Weekly Links

From a lunchtime walk last week.

A quick note before I get to the links: if you're a regular here, you've probably noticed that my blogging has decreased sharply. That's because, as I wrote here, I've changed my habits significantly in this new year, most especially by taking off my editor hat for awhile in order to concentrate on my writing.

And I have been writing, mostly on a novel, although I have a few non-fiction assignments I've been working on too.

The result of all this non-blog writing is that, when I turn to my poor, neglected blog at the end of the day, I find that I don't have many words left. 

I think this will change soon--I'm taking lots of notes for posts I want to write!--but for now I'm just going to keep putting up these Sunday links posts. I love sharing good writing and interesting stories. I hope you'll stick around for the links and, eventually, for some more original work from yours truly.

Okay, now onto the good stuff!


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

-"Are You Fighting the New Greed?" - on technology addiction

-"The Distinct God of the Book of Job"

-"The Benedict Option: What It Is and Isn't": the always-helpful Karen Swallow Prior, on the book of the moment.

-"What Will You Do? You Must Read to Lead"

-"Professing to be Wise, They Became LeFous": Linking to this especially for this good point that I've not seen anyone making elsewhere:

Disney...had to go and act like this story only exists to preach a bad sermon. This is worse than the most moralistic Christian films.

-"Family Christian Stores Close, But What Happens to Authors?"

-"Simple Rules for Healthy Eating"

-"Resist the Internet"

-"'London Bridge is Down': the Secret Plan for the Days After the Queen's Death"

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

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Weekly Links!

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

Faith

-"What Is Gospel Fluency?"


-"Embracing Valentine's Day Disappointment"


-"A Just Silence": This was helpful to me, especially as I've been thinking recently about how I do (vs. how I should) use social media.


-"Submit to the New Sexual Orthodoxy or Risk Losing Everything"

Family

-"A Simple Way to Speed Delivery": Somehow, this just reminds me of HOW HUNGRY I WAS after I delivered my first child.

Fiction

-"Painting a Story"


-"Why Don't We Talk About 'Stranger Than Fiction' Nearly Enough?": I love this movie.


-"Sunny Day": not fiction, but a good poem, worth reading.


-2016 Novelist Income Survey Results, Part One, and Part Two




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

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

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

Weekly Links: some good reading from around the Web

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

Faith 

-"Bible Basics: A Baby Believer Counting Primer": cool-looking Kickstarter from an fellow alum of THI.

-"One, Holy and Broken: Conflict in Christ's Church":

A church I attended suffered the pangs of conflict, and unfortunately, this was nothing new in my experience. As my wife and I moved around the country for graduate studies and then different teaching positions, four of the six churches we attended suffered deeply from conflict during the handful of years we were there (the other two were riddled by conflict before and after our time there). Based on our limited experience, to attend and participate in the life of a congregation, to be a member of a church is to participate in conflict.

Family

-"It's 'digital heroin': how screens turn kids into psychotic junkies": Important stuff. Particularly this bit:  

Once a kid has crossed the line into true tech addiction, treatment can be very difficult. Indeed, I have found it easier to treat heroin and crystal meth addicts than lost-in-the-matrix video gamers or Facebook-dependent social media addicts.

-And, to add to the category of What-I-Am-Going-To-Do-If-I-Ever-Get-Stupid-Rich: "Data Scientist Creates Fully Optimized Road Trip Map to Every National Park".

Maybe we can do a tenth of it every summer for the next decade ...?

Fiction 

-First thing to mention under the "fiction" category is a fun Twitter even I'm participating in this month: #WIPjoy! Founder Bethany A. Jennings calls it a month of "celebrating our works-in-progress and encouraging one another in our writing" and you can read more about it here. 

I'm having so much fun participating in it this month! And it's early in the month, so if you want in, there's still time. Just head on over to Twitter...

-"Mike Birbiglia's 6 Tips for Making It Small in Hollywood. Or Anywhere": Good stuff for any of my fellow creatives.

Have a lovely weekend!

-Jessica Snell

Weekly Links: some good reading from around the web

wouldn't mind heading back here...

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

Faith 

-"Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread...": a good poem for Sunday.

-"A Commendation of Leviticus": a helpful guide to a book that often stymies Christians in their Bible reading.

-"15 Proverbs for Social Media Users": much-too-applicable to real life!

-"Some Things You Should Know About Christians Who Struggle With Anxiety": yes, this.

-"On Daughters and Dating: How to Intimidate Suitors": I loved this. I loved the implication that the truly admirable men are the ones who look at strong, godly, content women and say, "Oh, yes please". And that the best way to protect your daughter is to raise her into a woman who is competent and who knows her worth and who knows her family and her God love her, support her, and have her back.  A snippet:

Instead of intimidating all your daughter's potential suitors, raise a daughter who intimidates them just fine on her own. 

Family 

-"McMansion 101: What Makes a McMansion Bad Architecture": I fell down this rabbit hole thanks to Anne Kennedy, and I don't regret it. This was fascinating.

-"How one family is sending 13 kids to college, living debt free - and still plans to retire early": inspiring stuff!

