Recently attempted, & abandoned š:
Current reading š:
These two pieces complement each other quite nicely:
First, in FiveThirtyEight: āThe Christian Right Is Helping Drive Liberals Away From Religionā
Second, in Politico: āāSomeoneās Gotta Tell the Freakinā Truthā: Jerry Falwellās Aides Break Their Silenceā š
Morning dinosaur-puzzle time. š·
A day when oneās surroundings reflect oneās heart: dreary & a bit deflated.
If you use Apple Music and you like top jazz, give my Ā”Ā”Ā” Top Jazz !!! playlist a listen. (Shuffle mode recommended.)
With 690 tracks of great jazz music, there are few better ways to spend the next 72 hours. š¶
Shirley Hazzard’s Greene on Capri recounts the relationship that Hazzard and her husband, the Flaubert scholar and translator Francis Steegmuller, had with Graham Greene over two decades, from the late 60s to the late 80s. Their friendship started when, in a Capri cafe, Hazzard overhead Greene struggling to remember a line from a minor Robert Browning poem. Hazzard, who seems to have most of the English literary canon memorized, walked up to him, reminded him of the line, and walked away.
The Churchgoer I stayed up late to finish The Churchgoer, a new novel written by Patrick Coleman. Itās San Diego noir about mega-churches, faith and doubt, and about learning to accept love from others, despite unshakeable belief that you donāt want or deserve it. Itās so good. The voice is brilliant from start to finish. The narrator and central character is a former youth pastor turned atheist. His theological training gives him exegetical and etymological habits that wonāt die, though his faith has; theyāre a source of brilliant and fresh metaphor.
I made an Apple Music playlist of Hans Castorpās favorite music in the āFullness of Harmonyā chapter of The Magic Mountain. (Full disclosure: thereās lots of opera.)
Amazing that itās so easy to enjoy the same music that a fictional character listened to 110 years ago! š š¶
This piece by Tara Isabella Button, In Brooklyn, ātradpunkā Christianity meets millennial counterculture, speaks to some of what resonates with me in Anglicanism. Her literary lineage of Anglo-Catholics is a bit heavy on the twentieth century, though. Iād keep them all, but add Robert Browning, the Rosettis and William Morris, Hopkins, the Brontes, Bram Stoker, and Ruskin. Not all Anglicans, or Catholics, or even necessarily Christians, but all part of that same religious critique of modernity.