He turns his face

After Psalm 67 

He turns his face

towards us, staring

directly into our eyes,

our souls, our hearts.

He gets in our faces,

placing his hands

on our heads, staring

and saying he loves us,

he cherishes us, he knows

all our faults, our sins,

and what matters

is his love for us,

once lost, now found.

 

Photograph by William Carlson via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Balrog on the Bridge: Cultivating the Courage of Gandalf – Clinton Manley at Desiring God.

 

“Sailing to Byzantium,” poem by William Butler Yeats – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Helene Binet at St. Anne’s Limehouse – photographs at Spitalfields Life.

 

Blessing for Different Sounds – poem by David Whyte.

 

Two Owls – pome by Josiah Cox at First Things Magazine.

Saturday Good Reads - Sept. 14, 2024

Matti Friedman worked for the Associated Press for six years in Israel. He began to see a shift in what was happening with his colleagues. They were moving from covering the news to covering “evil Israel versus the oppressed Palestinians,” even when the facts contradicted what they were writing (which was most of the time). Seen “ When We Started to Lie” at The Free Press.

 I’ll add a postscript to that article. I used to trust the AP’s stories; they were often the only journalistic accounts of what was going on. Then, about 2012-2013, something began to shift. What passes for AP news reports today is more charitably labeled “opinion.” Friedman is right, but it’s not only news about Israel.

 

We were in London when what is known as “Benghazi” happened. We were happily ignorant of the news until our hotel concierge warned me one morning to avoid Parliament Square, Grosvenor Square, and other areas where Americans congregated. Protestors were targeting Americans because the U.S. Administration was blaming Benghazi on an alleged movie about Mohammed. Nobody, including the news media, wanted to dwell on what happened to the American ambassador and the other Americans killed – it was an election year, and Benghazi made the U.S. look powerless and incompetent. One story I hadn’t read about was the Navy SEAL who gave his life, doing what he was supposed to do. 

 

What’s the best social platform for writers? Writing coach Ann Kroeker talks with Jane Friedman, who knows more about writing and electronic communications that just about anyone I’ve heard of. And Friedman says what she thinks, including about the most popular platform at the moment – Substack. 

 

More Good Reads

 

Life and Culture

 

I Think Therefore I Am: Technology’s transformation of human existence is rendering conservatism irrelevant – Brad Littlejohn at American Compass.

 

The Total State and the Twilight of American Democracy – N.S. Lyons at The Upheaval.

 

“Fauxtastrophes” and the Power of Bureaucracy – Joseph Woodard at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Building What Matters – Frank DeVito at Front Porch Republic.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Initials or Nicknames Out of Some Now Incomprehensible Affection – Chris Mackowski at Emerging Civil War on Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner.

 

Writing When You Have No Time to Write – Thomas Kidd.

 

American Stuff

 

What September 11 Revealed – Jonathan Rosen at The Free Press.

 

War on Record: The Archive and the Afterlife of the Civil War by Yael A. Sternhell – review by Kevin Donovan at Emerging Civil War.

 

Poetry

 

“The Janitor’s Boy,” poem by Nathalia Crane – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Israel

 

Holywood: The Birth and Death of a Vision – Michael Oren at Clarity.

 

Forrest Gumping Through Israeli History – Bonnie Goodman at Times of Israel.

 

Faith

 

Our Greatest Tool for Reaching the West – Aaron Armstroing.

 

Art

 

Some Favorite Nicholas Borden Paintings – Spitalfields Life. 

 

British Stuff

 

Schrödinger’s Culture War – Kristian Niemietz at The Critic Magazine.

 

His Glory and My Good – City Alight

 

Painting: Young Woman Reading a Letter to a Blind Man, oil on canvas by Louis Denis-Valvérane (1870-1943). 

Sing a new / old song

After Psalm 67 

Sing a new song

sing a new song

   may you be gracious

 

Sing an old song

sing a new song

   may you bless us

 

Sing a new song

sing an old

   may your face shine

   shine upon us

 

It rises, a chorus

of praise, ringed

in gladness, in joy,

un expectation

of justice, of guidance,

of blessing and increase

 

We are blessed

so that those

around us

will see him.

 

Photograph by Austin Neill via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

The Latecomers – poem by Seamus Heaney at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

Life is Too Brief to Waste – Jon Bloom at Desiring God.

 

Why Church Membership Matters – Alistair Begg at Truth for Life.

 

What Does God Listen For? – Seth Lewis.

 

King Jan Sobieski of Poland and The Lord of the Rings – Dwight Longenecker at The Imaginative Conservative.

Some Thursday Readings - Sept. 12, 2024

Handbags & Handcuffs: The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective by Sara Lodge – Claire Harman at Literary Review. 

“Poor Eddy”: A New Life of Edgar Allan Poe – Mark Jarman at The Hudson Review.

 

On the Tarmac – poem by Tania Runyan at Every Day Poems.

 

Shakespeare and Classical Education – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

“The Traveler” and “Sunrise” – poems by Shindy Cai at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Author George Saunders on His Novel Lincoln in the Bardo, on Lincoln After the Death of His Son – New York Times Book Review podcast via The Reconstruction Era blog.

 

If your protagonist is bored, you can bet you reader will be to – Nathan Bransford. 

 

End – prose poem / reflection by David Whyte.

 

Photograph: Edgar Allan Poe about 1837.

