"Reading the Times" by Jeffrey Bilbro

I was trained to be a journalist; my undergraduate degree is in journalism. I was a reporter, news editor, and managing editor for my college newspaper. My first job out of college was with a daily newspaper in Texas. Even after I went into corporate communications, a significant part of many of the jobs I had was working with reporters. 

The journalism I read today in the newspaper or see on television news seems completely different from the journalism I was trained in. I can read almost any story, and I hear the voice of my toughest and best college journalism instructor handing back an assignment with an automatic F on it: “You write the news. Save your opinion for the editorial page.” 

 

For Christians, and even for the culture at large, the news has become increasingly problematic. It’s not so much the “news” of a news story as it is the 24-hour saturation of what is called news, the almost grotesque one-sidedness of how stories are written and produced, and how every story seems to become a flashpoint of political division. Everything you read in the newspaper seems filtered through a political lens. It has become far too easy to define life in terms of whether you love or hate Donald Trump. 

 

We may cancel our newspaper subscriptions and turn off television news and television talking heads, but the reality is that news is still important, not matter how badly or biasedly it’s reported. The challenge, and especially for Christians, is how to understand and respond to what’s presented to us as news. 

 

Jeffrey Bilbro

Jeffrey Bilbro, editor-in-chief of Front Porch Republic, has an approach specifically aimed at Christians that might help us navigate the culture and the news that informs, shapes, and saturates it. In Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News, he considers insights from sources as diverse as Blaise Pascal, Wendell Berry, Henry David Thoreau, Thomas Merton, and Marc Chagall, among others, to show there is a better way than merely to embrace CNN/MSMBS/NBC/ABC/New York Times/Washington Post or Fox because one fits our particular view of the world.

 

Our view of the world should be something decidedly different. Key to this difference in how we understand and assimilate the news is the two concepts of time, both from Greek words. 

 

The first is kairos time, referring to “the propitious time, time that is right for a certain act—the time to plant or harvest a crop, for instance. Kairos time is rhythmic, cyclical, seasonal,” Bilbro writes. The second is chronos time, from which we get the word “chronological.” It’s the time we understand the best, because we live it, day by day. It’s time that’s linear and sequential, he says, and it is the time in which news is rooted. When the culture and daily life is engulfed by and obsessed with the chronological, it is the understanding and importance of kairos time that retreats and subsides.

 

Christians live with both concepts of time. Kairos time speaks to the eternal; chronos time speaks to the temporal. We know this; we know we live in this world but that we are not of this world. We often feel caught between the two – and we are. Our challenge is to understand which is more important, and which to store up our treasures within. And it creates tension, within ourselves, our families, and our churches. (A related concept is the one known as “the already-not yet”.)

 

Bilbro shows what confusing the two senses of time can lead to – the worship of the temporal, or secular, at the expense of the eternal, or sacred. Knowingly or not, we all do this. We worry that the moral underpinnings of the culture and society are collapsing, or that change to some imagined state of temporal perfection simply isn’t happening fast enough. And the news, with its social media handmaiden, is accelerating that division. It’s also resulting in the ongoing destruction of the idea of local community.

 

In addition to his work with Front Porch Republic, Bilbro is the author of Loving God’s Wildness: The Christian Roots of Ecological Ethics and Virtues of Renewal: Wendell Berry’s Sustainable Forms, and co-author of Wendell Berry and Higher Education: Cultivating Virtues of Place. 

 

Reading the Times is a thoughtful work and a vital work. It should appeal to the culture at large, but it is especially significant for Christians. We are supposed to be the lights in the darkness. Instead, we can get as caught up as everyone else in turning the lights out. 

Old walk, new walk

After Ephesians 4:17-32

Old walk: futility of mind.

New walk: purpose, clarity.

 

Old walk: darkened understanding.

New walk: light in a dark place.

 

Old walk: alienated ignorance.

New walk: engaged relationship.

 

Old walk: callousness of heart.

New walk: compassionate education.

 

Old walk: sensuality and greed.

New walk: purity and charity.

 

Photograph by George Bakos via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads - July 17, 2020

Barry Meier, a reporter for The New York Times, has written a book entitled Spooked, in which he describes the mischief (and the wreckage) when the news media get caught up in the world of private spies – like they did with the Steele dossier. T.A. Frank at New York Magazine interviews Meier: “The Steele Dossier was a case study in how reporters get manipulated.” 

Way back in the Dark Ages, aka the 1970s and 1980s, I was a fan of the mystery novels of Dick Francis. His books invariable were set in hors- racing venues with horse-racing plots – and I was no fan of horse racing. But I was a fan of his books. John Fram at CrimeReads “discovered” the Francis mysteries, and he describes how they became the answer to a personal crisis and a mysterious illness.

 

Father Jonathan Tobias at Second Terrace loves the novel Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry, and he thinks you should read it, too (for the record, I agree with him).

 

More Good Reads

 

Poetry

 

Hiding – Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Sonnet to William Wilberforce, Esq. – William Cowper at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

The Falcon’s Eyes – Joe Spring at Hoe Spring Writes.

 

A Girl in Her Own Words – Eustache Deschamps (1346-1406), translated by Margaret Coats at Society of Classical Poets. 

 

Faith

 

Standing with the Little Guys – Barry York at Gentle Reformation. 

 

Let’s Examine Our Motivations for Work – Hugh Whelchel at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

 

There’s Too Much Christian Content – Samuel D. James at Insights.

 

American Stuff

 

Don’t Take My Photograph! Incidents at the Dedication of the 44th New York Monument at Gettysburg – Sarah Kay Bierle at Emerging Civil War.

 

Making Missouri: Carving Out a State – Christopher Alan Gordon at Missouri History Museum.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Take a virtual tour of Walden Pond – Walker Caplan at Literary Hub.

 

Art Nourishes Community and Community Nourishes Art – Kyra Hinton at The Rabbit Room.

 

Writing as a Spiritual Discipline – Daniel Eaton at The Fight of Faith.

 

Life and Culture

 

China: Empire: What is China to us, anyway? – N.S. Lyons at The Upheaval.

 

The Inevitable Capitulation of Conservatism – Samuel D. James at Insights.

 

Travel

 

Intermission: The Green Martyrdom – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

 

Those Were the Days – Mary Hopkin

Painting: Portrait of a Man Reading, oil on canvas by Jacek Malczewski (1854-1929).

The path to oneness

After Ephesians 4:1-16

It begins with speech,

or speaking, not merely

uttering words but

speaking truth in love,

which assumes careful

consideration of the thoughts

expressed and words spoken.

Speaking truth in love leads

to growth, growth in every way,

growth into the head, for it is

the head that makes the body

grow, the whole body, joined

and held together, each and 

every part it comes with,

and each part working

as it should, in harmony,

together as one.

 

Photograph by Lukas Vanatko via Unsplash. Used with permission.

"Iron Island" by Gareth Griffith

Eleri Gwir, a Briton chieftain’s daughter, is sitting in a monastery, writing her history. She’s an old woman now, but she’s remembering her life when she was much younger, beginning when she returned from voluntary exile after the death of her father, her great love, and her people in a battle against Saxon invaders. She’s returning to the kingdom called Dyfneint, what today is called Devon. It’s 578 A.D., a year after the devastating Battle of Dyrham. 

Eleri is not only a chieftain’s daughter; she’s also a healer, someone in great demand in a perilous time of almost ongoing warfare. She knows the current king, Kadwy, and many of his officers and warriors. Kadwy is relatively young, as yet untested in battle, and he occupies a palace and a land full of intrigue and treachery. Eleri befriends Eilineth, a girl of 12 savagely disfigured by invaders or bandits, which are often interchangeable descriptions. And she befriends Morlais, a stable boy who’s a natural storyteller. 

 

The three soon find themselves involved in a planned deception by Kadwy, capture by the Saxons, and a daring escape. And a new battle looms, a battle that may mean final defeat for the Britons.

 

Gareth Griffith

Iron Island by Gareth Griffith is the sequel to Glass Island, the thrilling fictional account of the Battle of Dyrham. Griffith has a gift for describing battles and battle scenes, and both books place the reader squarely in the thick of the action. Eleri Gwir is the heroine at the center of the story, and Griffith draws a character who both understands the expectations for women in the period and resists conforming to those expectations. And Eleri threads her way through the story, telling a gripping account of the times, herself, her friends, and her enemies.

 

Griffith was born in Wales and moved to Australia. He’s been a teacher, researcher, and writer, and served as the director of research for the parliament of New South Wales for many years. He’s now focused on writing about Wales and the Dark Ages. 

 

Iron Island is historical fiction, but it rests on what is clearly extensive research by the author. The reader experiences the smells of the kitchens as much as the smells of battle. The story sits within from what is known of this period of British history, with its remnants of the fumes of Roman occupation, unknown tribes arriving and raging over the land, banditry, the growing presence of the Saxons, and the Britons desperately trying to defend what they have left. It’s a well-told and stirring story.

 

Related:

 

Glass Island by Gareth Griffith.

"Watching Crows" by Glenn McGoldrick

Philip spends a lot of time watching the birds by the river. He watches mostly the crows and what they do with the crusts of bread he throws them. 

At home, things are not good. His wife is increasingly flaunting her lovers, reflecting her anger at not having children. She blames Philip for that. She refuses to get a divorce Because she likes the lifestyle. And he’s growing frustrated. Until he remembers the crows.

 

Glenn McGoldrick

“Watching Crows” is another short story in the Dark Teeside series by Glenn McGoldrick. It’s a simple story and a dark story about a relationship with no future – and no present. But them there are the crows.

 

Writing since 2013, McGoldrick specializes in short stories. He’s worked for both land-based casinos and cruise ships for a time, basing many of his stories on those experiences. His stories are dark, gritty, often involve a twist, and inevitably open insights into the human psyche. And his characters run the gamut of good, bad, and something in between, and often find themselves moving far beyond the boundaries of acceptable behavior. He lives in northeastern England. 

 

Related:

 

“Yellow Feet” by Glenn McGoldrick.

 

Three New Dark Stories by Glenn McGoldrick.

 

“Six Down,” “Somewhere in England,” and “Dark Progresion” by Glenn McGoldrick.

 

 4 Stories by Glenn McGoldrick.

 

3+ Stories by Glenn McGoldrick.

 

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

 

The Dark Stories of Glenn McGoldrick.

Poets and Poems: Paul Willis and “Somewhere to Follow”

Poet Paul Willis sees life’s everyday, usually-passed-over-without-a-second-thought events, and he finds the sacred. It might be that scouting jamboree where you sit around a campfire singing “On Top of Old Smokey.” Or a football playing helping a tackled opponent to stand. Or young boys digging a hole in an empty lot because, well, they need to dig a hole. Or trimming back a tree grown too close to a building. Or hitchhiking a ride back to college, and only years later realizing that you spent a short time with a man who barely survived the Battle of the Bulge. 

The sacred can surprise you, and it usually does. And it often surprises you years later, because sometimes you see the sacred only years after you actually experienced it.

 

Somewhere to Follow is Willis’s new poetry collection. It’s filled with poems that tell stories of youth, of young adulthood, of family, of professional life, and of walking and hiking in Yosemite National Park. He writes with awareness of his own limitations and a wry sense of humor.

 

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