Liars, Forgiveness, Motherhood, and Celebrity Crushes
The last time I shared a round-up of links I’d saved was a month and a half ago. I’d just finished writing Part One of the three part book I’m working on, and so it feels good to say that today, as I offer you another round-up, I’ve just finished Part Two. One more (the longest part) to go.
Writing is, by necessity, a solitary occupation. For the full-time writer, we do not generally have co-workers or cube-mates, so it can be a bit of a lonely occupation at times. Especially in a year like the one we’ve just had, the aloneness can mount and with it comes the existential questions like, “What am I doing here? Does this work matter? Am I living the work or just writing it?”
Our work, in those moments, is to press through the questions, write through them, not around them, until we arrive in some space of certainty again. This is the work for the writer, I think. Our work is to take what is nebulous and spacey and a bit out there and bring it home for the reader. To take the feelings people feel and put a shirt on them, to take grief and give it pants, to take joy and give it shoes. But to do that means putting shirts and pants and shoes on our own feelings of grief and joy and whatever else. It means naming our own junk, just for ourselves, not even for the public.
Otherwise we’re just liars who can spin a phrase.
Here are some words from others
I read this this morning from Tim Keller. He is saying exactly the things I’ve been thinking about and feeling and didn’t have words for. On the disappearance of forgiveness. Note that he’s writing a book on forgiveness and so this won’t be his final word on it and shouldn’t be read as such.
Here’s a piece on motherhood and Madeleine L’Engle, whose reflections on mothering and marriage in the Crosswick Journals have always been some of my favorites.
I shared on my Substack this week a bit about my journey on gender roles and Tish Harrison Warren has been alit on Twitter on Women’s Ordination this week. I appreciated her piece in Christianity Today on it.
Here is a piece from Esau McCaulley on how Maundy Thursday was part of his conversion to Anglicanism. I loved it because my first Tenebrae service so captivated me eight years ago, it was part of what began drawing me toward Anglicanism.
This is a beautiful poem about grief.
Listening
I don’t love listening to music while I’m writing much anymore. Since the shooting five years ago I’ve realized my capacity for more than one sound around me puts me in a pretty tightly wound space. Right now my soundtrack is the hum of the fridge and the Canadian geese on the river and some faint notes of a neighbor’s lawnmower. But occasionally I’ve been using these playlists on Youtube that play continuously for three hours and they seem to do the trick too.
Reading
I have been slowly working through Winn Collier’s biography of Eugene Peterson the past few weeks. Slowly because I want to savor it. It would be an easy book to read quickly, but I want to learn from the man and doing things slowly was a mark of his.
Monty Don (whom we affectionately call my celebrity crush in this house) released his giant Complete Gardener a few days back and it landed on my steps the day of. Gardener’s World saved my year in more ways than I can count, and his book is even better than I hoped. If you’re just starting out or just want to learn from one of the best, I highly recommend it. Best read with a slight British accent.
I told my friend Emily Freeman that I’ve recommended her book, The Next Right Thing, more this past year than any book ever. It is so immensely practical and so deeply spiritual at the same time, that it can hardly not help a reader do whatever is next, or at least not do it until they know it’s right. I recommend also reading it slowly because her prompts are some of the best parts and those take time.
Tweets
Sometimes Twitter is a giant bonfire (and not the good kind) and sometimes it is a place full of wisdom and insight. I’ve worked hard to curate a timeline that looks like more of the latter instead of the former, and I feel pretty good about it right now. This recent thread from Barry Jones was excellent.
I loved this Tweet from my friend Aarik Danielsen.
I hope this smattering of links delights you or makes you think or helps you process. And I hope your coming weekend is beautiful and good in every way. I am enjoying being out in the new gardens we’ve made and also discovering all the old perennials planted around the house by some yesteryear gardener.
