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

Chapbook for Boethius' "The Consolation of Philosophy"

Book II
"But you are wrong if you think Fortune has changed towards you. Change is her normal behavior, her true nature." -section I

"I can say with confidence that if the things whose loss you are bemoaning were really yours, you could never have lost them." -section II

". . . you should not wear yourself out by setting your heart on living according to a law of your own in a world that is shared by everyone." -section II

"There is something in the case of each of us that escapes the notice of the man who has not experienced it, but causes horror to the man who has." -section IV

". . . he who hath much, wants much." -section V

"When you think of your future fame you think you are creating for yourself a kind of immortality. But if you think of the infinite recesses of eternity you have little cause to take pleasure in any continuation of your name." -section VI

"Good fortune deceives, but bad fortune enlightens." -section VIII

Book III
"Look up at the vault of heaven: see the strength of its foundation and the speed of its movement, and stop admiring things that are worthless." -section VIII

Book IV
"Some may perhaps think it strange that we say that wicked men, who form the majority of men, do not exist; but that is how it is. I am not trying to deny the wickedness of the wicked; what I do deny is that there existence is absolute and complete existence. Just as you might call a corpse a dead man, but couldn't simply call it a man, so I would agree that the wicked are wicked, but could not agree that they have unqualified existence. A thing exists when it keeps its proper place and preserves its own nature. Anything which departs from this ceases to exist, because its existence depends on the preservation of its nature." -section II

". . . only the wise can achieve their desire . . ." -section II

". . . the wicked cease to be what they once were. That they used to be human is shown by the human appearance of their body which still remains." -section III

"There is, indeed, great punishment then, sometimes exacted with penal severity, sometimes, I think, with purifying mercy; but it is not my intention to discuss it now." -section IV

"You are urging me to the greatest of all questions, a question that can never be exhausted. the subject is of such a kind that when one doubt has been removed, countless others spring up in its place, like the Hydra's heads. The only way to check them is with a really lively intellectual fire." - section VI

"It is because you men are in no position to contemplate this [divine] order that everything seems confused and upset." -section VI - puts us in our place! :)

"Some people are excessively afraid of suffering for which they actually have the endurance; others are full of scorn for suffering they cannot in fact bear. Both kinds [Providence] brings to self-discovery through hardship." -section VI

"All fortune is certainly good." - section VII

"Once earth has been surpassed
 It gives the stars." -section VII

Book V
"Human souls are of necessity more free when they continue in the contemplation of the mind of God and less free when they descend to bodies, and less still when they are imprisoned in earthly flesh and blood. They reach an extremity of enslavement when they give themselves up to wickedness and lose possession of their proper reason." -section II


". . . the operation of human reasoning cannot approach the immediacy of divine foreknowledge." -section IV

". . . human reason refuses to believe that divine intelligence can see the future in any other way except that in which human reason has knowledge." -section V

"Whatever lives in time . . . is in the position of not yet possessing tomorrow when it has already lost yesterday. In this life of today you do not live more fully than in that fleeting and transitory moment." -section VI

"Why, then, do you insist that all that is scanned by the sight of God becomes necessary? Men see things but this certainly doesn't make them necessary? And your seeing them doesn't impose any necessity on the things you see present, does it? . . . the divine gaze looks down on all things without disturbing their nature; to Him they are present things, but under the condition of time they are future things." -section VI

Last Line of the Book:
"A great necessity is laid upon you, if you will be honest with yourself, a great necessity to be good, since you live in the sight of a judge who sees all things." -section VI

Book Notes: The Actor and the Housewife, by Shannon Hale

This book still makes me laugh harder than any other book except "A Civil Campaign". And it makes me weep every time too - this time I got to the sad part while I was sitting at the table with the kids, and I kept quiet about it, but had to keep wiping away tears so that they wouldn't notice Mom was crying.

When we reread books there's always a reason. Sometimes it's because of the characters or the plot, sometimes it's the dialogue or it's because the setting is exactly the place we wish we could be at the moment.

With this book, I reread it because I remember how funny it is. But then, once I'm a few pages in, I remember that the reason I really love it is because of how Hale writes about marriage and family. I've never read a household that sounded so real. And it's a good household too - so often fiction is about dysfunction, and the fact that Hale can write about normality and make it more interesting than dysfunction just shows her chops. That's hard. And I love her for it.

Then, towards the end, I remember that the whole book is a theodicy and I love her for that too. Being a Mormon, she answers the theodicy differently than I would, but I think any orthodox believer of any faith can appreciate a piece of fiction that grows so organically out of the author's theology.

This is a good book. Go read it.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell