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

Weekly Links: Language, Nerds, History, and more!

My weekly round-up of interesting reading from around the web:

-When my babies were still actually babies, I remember noticing that "ma" meant "mama", "milk", and "more", and that all of those things were pretty much the same thing in their little minds . . . if you've noticed the same thing, you'll probably enjoy this article: "Why the Words for 'Mom' and 'Dad' Sound So Similar in So Many Languages".

-I've heard people talk about "pastor theologians" a lot recently; here's the flip-side: "Pastoral Theologians".

-"We Have Met the Nerds, and They Are Us: Fandom, Fanfic, and the Landscape of Desire". This article goes from cultural phenomena to a Christian insight. I appreciated that, but I think my favorite part was this very clear description of the current zeitgeist:

In the West, and in America especially, we have grown up into a system that prizes desire above all. We all, nerd and non-nerd alike, live in our separate landscapes of desire. And we all have stories to tell, stories of scars and damage. It’s a hallmark of the contemporary West that we all feel like victims, we all feel broken. And we arebroken, but we also want what we want, and who the hell are you to tell me I’m wrong?

-Author Brandon Sanderson is in the middle of a very ambitious writing project - one that spans most of his published work - and I enjoyed reading his thoughts about what he's doing here: "Shadows of Self and the Mistborn Mega-Series".

-Finally, this is a great article that knocks down some old fables about a misunderstood period of history: "How the Middle Ages Really Were".

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

Links! Butterfly effect, maternal guilt, a Christmas blog carnival, and more!

You remember the "butterfly effect" in chaos theory that was made famous by Jurassic Park? Here's a real-life case involving the Japanese tsunami and a turbine plant out in the boonies in Pennsylvania. I think I actually laughed out loud when I got to the "IT WILL BE TRUE for this test floor" bit.

I laughed even harder and longer when I read Simcha Fisher's "Maternal Guilt Cheat Sheet". A sampling:

THE OFFENCE:

You accidentally let slip a comment which implies that not every moment of childrearing is a profound and ecstatic dance of bliss, a sentiment which will undoubtably set the pro-life movement back forty years and do irreparable harm to your children’s souls, causing the boys to become pimps and the girls to become bitter, tank top-wearing Riot Grrrls who listen to Terry Gross and tattoo “I [heart] the culture of death” on their lower backs.

THE SOLUTION:

Remind yourself that, in order for your words to do any harm, your kids would actually have to be listening to you. Whew!

Anyone else notice that zombies are showing up a lot in popular culture these days? I'd actually been wondering why that was, and this is the first article I've seen that offers a plausible theory. (Warning: slightly gory picture at the top of article - easy to scroll past, but don't open it while little kids are reading over your shoulder.) I do wonder, though, if even though some of it is about the economy, as the writer suggests, if more of it doesn't have to do with our culture having no coherent idea of what the afterlife is like. (Suggestion to culture: convert to Christianity! En masse!)

Facing down the editing of the first book I intend to query, I've been trying to give myself a crash course in grammar. My education in English grammar could charitably be called eclectic and I really wanted a more complete - and functional - understanding of the topic. And look! Here's a free online class in grammar! I think I've found what I need, and I'm passing on the link just in case someone else out there is realizing that not only is she an English nerd, she's an ignorant English nerd. (No? Just me?)

Kerry is thinking of organizing a Nativity blog festival (for Advent and Christmas and Epiphany) and wants to know if anyone's interested. Go tell her you are so we can do it! I'm sleepy enough right now that I think my contribution will be, "Let's all be quiet with our eyes closed and spend the holy season praying quietly," but surely someone has a better idea and if the blog carnival goes forward I'll just be able to happily copy those of you with more energy. :)

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Links - death, Thor, & more

Anne Kennedy on funerals. Very cross-cultural, very Christian. Right on.

Pro-life, pro-death? My husband explains how you can be both (sort of).

I can't help but like this one: apparently moms of twins are superwomen! (Biologically speaking.)

A review of Thor from an expert on all things Norse. His observations on how the film-makers were unable to truly imagine a pagan god are particularly interesting.

Need help remembering how to play "Rocks, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock"? This handy chart should help.

Where do writers get their ideas? As Patricia Wrede explains, it's not so much where they get them, but what they do with them once they have them.