Fiction

-"Where Her Whimsy Took Me": a love letter to Dorothy Sayers' excellent novel, Gaudy Night.

-"The Writing Tricks We'd Be Naked Without": a good round-up of tips for my fellow writers.

-"The Unofficial Rules of the Starship Enterprise": This hilarious list-style bit of fanfic confirmed my secret theory that life aboard a REAL starship would inevitably involve a M.A.S.H.-style illegal still...


I hope you have a good weekend!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

This post contains an Amazon affiliate link; 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: Rejection, Pluto, Achilles, and more!

My weekly round-up of interesting links from around the Web!


"Ranks of the Rejected: Josh Vogt": I've been enjoying the Rejectomancy blog for awhile now, but I particularly liked this quotation from his interview with Josh Vogt:

[My first rejection letter] didn’t surprise me at all. It acted like a milestone in my fledgling writing career because it meant I was actually doing what I needed to do: write stories and submit them to publications.

"The Full Armor of Achilles to Withstand Odysseus (Eph. 6)":

Because as Paul wrote these ideas down in Greek, it’s very likely that the Greek classics were part of his specifically literary equipment. Lines of Homer were so pervasive in elementary education in the Greco-Roman world that children would practice their letters by writing Homeric sentences. And once you pick up on the way Homer describes warfare, you notice some particular expressions and conventions that help explain some of Ephesians 6’s peculiar phrasing.

"A Philosophy of Internet Safety":

The main line of defense against cyber bullying is not to avoid the internet, but to be in control of your identity on it.

"New, Gorgeous, Pictures of Pluto":  The title pretty much says it all!


And, finally, some exciting news from Ranee, a longtime friend of this blog: her knitting pattern "Saint Catherine of Alexandria" has just been released in "One-Skein Wonders for Babies: 101 Knitting Projects for Infants and Toddlers."

Congratulations, Ranee!  The pattern is so cute!  (You can see several pictures of it if you head over to Ranee's blog.)


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell



This post contains an Amazon affiliate link; 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

"Guy in your MFA":

 Guy In Your MFA (Guy) was born out of a big stack of pieces I needed to critique for the next day and my frustration with this whole culture of pseudo-pretentious literary works, both in myself and in my colleagues.

"Five Things Every Christian Should be Doing with God’s Word"

. . . Psalm 119 is one of the best examples of Scripture speaking about Scripture.  It is the Word about the Word.
And in it, we find David interacting with the Word of God in five ways that should be paradigmatic for all believers . . .

"The Most Qualified By Far: On Clinton and Qualifications":

Mrs. Clinton is one times more qualified than Mr. Bush . . . at best.

"A Composed Salad Is a Meal Unto Itself":

 . . . it can contain almost anything the cook wants to arrange, roll, roast, poach, bake or grill, from thin shavings of fennel and whole kernels of local corn to dollops of ricotta and shards of country ham. Tossed together, the result would be sloppy and monotonous. A bit of order makes it satisfying and elegant.

Weekend Links: Facepalm Jesus, purity, talking about race, and more!

Here's some reading for your weekend!

"Coffee with Facepalm Jesus Calling":

An earlier generation asked What Would Jesus Do? But these days, people are increasingly comfortable with skipping the hypothetical, shifting out of the subjunctive, and just telling us What Jesus Would Say, in their opinions. If he were really here, that is: if he were talking, if he were blogging, or meme-ing, or cartooning, or writing devotionals.

"Let the Battle for Purity Begin":

As a young priest in the 1970s, I served for a decade in campus ministry settings. In those years, the first fruits of the sexual revolution were already apparent. Pope Francis’s image of the Church as a “field hospital” in the midst of such wreckage would describe it well.

"On Being White (And Talking About It) – Part 1":

I have seen my students do one of two things when confronted with a glaring disparity in the real world to their beliefs about human equality – they either (1) become very uncomfortable and frustrated that their parents didn’t teach them the truth, or (2) become very self-righteous, sure that equality is real, and that anyone experiencing inequality must be morally at fault for their own situation.

And Part II can be found here.

"Murder in Los Angeles":

The Homicide Report addresses two questions every newspaper covering a major metropolis should answer: who was killed last night, and why? But most newspapers don’t do this because the logic of most newsrooms is that not all murders are sexy, grisly, or surprising enough to be written about. The Homicide Report operates on the inverse principal: Every murder gets a story because murder is inherently worthy of our attention

"Today Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath, Died (1711)": I'm linking to this one because it contains the full text of Bishop Ken's sublime "Evening Hymn". I've long loved the version in our hymnal, and I was delighted to learn that not only does it have more verses, but that there's a matching "Morning Hymn" to go with it!

"What I’m learning about choice and gratitude from not skipping songs on my iPod":

Not having a choice about which song I listen to makes me calculate finding pleasure in songs differently. Instead of actively working to perfectly assemble the music so that it will make me happy, I derive happiness from whatever is in front of me. The switch in mindsets in the same switch you make when you go from being a shopper making a purchase to being a recipient receiving a gift. One involves feeling powerful, deciding which among a variety of items will best please you; the other involves receptivity, seeking what is good in whatever you have been given.