Signs and wonders

After Acts 5:12-16

What is rare becomes

commonplace, 

signs and wonders

done among the people,

the people joined

together in one place.

It is a spectacle,

inspiring amazement

and fear and awe;

reverence and reticence;

multitudes join and

multitudes hold back, 

casting nervous eyes

at the rulers and elites

watching for a whiff

of disloyalty and

insurrection.

But multitudes come,

adding to the rising

of belief, the word

of signs and wonders

spreading outward.

People hear and people

carry the sick and ill

and diseased and lay 

them on beds and mats,

hoping that even

the shadow of the healers

would fall on them,

touch them, heal them.

And they are healed,

multiplying the evidence

of signs and wonders.

Photograph by Sorasak via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads

Attention, Walmart shoppers! That product you buy that was made in China might have a note in it from the person who made it. Like the one Amelia Pang’s daughter found in a purchase from a store. And Amelia was suddenly confronted with the reality of slave labor in the Chinese gulag. It’s real, and she’s written a book about it. 

The state of San Francisco’s public schools is not unlike the state of large public-school systems everywhere. There’s a behemoth struggle underway over reopening schools, closed because of the virus. The mayor of San Francisco is facing mounting political pressure; the district’s school board seems largely unruffled, content to undertake a renaming of 44 schools for various reasons. Isaac Chotiner at The New Yorker explains how the renaming happened. Jonathan White at Smithsonian Magazine comes to Abraham Lincoln’s defense (Lincoln is being canceled, too). Ezra Klein at The New York Times takes the broader view; he says that what is happening in California is proving to the nation that progressive policies are out of touch with reality.

 

This week, I’m introduced a new category for Saturday Good Reads, called the Saturday Bad Read. It’s an article or post that’s so bad that to read it is to learn something important. The debut link is a column by Virginia Heffernan at The Los Angeles Times, who describes her existential dilemma when her Trump-supporting neighbor committed the unspeakable act of plowing her driveway after a snowfall. Neither the writer nor her editor seemed to realize that there is such a thing (at least outside of big cities) called neighborliness and kindness, and that plowing a neighbor’s driveway is not a political act. I hope this will only be a sporadic feature, but this is America in 2021.

 

Saturday Bad Read

 

What can you do about the Trumpites next door? – Virginia Heffernan at Los Angeles Times.

 

Life and Culture

 

‘More Weight’: An Academic’s Guide to Surviving Campus Witch Hunts – Dorian Abbot at Quillette.

 

The Front Porch and the American Dream – Paul Krause at Front Porch Republic.

 

 A Place Called Home – Kevin Ford at Story Warren.

 

American Stuff

 

The State of the Union – Mark Malvasi at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Faith

 

How letters mingle souls – Christine Farenhorst at Reformed Perspective.

 

When You Have Nothing Left to Give – Jen Avellaneda at Rich Faith Rising.

 

Poetry

 

The First Five Sonnets from ‘The Gift of Life’ – Amanda Hall at Society of Classical Poets.

 

A Gascon Day – Stella Wulf at The High Window (H/T: Paul Brookes).

 

Outside – Seth Lewis.

 

Writing and Literature

 

The Greatest Literary Alliance of All Time: You, the Author, and the Character – Lisa Zeidner at Literary Hub.

 

Christ Figures in The Lord of the Rings – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Stepping Stones – James Zug at New Criterion.

 

Annotate This: On Footnotes – Ed Simon at The Millions.

 

Solzhenitsyn & the engine of history – Robert Kaplan at New Criterion.

 

British Stuff

 

5 Sites That Tell the Story of Early Anglo-Saxon England – Historic England. 

 

Bronze Age Graves Uncovered at Stonehenge During Tunnel Excavations – Ashley Cowie at Ancient Origins. 

 

Someone You Loved – The Piano Guys

Painting: Man Reading, oil on canvas by Mavis Blackburn (1923-2005).

Great fear

After Acts 5:1-11

A man dies for his deception,

a woman dies for aiding and

abetting deception. Not just

eventually but right at 

deception’s revealed moment.

The people, the witnesses,

see the deception, 

see the penalty immediate,

and are seized with a fear,

a great fear, and those

not there, but only hear

the story later, are seized

with a fear,

a great fear,

a trembling of the heart,

a trembling of the soul.

This God, our God,

is the God who knows

all things, even

the dark places

of the human heart.

Photograph by Olesya Yemets via Unsplash. Used with permission.

"Frozen" by Ann Cleeves

I’ve read all of the Shetland mystery novels by Ann Cleeves, which feature police detective Jimmy Perez and are the basis for the popular Shetland television series starring Doug Henshall. And we’re working our way through the Veratelevision series, starring Brenda Blethyn as Vera Stanhope, the police detective based in Yorkshire. It’s based on the Vera Stanhope mystery novels by Cleeves. 

But I haven’t read the Vera books. I’m starting with a freestanding short story, Frozen.

 

In the story, Vera stops by a bookshop in the small town of Corbridge, which is not far from the home where she lives on the rather desolate moors. She’s interested in find a book about the 

Roman soldiers and women who lived along Hadrian’s Wall. The bookstore building is a former chapel, only recently converted to a retail book shop.

 

Instead of a book on Hadrian’s Wall, the shop owner is opening up the old baptismal chamber in the floor before the altar area. And in the chamber is a fully clothed skeleton. Vera recognizes the clothes and a leather band around the wrist. And she knows the skeleton belongs to a 14-year-old girl who went missing years before. But what is she doing in the baptismal chamber of the chapel?

 

The story includes Vera’s familiar colleagues like Holly and Joe, but it’s too short to go beyond a brief appearance for Joe and a slightly less brief appearance for Holly. The focus is Vera pursing the case, with all of the attributes both the television Vera and the print Vera are known for – abruptness, borderline rudeness, a diet that leaves a great deal to be desired, a wardrobe consisting of mostly a scarf and raincoat, and a razor-sharp mind that keeps plugging away until she gets it right.

 

Frozen is a good introduction to Ann Cleeves’ detective, and it looks like I’ll have a new series to read.

 

Related:

 

My review of Wild Fire by Ann Cleeves.

 

My review of Cold Earth by Ann Cleeves.

 

My review of Red Bones by Ann Cleeves.

 

My review of Raven Black by Ann Cleeves.

 

My review of White Nights by Ann Cleeves.

 

My review of Blue Lightning by Ann Cleeves. 

 

My review of Dead Water by Ann Cleeves.

 

My review of Thin Air by Ann Cleeves.

 

My review of The Long Call by Ann Cleeves.

 

Top photograph: Brenda Blethyn as Vera in the television series.

“Joey Flynn’s Extraordinary Tale” by Meghan White

J

oey Flynn has moved with his family from California to Oregon. His dad has a new job, and the family’s new house is in a remote area, not far from Multnomah Falls. Joey’s rather miserable; he’s left behind everything that’s familiar, including friends and school. 

One good thing about the new home is the nearby forest, perfect for an 11-year-old boy to explore. What he doesn’t expect to find is Zibbis, a roughly three-foot tall, well, something, like a racoon who walks around on two legs. Zibbis hands joy a silver calling card that reads “Special Agent Zibbis, Department of Children’s Needs and Emergencies.”

 

The strange creature doesn’t explain where he’s from, but Joey discovers his new friend is extremely resourceful (with a kangaroo-like pouch full of bubble gum soda and purple stones ideal for skimming across water, among other things). What Zibbis doesn’t say, or at least say immediately, is what his mission is. And the mission has a lot to do with Joey.

 

Meghan White

Joey Flynn’s Extraordinary Tale by Meghan White is the story of what happens to Joey and his new friend Zibbis during that first summer in Oregon. Joey is going to learn about trust, faith, and putting others before himself.

 

The short novel is White’s first published work. She says it began when her family lived in Oregon and her husband got an idea for an illustrated book, based on a character he’d drawn. She resisted the idea for years, until the family moved to Texas, where she finally wrote the story.

 

Joey Flynn’s Extraordinary Tale is reminiscent of the Glade series of novels by Martha Orlando. A mythical-like character appears to guide a troubled boy to an understanding of faith and self. We need more stories about children like Joey Flynn; Our children do, too.

Poets and Poems: Damien Donnelly and “Eat the Storms”

In his new chapbook Eat the Storms, poet Damien Donnelly has staked a solid claim to being the poet of color. Each of the 20 poems is shaped by a color or shades of a color – yellow, scarlet, purple, black, ruby, red, cerulean, blue, gray, brown, gold, and green. 

I’ve long associated color with emotions and feelings (feeling blue, red with embarrassment, green with envy), but the poems go well beyond only the emotional. They prompted me to take a look at the idea of color, and what color can mean beyond the emotional. I discovered there’s an entire psychology of color, one that adds considerable layers of nuance and understanding to what Donnelly conveys in his poetry.

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

“The Cultural Revolution” and “Mao Zedong”

There’s considerable renewed interest in the Chinese Cultural Revolution that began in 1966 and didn’t officially end until the death of Mao Zedong in 1975. For those of us alive at the time, the reports were initially sparse; China was a closed society, and the U.S. and China did not have formal diplomatic ties until 1972.  

What we heard at the time sounded like thousands, perhaps millions, of young people had turned universities upside down, denounced professors and other members of the Chinese elite, and upended society almost to the point of breakdown. The death toll may have been in the millions; no one knows for sure, because no one kept records (and it was probably dangerous even to consider keeping records). The death toll has been estimated anywhere between hundreds of thousands to 20 million.

 

What would be apparent only much later was the extent Mao Zedong himself was involved in it. Much attention and speculation focused on the so-called “Gang of Four,” close confidants of Mao, including his fourth wife. But when people in China said anything about the group, they always held up five fingers.

The Cultural Revolution and Mao Zedong are concise studies published and paired together by Captivating History. And what they make clear is Mao’s central role in starting the revolution, how he did, and, most intriguingly, why he did. The impetus for turning young people loose on their elites (and often their own parents) had much to do with Mao’s concern about his legacy, preserving Chinese communism, and retaining his own position of power.

 

His grip on the country had been slipping since the disastrous failures of his Five-Year Plan and the Great Leap Forward. Mao was also well aware of what happened in Russia to the legacy of Joseph Stalin, dismantled and upended after the dictator’s death. And he was well aware of the propensity of the political class to turn the country into some form of state-controlled capitalistic society. The Cultural Revolution was aimed at the very people most likely to challenge Mao’s grip on the country, and millions of people paid the price for the power struggle.

 

The Cultural Revolution provides the historical background to the event, the roles of key figures involved, Mao’s motivations, the context of a deteriorating relationship with the Soviet Union, the mass killings and devastation that occurred (especially in north China), how it finally ended, and what were the long-term effects.

 

Mao Zedong explains the dictator’s early life (he did not come from the peasant or working class), how he came to embrace communism, the off-and-on battles with the Kuomintang of the Nationalist Party, the mythic Long March, the battles with Japan, the victory of the communists in 1949, and then the major events of Mao’s later life, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. 

 

What is clear is that there would have been no cultural revolution without Mao Zedong.

 

Captivating History, a kind of everyman’s history series, has published about 40 of these kinds of concise history books. In addition to these two on Chinese history, other publications have tackled a wide array of people and subjects, including Harriett Tubman, War of the Roses, Aaron Burr, Aztec history, ancient Israel, Egyptian mythology, and many others. The books provide a general overview for the general reader.

 

An interesting question is why there has been a renewed interest in the Cultural Revolution, especially in the United States and Western Europe. While so-called “cancel culture” exhibits only rudimentary similarities to what happened in China, concerns about American culture and society have been rising. The verbal attacks and campaigns against university professors, the often wholesale assaults on American history, schools being renamed, statues removed (and not only those of Confederates), and the often ruthless attacks on people on social media platforms all point to some kind of American “cultural revolution” being underway.