Dear friends,
I hope you are doing well as the unofficial end of summer has come and gone.
The autumn season is my favorite time of the year. This was true in Saint John, certainly, because around the end of August nighttime temperatures started to drop, leaves started to blush, and the evenings fell a little sooner. From then on until the end of October the weather was perfect (to me!), and everything was its most beautiful. Then Advent and Christmas and New Years, followed by a icy, dark, gray kaleidoscope tunnel until about the middle of May.
Save for the early nights, East Texas is a little bit different. Daily highs here are still above many summer days in New Brunswick, but the leaves here starting to turn. And what Tyler lacks in coolness now will arrive soon enough. For my Canadian friends: In Texas, it’s all about making it through the summer, but the next nine months are pretty pleasant all in all. Late November and early December here feel like late September in New Brunswick. This surprised me last year. And so did the fall colors, which give those on the East Coast a run for their money, and they tend to stick around a bit longer here as well.
Enough about the weather!
Kind of fun: Friends invited out for an afternoon on Lake Tyler on Labor Day weekend. They took us tubing too, which was a first for our boys.
Let me share a little of what’ve been up to.
Writing
I published a short essay at Covenant, the online journal of The Living Church. I write for Covenant about once a quarter, and this past month I reflected a little bit on my time in Scotland over the summer.
The ruins of St. Anthony’s Chapel, Edinburgh.
You can read it here.
One of the interesting things about writing popular essays like this is that sometimes they make a splash and sometimes they don’t. I’ve written things that I thought were controversial and important and they’ve been met by yawns. Other things that I thought were just kind of a fun and light have drawn a lot of scrutiny. This piece is an example of the latter.
Really, just some reflections on my experiences in Edinburgh, but a lot of people didn’t like what I had to say for various reasons!I mentioned back in January I was part of a group working on a commission to imagine the future of the Canadian Church. We were called together by the Primate (or Archbishop) of the Anglican Church of Canada. We put together a tentative document and some of that got covered by The Anglican Journal. Others in the group have been more diligent in contributing than I have, probably to my shame. But I got to talk a bit about what I thought about our work here.
I’m back in the swing of things at Christ Church, so my sermons are available here once again.
I also wrote a couple of pieces for our parish newsletter, The Crucifer. One is on the Parable of the Tax Collector and the Sinner, and the other is kind of about finding one’s place in the Church, especially as an introvert.
Reading
I guess I’ve been on a bit of a Ross Gay kick. This past month I read The Book of (More) Delights. Like it’s predecessor, this book is a log of essayettes written throughout the year. Each one lifts up some mundane delight that Gay wanted to share. It’s a lot of fun.
One of the audiobooks I listened to this month is Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians which read to me like Jane Austen but 21st century and Asian. The sprawling novel weaves together the stories of American Rachel Chu and Singaporean Nick Young. Chu is from a relatively successful Americanized family, and she falls in love with her professor colleague Young, who she does not know is basically Singaporean royalty. And when Chu goes to meet Young’s family, all hell breaks loose. It’s funny, and sad, and at least for me, gave me a picture into the life of a subset of people who I did not even know existed: Aristocratic, anglophile Asians.
There are lots of plot twists, and I found the end surprisingly moving. And thought Anglicanism didn’t make much of an appearance, I was intrigued by the way Christianity - especially Methodism - was tightly connected with status and wealth.This month I also read Preaching the Word with John Chrysostom by Gerald Bray. The book is a exploration of the way Chrysostom preached the Old and New Testaments, and a little bit of the theology behind his approach. It was interesting and informative. I read a bunch of Chrysostom when I was preparing for my comprehensive exams, but it’s been a while, so it was good to read this as a refresher.
Listening
Man, I cannot believe it’s been 20 years that since Iron and Wine’s Our Endless Numbered Days was released. I still remember when I bought the physical CD one summer from a record shop in Sydney, Nova Scotia, when I was there working for a few months as a intern at a church in Cape Breton.
The whole album is not of a piece, and there are some tracks that I could take or leave then as now. But for the most part the album is beautiful. I especially love the haunting “Fever Dream” and “Sodom, South Georgia”
Watching
This month I watched four of the five Mad Max films. It started with the newest, Furiosa,which was really great—in a despairing apocalyptic dystopian kind of way. Then I rewatched Fury Road, which led me to the OG Mel Gibson Mad Max, and then Mad Max 2. I plan to watch Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, but I haven’t gotten to it yet because these are films I tend to watch solo and I just haven’t made time.
There is a lot I can say about these films. They are visually stunning (save, maybe, for the original), the story telling is compelling,, the world-building is fantastic, and the action sequences (especially in Mad Max 2) are mind-blowing.
And they feel kind of timely in their depiction of a world built in the wreckage of civilization, but with this memory or longing for the “green place”, with its Edenic lushness. I don’t think the world is an exceptional terrible place right now, though there are exceptionally terrible things going on. But there have always been exceptionally terrible things going on. I do think however, there is sea change of sorts in the West, and we are still trying to figure out how to salvage what we can from the Old World, much like in Mad Max.
Tasting
Our next-door neighbor is a very kind man who grew up just outside Tyler. He knows these parts well. And he has a bit of land on which he has a hobby farm. We’ve been the grateful beneficiaries of his produce a few times, and last week we were treated to a bucketful of muscadine grapes,
Muscadine grapes in tupperware.
I’d not heard of muscadines before, but they are fantastic wild grapes. They have a musky smell that is a little bizarre, with tough, thick, chewy skins. Inside they have a gelatinous, and very sweet flesh surrounding a few small seeds. The flavor of the grapes is incredible. The skins have a tart, tanic taste, and the flesh is a cartoony-sweet grape flavor, like concord grapes on steroids.
Amy boiled some down to make jelly, and unfortunately it didn’t really set. But, it still kind of works a syrups. And it has this wonderful grapey sweetness that is only intensified by the sugar. But then there is this nutty, almost coffee-like undertone.
They are great!
Well, that’s all from me once again. I hope you enjoyed reading and look forward to sharing again in a handful of weeks.
If you know someone who might like this newsletter, or who might be interested in following my writing, please send it a long.
In Christ,
Cole+