Advent

News from the past month or so...

Blessed Advent, friends,

In only a few short days Christmas will be upon us.

It’s been a busy and full season of life and ministry, so I’m a little behind getting this missive out into the world. Thus, it is not a “December” letter, but and “Advent” letter, with some insights from the past six or seven weeks.

Part of the busyness was the result of the Thanksgiving holiday, which was fun, had us travelling. We went to visit our good friends in Little Rock.

One day while we were there, we went hiking at Petit Jean State Park (Canadians: This is pronounced as petty gene!). It was really beautiful, surprisingly beautiful even! Amy took some great photos, but here is one lousy one I took

Here’s what I’ve been up to lately.

Writing

I’ve still got a few big projects that I am chipping away it, but in the meantime here are few tidbits I have to share.

• First, an article about some work I’ve been apart of that looking ahead at the future of the Anglican Church of Canada. It’s about structures and governance, so if that’s not your jam, you might not find it titillating. Here it is, anyways, in Covenant: The Online Journal of the Living Church.

  

• I was also quoted for my work on the commission in an article in The Anglican Journal, the newspaper of the Anglican Church of Canada. I did not write the article, but some of what I said in an interview is down below. Read it here.

• I wrote a few small pieces in our parish newsletter, The Crucifer, on feasting, on waiting and Advent, and on William Kurelek’s A Northern Nativity.

• Plus, I preached about a month’s worth of sermons, like this one:

Reading:

Here is what I’ve been reading this month:

• Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, a memoir which covers the death of her husband and the year or so after as she processed the grief. I haven’t read a lot of Didion, so I am not sure if this is helpful for getting a sense of her as an author. But it was a moving and gripping chronicle of her loss.

  

• This month I also read Stephen King’s Carrie for the first time. I’ve only read a handful of King’s book and have enjoyed them all. Carrie was no exception.
  
  The edition of Carrie I read was the 50th anniversary edition, which featured a great introduction by Margaret Atwood that primed me to some of the symbolic depth of the novel. There is certainly more going on here than meets the eye. On the surface, this is a campy horror/thriller novel about a high school girl. I know I’ve got this backwards, but having been a long-time fan of Stranger Things, I couldn’t help but being reminded of the series. In reality, I know the series owes much to Carrie.
  
  But the book is also a profound look at the human capacity of cruelty and evil, a sketch of the (admittedly caricatured) distortions of American Christianity, as well as the tendency we all have toward scapegoating.
  
  It’s too bad that some of the language is a little fruity, and the violence a little to gratuitous, otherwise this would make great reading for high school students.

• I spent a lot of time this month with Judith Viorst’s Necessary Losses: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations that All of Us Have to Give Up In Order to Grow. What a title, right!?
  
  Interestingly, you might recognize Viorst’s name because she is the author of the very popular kid’s book Alexander’s Terrible, Horrible No Good, Very Bad Day. Necessary Losses, it might go with out saying, is not a children’s book, but rather a Freudian take on human development from infancy to adulthood. Viorst’s basic argument is that life is about - from infancy - letting go, losing, and in processing these losses, growing into a more complete person.
  
  It’s been a few years since I’ve read Freud, and I don’t buy into his ideas or his legacy wholesale, but I do think there is something to his ideas, especially as they’ve been interpreted here by Viorst.

• A friend, Travis, recommended out family read Daniel Nayeri’s Everything Sad is Untrue: A True Story. We started listening as a family on a long drive, but I continued on without my kids because I enjoyed so much.

  

  Nayeri is an Iranian-American refugee that had to flee Iran because his mother and sister converted to Christianity, and a fatwa was issued against them. The book chronicles, from his perspective as a child, what their journey from Iran to Oklahoma (with pit stops in Dubai and Italy) was really like.
  
  The book is sad and moving and challenging. I think part of the undercurrent is a theodicy, which I am not sure I can accept. But the book itself was wonderful and I would recommend it to anyone.

• I finished the third in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Morning Star series. This one was called The Third Realm, and picks up where the first novel left off. It’s a meandering, apocalyptic account of contemporary life, from the eyes of multiple characters (this time only in Norway) over the course of a few days. It features the grisly murder of a death metal band, an unexplained star, extreme heat, and the fact that nobody has died in Norway for over five days!

  

  It’s wild, and deliciously absorbing. It’s also slow burn when it comes to plot (like all of Knausgaard) so I am looking forward to getting my hands on the next volume, The School of Night, when it is released in English in September.

• I also read a short book on Knausgaard on why he writes, Inadvertent which was helpful for me. He writes, “literature was a hiding place for me, and at the same time a place where I became visible. And this, an outside place where what is inside become visible, is still what literature is to me. Literature and art, along with religion, are the only places I know that are capable of establishing such and outside” (25).

• This week I stumbled upon this very funny Substack Evangelical Think Pieces. I laughed out loud more than I have a long time. If you know the culture, this will read a very funny, and if you don’t, you might be scratching your head.

• Finally, I finished the hefty second volume of Frances Young’s Doctrine and Scripture in Early Christianity series, Scripture in Doctrinal Dispute. Throughout the book Young examines the way significant church fathers derived doctrine from Scripture in the period between Nicea and Chalcedon, really giving the evidence for her claim in the first volume that doctrine and Scripture in the early church were “coinherent”.
  
  It’s a great scholarly book, and I think Young is right in her conclusion. But it was a hefty read and probably will not be accessible for many people.

  

Listening

• This time of year has me returning (early, so transgressively) to the Christmas music I love. Along with the wonderful choral music that we hear this time of year, I’ve back to Sufjan Stevens, Bear’s Den, and Sleeping at Last.

• This past while I’ve also been listening a lot to Medium Build. I heard of the band from their single “Yoke” which features Julien Baker.

  And the rest of the stuff is hit and miss to me. I hate how sweary they are. But the stuff that’s a hit (“Triple Marathon”, “Cuttin Thru the Country” and “Can’t Be Cool Forever”) is really a hit.

Watching

So last year we didn’t really start on the Christmas movies until almost Christmas, and this year we’ve started early. This has been fun. Here are two that have stood out to me this year:

• The new Jason Bateman movie, Carry-On is billed as Christmas movie, but it’s really just a thriller that happens to take place on the holidays. The plot is simple: Terrorist hijacks airport security to get a dirty package through. Shooty, shooty. Punch, punch. There is not much of substance in the movie. But it was fun way to kill an evening.

• Family Stone may be my favorite Christmas flick. I feel embarrassed to admit this. It has middling reviews, a middling popular rating, but I love it. I am not even sure why I love it. It always gets me laughing and crying. This year was no exception.

  

Smelling

We went to the mall this year for the first time since last year. That in itself is an olfactory experience: Scented candles, popcorn, fried chicken, a slurry of colognes and perfumes, cleaning chemicals, coffee. There is a distinct mall smell that is somehow more than the sum of these parts.

While we were browsing through Dillard’s I had a sniff of Tom Ford’s Oud Minerale. I love all of Tom Ford ouds I’ve smelled. I can afford none of them. But they are transporting. I’ve never samplee the Minerale. It was really lovely. The scent’s description reads:

The warmth of oud is spiked with a wave of fresh pink peppercorn as fir balsam and ambergris balance earthy and marine inflections. A surge of smoky woods embraces sensual, skin-gripping musks for a contrasting fusion of elements.

I’m not sure about this, but I think I can pick on on the “contrasting” freshness and smoke.

Tasting

There are two many good things to taste this time of year. And this over satiation has a numbing affect. The writer of Proverbs reminds us “The full soul loatheth an honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.” I think that’s why historically Advent was a fast season before the feast of Christmas. Now, it seems, the feasting begins right after Halloween (which itself is a secular candy feast).

Here are a couple of things that were noteworthy, however

• I found a recipe (that I will not share) for apres Thanksgiving turkey cakes. The idea here is a variation on the crab cake: Chop up turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes (and through in some turnip too!), then form them into cakes and fry in a cast iron. Top with gravy, and you’ve got a wonderful meal made with leftovers.

• I noticed bottles of Goose Island Bourbon County Stout at the grocery store last year, but let them pass. I looked up this elixir this year and, after reading the reviews, procured a bottle. Amy and I shared it and it really lived up to the hype. It was almost chewy, with rich, full, dark chocolate notes, finished with a wonderful caramelly-bourbon sweetness that seemed to last forever. It was a real treat. Probably a once-a-year-treat. I plan to pick up a bottle next year as well.

  

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Well folks, this is my over-stuffed, pre-Christmas, late-to-arrive, Advent blast.

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas. Keep the Christ in Christmas. And keep the Mass in Christmas.

Until next year,

Cole +