Weekly Links!

~ LINKS TO SOME INTERESTING READING and WATCHING, FOR WHAT'S LEFT OF YOUR WEEKEND ~

FAITH

-"The Story of Those Little Communion Cups, Whatever Those Are Technically Called"


-"10 Reasons to Love Lent"


-"If Literature's Biggest Romantics Could Text" - the Odysseus one!


-"God's Omniscience as Law and Gospel": worth listening to:

FAmily

-"Solving the Autism Puzzle": This article from MIT Technology Review has research I haven't read elsewhere. You might be interested.

Fiction

-"Think Like a Pirate" - a very useful podcast episode, for you authors out there.


-"The Mad Truth of 'La-La Land'": I haven't seen this yet, but this review makes me want to see it more than ever.


-"How 'Weird Al' Eclipsed Almost Every Star He Ever Parodied": Not fiction, but art, so I'm putting it here.




I hope you have a lovely Sunday, full of worship and rest!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Weekly Links: this week, it's all about writing

SOME INTERESTING LINKS FOR YOUR SUNDAY AFTERNOON, SET OUT IN MY USUAL CATEGORIES of faith, family, and fiction.

Faith 

-"How Methodists Invented Your Kid's Grape Juice Sugar High"

-"Save Your Soul: Stop Writing"

-"A Near Miss": on a good movie missing because it thinks religion isn't a legitimate part of culture.

-"On The Theology of Sleep"

Family

-"Laws of Food and Drink; Household Principles; Lamentations of the Father": If you are a parent who knows what the King James version of the Old Testament sounds like, this will make you laugh.

Fiction

-"The Glamorous Life of the Writer": One of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Moon, tells it like it is.

-"Money and the Writer"

-"Misinterpretable Words": on living with a changing language (as we all do).

-"Why Do Books Written By Women Get Such Terrible Book Covers"

-"Understanding Shakespeare" - a lovely, annotated and connected digital library, so that you can research the research to your heart's delight.


Have a great weekend!

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

Weekly Links: ISIS, Austen, and more

SOME GOOD READING FOR YOUR SUNDAY AFTERNOON, SET OUT IN MY USUAL CATEGORIES OF FAITH, AND FAMILY, AND FICTION...

Faith

-"No Matter How Many  Priests ISIS Kills, They Can't Win":

When a faithful pastor baptizes, he is telling those clothed in the waters of regeneration, “You are no longer under the power of the devil, his murderers, or his terrorists. You are now under the protection of Christ, and no one can take you away from him.” When a pastor faithfully administers Holy Communion, he says to those who gather at the altar, “Here with his body and blood, Christ covers you in his righteousness, and no knife or bullet can pierce through that armor.”

-"A Good Man Justifies a Wicked Deed: Grudem on Trump":

We must vote for flawed men, but not for men who glory in their flaws.

-"Bats in the Attic":

The thing is, the Devil and all his evil cohorts really don’t want us, or anybody else, to go to church. If there is any reason at all, however small, to persuade you not to go, that reason will be gathered up and hurled at you, along with your own natural inclinations to take it easy and stay home. If you arrive on a Sunday morning, exhausted, totally unable to conceive of hauling yourself out of bed and going to sit in a hard pew with a lot of annoying people, well, you are not alone.

Family

-"Uncannily Youthful At 67, He Embodies Antidote To Bummer 'Biggest Loser' Study": apparently, it's all about building muscle mass.

Fiction

-"Austen Upside Down": Can you be an Austen fan without really understanding her? This article makes me think the answer is "yes".

-"Ten Thoughts About the Business Side of Writing": so very many good thoughts here.

May your week be a gracious rhythm of meaningful work and peaceful rest.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

7 Quick Takes

1. A few weeks after reading Andrew Yee's "Spiritual Disciplines for Busy People", I'm finding what's stuck with me the most is his suggestion to take your internal dialogue, and address it to God.

In other words, instead of just thinking, "Aw, crap, I can't believe I just did that," you pray, "Aw, crap, Father, I can't believe I just did that."

. . . I know that's a pretty unedifying example (and it's mine, not Yee's!), but that's kind of the point. God hears all my thoughts anyway, and addressing them to Him . . . well, I don't want to say it changes my perspective, because that's not quite it. But it's me inviting Him in. And I'm finding He's accepts my invitation.

And that does change everything.

2. When I was a teenager, driving around in an old, beat-up Honda Civic and flipping channels, I imagined how cool it would be to have my own radio station, that only played music that I liked. I imagined that every time a song came on, I could say yea or nay, and it would be forever banned or forever on the playlist.

