Current listening: a new Arvo Pärt album, Tractus, featuring a new, chamber-choir arrangement of Pärt’s setting of words from a sermon of John Henry Newman. 🎶

Rest in peace, Terence Davies. 🎞️

The first film I saw of his was his relatively recent documentary about Liverpool, *Of Time & the City*—a film of great beauty, full of profound reflection on memory & how profoundly the world has changed since the 1960s.

Here’s a quotation that reflects his sensibility, from the NYT obituary linked above:

“The first thing that goes is subtlety. The first thing that goes is any kind of restraint or even wit sometimes. I don’t know how to deal with that in the modern world.”

No words strike fear into a Minnesota United fan’s heart quite like “must-win home game.” #COYL ⚽️

Currently reading: Your Face Belongs to Us by Kashmir Hill 📚

Currently reading: Toward the Winter Solstice by Timothy Steele 📚

Perfect night for a fire. A zillion stars in the cloudless sky. Some Wolfgang Muthspiel on the speaker. Life is good. 🏡

Finished reading: The Bible and Poetry by Michael Edwards.

A fascinating and very idiosyncratic look at Scripture, from an unexpected quarter: Edwards is a member of the Académie Française and one of the world’s leading Racine scholars. If you’ve ever wondered why so much of the Bible is poetry, and how that fact should influence your reading of Scripture, this is a very good starting point.

Plus, anything published by New York Review is worth reading at least once. 📚

Finished reading: Meet Me at the Lighthouse by Dana Gioia.

A delightful collection of poems, songs, & a few translations. I especially loved the closing sequence, “The Underworld.” I read “The Ballad of Jesús Ortiz” aloud to me daughter, & she loved that. 📚

Tyler Cowen draws attention to the remarkable life and work of the Catholic religious scholar R.C. Zaehner, whose Wikipedia page is, indeed, fascinating and wild. 📚

Currently reading: The Bible and Poetry by Michael Edwards 📚