March

News from the past month or so....

Thinking

Life has a way of throwing us around. It just kind of tossles us, with a power and force that is so far beyond our imagining.

This is what I was thinking about when I watched my son carry our cat.

This cat (also known as Zelda) found its way to our front yard months ago. We fed it once, and it never really left. It was only a kitten and learned early on that the strong and fumbling hands of one toddler would be a regular part of its earthy existence. And Zelda doesn’t seem to mind. She just goes limp, meows (also known as “murrowing” in our house), and somehow keeps her organs in place.

I feel like Zelda. My son is like Life.

I am caught in the grip of a benevolent unpredictable hand, tossed to and fro by the vicissitudes of existence, always woken up by someone (in the night, in the wee hours of the morning!), having our new washing machine break, realizing (too late) how full a septic tank can get, finding my car battery dead. All of these little mal-surprises alone are negligible, but together they buffet me.

And I am left with little to do but to “murrow” my faint complaint and try to relax as I am jostled and swung. Resisting, trying to plant my paws on the ground is futile. Better limber up and let whatever happens happen.

This month, life has felt a lot like that.

And where is God in all of this? Is God like us, parents looking on at mischievous Life, chuckling to himself as his cat-creatures are twirled and shaken? Does God have some sympathy for us? Will he intervene as he watches the marrow shaken out of ourbones? He himself was a cat one, wasn’t he?

My musings devolve into what might be heretical babble.

The TLDR version:

This was a busy month filled with some minor unfortunes that have eaten up a lot of time and energy, and so I am later-than-intended sending this missive.

Please read kindly.

I hoping this month proves gentler.

Writing

Lots to share this month about some writing I’ve been doing.

• First, What’s Been Left Behind, my book of poems has been out in the world for a few weeks now.
  
  I’m glad for the kind response so far. I have some copies on the way to hock locally, but if you are living far from the Lone Star State and you’d like to get a copy, you can purchase one from the publisher, from Barnes and Noble, or from Amazon. If you do get one from the “primest” book seller, I’d appreciate it if you leave the book a rating or a review.
  

  I’m grateful for the endorsement from Joel Lawrence, the president of the Center for Pastor Theologians:

  “Cole Hartin’s poetry arises from the soul of a pastor-poet. This collection models a pastoral imagination reflecting on the great and the small, the eternal and the temporal. Too often today, pastors are trained to be technicians who easily lose a sense of wonder. Hartin’s poetry demonstrates a way of shepherding that is rooted in the art of pastoral ministry.”

  If this sounds like something up your alley, give it a read!

  

• Also, over the past month I was able to contribute a little piece to Covenant the blog of The Living Church. I wrote about my decision to log out of social media (for good) about a year ago. This has had a positive impact on my personal life and pastoral ministry.
  
  This used to be me:

  

  It’s still me, but a little less so.
  Check it out.

• A couple of short pieces in The Crucifer, our parish newsletter, one on Lent and costly grace, and one on poetry and learning how to attend.

• Some sermons from the past few weeks, from Christ Church Downtown and one from Christ Church South this week:

• Speaking of sermons, This past month I had the neat experience of being part of a podcast about a sermon I preached for Epiphany Sunday. The podcast is about preaching the Anglican tradition, the role of the sermon in the liturgy, and how it fits together.  You can find that here.

Reading

• Because this has been a busy month in life, my reading life has been slower than I’d like.
  

  What this means for me is that I read fewer physical books this month, and I listened to more audiobooks. This also means that the kind of content that I am able to enjoy and engaged with has to be lighter fare. More specifically this means I am listening to novels and memoirs from the past century instead of digging into primary sources from the nineteenth-century of reading deeply in the tradition of the Catholic faith. I am looking forward to, and pray for, more reading hours in the days to come.
  

  The first book I made it through this month was Tara Isabella Burton’s Social Creature. I’ve read Burton’s essays before and dabbled in her non-fiction. She is one of the most significant young commentators on Christianity. But I had not read any of her fiction.

  

  And man, this book is good. It’s unsettling, creepy, funny, and a devastatingly sad critique of life in New York City. I don’t want to give too much away, but the plot follows around Louise, a nobody struggling to make it in New York, who falls into a dysfunctional friendship with Lavinia, wealthy, narcissistic socialite who wants to suck the marrow of out of life. They traipse around to wild parties, there is a murder, a cover-up and so much more.

• I was invited to read H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ & Culture with a group of pastors over the past couple of months. I first read this in college, I think, and it was good to read it again. Niebuhr gives us a fivefold typology for thinking about culture in relation to Christianity and ultimately champions Augustine (my boy!) and Christ transforming culture.

• Another good read from this month was journalist Kate Murphy’s You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters. This was a helpful reminder of both the value of listening, how uncommon deep listening really is. It also makes me hopeful that I can learn to be a better listener.

  

• I also read (via audiobook) Elliot (née Ellen) Page’s Pageboy. I saw the title was popular (and available!) through the Houston Library and wanted to check it out. I guess I’ve read a lot about the ethics and arguments around what it means to be trans and how this ought (or ought not) to be accepted in society, but I was curious about hearing Page’s experience.
  
  The book was kind of a sprawling memoir, and I am not sure if there was enough glue to hold it together. But I learned two interesting things, one important and one not.
  
  First, I learned how dark and abusive the world of film (esp. Hollywood) can be. Man, Page recounted some pretty horrifying experiences that left me feel deep sadness and sympathy.

  The second less-than-important thing: Page’s maternal grandfather was an Anglican priest, the Rev. Gordon Wesley Philpotts. He was sometime Rector of St. Paul’s, Halifax, and longtime Rector of St. Luke’s Church, Parish of Portland. This was the same St. Luke’s Church where I was a Rector before moving to Tyler. Small world

The interior of St. Luke’s Church

The book was filled with some fun Canadiana. Page often alludes to eating ketchup chips (sorry, American friends), visits to Tim Hortons, and Toronto features large. One passage about listening to Broken Social Scene just before a trip to the Drake Hotel made me realize that I was into the same things around the same time and hanging out in the same places.

• Last but not least, I was graciously given Eugene Peterson’s The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction. This is a collection of essays on (as you might expect from the title) pastoral ministry.
  
  Peterson was a really influential voice for me when I was discerning a call to ministry. I had given up thinking I would be a pastor when I was Pentecostal because I did not fit the mold the charismatic, larger than life, deeply spiritual ministers who had been influential in my life. I am sure my character of Pentecostal ministry is not fair, but it’s what shaped my imagination. Peterson modelled another way of being a pastor, one that was earthy, thoughtful, slow, and deliberate. I could see myself fitting in a vocation like that.
  
  I’ve read many of these essays before, but it’s great to have them together in this collection.

Listening

• Novo Amor have a new album coming out soon. But right now they have two new singles. I’ve had them on repeat.

  

Watching

• Amy and I have been watching The Office again. This is probably the third time we’ve watched the whole run of seasons and are in the middle of season nine right now. To me, The Office is comfort food for the soul. We watch it while we are folding laundry. It’s funny, in a cringy kind of way. It’s also an interesting social commentary for the way humo(u)r has changed over the past decade or so.

  But more than anything, it’s just a fun show with a little heart. And when life gets challenging, watching Michael or Kevin or Angela or Dwight just makes it a little more bearable.

  

Tasting

• I love burgers. I really do. And the kind of burgers I love most on smash burgers, cooked on a griddle, seared, and flipped. Charbroiled is second best. Barbecued (in Canadian English) or grilled (in American English) are not bad. But cooking fatty beef on a flat top is the best.
  

  While we were in Waco this past month for Diocesan Council (Synod for Anglican friends in Canada), we spotted an In-N-Out Burger. I’ve only been to the chain once, over a decade ago, when I was in college, road-tripping down the West Coast in a overweighted Honda Civic with three other guys.
  

  So in addition in my love for classic American burgers is the nostalgia that came with this last gustatory experience.
  

  I ordered a double cheeseburger animal style (those who know, know). It was great. Fresh, flavo(u)rful, and delicious. Perhaps not as great as when I ordered this in my late teens and didn’t have to think about heartburn, but pretty close.
  
  This was before Lent, and I am looking forward to more feasting and rich food in Eastertide.

Well, that’s all for me folks. Thanks for reading. Please subscribe and/or share below, and I’ll be in touch again in Eastertide.

All the best,

Cole+