Here are Four Great Things from the week of 08/30/2024.

Leonardo DaVinci's Women

In Art Everyday, daVinci's 4 women are highlighted here. Mona Lisa, Lady with an Ermine, Ginevera de' Benci, and La Belle Ferroniere are all famous paintings, but the featured photo this week is an unfinished painting of Isabella d'Este.

"There may only be four portraits of women in Leonardo’s entire oeuvre - but when the works are as beautiful as this . . . perhaps four is enough."

Bible Reading Challenge

Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho put together a Bible Reading Challenge which extends from September to May. It's my favorite setup in covering the OT once, NT twice, Psalms and Proverbs twice. It begins and ends with Psalm 119—a sort of ode to loving God's Word.

"In spite of the abundant availability of Scripture to us, many Christians struggle to develop a habit of reading – simply reading the Word. We have overcomplicated and under appreciated it. By making it only a matter of private reflection and introspection, we have forgotten the element of hospitality, and Christians have fallen out of the practices of inviting others to read with us."



Learning with Notes

Jillian Hess at Noted is a college professor who publishes a lot of rhetoric about handwritten notes and letters. In this article she discusses the benefit of taking notes by hand rather than computer.

"So, when I say that we are better off taking notes by hand than with computers, I recognize that I am part of a rather hilarious historical trend. Nevertheless, the science is quite persuasive."

Writing & Drawing as Conversation with Self

I regularly read The Sneakyart Post on Substack. He is truly inconspicuous as he sketches everyday life around him. What's more, he encourages his readers to take up the form as well.

"If you know how to write by hand, you already know how to draw, because writing and drawing are the same thing."

What I'm working on:

I'm still sketching out an article about translating. John Donne paralleled it to death and eternity, so I am pulling at that thread to see what could be. The current direction is surveying what our souls should look like between conversion and death/Christ's return. My goal is to post it in the next week.

Quotable:

“I cannot explain by an possible Energy of Words, what a strange longing or hankering of Desires I felt in my Soul upon this Sight; breaking out sometimes thus; O that there had been but one or two; nay, or but one Soul sav’d out of this Ship, to have escap’d to me, that I might but have had one Companion, one Fellow-Creature to have spoken to me, and to have convers’d with! In all the Time of my solitary Life, I never felt so earnest, so strong a Desire after the Society of my Fellow-Creatures, or so deep a Regret at the want of it.”
― Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

Worth the Memory

"Light holds you, Grendel. Light has you in its power. You, who have shunned the sun, meet me, once stung by bees that drank the sun. There’s honey in my veins, Grendel, a liquid sunlight that can kill you quite. These fingers that you feel are ten great stars. Stars have no fear. I do not fear you, Grendel. I do not fear, therefore I do not fight. I only hold you, child of Cain. I only fix you fast in your own evil, so that you cannot turn it out on any other. It is your own evil, Grendel, that undoes you. You must die, creature of night, because light has got you in a last embrace."

Beowulf, translation by Robert Nye

This is part of our catechism for the school year—and it's been one of my favorites.

What are your great things from the week?