Near Our Hand and Within Our Gaze

I would like to say that I have resolved to write more in 2021, but the truth is I have only resolved to write one thing and its material won’t be for public consumption any time soon. I have written less in the past year than in any year since the early 2000s. My friend reminded me this morning that I released a book in 2020 and we moved cross country in a pandemic, and, I’ll add, we renovated a house. So I am asking my feelings about how little writing I did this past year to catch up with my reality. And I’m also asking my will to bend a bit more in the direction of writing than it necessarily wants to. We shall see how that goes.

I did, however, do some reading, especially in the last few weeks. December was almost entirely made up of too much bread and charcuterie and watching whole tv series on Amazon prime and reading books front to back in one afternoon. It was a lovely month to rest and reset some of our mental acuities. Here’s some of what I read or listened to or recommend from this month.

Articles

To comment on this piece is to defeat its purpose, so I give you only its title and a link to it. Read it slowly, save it for later if you can.

Here’s a piece from everyone’s favorite curmudgeon on everyone’s favorite agrarian octogenarian. If you’re not sure whether either should be your favorite, allow the piece to make its point.

As I begin to work on the aforementioned writing, I am revisiting some of my favorite pieces on writing. Here is one about the power of a single line.

Our world has always had need for prophetic voices, those who speak out from the midst of the environment that needs righting. David French is one of those voices and here he writes on the continual need for more of those voices.

Books

Charlotte Donlon’s book The Great Belonging was a timely read for me on loneliness and a kind of belonging people can’t give to us.

For Christmas Nate gave me The Invisible Life of Addie Larue which everyone has been raving about (even the bedheaded guy with the bloodshot eyes with whom we talked for fifteen minutes about books in the fiction aisle of a local bookstore). I didn’t love it. I wanted to. But for all its magical realism, it didn’t have the charm of Alice Hoffman’s The World That We Knew or Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life (which I picked up for a reread two nights ago and love even more this time through).

Nate also gave me the newest book from the pen of my favorite mystery writer, Tana French. The Searcher is different than any of her other books and it took me a week to finish—which is unusual for me. Partially, I was savoring it. But partially, it was written in such a way that it couldn’t be sped-read. It read slowly. I think—I’m not sure yet, but I think—that this may be my favorite of hers.

I also read Jesus and John Wayne and I’m still reeling from it all. I lived so much of it up close and personally, from Bill Gothard’s Institute in Basic Life Principles to the effects of Phyllis Schlafley’s message on women in the home, from Vision Forum to Cannon Press to HSLD to anti-abortion marches to Rush Limbaugh on every radio station in our home to my father’s obsession with end-times theology and the havoc it wreaked in our home, a simultaneous fear of the government and a giving over to its allure of power. Reading it, I was a bit reminded of how I felt reading Educated—which mirrored my own life in so many ways it was a tiny bit traumatizing to read. I didn’t feel traumatized during Jesus and John Wayne, I just felt angry. Angry at myself for the ways I’ve given into the allure of power, angry at the belief that American Evangelicals are marginalized or powerless, angry especially at the kingdom that’s been built on the backs of celebrity and deeds done in darkness. I have many more thoughts and am mulling over a more full review or op-ed on the book.

Listening

Finally, if you like a mellow mix of wintry music, I put together a playlist on Spotify for our first winter in The Little River Cottage. It’s playing almost constantly in our kitchen, added to sparingly and subtracted from almost never. It is, as I’ve said elsewhere, best enjoyed on shuffle with a hot beverage. Please don’t forget the shuffle part, it makes all the difference. Click here or on the image below to open it.