April

News from the past month or so...

The Lord is risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

This is the one our Easter greetings, and since we are still in Eastertide, why not keep it up? This is a season of feasting and celebration in the church year, and also a season that is very full.

The past month has been very rich for our family. I was privileged to serve at all most the Holy Week liturgies at Christ Church and to celebrate some of them, we went on a beautiful Good Friday hike with our family and some friends, and then we celebrated Resurrection Sunday at Christ Church, enjoyed an Easter feast, and then I had a nap.

This past weekend was also a blast, with two believer’s baptisms at Christ Church, a gaggle of confirmations, a wedding, some swimming, a picnic, and an impromptu kids vs. parents baseball game (thanks to Ambrose).

It’s also been a good month for writing and reading. Here’s what I’ve been up to:

Writing

• A piece that I’ve been thinking about for a while was published over at Christianity Today in the “Pastors” section.

  

  The piece was a reflection on spiritual formation and some of the concerns I have with the uptake of spiritual formation in some Evangelical settings, plus a solution.
  
  Sometimes I write an article and the process from the pitch to the publication is quick and easy. I am grateful that for this piece the CT pastors editor, Chris Poblete offered some expert guidance that made the finished project much stronger.
  
  The piece is behind a paywall, but this link you get you access. The article is called “Spiritual Formation is Not a Formula”.

• I also have an article in Covenant, the online journal of The Living Church, where I am a regular contributor. It’s about joy and neckties, and builds on some ideas I first had while writing a sermon.
  
  Check it out here.

• My usual short pieces for our parish newsletter, The Crucifer. One on holiness and the other on the Christian Year.

• And my bread-and-butter writing of sermons, like this one from the Great Vigil of Easter:

Reading

This was a good month for reading.

• I finally got around to the first volume Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, most of which I took in via audiobook. This book describes, in memoir form, Solzhenitsyn’s experience in the twentieth century Soviet prison system. In addition to his own experiences, he shares anecdotes picked up from other prisoners and his later research.

  

  
  This is a difficult book to read because one is forced to imagine the appalling conditions in which so many people had to live. I think, too, because I’ve encountered so much on the horrors of Nazism (and rightly so!) it is easy to forget about the other horrifying events of the past century. I think it’s important to face them when and to the degree that one can.

• I’ve been meaning to read Esau McCaulley’s Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope for a while and I finally got around to it this month. It was… okay?
  
  I especially enjoyed the first chapter and thought this was the strongest part of the book, which kind of rooted the “Black ecclesial tradition” as a legitimate and distinct school of interpretation, even if it is mostly located in pulpits rather than print.
  
  And the rest of the book was good, sound New Testament scholarship, but I didn’t think it was groundbreaking. I wonder if I would have read the book several years ago if it would have felt more groundbreaking to me.
  
  I’ve just started McCaulley’s How Far to the Promise Land. Certainly, it is a different kind of book, but so far I find it far more powerful and compelling. More next month!

• I read Cain by Jean Toomer, which was given to us by a friend. It’s a kind of fragmented, fever-dream of African American experience in the South (and North a bit, but the South stuck out to me). To me this was one of those books that was difficult to follow, but left me with a distinct impression of a way of life I’ve never known. I felt it more than I understood it, if that makes sense.

  

• I’ve been meaning to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein since I was teenager. But I never have. Until this month.
  
  It’s weird because Frankenstein’s monster is such an iconic figure, but the novel (I suspect) is seldom read. I did not know it was an epistolary novel, for instance, or that it was as much (or more) about Frankenstein as his monster.

• This past month afforded me the time to read two comics the first was Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All Star Superman. I read Superman for All Seasons last month and enjoyed it a bit more. I think this was a little more wonky and - as per comics - there were quite a few side plots that I could only grasp vaguely, but the book seemed to assume that everyone understood.

• The second comic was lot more demanding, especially for a comic. Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos Papadimitriou, Aleco Papadatos, and Annie Di Donna, is a graphic novel biography of Bertrand Russell and his ideas.

  

  I have not read Russell, but I have dabbled in some Wittgenstein (who is also a character in the book, along with Alfred North Whitehead), and find his work very challenging. Having it nestled in the context of comic, with some graphic illustration helped me to see it in a new light.
  
  This is not a comic that is fun to read when you want to turn off your brain and be entertain (like Superman) but it was a worthwhile and interesting read in the medium.

• I decided this year, I would read the Divine Comedy given that I too:
  
  Midway upon the journey of our life
  I found myself within a forest dark,
  For the straightforward pathway had been lost
  
  Actually, though I am at Dante’s “midway” point in the journey of life, and sometimes I find myself lost in “a forest dark”, some days are better than others. But I have read Inferno before and reread it this past month. I have not yet read the Purgatorio or Pardiso, but plan to tackle them next.
  
  I find Dante difficult, but this second reading has proven more fruitful than the first and at points it carried me along well.

Watching

Honestly, this month as been a dearth of enjoyable films, or at least one’s that I’d recommend. Amy and I watched Our Idiot Brother and it was fine. We started a few other action or thriller flicks on our streaming services, but I don’t think we finished any of them. I’ve been rewatching some skits from I Think You Should Leave and some of the highlights from SNL but that is about it.

We started (late) the first episode of Severance which, if the reviews mean anything, we will enjoy.

In the meantime, though if you have recommendation of stellar, fun, or deeply engrossing film recommendation, send it my way!

Listening

The two LPs that have been on constant rotation this month are:

• Bon Iver’s long-awaited SABLE fABLE. So far I’ve really enjoyed it, but I have to admit I am partial to the first few tracks, released at SABLE last fall. It’s all good, but I love Bon Iver’s older, more stripped own stuff, so the groovy latter part of the album is fun, but not as much my cup of tea.

  

  I am actually working on an article about the album I hope to share with you soon.

• Jensen McRae’s I Don’t Know How They Found Me! was released recently too. I was constantly listening to the early-release singles, which I mentioned last month. Amy and I both find her voice astonishingly good. The whole album is very strong. I especially liked “Daffodils” and “I Can Change Him”. But the best tracks are the “Savannah” and “Praying for Your Downfall” which have been out in the world for a while now.

  

Tasting

After the fasts of Lent, there have been almost too many delicious things to list. In rapid fire:

• The Republic and Hogfather tacos form Torchy’s did not disappoint.

  

  The Republican

  

  The Hogfather

• Strips of picanha steak at our the Easter feast we were invited too.

• An excellent pairing of Rahr and Sons’ Iron Thistle Scottish Ale paired with a bowlful Presbyterian Mixture in the evening.

  

• A great Guatemalan espresso I’ve been brewing the past several mornings.

• Eating Bruno’s lasagna at a wedding.

• And - not to be forgotten - feasting at this years annual Crawfish Boil at Christ Church. This was my third boil, and for whatever reason, it was the most delicious. I ate far too much.

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I realized, by the way, that these dispatches keep getting later into the month, and this is coming a day late. I will, in a half-hearted-college-try-kind-of-way try to finish the next a little earlier.

If know someone who might enjoy reading along, please pass this along, and subscribe if you have not.

In Christ,

Cole+