Mp3 players and iTunes? They're seriously my adolescent dream come true. I can still hardly believe it.

3. I still wish the radio thing had happened though. I like the idea of instantly & permanently zapping some songs off the airwaves.

4. My new favorite culinary discovery is smoked paprika. Have you guys tried this? It's awesome! It adds that smoky, camp-fire-y taste to just about anything. It's great on egg-y dishes like chiliquiles and in soups, like southwestern corn chowder. Yum, yum, yum.

5. Sister to that discovery is my newfound love for cumin. I mean, I've used it for forever, but I've never really appreciated it before. But now I'm finding it adds a real depth to dishes. Love it in stuff like carne asada and chilled salads.

6. I love, love, love this article by Carolyn Thomas on taking the Eucharist with children. Here's an excerpt:

Perhaps it’s the boy kneeling next to you, who takes a big gulp of wine, swallows, and then grabs his throat in pain. Maybe you lean over and whisper, “Are you okay?” and he whispers back, “That drink always hurts the inside of my neck!” And suddenly you remember the first time you ever took the Eucharist with real wine, on your knees, in a stone church on a cold, grey morning, and the wine stung your mouth, burned down your throat, warmed your body–and made you think of blood: hot and red and alive.

7. And I don't love this next link, but I found it pretty interesting: an interview with a female astronaut who really loves her job. From her description, I think her love is entirely justified:

Were you sometimes too busy living in space to really reflect on where you were?

I would say it’s not something I’m very good at even when I’m here on the ground, which is to make some kind of empty philosophical space where I just think and be and live. We work between 12- and 18-hour days up there, and even when you’re done you’re thinking about the next day. But when you look out the window and see the view, it’s so addictive and alluring and irresistible. Often at the end of the day I would go up to the cupola [panoramic window] and play my flute and look out.

Can you even imagine?


Anyway, more quick takes can be found over here, at Conversion Diary. Have a great weekend, folks!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Links: Domestic Monasteries, Dark Personalities, and More!

"The Secret of a Domestic Monastery":

It doesn’t have to do with getting the kids to walk around in silence (though, boy, that’d be nice if I could pull it off), nor is it about observing the exact same prayer times as consecrated religious. Boiled down to its core, the hallmark of the monastic schedule is that the way you use your time reflects your true priorities. Your daily life is one of constantly pushing back against the world’s expectations, making real, sometimes difficult sacrifices so that your time is not swept away by the current of the world’s priorities.

"Psychology Uncovers Sex Appeal of Dark Personalities": this is a fascinating study (hat tip to my friend, Roland, for the link!):

 . . . In other words, people with dark personality traits are not seen as more physically attractive than others when you take away their freedom to wear their own clothes and makeup. People with dark personalities seem to be better at making themselves physically appealing.

"Saying Stuff (about the Lord's Supper)":

And the stuff God says is totally different from the stuff we say. He says LITERAL STUFF. He speaks, and worlds come into being. He says, “let there be,” and it is. Stuff is, because God says for it to be. Of course I’m referring to Genesis 1, but it’s all through the Bible. For instance, look at Psalm 33:6 “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.” He says “let there be stars,” and all the stars come out. They obey before they exist. They exist by obeying the word of the Lord.

"Learning to Trust the Instruments":

In the aftermath, investigators found that almost everything that had gone wrong had been the fault of the pilots. When the plane encountered significant turbulence the pilots should have responded according to their flight training and according to the plane’s manual. Instead, they relied on instinct. And then, when the plane began to experience further complications, the pilots ignored the instruments that should have directed them to the source of the problem and the straightforward solution. They swung the plane violently from side to side attempting to right it because they ignored the aircraft’s instrument that told them where the horizon was and how to keep the plane level. They ignored the instruments that told them that their engine problem was not as serious as they thought. Blinded by the stress of the situation, they ignored the manual and did things their own way. It very nearly cost them their lives and the lives of hundreds of passengers.

And, finally, an advertisement that absolutely succeeded in making me want to give my money to the people who are asking for it - but they're not gonna take my money till . . . May? C'mon!! Why isn't this a Christmas release? Boo.
But, without further ado, Kirk, Cumberbatch, and . . . Khan?  Sorry, I mean: Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!

daily devotions and the Eucharist

One of the elements of my mild case of synesthesia is that I conceptualize time differently than most people: I actually see it. I'm unable to think of it abstractly. "Time" brings up a sort of complicated picture in my head and onto that I map my days and weeks and years.

The weeks look sort of like swooping sections of wires held up by telephone poles, and telephone-pole sections are the weekends. I've seen time like that as long as I can remember knowing what time was.

When I became Anglican, it was easy to see that the highest  point of the week - high literally, in my conceptualization of time - was Sunday mass. And now when I look at my weeks, it seems that communion on Sundays is really the strong structure holding the rest of the week up - my weeks swoop down from the last Sunday and up towards the next, and the grace received at each service is enough to last me through the week and the grace I expect to receive at the next service is what draws me back up from the trough of those hard middle days.

But I'm beginning to see that what keeps me open to receiving that grace through the week is my devotions - reading the Bible and praying. It’s a sort of connection to starting the week with the Eucharist. I want that peace and strength to be the line that carries me through, and it's really beginning to seem to me that prayer and Scripture reading are the practices that keep me connected to the grace that's so easy to perceive while I'm at church.

Which makes sense, because prayer and devotional reading are a kind of worship - or the obedience that properly flows out of worship.

I know this is all sort of obvious, but it's such a good thing that I wanted to think about it a bit more through writing.

Songs too. The Psalms and hymns and praise choruses - especially the ones with lots of scripture in them - I think these remind us through the week that we are, as some pastor or other put it, "Sunday people". We're the people of the Resurrection. And we can see that most clearly when we're all gathered together worshipping on Sundays, but it is true during the week too. And prayer and Scripture and songs help us to remember.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Overheard

Gamgee (holding out his cup of orange juice to his sister): Here, drink this. It's the blood of life.

Bess (jealous she didn't think of this imaginative game first): Hey! Why can't I be the priest?

Adam: That's a deeply theological question.

Me (silently, to myself): Hee, hee, hee . . .

Now that I think about it, though, I'm not sure how I ought to feel about my kids play-acting the sacrament. On the one hand, I'm glad it's sinking into their heads and hearts. On the other hand, many of their games end in shrieking or tussling, and I could see this one heading the same way. But I let them play wedding when they want to, and that's a solemn event (I realize it's not quite on the same level though). Anyone have any house policies on this?

peace of Christ to you,

Jessica

p.s. The cool thing about they way their playing is the "priest" is calling each communicant by name. "Come here, Lucy . . ." I think it's sweet (I mean that adjective seriously) that their view of communion is so personal.

menu planning

Okay, this is a homemaking post much more than it is a church year post, but after yesterday's liturgy-heaviness, I feel like the back half of my mind is too busy meditating on death and redemption to write much about it. (Everytime I see our priest mark my babies' foreheads with crosses and intone "from dust you came, and to dust you shall return", I get a sucker-punched feeling that just doesn't go away too quickly.)

On the other hand, I just planned my menus for the next few weeks, and that, being coporeal and all, is easier to write about.

Menu planning is absolutely one of my favorite homemaking tasks. I love, love, love to cook - especially new recipes - and I love, love, love knowing exactly what I'm going to cook. (Have I mentioned that I'm a firstborn who hates surprises? No? Well, I am.) Menu planning and cooking are huge creative outlets for me.

I like balancing vegetarian meals with meals with meat. I like finding dishes that are healthy, cheap and yummy (this is just about as easy, btw, as finding clothes that are pretty, cheap, comfortable and can be thrown in the dryer). I shop every two weeks and so I enjoy the challenge of balancing the produce I buy so that the most perishable stuff will be used up first. I like taking my husband's inordinate love of cilantro and ginger into account when I pick my recipes. (He, in turn, indulges me in my inordinate love of reading the completed menu aloud to him.)


Okay, I know I said this was more about homemaking than it was about the church year, but I can't help but notice that menu planning is a tool, and like most tools, it can be used not only for the job it's meant to do (i.e., getting food on the table every night), but it can be used to love people. It'd be fun if I were doing this as a professional chef, and I'm sure there are ways you could do that job with great love (I just don't know how, not having been one), but there's a special sort of joy in doing this for my family. Joy in seeing them well-fed, happy around the supper table, full of energy from what they ate. My common prayer when I pray for our food is: "Thank you, Lord, for this food. May we use the energy we get from it to glorify You." Meals are just such a time of rejoicing and thanksgiving and fellowship. Your body and heart are fed at the same time. No wonder the commonest of all Christian institutions is a meal.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

Ashes and the Eucharist

Read Fr. Dan's illuminating post here.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica