Weekend Links - Memorial Day Edition

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

But first, on this Memorial Day, here is a prayer from the BCP, in remembrance of those who have given their lives for our country:

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, in whose hands are the living and the dead: We give thee thanks for all thy servants who have laid down their lives in the service of our country. Grant to them thy mercy and the light of thy presence; and give us such a lively sense of thy righteous will, that the work which thou hast begun in them may be perfected; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord. Amen.

 

Faith 

-"Gandalf, Job, and the Indignant Love of God":

So what of God’s opening lines? Is he not dealing forcefully with Job? Is he not angry? Even indignant and sarcastic? Yes, but none of this means he’s acting with anything less than merciful lovingkindness.

-"How to Glorify God By Being a Generalist" 

-"A (Very) Brief, Gospel-Centered Defense Against the Problem of Evil"

-"The Phil Vischer Podcast: Religious Liberty with Russell Moore"

-"A Call for Plodding Bloggers"

-"Is Your Pastor Happy to See You?":

To be a Christian is to be a churchman or churchwoman. The New Testament knows of no vibrant discipleship apart from life in the local church, no authentic Christianity divorced from the covenant of life together according to the biblical structure of the local church. And if this is true, it behooves us to be the best churchmen and churchwomen we can be. And good churchfolk love, respect, and submit to their pastors.

Family

-"Keeping the Calendar to One Day" - an inspirational idea from Ann.

-"Don't Dismiss Housework":

This is where, I would argue, the moral imagination comes in. The task of cleaning itself may not require a lot of intellectual prowess—but it does require a great deal of imaginative skill and understanding. The work of maintaining a home is tied up inexplicably in the question of what it means to be human, and the person who cares for the home must adhere to a set of underlying ideas and mores that make his or her work meaningful. After all, why is it that we do not wish to live in squalor? Why do we see cleanliness and order as essential tenets for human flourishing? It must be because these constitute basic understandings of what human life should constitute—ideas that have a moral and spiritual tradition.

-"What I've Learned in Twenty Years of Marriage": I love the difference he articulates between a "merger marriage" and a "start-up marriage".

-"Blue-Collar Contentment"

-"Talking to My Boys After the Transgender Talk at Their Public School" - a helpful article.

Now, onto the links...

Fiction

- "Save the Allegory!"  - allegories: both different and cooler than you might have thought they were.

-"'Gossamer', by Stephen Baxter" - this beautiful short story pictures life (a very different sort of life) way out on the cold plains of Pluto.

-"A Letter to Friends Looking to Break into a Part-Time Writing Career" - not strictly regarding fiction, but good writing advice all the same.

Finally, if you haven't yet, please come and enter the giveaway for a copy of "Not Alone"!  The stories in it of faith during suffering are truly inspiring.

Have a good and meaningful Memorial Day, folks!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

My To-Be-Read List, and how I organize it

Every time the old year turns over to the new, I do a few things:

1) I update my "yarn stats".  I have a document where I keep track of what I knit each year: how many skeins, how many yards, etc.  Maybe this is a blog post of its own, waiting to happen.  :)

2) I update my "books read" document.  I've been keeping track of how many books I read each year for about five years now. I keep track of author and title, too.

And it got me thinking about my to-be read list, and how I use it.


I used to keep track of my books-to-be read on a Word document, but lately I've also been using the "to-be read" function on Goodreads.

(I still use Word docs to keep track of the books I've actually read; though I keep track of most of the books I read on Goodreads, for various reasons, I don't put all of them on there.)

I know some folks put every vaguely interesting book they run across on their TBR list, but I do things a little bit differently: I only add books I think I'm actually going to read.

I don't put on books that I want my kids to read.  Or books that I should read.

Just books I think I'm actually going to read.


This means my TBR list isn't very long.

Y'know, just fifty books long or so.


And it doesn't include the Bible, which I am constantly rereading.  And it doesn't include the books I know I'm going to reread sooner or later because they're sitting on my physical bookshelves and I love them.  Those just get read when I read them.  Whenever.

No, my TBR list is for new books, mostly.

New-to-me, anyway,  If you look at my TBR list on Goodreads, you'll see that it's organized in a particular order:
1) New non-fiction.
2) Old non-fiction.
3) New fiction.
4) Old fiction.  (Here live Heyer and Orczy.)


So what about you?  How do you keep track of the books you want to read?


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Links: Organizing vs. Decluttering, the Future of Protestantism, and more!

Weekend links - just a bit late. Enjoy!

"The powerful difference between organizing & decluttering":

And then there’s the beautiful aftermath that follows decluttering. You find yourself happy to own less, so if you consciously keep stuff from entering your door again, you start owning this habit. You genuinely don’t want to shop because then you’d have to do something with the new stuff.

"The Future of Protestantism": This video from Biola University is a great discussion - my husband and I watched the live stream earlier in the week, and really enjoyed it.

And this post contains a bunch of great follow-up links.  I'm just really heartened by listening to smart, thoughtful, educated people working through these important issues.

And now, here's a treat - a much shorter treat - that's relevant to our interests: two brilliant profs from my alma mater, discussing the liturgical year:

A Couple Small Projects: Hair Clips & a Pillow

In between working on crochet projects, I've finished a few other small things here and there.

This week I organized my girls' hair stuff drawer (yes, a whole drawer - three girls, lots of hair) and I pulled out bows that had been worn till tarnished and dirty and flower clips with flowers falling off and the like.

The flower clips I repaired by adding some extra blossoms (forgive the busy newspaper print underneath the clips):

The dirty bows I pulled off and threw away, and then I hot-glued new flowers onto the still-useful clips (you can see the clip at the far left awaiting its blossoms):
I repaired a couple of headbands (gluing feathers and flowers back on) and then made a little something for me, perfect for sticking into one side of an updo (it's glued to a clear acrylic hair comb, which you can see under the flower if you look closely):

I love how quickly you can make something pretty with hot glue. Before I married my husband, I thought hot glue was fussy and more trouble than it was worth. But . . . I was wrong. He converted me! (Though, I don't think I've ever seen him use it to make hair things . . )

Also, since I had the sewing machine out for a larger project (that's still in process), I whipped up a quick throw pillow using a couple of large, pretty cloth napkins I'd bought on clearance, oh, a year ago? Here it is:

Forgive the bad light (it's been cloudy here), but isn't that embroidery lovely? Since the napkins already had that lovely, thick hemming job on them, I just cut the tags off and then traced the already existent-stitching with my sewing machine to sew the two together, right sides out, left a small hole, stuffed them with fiberfill, and stitched up the opening. Result: pillow!

It was so easy, I want to keep my eyes out for more pretty napkins at Marshall's!

It's nice to have some little things finished in the midst of bigger projects. Gives me the juice to keep going.

Speaking of bigger projects, because I so needed another one, I just started a cardigan in broomstick lace:

Yeah. I'm hopeless. :) Truth is, handiwork, I find, much like exercise and writing, fights the winter blues. Something about the tangible, actual, beauty of it makes me feel that life can't be as bad as I'm sometimes tempted to think. It's as if producing order in the work between the tips of my fingers restores the order in my emotions and my mind. It's a very great gift, work. Praise God for it. Amen.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

Putting Things in Their Places

After all the church year fun with St. George’ Day last week, I thought I’d write a bit about the homemaking side of things.

We’ve been in our new place for almost a year, and I think I can finally say that we’re really moved in. Everything’s unpacked that’s going to be unpacked, and though there are a few pictures yet to be hung, I feel okay saying that we’ve settled in.

Now comes what feels like the fun part: settling the things that have settled. When we moved, things all found a place, but not everything found its proper place. There are corners that attract clutter and corners that attract books; there are surfaces that attract papers and surfaces that attract craft projects. (And every place attracts toys.) So now I am working on clearing out the corners and clearing off the surfaces and beginning to make places for all the things that have settled where they shouldn’t.

It’s a lovely job, because I feel like I can take it a bit at a time. There aren’t any huge projects lying about anymore, things that must-be-done-now-or-we-won’t-have-a-surface-to-eat-dinner-on. No, these are the little things that slowly make the house feel more peaceful. The top of the piano now only has plants and candles and pictures (and a small pink matruska), rather than plants and candles and pictures and papers and hair things. The sewing desk now has the sewing machine, a few other necessary objects, and a large, clear surface on which to work. The space behind the coffee table where Things Accumulated now mostly is just home to the basket of library books and a big canvas bag of folded fabric. The bar between the kitchen and the dining room looks pretty now, because the plants on it are no longer hiding behind piles of mail and scads of errant notepads.

There’s more to do – lots – but it’s all satisfying little pieces. Now I can take a breath and think and say, “where should this go? Should it even be here? How can this space be best used?” It’s work, but it’s peaceful work, and I’m glad that we’ve gotten to this point.

I was glad for the move, too, and I’m sure the big, urgent projects will come again. But while I’m in this season, I want to notice and enjoy it.

And I'm finding that, after I really think through a certain space, and arrange in in the things that ought to be there, and take out the things that shouldn't, that it's easier to keep it clean than it used to be. I don't know if I can eventually get the whole condo that way, but I've never had a place that was all ours before - that we weren't renting and/or sharing - so maybe it's different when you have complete say over the space? I'm wondering if that will make it easier to make order and keep order. It seems to be, so far. But even if not, I'm happy with improvement; I don't need perfection.

Upon reflection, this is what my spring cleaning looks like this year. It's not deep-cleaning, it's deep organization. How about you? Have you done either spring cleaning or spring organization? And if you've ever moved from a rented home to an owned home, have you found it easier to organize after the move? I'm curious if my experience corresponds with others.

Though, the truth is, no home here is our home; we are always on pilgrimage. And we're called to be good stewards of whatever is entrusted to our care - rented or owned. So perhaps it shouldn't make so much difference after all.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell