Friday Links
May 31, 2024
The Visitation by Philippe de Champaigne
Eric Cyr on “The Goodness of the Strange”
Christian Wiman at The Trinity Forum: Words Against Despair
The Jeweler’s Shop by Karol Wojtyla presented by ArtHouse2B
Valuing the Craft of Beautiful Homemaking
Sarah Spivey wins the Frost Farm Prize
B. D. McClay: Anne Elliot is Twenty-Seven
Eric Cyr on “The Goodness of the Strange”
Fiction writer Eric Cyr attended Chrism Mass in his diocese this year and was surprised when the bishop “blew into the cask of oil, directing his air into the form of three crosses, the rush of air roaring through his microphone.” Cyr writes:
There was something in the strangeness, the unexpectedness of the gesture that arrested me in a way that the (beautiful) prayers of blessing, on their own, did not. We become complacent or apathetic at times when we perceive our surroundings as overly familiar. But when we encounter the strange—as Hopkins put it, “all things counter, original, spare, strange”—we are pulled in a way out of ourselves and out of our complacency. The plane wherein we feel we’ve got this all figured out, we know what is going to happen, becomes challenged. And we pay attention.
Christian Wiman at The Trinity Forum: Words Against Despair
Listen to this beautiful and moving conversation between poet, critic, and teacher Christian Wiman and Tom Walsh about Wiman’s book Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair.
The Jeweler’s Shop by Karol Wojtyla presented by ArtHouse2B
This June "The Jeweler's Shop" will premiere at St. Vincent Ferrer Church on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Arthouse2B Artistic Associate James Majewski directs an original adaptation of the most well-known play by Karol Wojtyła (later Pope Saint John Paul II). Featuring Lydia Brinkmann, Vincenzo Hinckley, Karina Majewski, Peter Murphy, and Anna Wulfekuhle, with assistant direction by Dylan Gervais and music direction by Christa Dalmazio. Join us June 7-9 & 14-16 for this exciting new theatrical event.
Valuing the Craft of Beautiful Homemaking
Ivana Greco offers a wonderful take on the important and, oftentimes, denigrated art of homemaking:
homemaking today remains a form of skilled craft, in which a woman—or a man—uses experience and intelligence to create something that is both beautiful and functional. The difference, of course, between the art of homemaking and other kinds of art is that homemaking’s beauty is often not produced in the form of a physical object. Much of the beauty of homemaking is fleeting and intangible. It might look like a mother reading a favorite book (for the fifth time) to a toddler who just loves every repetition of Little Blue Truck. It might also look like a dad who can take the time to listen and talk extensively to a son devastated by a heartbreaking loss in a championship sports game. A daughter might bake a special birthday cake for her mother’s 70th birthday—but a few days later that cake will probably be gone. Indeed, much of the beauty of homemaking comes in tending relationships with families, friends, and communities. Thus, a family can live in a small apartment with battered furniture and plates from Goodwill but still have a beautiful home, if the relationships between the family members have been carefully nurtured and grown.
Sarah Spivey wins the Frost Farm Prize
Congratulations to Sarah Spivey! You can read her winning poem, “Dispossession” at the link, as well as more about the Frost Farm Prize.
B. D. McClay: Anne Elliot is Twenty-Seven
In all of Austen’s novels, she commits herself—fully—to two incompatible truths. The first is that people never change. The second, that they can and do. Austen seems skeptical of reform; she takes people as they are, and how they are usually leaves a lot to be desired. Her series of almost-salvageable cads—there’s practically one in each novel—testifies to the ways that the desire to change (or the appearance of the desire to change) is much easier to summon than actual change. But most of her romantic couples have to forgive each other—sometimes for betrayals and misunderstandings that seem small potatoes (as is true, I think, of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy); sometimes, as in the case of Anne and Wentworth, over much more serious matters. That forgiveness would be meaningless if it were not accompanied by real reformation on of character.
