This is an email interview I did with Dorothy Greco—the first of it’s kind! Dorothy is the author of Making Marriage Beautiful, and more recently, Marriage in the Middle. She and I differ theologically on many points, but I have found her approach to Marriage a good antidote to the “follow your heart” model of relationships that is causing so much dismay and unhappiness even in Christian circles. I particularly love that in Marriage in the Middle Dorothy gets into... Read more
I’m teetering between wanting to say snarky things about the question of who gets to be called Doctor and who doesn’t, the question of how much snow we’re expecting today, and this awesome tweet about parents being an “oppressive class,” like “rich people” or “white people.” There are so many fun and stupid things to be violently angry about that it’s really hard to pick. But no matter where I land, I’ve decided to add “in Jesus name” at the... Read more
This is a long and sort of interesting article about efforts to recover what the past smelled like. At first glance, it seems a rather decadent enterprise–something called “Odeuropa” which will be pretty expensive: Launching this January, it is a $3.3 million, three-year, multinational project on the collection and recreation of smells in 16th- to early 20th-century Europe that will marry historical and literary analysis with machine learning and chemistry. The project is pioneering and also, in a year of... Read more
Clearly, I need to take more pictures…anyway, today is snowy and cold and I’ve gotta clean all the things and ride herd on lots of children, but we woke up and did a goodish podcast on why everyone should repent. We talked about an amazing occurrence of a woman being kidnapped and then finally found and saved, about that Jericho March, and about Ravi Zacharias. It might actually be a touch depressing, but suitable if you’re wondering what to do... Read more
I’m over at Stand Firm Today. Yesterday we were finally able to have a service for, as I’ve been calling her, our Essential Person—Kay—the grandmother type who was so central to all our day to day happiness for the first fifteen years of our being here. I was worried we wouldn’t be able to meet together, especially with Christmas looming up, but God worked it out. And thank goodness, because the liturgy for the burial of the dead, as usual,... Read more
Trying really hard not to be obsessed, but it’s not working–so one more video on Eddie Izzard and why his Make Humanity Great Again project is not funny and nothing is funny. Quick Takes probably back next week. Read more
As a staunch observer of Advent, in my soul, I am always wishing we would go out two days before Christmas, chop down a well-shaped tree, drag it home in a sled, decorate it with real candles, and then take it promptly down again exactly upon the Feast of Epiphany (not some time in February between Valentine’s Day and the Feast of the Presentation). This is the proper Anglican Way–somber and guilty nibbling of pre-bought Christmas cookies by the flickering... Read more
Picking up from yesterday—here is a whole world I didn’t even know existed. I don’t read romance novels, unless they are hundreds of years old and written by Jane Austen, or really funny and written by Grace Livingston Hill, and therefore didn’t know how much the descriptions of interiors are a key element of the genre. Here are some great bits from the piece: Romance has a serious décor problem. Contemporary romance novels, my pandemic escape of choice, provide a wide variety... Read more
I’m ploughing along desperately in my effort to get to 75 books before the end of the year. I’m up to 71, which is pretty epic. I think I’m going to reward myself with a whole sleight of Wodehouse on a loop. Unless disaster happens–which, it being 2020, is not out of the question–I should be able to get to my goal. The last two books were super fun for super different reasons. The first was Planet Narnia, which I... Read more
Good Morning, or Moaning, if you prefer. It is a cold, blustery, gray day here in the Northeast, as usual, and we’ve fought our way into the dawn with a shortish podcast about Carl Lentz, why God is probably blessing you if your life is difficult and disappointing, and why the pastor shouldn’t preach in a muscle shirt. I feel like it’s something–who knows what–but something. Here is the NYT article we talk about. Here is something heartrending by Challies.... Read more
Preventing Grace
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