in some cases, tacit approval to protest. Joel Zinburg at CityJournal looks at some of these developments, and asks, “Follow the Science – Where?” His answer: we might have been told to follow the science, but we were really being told to follow the policymakers and the politics.

The Society for Classical Poets is a relatively new group that promotes traditional poetry, and especially poetry that has rhyme and meter. It held an online symposium recently and collected some of the readings in one spot. You can watch and listen here. 

A writer not terribly familiar in America is Michel Houllebecq, a novelist who’s a household name in France. He’s written a series of provocative novels, daring to take on what literary elites generally avoid. In all of his works, one theme is that without a solid grounding in religion, Western civilization is doomed. And yet his books are widely read, by both the French public and the literary crowd. Nicholas Merevel at Front Porch Republic takes a good, hard look at Houllebecq and his novels to see what all of this means. 

More Good Reads

Culture

How a 1990s book predicted 2020 – Ed West at UnHerd. 

The Chimera of Cancel Culture – Clint Archer at The Cripplegate.

The Unprecedented Bravery of Olivia de Havilland – Todd Purdum at The Atlantic.

Free Speech Under Siege – Michael Mandelbaum at American Interest.

China is what Orwell feared – Ross Anderson at The Atlantic.

Poetry

The Violin Soldier – Paul Gallagher at The Chained Muse.

The Air in Tasmania – David Mason at Literary Matters.

“Thermidor: An Ode to Reaction” – Adam Sedia at The Imaginative Conservative.

When searching for your truth (5 poems) – Kerry O’Connor at Skylover. 

Faith

Don't just learn from church history - look to the global church too – Tales of Being All There.

Gratitude as a Virtue – Jessica Hooten Wilson at Church Life Journal.

Writing and Literature

The Restless Bones of Dante Alighieri – Kelly Scott Franklin at Law & Liberty.

Is This the End of Writing in Cafes? – Emily Temple at Literary Hub.

In Search of Shakespeare’s Mind – Daniel Blank at Los Angeles Review of Books. Related: In Search of Shakespeare’s London at Spitalfields Life.

The Power of flawed Lists: How The Bookman invented in the bestseller – Elizabeth Della Zazzera at Lapham’s Quarterly.

American Stuff

American Disaster: In the Path of a Dirty Storm – Matthew Van Meter at Literary Hub.

1619: The Beginning of Self-Government in Virginia – Gary Porter at The Imaginative Conservative.

The Buildings That Made India

Painting: A Man Reading a Paper, oil on canvas by Adriaen Van Ostade (1610-1685).

The law of death

After Romans 7:1-6

We chafe at is restrictions,

its do’s and don’ts, this thing

we call the law. We are 

free of the law only when

we die, breaking free from

the chains of rules and

statutes and amendments

and codes.

And so

when we die to death,

when a new birth lifts us

above the law, the way

of death, no longer are we

creatures of the law but

creatures of love,

belonging to each other,

belonging to the one

who died and

lives again.

Photograph by Kai Stachowiak via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

“The Marriage Murder” by Roy Lewis

Newcastle-on-Tyne Attorney Eric Ward has gotten himself into a serious fix. The former-policeman-turned-attorney has just had an argument with his wife Ann, right before she leaves for a three-week business trip to Singapore. Accompanying her is her own corporate attorney, a man nearer her age and one Eric has little use for. 

And now he has to attend an evening business reception, one of those boring affairs he hates. Finally getting away, he’s leaving the parking lot when an attractive woman who’d made something of a scene at the gathering flags him down; her car won’t start. and she needs a ride home. She also needs legal advice about something she says she’s gotten too deep into. Eric succumbs to her charms and finds himself in bed. 

She’s asleep when he leaves, and then he realizes he can’t find his car keys. Returning to her flat, he finds the woman dead in the living room, her neck broken. He eventually realizes that it will be only a matter of time before the police find her car, learn she was at the reception, and start interviewing attendees as possible suspects. He’s right; the police are also asking for DNA samples. 

Roy Lewis

One of Eric’s ne’er-do-well clients gets himself in a fix, owing a gambling debt and being framed for a burglary. And then the man is found at the scene of a murder with the interesting twist of the body being missing. Slowly, and with the help of his regular informant, Eric comes to see that the crimes are connected, leading in the direction of another client and the chairman of the board Eric serves on. 

It’s messy, it’s complex, and it’s a ripping good read. First published in Britain in 2000 under the title A Form of Death, The Marriage Murder by Roy Lewis is the tenth in the Eric Ward series. 

