Weekly Links - Holy Week edition

~ LINKS TO SOME INTERESTING READING, too late for the weekend, but perfect for a monday ~



-"Thoughts on the 'Benedict Option' - a Lament": Dr. Peters' point? Don't write a book about the Benedictines and get the monasticism wrong. 


-"10 Things You Should Know About the Trinity": This whole thing is good, but I especially appreciate point #8.


-"The Death of the Levite's Concubine":

Once having choked it down, you’re left wondering, as with the whole rest of Judges, who exactly the good guy is. 

-"Three Myths of Cohabitation": interview with a sociologist who just completed a very interesting study. A snippet:

Generally speaking, the least educated married families in Europe enjoy more stability than the most educated cohabiting families. That’s not what I would have guessed.

-"Stop Hating on Christian Popular Culture": now here's a challenge for our modern age!


-"Celebrating the Feast of the Anunnciation": I'm a few weeks late on this one, but I really appreciate this piece, and I think it's a good meditation for Holy Week:

This year I had several friends who faced the death of a loved one right at Christmas time.  They had no choice but to grieve and celebrate in the same breath. These sorts of emotional juxtapositions always be gut retchingly difficult. Yet living year by year through the liturgical seasons we are offered a foretaste of the multi-dimensional nature of our emotional life.  In following the seasons we are encouraged to explore the depths of our own souls in both joy and sorrow, to bring our hearts before God, and to align ourselves with the life of the church. When triumph is followed by disaster we have a sense of the path to take, we have walked it and we know where to fix our eyes. In the darkness of the tomb we wait for the light of resurrection.

-"Sushi Saturdays": My eldest daughter and I are the only people in the house who love sushi, and we're determined that this experiment is the perfect activity for Bright Week this year.


-"Researchers Have Transformed a Spinach Leaf into Working Heart Tissue": wow!


-"The Impossible Novel that Became IMPOSSIBLE SAINTS": I follow Clarissa Harwood on Twitter, and enjoyed reading this long version of her first novel sale, especially her honesty when she said:

In hindsight I can see that I was far too close to Novel #2 to see it clearly enough to revise it. I invested too much of myself in it, but that’s also why it was such a joy to write. It was everything a first draft should be: too long, repetitive, self-indulgent, and confusing. In other words, what was an utter delight to write was a complete nightmare to read.

I hope you have a good and blessed Holy Week!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Weekend Links: a day late!

"Fermentation":

Some of the stories need working on before I can see whether they’re interesting enough to finish; some of them stall when they need some heavy-duty research that I don’t have time to do; and there are a few that I started and then realized I didn’t have the chops to do justice to. So those are all partials sitting on my hard drive, and I revisit them occasionally between books to see if any of them are ready to get written the rest of the way yet. If one of them is, I have a big jump on getting the next thing started.

"Annunciation Gap":

One thing almost all the painters agree about: in this scene, the annunciation, they put Mary on one side of the painting and Gabriel on the other, with a gap between them. Sometimes it’s a large gap, as if Gabriel is shouting from across the room. Sometimes there is architecture between them, like posts or columns or half-walls. And sometimes, if it’s installed in a church, the scene will be depicted on two separate paintings, with the angel on one wall and Mary on another, and actual empty space between the two. The angel’s message has to jump from one two-dimensional plane to another, through a gulf of three-dimensional space.

"Let the Children Come":

All this being so, the thing about church is to just go and be there. Not to have any kind of agenda about it. Leave aside the hymn learning. Leave aside the needing to sit still. Leave aside the getting to know of your church family. You want to just be there, yourself, and for your children to be there, even though it is a wretched and horrific hassle. As you're dancing in the back with your baby, or hauling out your toddler for banging on the pew, missing the singing, missing the sermon, missing the announcements, missing everything, and you're bone tired, you back aches, and you're just angry, you just want to go hide in a hole, you stand there, and that's where Jesus is. That is where he is. That's where he was on the cross.

Links - Annunciation, Scary Lights, and Praying for the President

I love this painting of the Annunciation. (Hat tip to Simcha Fisher.)

Study: Some Eco-Friendly Lightbulbs May Put Health At Risk:

Money saving, compact fluorescent light bulbs emit high levels of ultra violet radiation, according to a new study. Research at Long Island’s Stony Brook found that the bulbs emit rays so strong that they can actually burn skin and skin cells . . . “It can also cause skin cancer in the deadliest for, and that’s melanoma,” said Dr. Rebecca Tung.

"Praying for the President":

President Obama is right to take the Oath on the Bible, but he is wrong to reject its morality. He is divisive to reject the morality of many Americans and most of the globe in a fit of parochial, partisan exclusion.

