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.

St. Francis De Sales on What to do when you think you've failed

Or when you think you've sinned:

. . . when we cannot discern whether we have done our duty well in some matter and are in doubt about whether we have offended God, we must then humble ourselves, ask God to forgive us, request more light for another time, and then forget all about what has happened and get back to our ordinary business. A curious and anxious search to determine whether we have acted well comes undoubtedly from the self-love that makes us want to know whether we are brave - just at that point when the pure love of God tells us: "Whether you were truant or coward, humble yourself, lean upon the mercy of God, always ask for pardon, and with a renewed confession of fidelity, go back to the pursuit of your perfection."

-St. Francis de Sales, from Thy Will Be Done, Letters to Persons in the World

What good instruction! I'm so grateful for the wisdom of those who've gone before us.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell


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Links

"Guns, Football, and Fornication":

Perhaps, society should discourage sex outside of marriage and making babies outside of marriage as ideals. We all admit that many will not live up to the ideals, but that would not make them worse. Social pressure does have some impact after all.

"Semiannual Gluttony Retrospective, Pt. I":

Because one thing I've learned through the past four years is that there are eating disorders that keep you fat and eating disorders that keep you thin, but they're still disorders. There are gluttonies that keep you fat and gluttonies that keep you thin, but both are no good way to live.

"Editing the Soul":

In a way, examining your conscience is very much like being a good editor. Editors are trained to spot and ferret out what is objectively unacceptable in a manuscript. But the best editors do more than just mark up the page with red ink, noting all the errors. This is only helpful in the most limited way, and it may very well lead the writer, especially if they're the delicate genius type, to despair. Instead, a good editor will try to figure out what the author was actually trying to say when they went astray; and they help them to make corrections and draw out something better.

"Of Women and the Freedom to be Holy":

. . . but there is, at least, here in her masterpiece work, an appreciation of what Christianity alone provided women in the 18th and 19th centuries: the freedom to be human. Safie is, after all, seeking only to be allowed to pursue virtue, to learn, to deepen her soul, and to marry a man she loves. She knows that it is only a Christian nation that can provide that freedom for her.

This is a part of the Christian story, a part of the Bible itself, that I think we’ve too often forgotten to tell, bowing, in our own way, to the common modern idea that Christianity is, at its core, oppressive to women. Instead of fighting back tooth and nail we most often answer only that Christian wives and mothers are very happy, or that women want the strong manly leaders our churches encourage. And that’s really not the story we need to be telling.

a bad argument for Planned Parenthood

If you're reading this, and you're one of the many women who've had an abortion, please know that I'm not writing to make you feel worse. Facing a pregnancy that will upend your world is terrifying, and there's not a one of us who hasn't done something stupid or wrong because we were scared. Along with that, it seems to me that abortion is a crime that, in many ways, carries its punishment with it, because who's going to miss the absent child more than the child's own mother? If you are in this place and sorrowing, know that there is certain forgiveness and comfort. The Lord Jesus only welcomes sinners, and so that's me and you and everyone. Please come to him and be relieved of the weight you're carrying. Set it down and be made whole. And know that there are wonderful people who will help you through your grief.

It is because of the great sorrow and weight of an abortion, though, that arguments like this trouble me so much. The pie chart seems to imply that because abortion services are only 3% of the services provided by Planned Parenthood that they carry no weight.

Does a wrong cease to be wrong just because it is performed by a person who mostly does right?

If a doctor spends 97% of his time caring for the poor, and 3% of his time euthanizing the old, are the euthanizations less criminal? If a teacher cares excellently for 97 of his students, but molests 3 of them, are those molestations less horrific? If a mechanic provides good service for 97% of his clients, but cheats 3% of them, is he less of a thief?

There are very good conversations to be had about abortion, about the care of women who become pregnant in hard circumstances, and about providing health care for the poor. But this argument? It is no argument at all.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell