Here are Four Great Things from the week of 08/02/2024.

Merlin's Isle

Malcolm Guite is a genuine joy to read. He is even more of a treat to watch and listen to. This video is a view of him in his home workspace, revealing his newest project: Merlin's Isle. He is reworking the original Arthurian tales in a four-volume set through Rabbit Room Press.

In this clip he does read a good portion of the introduction, but my favorite part (beyond all the pipe smoking) is this line of his while allowing us to glance through his very over-crowded book shelves: "The first thing I do when I enter someone's home is look at their book shelves. It's like their soul is being bared before me."

Protect Your Kids from the Vampires

Johann Kurtz has an interesting take on modern dating relationships: young people self-sabotage because this is the primary mode of relationship they view in media.  He argues there is a lack of connection to older generations who have weathered relationship woes and thrived in the midst.

"There is something that we can do to protect them, and that’s to make sure they’re establishing deep bonds with a range of elders, and their grandparents in particular. The benefits of cultivating these relationships are clear."

Whereas Kurtz argues for in person interactions over digital ones, I am grateful for the technology capabilities since we live 1,000 miles from the girls' grandparents now. Also, I'm grateful for the church :)

The Last Supper Always Wins

I'm sure you have seen as many posts and articles about the dragqueen show in place of DaVinci's The Lord's Supper at the Paris Olympics. Miles Werntz took a much different stance: "If I find something distasteful or disrespectful, one possibility is that the message is not for me. In the case of the French, this is easily the case: a secularist performance is communicating with a winking eye to an audience that doesn’t include me, eliciting a smile from a crowd that I am not a part of."

This is his setup so he can go deeper: "For a parody only works if you know the original." He gives much hope that people gave attention to Christ after all.

Here's a simple solution to the pessimism culture. Read a book.

Henry Oliver at The Common Reader does really good work. Here he traces lines of pessimism circulating our modern world with an uptick since the 70s. There are so many complex factors at play, but this is good:

"We will not think or argue our way out of modern culture’s pessimism. We will have to imagine our way out. We live, as Robert Graves said, in a web of language. The bigger our web, the bigger our world."

What I'm working on:

• Homeschool prep work—in history we are covering the early church through the middle ages. I'm working through a few anthologies through Oxford to pull visual aids.

Quotable:

"Eat well then. Between our love and His Priesthood, He makes all things new. Our last home will be home indeed."

—Robert Farrar Capon The Supper of the Lamb

Worth the Memory

Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem for boys called "If"—it's a call for their maturity and manhood. I recently discovered "An 'If' for Girls" by JP McEvoy from 1924. It's now our first memorization piece when school resumes.

‘If you can hear the whispering about you,
And never yield to deal in whispers, too;
If you can bravely smile when loved ones doubt you,
And never doubt, in turn, what loved ones do;
If you can keep a sweet and gentle spirit
In spite of fame or fortune, rank or place,
And though you win your goal or only near it,
Can win with poise and lose with equal grace;

If you can meet with Unbelief, believing,
And hallow in your heart a simple Creed,
If you can meet Deception, undeceiving,
And learn to look to God for all you need;
If you can be what girls should be to mothers:
Chums in joy and comrades in distress,
And be unto others as you’d have the others
Be unto you – No more, and yet no less;

If you can keep within your heart the power
To say that firm, unconquerable “No”;
If you can brave a present shadowed hour,
Rather than yield to build a future woe;
If you can love, yet not let loving master,
But keep yourself within your own self’s clasp,
And not let dreaming lead you to disaster,
Nor pity’s fascination loose your grasp;

If you can lock your heart on confidences,
Nor ever needlessly in turn confide;
If you can put behind you all pretenses
Of mock humility or foolish pride:
If you can keep the simple, homely virtue
Of walking right with God – then have no fear
That anything in all the world can hurt you-
And – which is more – you’ll be a Woman, dear.’

What are your great things from the week?