Faceless portraits seem like they’re all the rage these days – and at Art House America, Lindsay Crandall talks about why she loves them, and includes a number of hers: Last year, as more people began asking me to take their picture, I sort of stumbled into portrait photography. I started a small photography business and began accepting clients this spring. And for a while, I gave up the faceless portrait. I was sure no one wanted that. A photographer... Read more
Over at Fieldnotes, Jamaica Abare reflects on what changed when her vocation grew to include motherhood: Although she admits that in the past she dreaded the child-raising stage of life, one of her friends in graduate school used to talk to her toddlers as if they were philosophers, breaking down profound truths about life into bite sized nuggets in the car between bites of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Jamaica was fascinated every time she carpooled with them. She knows... Read more
A welcome reminder from The High Calling for this Monday: your work matters (even when it feels like it doesn’t). Blogger and Chief Creative Officer at iDoneThis Janet Choi quotes authors Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer from their book The Progress Principle, “What matters is whether you perceive your work as contributing value to something or someone who matters (even your team, yourself, or your family).”“Meaning isn’t necessarily lofty,” Choi goes on to say. “As in some unattainable, fairy tale magic bean thing, but it is... Read more
At Christ and Pop Culture, Jason Morehead writes about the Bibliotheca project and asks, what’s the point of making the Bible more beautiful? Similar things could be said about Bibliotheca. All of that time, money, and effort could be put towards something more practical and necessary, like translating the Bible into a language that doesn’t have it yet or printing thousands of cheap copies to hand out for free. Such statements may contain wisdom, but they also gloss over the ministry that... Read more
Tiffany Owens writes at In Earnest about adventuring alone (something I rather enjoy, too): Let’s begin with definitions. By solo trip, I mean a deliberate choice to enjoy a journey and destination without traveling with anyone or scheduling any meetups with friends. Of course, you might make new friends in the process, which is part of the fun. Traveling alone doesn’t have to be for the broken-hearted, melancholy, or anti-social. And it doesn’t have to always be a statement about independent... Read more
Over at Christianity Today, Karen Swallow Prior wrote about an often-difficult topic: the hidden blessing of infertility. My husband and I decided that further procedures were off the table. Although we are Baptists, we believe in the principles set forth in the Catholic Church’s Donum Vitae (“The Gift of Life”), which distinguishes between medical interventions that assist the marital union in achieving pregnancy and interventions that replace the procreative marital act. We agree with the distinction made by some Christian ethicists and theologians between procreation and reproduction: While... Read more
This week at QIdeas, the question has been an interesting one: can Catholics and Protestants work together? The responses are interesting, including two videos and three articles that cover some of the challenges – and encouraging developments – across denominational barriers. Take a peek. Read more
Last week at Christianity Today, I enlisted my friends to help come up with a list of some of our favorite “good” ministers in movies and TV from the past decade. Of course, it’s not an exhaustive list, and there are plenty of notable omissions. But it’s a good start, we think. The list is here. Who would you add? Read more
Comment held a symposium, asking writers how they are working at rest this summer. It’s worth reading. For instance, here’s Norman Wirzba: The opposite of rest is not activity but restlessness. That is, I need to rest so I can calm down and discern how the world around me is a place of so much beauty and grace. When I am restless, that usually means that I am unhappy with my life or my situation, wishing I had a better job,... Read more
Mark D. Roberts
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Rituals of Embodied (Coffee)
Over at Front Porch Republic, David Walbert wrote about rituals of embodiedness – prompted by his new coffee mill: I admit I don’t much care who writes the protocols for the ways I interact with my home, nor whether I have a choice of two or five or ten such protocols. What I care about is that, if my home is “smart,” the guy writing those protocols isn’t me. What I object to is the very idea of protocols. More fundamentally,... Read more