Weekly Links: The It's-Still-Christmas Edition

~ Links to some interesting reading, FOR What's left of your weekend ~

- "Twelve Days of Christmas Jollification"  - A primer on when the Twelve Days of Christmas actually started.


- "The Prophetess Anna Praises Christ": a beautiful meditation on Anna meeting the Christ child.


- "Aspire to be Fezziwig: Isn't It Time to Grow Up?"


-"People Disagreed with Jesus About the Bible Too"


-"Mary and Jesus and Me"


-"'An Odd Sort of Mercy': Jen Hatmaker, Glennon Doyle Melton, and The End of the Affair"



-"I'm On the Lookout for the Next Great Christian Novel"


-"How to Parent Without Regret": I needed to read this one this week.


-"The Bloody Attempt to Kidnap a British Princess"


-"Rules for Writers: Be Imperfect"


-"Why Can't We Read Anymore?"


-"It's Not Just You: Garfield Is Not Meant to Be Funny"



And, because I was reminded recently that if you've published a book, you ought to remind people of it every once in awhile...

-"Let Us Keep the Feast: Living the Church Year at Home" - a good resource if you want to learn more about why it's still Christmas, or if you want to learn how to celebrate any of the seasons that are coming up soon.


And that's it! I hope you have a lovely New Year's Day, and a good first week of 2017!


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell


This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Weekly Links! Welcome-to-Advent Edition

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

Faith 

-"The Advent Project": Biola is hosting The Advent Project again. Every day during Advent (and also, I think, every day of Christmas), they'll be posting a seasonal devotion with scripture, written meditation, art, and music. Recommended!

-My Advent Pinterest page: As I said on Twitter, this is really a "baby" Pinterest board, in that I have fewer than twenty pins so far. But it's growing, and the stuff that's already there is pretty good! Take a look, and let me know if you know of any pins I should add.


-"How to Deal with Erratic Corpulent Ginger Authoritarian Much-Married Rulers: Options for Christians in Public Life": This is very clever.


-"The Virtue of Tolerance"


-"The Bravery of Glennon Doyle Melton"-a snippet:

No amount of embracing the self will cure the ills of the soul. No Amount. There is nothing you can do to love yourself enough to rescue your soul from death. You can’t. 

-"The Church's Outsourcing of Women's Discipleship"


-"The Great War's damage to the English soul and the church": I've never read this perspective before. It was interesting.

Family 

-"Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It."


-"Advent Reading": a fantastic list of books to read to children this Advent.

Fiction 

-"How Realistic is the Way Amy Adams' Character Hacks the Alien Language in Arrival? We Asked a Linguist."

-"Protect Your Library the Medieval Way, with Horrifying Book Curses": Relevant to the interests of all devoted readers.


Have a lovely Sunday evening!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Weekend Links: a Cure for Cancer, Grimms' Fairy Tales, Ugly Bridesmaids' Dresses, and more!

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

 

Faith 

-"What It's Like to Be Gay at Wheaton College":  Great essay, and I especially appreciated this call-to-action:

For Christian communities to encourage gay people to remain celibate, they will have to model with integrity the implications of their teachings. Whether gay or straight, this means valuing celibacy to an equal if not greater degree than valuing marriage. On Facebook, through sermons, and in conversation, they must highly esteem Jesus’ celibacy. They will have to model in word and practice that all humans need love and connection—and not primarily in marriage and dating relationships. If this does not occur, LGBT Christians will not be convinced. No one likes a double standard. 

-"Voting for Donald Trump Is Not the Only Conservative Option"

-A couple of newsworthy articles regarding (sigh) my home state:
   -"Preserve Faith-Based Higher Education"
   -"'It's Going to Be an Issue': Biola, Conscience, and the Culture War"

-A good podcast listen: "The Gospel-Marinated Life: Mike Duran on Christian Horror"

-Another good podcast listen: "Momentum: Interview with Erin Straza"


On those last two: I met Mike Duran at a writing conference and really enjoyed my conversation with him, and Erin Straza provided excellent editing on my Christ and Pop Culture piece. You might assume that means I'm positively biased towards them*, but I prefer to think that my good fortune in meeting a couple of excellent writers and thinkers is your gain, because it means I get to introduce you to their work!

Family 

-Interesting: "10 Top Reasons You Should Have Kids Before Thirty"

-And literally life-giving good news: "A Scientist's Dream Fulfilled: Harnessing the Immune System to Fight Cancer"

-Yep: "A Cultural History of Ugly Bridesmaids' Dresses"

Fiction

-Ha-ha!  "Weird Things Writers Say (And What They Really Mean)"

- "The Owl, the Raven, and the Dove: The Religious Meaning of Grimms' Magic Fairy Tales"


Have a great Sunday!
-Jessica Snell



*You'd be right.

Weekly Links: September, Stumbling, and more

My weekly round-up of good reading for (what's left of) your weekend.


"September Seasonal Plans": I myself have been falling down in my duty to write about the change from summer to fall (probably because it's still ridiculously hot here and the trees don't look like they're even thinking about dropping their leaves), but you should go over to Shirley's place and read about all the wonderful autumnal things you can now reasonably enjoy.

"When You Stumble and Fall":

On some level, I carry on all week sinning and being awful and hauling the burden of those sins around with me without too much trouble or discomfort. It’s not like I’m always sitting at my kitchen table, stricken and afflicted, because of my selfish unkindness, my bitter unforgiveness of others. But that I carry them around myself presently, doesn’t mean that it will always be so. Jesus is the judge. He is the king. If I don’t give them to him to carry now, I will have to go on carrying them forever, and then the burden will be intolerable, and I will have to tolerate it. 

"Why the Key Character in 'Inside Out' Is the One that Isn't There":

Admittedly, there's something very lonely about Inside Out if you compare its external structure and Riley's journey through her physical world to traditional kids' movies. There's no Donkey from Shrek or Abu from Aladdin or Timon and Pumbaa from The Lion King cheering her up with "Hakuna Matata." This respect for the role of melancholy in the lives of kids is very Pixar, but it's particularly acute here: There are no other Incredibles, there is no EVE, there is no Dug the dog. Riley's allies and boosters in this adventure are not made or met along the way; they are summoned. They are hers — in fact, they are her. 

"I, Tertius":

For my money, the Epistle to the church in Rome–the book of Romans more commonly–is the finest, most important letter in church history. Certainly in the canon. So who wrote this tremendous piece of work? The apostle Paul, right? Actually, no. That’s a bit of a trick question. Paul is the author–it is full of his words and thoughts–but the writer is another chap we only find out about towards the end of the letter ...

"Our Reading Life":

So our reading life is reading for life; reading as the experience of the literary art which focuses and localizes a reality that is apparently too grand and overwhelming for us to give our full attention to with such immediacy. Reading great books is a chance to face reality through the prism of carefully crafted objects of art tested by time and worthy of our attention. We don’t bring fully formed faculties to the task; we open our still-forming eyes and ears to things we hadn’t previously known in their wild form. We learn reality by joining the human community that is already talking about it.

"Kim Davis: the Guts of a Convert":

We are Christians first, before we are Americans. So before we start talking about whether this is a good religious liberty case, or not, before we start distancing our educated selves from her simple faith, and before we take to the internet to show the liberal gestapo that we really are for the “rule of law” and that Kim Davis is a simpleton of a Christian who should have resigned before embarrassing us Christians—let's just step back from this fog and think with a faithful mind.

Weekly Links: Public School, Sex, the Fantastic Four, and more!

My weekly round-up of good reading from around the Web:


"The Public School Parent's Guide to Learning at Home":

Many families do all that we can to foster and nurture learning in the earliest years of a child’s life, as well we should. But when our children begin spending their days in the classroom, we aren’t off the hook! Continuing to build a home where learning is nurtured and valued is one of the best ways we can equip our children for life after graduation.

"We're All Sadists Now": Such an important point:

Yet there is another force at play today ... The belief that our sexual desires determine who we are at the deepest level.  This is somewhat ironic: The age which denies any real significance to sex also wants to argue that sexual desires are of paramount importance to personal identity and fulfillment.  

"The Most Important Scenes from Fantastic Four (As I Remember Them)".  Snort.  A sample from this hilarity:

Ben Grimm: Hey. Anyone else think it’s weird that a high school is doing a science fair, but every single exhibit looks like an elementary school science fair project?
Reed Richards: So basically, science science science. Here, let me steal a toy plane from a kid so I can teleport it for you.
Ben Grimm: Wait a second. Why is there an elementary school kid with an exhibit next to Reed? Is this an all-ages science fair?
Reed Richards: (presses button, plane is teleported). See? Science!
Teacher: Even though I am apparently judging this science fair, I know nothing about science and thus have to assume you used magic to make that kid’s toy disappear. I have to disqualify you, because you are obviously a witch.

Finally, I really, really, really liked Family Life Today's interview series with Rosaria Butterfield. You can listen to the whole thing free. Here are the links:
1) A Train Wreck Conversion
2) What Is Hospitality?
3) What Is Truth?
I've rarely heard anyone so thoughtful, so open and considerate, and yet so thoroughly Christian. Really worth the listen.



Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Weekly Links: Planned Parenthood, Obergefell, earthquakes, and more!

So very, very many links for you this week. (Possibly because I took a week or two off!)

Enjoy the good words of people so much smarter than me.



"After Obergefell": I always find it heartening when smart, godly people give good counsel on what to do (as opposed to the disheartening feeling I get after reading an article that's a mere wringing of the hands):

Churches must take responsibility for marriages and families. The argument that we need to protect marriage for children is true in principle, laughable in practice. In sections of America, marriages aren’t steady enough to protect anyone. The best argument for traditional marriage is a thriving traditional marriage.

"The Really Big One" - Terrifying. (And makes me happy to be a bit east and a bit south of the region they're talking about. But still, as some one close to the Pacific and very sincerely in earthquake country? Terrifying.)

"10 Foods that Regrow in Water Alone" - Here's a break from the doom-and-gloom: things still grow! And better and more easily than you might have guessed!

"The End of Sexual Ethics: Love and the Limits of Reason": charity and logic applied to sexual ethics and identity.  God bless you, Matt Anderson.


"Arms Wide Open":

I am the type who rehearses life. I plan. I practice. I think of every possible thing that could go wrong, and I set aside provisions for them. I am careful and fearful and shy. But my daughter? She is brave.

"Planned Parenthood and the Atrocity of Corpse Selling": This is really horrific.

"I, Racist":

You are “you,” I am “one of them.” 

"How We Do Family Devotions":

I read slowly and expressively with just enough drama to cut through their early-morning fog. I pause to tell my daughter to remove her hands from around her sister’s neck, and keep reading. When I have come to the end of our passage I briefly explain something from the passage (and by “briefly” I mean a minute or less). Sometimes I have to cheat by quickly consulting the study Bible notes so I’ll have something worth saying. Then I try to come up with a question or two I can ask the kids—a question of comprehension or of application. And I explain why calling your brother “a stupid idiot” is inappropriate during a reading of 1 Corinthians 13. And that’s our Bible reading.

"Non-Competing Theories of the Atonement":

As I told my veteran pastor of my plans to do graduate studies in the doctrine of the atonement, a wry smile creased his face as he asked: "So...which theory of the atonement do you believe in?" I responded, "All of them!"

Weekly Links: Game of Thrones, the Trinity, and Macbeth!

"Why Is that Woman Naked?: Sources of Objectification in the Game of Thrones":

Martin’s real women problem has much deeper roots. For most of the female characters in Game of Thrones, their value resides, without question, in their sexuality. 

"'Game of Thrones' and Its Caricature of Faith":

As a novel, the problem with Martin’s reductionist criticism of religion is not that it’s silly (although it certainly is). The problem is that his characters, taken as a whole, become a bit unrealistic, lacking a facet that was pretty common for many people in the Middle Ages, namely: religious beliefs that were both genuine and not reducible to violent fundamentalism.

"Why I Am Opposed to Gay Marriage": I said earlier this week (on Facebook) that I thought a better name for this (10,000 word!) article might be "Why I Am For Marriage, Full Stop". This is beautiful, and articles on this topic are rarely beautiful. But this one is. Read on for some really good & lovely thought about how creation was set up from the beginning. Much more a positive construction than a negative tearing-down.  Worth the time it takes to read (or even, to re-read).


"Unperplexed About the Atonement": Humble-brag: I get to go to church with this guy (and better yet, with his lovely wife):

Johnson opens the book with the story of a pastor asking him, “which theory of the atonement do you believe in?” Johnson’s response: “All of them!” Something has gone wrong when the question “which theory” somehow becomes the main, or the only, question about atonement. Johnson is concerned to make that question unaskable, to “resist the search for a controlling category” that would cover all theologizing about the atonement. “There are better ways to engage the doctrine,” he says . . .

And, in keeping with the theme of this blog, here's a GREAT sermon for Trinity Sunday (celebrated last week).

And, if you need yet more Trinity goodness (and seriously, we all do), here's some more:




Finally, "Macbeth" is one of the scariest of Shakespeare's plays, and this trailer makes me hope that this movie actually captured the horror of it (i.e., the guy &; his wife are tempted by devils, they GIVE IN, and terrible things happen, and then Macduff comes 'round and wreaks bloody, righteous vengence):





I love it when every movie still looks like a painting.



Have a great weekend!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Weekly Links: good rules for eating, superheroes, and more!

"Simple Rules for Healthy Eating":

It’s much easier, unfortunately, to tell you what not to do. But here at The Upshot, we don’t avoid the hard questions. So I’m going to put myself on the line. Below are the general rules I live by. They’re the ones I share with patients, with friends and with family. They’re the ones I support as a pediatrician and a health services researcher. But I acknowledge up front that they may apply only to healthy people without metabolic disorders (me, for instance, as far as I know).

"Why Comic Book Nerds Hate 'Batman vs. Superman'":

Zack Snyder thinks about comic books the way that Peter Jackson thinks about Tolkien. All he sees are the battles and the fights and is completely blind to the themes and characterization that make those bouts of violence mean anything. 

"In Love with Small Towns: Author Interview with Jill Kemerer": I love reading about the persistence it takes to make it as an author - I find it so encouraging!

"The Power of Confession":

The beautiful thing about testimonies at their best is they're not meant to establish the speaker in a power relationship with the listener. Rather, they're an act of humility. Here is my life, the testimony-giver says. Please find in it your own path toward assurance. And please know that after today, I will go on living; this is not the end of the story.

"80's Free Range Childhood Was Not the Sam as 50's Childhood":

Surely we’ve learned something from the scandals in the church and all the conversations about rape culture and bullies–that abuse thrives where there’s silence and lack of supervision, where popularity is currency, where might is right, where blackmail keeps what happens on the playground on the playground. Children really can be quite naughty left to their own devices. Almost as naughty as grownups.

This article: "Why I Haven't Spoken Out on Gay Marriage Till Now"  and its follow-up, "Why I haven't Spoken Up: More Thoughts", I value particularly because they are from a tradition that is not my own, and take an approach that is different than many I've seen, yet clearly a path taken in both charity and obedience. I don't think I agree with all of it, but I found a lot of food for thought in her words.


Finally, skip this if you don't want the earworm, but this guy definitely has the right idea on how to have fun with singing in your car (love the looks on his friend's face):


Have a great weekend!
Jessica Snell

Weekend Links! - Christmas, New Year's, and more!

"Why Busy Parents Should Always Go to Midnight Mass":

Now that I got that first, pious reason out of the way, I have to admit the real reason: it really is the most convenient. Think about it: Christmas eve and Christmas day are already packed with activities, the kids are already buggy, and my husband and I are already up late doing last-minute preparations, and already nobody gets much sleep. As long as it's the craziest 48 hours of the year anyway, might as well go whole hog and add a van trip into town in the middle of the night. I'll tell you what's difficult: finding time the evening before, when we're supposed to be wrapping presents, or the morning of, when everyone's hopped up on chocolate and candy canes and doesn't want to be torn away from their new toys. We've tried the vigil Mass and Christmas morning Mass, and they are not a walk in the park!

"Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: A Review of Rosaria Butterfield’s Book":

So often, especially concerning sex, Christians talk as if we are asking people to nip a little here, tuck a little there. But to follow Christ is to die. To be fair, Christ gives us back a new life, an eternal life that can’t be compared to what we lost. But having borne two children in the last six years, I can tell you, birth is messy, and painful, and the best sound you can hope to hear in your newborn is a loud, terrified cry. New birth in Christ is no less terrifying and miraculous.

"Clutter Interrupted’s New Year’s Goals"  - I love reading about New Year's resolutions, and this is a particular fun and thorough post on the subject. (And there's a podcast to go with!)

"The Herod in Each of Us":

We see Him as a threat to all things that could bring happiness. Tiny Baby. Gentleness incarnate. And we rage. And we struggle. And yes, we kill. We destroy peace. We destroy joy. We slaughter childlike faith. All because we think we know better. We are so afraid of relinquishing our own wills, that we miss the one thing that will give us genuine peace. 

"Word of the Day: twelve":

One of the sad losses as Western man moved from liturgical time to secular time has been the festal season. We have shopping periods, with no special beginning or end, stretching farther and farther out away from Christmas Day or Easter, losing all connection to the feast, and bringing in their wake not festivity but weariness and ennui.