Lewis is the author of some 60 other mysteries, novels, and short story collections. His Inspector Crow series includes A Lover Too Many, Murder in the Mine, The Woods Murder, Error of Judgment, and Murder for Money, among others. The Eric Ward series, of which The Sedleigh Hall Murder is the first (and originally published as A Certain Blindness in 1981), includes 17 novels. The Arnold Landon series is comprised of 22 novels. Lewis lives in northern England.

It appears that Eric Ward may lose everything – his good name, his marriage, and possibly even his freedom. And that’s the mesmerizing tension point in The Marriage Murder.

Related:

The Sedleigh Hall Murder by Roy Lewis.

The Farming Murder by Roy Lewis.

The Quayside Murder by Roy Lewis.

The Diamond Murder by Roy Lewis.

The Geordie Murder by Roy Lewis.

The Shipping Murder by Roy Lewis.

The City of London Murder by Roy Lewis.

The Apartment Murder by Roy Lewis.

The Spanish Villa Murder by Roy Lewis.

A Cotswolds Murder by Roy Lewis.

Bill Grandi Reviews "Dancing Prince"

Pastor Bill Grandi has published a review of Dancing Prince at his blog, Cycleguy's Spin. 

"What I want to say deals more with my personal emotions," he writes. "I found myself twisting and turning with each turn of the plot. Unexpected twists. Unprepared-for turns. I simply had trouble putting the book down. If it hadn’t been for Glynn I might have gotten more stuff done at home. I might have decided to cut the grass instead of saying, “It’s too hot to do much of anything.” And doggone it if he didn’t make it hard to put the book down and go to bed!"

You can read the entire review at Cycleguy's Spin. 

How to Revive a Dying Church

The so-called “mainline” Protestant denominations – the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, the Methodist Church, and a few others – reached a high-water mark in membership in the mid-1960s. The Episcopal Church, for example, stood at 3.6 million members in 1966; today, the membership is 1.8 million. The decline of the traditionally major denominations is even starker in countries like Britain and Canada. 

Yet, individual church success stories persist. Not all individual churches have declined. Caswell Cooke, a lifelong member of the Episcopal Church (and seven-term city councilman) in Westerly, Rhode Island, took a look at the decline and asked some questions. Why have some Episcopal churches continued to grow and flourish, and others have dwindled? And what, if anything, can be done about it?

The Death and Resurrection of the Episcopal Church: How to Serve a Church in Decline is the result of that look. Cooke is an informed layman in the church. He served in the choir of his church during childhood. He’s a junior warden and acolyte warden in the parish. He’s a delegate to the Diocesan Convention. He leads the church’s communication committee. Cooke has also been a television and radio show host and a documentary producer and director.

He’s also passionate about the Episcopal Church. And he’s willing to face facts and urges clergy, vestry, and the faithful core of parishioners to do the same. Ignoring the national decline in membership, he suggests, will only guarantee more decline.

Caswell Cooke

He begins with basic tactics, like signage that doesn’t mystify, an internet presence that is current and inviting, and using communication technologies to their best effect. Capitalize on a great location. Even update those visitor cards on the backs of pews. 

He moves on to the national church’s policies and says it’s time to tell the church’s story instead of focusing almost exclusively on whatever the latest social justice cause is at the moment (he cites a few). He also asks what the ongoing revision of the prayer book has achieved, other than no growth and membership decline. And, he says, what if the church focused its energies and resources on proclaiming the gospel?

Cooke packs even more suggestions in this barely-100-page book. It’s not difficult to see the enthusiasm and the love he has for his church and denomination, and that enthusiasm and love frame both his criticisms and his proposals for a path forward.

My own church is a member of a conservative Presbyterian denomination. We’re celebrating our 175^th year of existence, and the church has weathered the Civil War, plagues and pandemics, world wars, social upheaval, and economic depressions to continue to grow. It does exactly the things Cooke describes in The Death and Resurrection of the Episcopal Church, with the primary focus being the proclamation of the gospel. What he urges on his fellow Episcopalians really works.

Dancing Priest: What You Learn at a Group Book Discussion

In February, a woman at church asked me if I would be interested in talking with her book discussion club about Dancing Priest. She had read it, and the three published after it, and said she had recommended it to the club. The question became, how fast could I say yes?

Then came coronavirus, and everything went into hibernation. But Dancing Priest hadn’t been forgotten, and once our county emerged from lockdown (or sort of emerged), the discussion was back on. Last week, I sat for two hours with the club’s members, about eight or nine people in all, and talked about Dancing Priest, its successor novels in the series, and the new and final novel in the series, Dancing Prince. 

Virus note: Yes, we wore masks and sat in a socially-distanced-approved manner.

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

Photograph by You X Ventures via Unsplash. Used with permission.