"The Blackbird & Other Stories" by Sally Thomas

A little girl tries to lead a normal life – dance revues, school – while the shadow of her mother’s illness seems everywhere. If she focuses on dancing “The Blackbird,” she’ll be fine. 

A couple try to make sense of their grown son’s suicide, even if you can never really make sense of that kind of tragedy. Or you’re traveling with your grandparents, trying to escape, or deal with, a family breakup. Or a spouse dies, that “little cough” having turned into something fatal. Or your youngest child is born with a skin condition that essentially makes him allergic to sunlight, and you have to re-orient everything you know and do. Or you take refuge from your spouse’s beach house, the one in your family for three generations, the one containing memories of every childhood vacation. 

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

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Go On, Try It; The Semicolon Isn’t as Scary as You Think – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Writing without a platform – Brad East.

 

The kindest of ghosts: A new history of childhood reading is a treasure – Simon Evans at The Critic Magazine. 

 

Things Worth Remembering: Nothing is Lost Forever – Douglas Murray at The Free Press on playwright Tom Stoppard. 

 

A preview of the New World War I Memorial in DC – and why it will hit you hard – John Domen at WTOP.

An Anthology of Contemporary Catholic Poetry

Growing up in late 1950s and early 1960s New Orleans meant by definition that you were part of a Catholic culture. My family wasn’t Catholic, but most of my neighborhood friends and school classmates were. Within relatively easy walking distances were several Catholic churches and schools – Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Our Lady of Divine Providence, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Christopher’s, and St. Philip Neri. Our Lutheran church could only be reached by driving. My parents almost sent me to a Catholic high school. Because the Catholic church was so dominant, you didn’t think of “Catholic” as anything but normal.  

We certainly didn’t think of “Catholic” poetry or fiction as something distinct. Poetry was poetry, and fiction was fiction. We did learn about the importance of Catholic faith when we studied T.S. Eliot, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Henry Cardinal Newman, or Reformation writers, or the religious wars of the 16^th and 17^th centuries. But no one talked about a distinct Catholic literature, even if it might have existed. If anyone had asked me to name a Catholic writer, I would have said G.K. Chesterton, Flannery O’Connor, or Giovanni Guareschi, author of the Don Camillo stories (which I read in high school and loved them all). And that would have exhausted my knowledge.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Sweet Gal, You Made Me Think – poem by Jonathan Rogers at Rabbi Room Poetry.

 

A Letter from Rome – poem by Morri Creech at The Hopkins Review.

 

A Savannah Poet – Richard Kreitner at Jewish Review of Books.

 

I Have Waited for September – poem by Roy Peterson at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Poetry Prompt: Wordle Your Way – Tweetspeak Poetry. 

“The Wild Duck,” poem by John Masefield – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

"The Dark Wives" by Ann Cleeves

If you’re a fan of the DCI Vera Stanhope mystery series on Britbox, you know what a find characterization Brenda Blethyn makes of the title character. Even when I see the actress on other programs, I keep expecting her to drive that beat-up old Land Rover, wear her trench coat and fisherman’s hat, and call everyone “Pet.”  

And reading The Dark Wives by Ann Cleeves, the newest entry in the Vera Stanhope series, all I can see is Brenda Blethyn. The image is branded on my brain. 

 

In The Dark Wives, Cleeves, a fine storyteller, weaves a dark tale. At a privately operated care home for troubled teens, a young worker is found dead, his head bashed with a hammer. A resident 14-year-old girl is missing. And Vera and her team can find no motive, no suspects, and no clues. Except the missing girl. But having read the diary the girl left behind, Vera can’t see as a killer. What she does begin to see is that the girl is in danger. The diary makes a vague reference to a dark car following her. And more reports of a dark car crop up.

 

The investigation shifts from the Newcastle area in northwestern England to a village some 30 miles to the north. The girl’s grandparents have an old, unused cottage nearby the village. The dead man was familiar with the area, having hiked it many times with his father. And rather brooding over the area and the case are three legendary monoliths, known as “The Dark Wives.” 

 

Ann Cleeves

Through a combination of dogged, routine police work and Vera’s uncanny intuition, the team begins to grasp what’s happening. But they may be too late to save the missing girl.

 

Cleeves has published eight mysteries in the Jimmy Perez / Shetland series, including Raven Black (2008), Red Bones (2009), White Nights (2010), Blue Lightning (2011), Dead Water (2014), Thin Air (2015), Cold Earth (2017), and Wild Fire (2019). She’s also published 11 mystery novels in the Vera Stanhope series (also a television series), six Inspector Stephen Ramsay mysteries, and several other works and short stories. The Jimmy Perez novels are the basis for the BBC television series “Shetland.” Cleeves lives in northeastern England. 

 

The Dark Wives is a classic Vera Stanhope tale, told with imagination and not a small amount of the tension as the case nears its solution. 

 

Related:

 

Missing in the Snow by Ann Cleeves.

 

Shetland author’s lost laptop with draft of next novel found in snow – Lucinda Cameron at The Scotsman.

 

The Long Call by Ann Cleeves.

 

The Woman on the Island by Ann Cleeves. 

 

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.

Some Monday Readings

 

Individualism – Wilfred McClay at Modern Age.

 

Toward the Recovery of American Culture – Matthew Gasda at American Affairs.

 

When Students Become Terrorists – Eli Lake at The Free Press.

 

The delusions of the West’s politicians – Douglas Murray at The Spectator.

 

Nehemiah Questions Robert Frost About Walls – poem by Cynthia Erlandson at Society of Classical Poets.