Links: the Bible, sex, California's gods, and more

"Post-depressed post":

I wrestle with many things I find in the Bible, and I cannot claim to have solved its mysteries (I've written about how I deal with those things elsewhere, and won't address that subject tonight). But when I go to the Bible I come away with the sense that I've encountered something entirely true to life. It is not a happy book about bunnies, nor is it a “realistic” novel by Zola. It contains real pain, real tragedy, and real hope.

"Is It Really Okay to Laugh About Sex?":

I'm not just talking about intercourse. Human sexuality is about so much more than that. It's about the incredibly weird cosmic joke that two things work together only when they're opposites of each other. It's about the baffling irony that innuendo speaks louder than frankness. It's the dance between power and helplessness, and the eye-popping switcheroo when you realize that the balance has silently and profoundly shifted. It's the fearful delight of discovering yet more doors to open. And the blessed defeat when you discover that sometimes, you'll only get what you need once you give up grasping for it so hungrily.

"California's Gods":

In California, there's The 5, The 405, The 10. Each of these freeways has its own quirks, a personality of sorts. They aren't just stretches of pavement but presences, creatures that necessitate the definite article by their very individuality and uniqueness.

"Writing Excuses": new-to-me really great podcast for writers (and probably also for sci-fi/fantasy fans generally, if you like the-man-behind-the-curtain sort of stuff).

"Untangling the Threads of Gluttony":

 As I have been struggling with weight maintenance more than usual this month, I have found myself contemplating the two dominant narratives about weight loss and weight gain, and why neither of them ultimately satisfies.

 "North Carolina, Biden, and Same-Sex Marriage":

What’s at issue is whether the government will recognize such unions as marriages — and then force every citizen and business to do so as well. This isn’t the legalization of something, this is the coercion and compulsion of others to recognize and affirm same-sex unions as marriages.

And, on a not-directly-related note: it looks like our parish church is likely to lose its building soon. Pray for us. What keeps coming to my mind is the verse from Proverbs that says, "It is better to go to a house of mourning than a house of feasting, and the wise take it to heart." I'm so glad to be part of All Saints, Long Beach.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Links! reading, voting, writing & more! (like Austenland, Potter & ungrammatical vampires)

I'm sorry for the lack of posts, folks! I've been following through on my summer ambitions and doing lots of writing and cleaning. :D But here are some fun links, from the (not insignificant) time I've also spent reading:
Willa writes about having "landmarks" in the history of literature - those authors and eras you know really well, and muses about whether it's good to make a vast, shallow survey of literature or to really dig in to one particular area. (I think you probably need to do both - and she has a great Lewis quotation about how the latter will naturally lead to the former.)
Hey, this is why I vote for those "gutless, unreliable, ineffectual Republicans" too!
Oooh, Shannon Hale's "Austenland" is being made into a movie!
This interview with Jason Isaacs (who plays Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies) is great. An excerpt, when he was asked if he expected his character to take the journey he did:
I mean, most of us would run to the bookshop at midnight when the books came out, partly because we’re fans, and partly to find out if we had a job next year.
And I like this part where he describes how actors work:

Every single actor who plays a part that is on screen even momentarily can talk like this about their own characters, because you’re always there. You may not be speaking or the camera may not be pointing at you, but you create an entire life for yourself so that when the camera does catch you, you’ve got something to bring to the party.
It reminds me of all the work I do on my own characters' backgrounds. I need to know more about them than the reader ever sees, or they're not going to act like actual people when they're on stage (on page?).

And this is a helpful little collection of analysis on the Church and homosexuality. An excerpt, from Albert Mohler:
In this most awkward cultural predicament, evangelicals must be excruciatingly clear that we do not speak about the sinfulness of homosexuality as if we have no sin. As a matter of fact, it is precisely because we have come to know ourselves as sinners and of our need for a savior that we have come to faith in Jesus Christ. Our greatest fear is not that homosexuality will be normalized and accepted, but that homosexuals will not come to know of their own need for Christ and the forgiveness of their sins.

This is not a concern that is easily expressed in sound bites. But it is what we truly believe.
And an excerpt from John Piper:

What’s new is not even the celebration of homosexual sin. Homosexual behavior has been exploited, and reveled in, and celebrated in art, for millennia. What’s new is normalization and institutionalization. This is the new calamity.
"Normalization and institutionalization." A-yup. There's also a video at the link that I haven't watched. (Just to let you know. I'm sure you wondered.)


Finally, if you want a fun way to brush up on your grammar, try this site, where the Twilight books are picked apart, comma by comma, with a very sardonic hand. (Can you have a sardonic hand? Oh well.)