If President Obama doesn’t want the prayers of good men like Lou Giglio, then he doesn’t want my prayers. And yet the Bible, the morality of the Bible, commands I pray for him anyway. I must love him, I must honor him, and I must ask God to give him wisdom. And so I will pray tonight as I have every night:

“God save our Republic and my President Barack Obama.”

If you've got any good links to add, please do leave them in the comm box!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

a little late, a hymn for the Annunciation

Or "Lady Day", as they say in England. March 25 . . . 9 months before Christmas.


You can find the lyrics here (the link also plays a short midi).

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

links! - trusting God, playing the violin, and much, much more

These Little Pieces is posting regularly to her blog again, and she's started with a bang. Check out this post on how to celebrate the Annunciation with your children (I love the idea of supporting a crisis pregnancy center in honor of the occasion) and also check out her giveaway from her Etsy shop!

Conversion Diary's post Trust School is excellent, and, for me at least, came right when I needed to hear the message it offers.

And on the funny/awesome side, I love, love, love my friend Katie's post about her New Trick. :D

Bethany writes about what keeps us from being happy, and about her need (and many of ours, I think) for time alone. This line especially makes me think: "Just because we need something doesn't mean that we demand it from others." Go read the whole thing here.

Jen left me a comment today on my post about how hard it is to find sympathy cards that are neither sticky-sweet nor theologically bad, pointing me towards these beautiful, serene, appropriate cards from Conciliar Press. I don't think I've ever seen anything better.

I always have trouble summarizing Anne Kennedy's posts, but read this one and you'll understand why I read her blog. Let's just say that she has read, marked, and inwardly digested everything that P. G. Wodehouse had to teach her.

I have not read much of this blog yet. I just found it. But it's called "Shrinking Violets: Marketing Promotions for Introverts". That's enough for me to keep the tab open for quite awhile.

Rachelle Gardner has a thorough, helpful post on what fiction editors are looking for when it comes to a novel's characters.

Smithical does a great job of collecting quotations pertinent to the big creation/evolution/homeschool conference kerfluffle.

"A Neutral Education?" by Susan Wise Bauer helped me find a missing piece in my continual ponderings about homeschooling and the nature of education. She writes:

The church of Christ, not textbook writers, should be responsible for providing the central Christian story that must inform all true education. When I wrote in Chapter Twenty of The Well-Trained Mind, “When you’re instructing your own child, you have two tasks with regard to religion: to teach your own convictions with honesty and diligence, and to study the ways in which other faiths have changed the human landscape. Only you and your religious community can do the first,” I was not attempting to maintain neutrality. Rather, I was asserting that a Christian education can only be provided by a Christian community — parents, in obedience to and in faithful relationship with their local church.

Now I am trying to figure out how that fits in with what has bothered me so frequently about Christian homeschooling organizations, i.e. that they frequently put character above academics when they are ostensibly academic organizations. I thought it bothered me because they were trying to make ordinary Christian parenting the end-all and be-all of education. But maybe part of it is that they are trying to take the place of the church? (Still just thinking out loud here, folks - not coming to any conclusions yet. Feel free to join in conversation in the comment section!)

Finally, what's a link post without some music? Probably most of you have heard this, but whether you have or not, it's still a nice evening treat. Enjoy!

Getting Ready for Palm Sunday, and a Last Few Lenten Links

Hi folks!

I'm so excited - we get to go back to Sunday mass this week! It's been a long winter, but it's almost over. Our kids are really excited about seeing their friends again, and about processing around church with their palms.

One thing I'm doing to get ready for Palm Sunday is teaching our (older two) kids the chorus to "All Glory, Laud and Honor", which is what we sing while we process into church. There are two many verses for them to learn the whole hymn quite yet, but the chorus is only two lines long. I think it's an especially good one for children to learn, because it actually mentions children in the chorus:

"All glory, laud and honor to thee, Redeemer, King,
To whom the lips of children make sweet Hosannas! ring."

I spent some time at dinner last night explaining what some of the harder words mean to my oldest.

Is anyone else doing anything special to get ready for Palm Sunday?


Also, though Lent is almost over, here are a few more seasonal links:

-Amy at Splendor in the Ordinary talks about spring cleaning, and its liturgical meaning. I like the idea of getting everything done early, so you can concentrate on the Triduum.
-It's probably a little late for it this year, but to put in your list for next year, check out these Lenten fruit trees from On the Old Path - good idea for doing Lent with children!
-Also a little late for this year, but something I want to try next year: these annunciation shadow boxes from Chez Ouiz.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell