September 27, 2021
Odds + Ends
At the end of the month, Post Script readers will know I send a quick catch-all kind of email. I think of it as representing the spirit of the newsletter as it was formally called: “Miscellany.”
I want to say how grateful I am for you as readers. There is so much content in the world, so many voices, and your choice to read these letters is a gift. A handful of you send me occasional replies, saying I’ve written something that has sparked for you or kindly sharing something that could be of help or interest in my own work. Thank you!
Last week, I had two wonderful replies from readers: one, who shared a list of books I might like to consider for my current project on time; another, who is working on a PhD in organizational behavior and theory (as it relates to time). “Can we share sources?” she asked. I promptly forwarded that email I had just received from another Post Script reader. Call it serendipity, call it providence. Call it witness to a world held together by God.
These two reader replies remind me that writing is a communal act as much as a solitary one. As I write, it’s 11:15am on a Friday morning. The house is empty and quiet, except for the humming of the dehumidifier in my office closet. I’m alone—and not. Because I’m the beneficiary of conversations that span across books. Because I’m the beneficiary of the good thinking other writers do in their newsletters and social media posts and internet articles. Because all human making images our Maker God, who creates in the triune community of himself.
"Small Letters and Sparrows" by Mischa Willett. Mischa is a poet and professor at Seattle Pacific University. I’ve met him through my MFA studies there, and I thought this piece was exquisite. “What qualifies as a miracle worth recounting? And how far beyond the probable does an event need to be before we consider it miraculous?”
“For the Sake of the World” by James K.A. Smith. Jamie writes a newsletter in his role as editor in chief of Image, and I find it worth my time. This edition was no exception. “I’m interested in art that is made for the life of the world. Not art that simply deepens piety but art whose faith-infusion invites a wider world to imagine why one might believe—art that invites any and all humans to confront the swirling eddies of hunger and longing we call the soul.”
“This is the Highest Ambition of Christian Vocation.” I wrote this piece for Common Good. I had recently discovered the late poet Anne Porter, and I was so happy to work a small glimpse of her story into this piece:
I’ve spent years presiding over my sink and stove, making a home for my family and the stragglers of the world. Now I also spend hours tapping away words on this keyboard, praying they might eternally matter. Can both kinds of ambitions matter to God? Enormously, I think.
I suppose what counts is living as Anne Porter, a devout Catholic, did. In his foreword to her second poetry collection, which she published at 95, David Shapiro wrote, “Her greatest emotional perspective [was] that of praise.
The Jesus I Wish I Knew In High School. This is a book project I was invited to contribute to. In the chapter I wrote, “Temptation and Goodness,” I share my story of coming to faith in Jesus as a 16-year-old. (You can listen to me read my chapter here.) “If you know the story of Saul on the road to Damascus in the book of Acts—this fire-breathing man with arrest warrants for Christians in his hand, this man who met the blazing spectacle of the risen Jesus one ordinary afternoon—then you might not be surprised when I tell you that I also met Jesus when I least expected to. I was sixteen when I heard his voice at summer camp, asking me three questions: What do you want? Where are you headed? Will you follow?”
A Conversation on Stability and the Goodness of Limits. I had the privilege to talk with Nathan Oates, pastor and author of Stability, together with Ashley Hales, author of A Spacious Life, for the Englewood Review of Books Podcast. If you are a reader, you’ll love, not just our podcast conversations, but also our show notes!
With regard to the new Texas abortion law (and the ethics of abortion in general), I highly recommend reading David French’s “The Pro-Life Movement Must Transcend Politics.” Also, Karen Swallow Prior’s piece in The New York Times was courageous: “A law preserving the life of a human being at any stage can be considered “extreme” only within a distorted social context.” If you want to read a morally conflicted pro-choice piece, I recommend Caitlin Flanagan’s, “The Dishonesty of the Abortion Debate.” For further research, on a recent Mere Fidelity podcast, I heard Dr. Matthew Lee Anderson enthusiastically endorse this book on abortion ethics. I haven’t read it, but it sounds like I should.
Grace and peace,
Jen