Hello! I wanted to give a summer scheduling update and suggest some books if you’re looking for something to read.
Until September my usual weekly essay output will be moving to an every-other-week schedule. I’ll be using the time to work on book number three (and book four, since it seems I have a habit of writing a fiction book alongside a non-fiction book, oscillating between the two.)
In the meantime, if you haven’t already, you might enjoy reading some of my greatest hits:
How Fantasy Literature Lost its Soul: From Narnia to Nihilism
The Expat Delusion: Globalist Dreams, Populist Realities
Disney Adults Just Want God: A Theological Defense of Artificial Wonder,
Be Not Conformed: Autism and Imago Dei
I’ve also been meaning to share this essay, by Kryptos, since I first read it. In recent years, there has been a growing trend among Christians to decry the idea of Christian civilization - which I think is wrongheaded, risky, and a misunderstanding of what it is we are called to do.
This essay if a must read:
Revealing the City of God: A Response to Paul Kingsnorth
I’ve been lax about sharing book reviews! To make up for it, here are mini-reviews of six of the most interesting books I’ve read so far this year:
Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard - A fierce mystical prose-poem wrestling with beauty, suffering, and the incandescent presence of God in the natural world.
Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist by Brant Pitre - Pitre is such an engaging theologian, I recommend all of his books, but this one is a stunning exaination at the ancient Jewish traditions that illuminate the way we are meant to understand the mystery of the Eucharist.
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill - A fragmented meditation on marriage, art, and existential despair, told with mordant wit.
Esoteric Trumpism by Constantin Von Hoffmeister - Myth is happening right now and this book takes that seriously, analyzing the arcane undercurrents of the Trumpian era, ultimately asking if an age of decline can be reversed by a resurgence of primordial American exceptionalism.
Regime Change by Patrick Deneen - A thoughtful, grounded call to replace liberalism’s failures with a politics rooted in virtue, tradition, and the common good.
What is Redemption? How Christ’s Suffering Saves Us by Philippe de la Trinite - A luminous challenge to the flawed doctrine of penal substitution, emphasizing Christ’s suffering not as the outcome of divine fury but an act of perfect love that heals and restores.
The paintings are Reflection and The Boat by Odilon Redon.