I write to you from the throes of a summer cold and in the wake of a back injury. This means that when I sneeze (often), my back hurts. Late forties, I personify you.

The Part Where There’s an Essay: The Boys They Prayed For

I was recently asked to compose a poem for a friend’s baby shower. She has kindly allowed me to share it with you.

There was the boy who came after the strife
The appointed one. [1]
He was to be the restored foundation.
A balm to his parents as they made their home in the East.

Another boy, expected after decades of weeping
And some laughter.
His parents welcomed the angels.
He would carry the wood for the sacrifice.

There was a different boy sleeping in the bullrushes,
A basket for his bed.
Mother and sister never far off,
Getting him to shore, to walk upon the dry land.

One boy was waited for in the temple
His mother passed over, weeping
Later, he would sleep in the temple
And hear God call his name.

There was the boy who leaped at the coming of his cousin—
Elizabeth’s boy.
The forerunner, the anticipator.
The one whose life decreased that another would increase.

The increase came from God
By Mary. The Messiah—
Born into obscurity, the tiny town
Defeating death in a garden.

We pray today that this secondborn,
This boy after girl,
After waiting; after weeping; after laughter—
We pray that his life would echo these forerunners.

We pray that he be a balm to those in need;
That he would rise up laughing,
And hear God call his name.
We pray he would be the excited anticipator—
One who looks to the Kingdom and the resurrection with joy.

We pray that this second born,
This boy after girl, this answer to prayer, 
Would look with hope
Toward the restoration of all things;
The walk in the city-garden
In the cool of the evening.

[1] Seth means “appointed.”

For the Anglophiles

I’m not sure what to think about The Beatles dropping on this list. They were already too low!

Reads & Listens of the Week

Here’s that Atlantic article everyone is buzzing about: The End of Reading is Here. “The decline of reading will bring about changes of the same magnitude. It will affect our innermost thoughts, our society’s politics and culture, and how we tell the history of our civilization. If we look closely, we can see that these changes have already begun.”

You all know that I am a futbol watcher, but did you know that sometimes I write about it? Here is a guide to choosing a Premier League team, in case the World Cup has made you hungry for more. The season starts in a little less than a month!

And I loved this recap of this summer’s World Cup: 29 Reasons We Loved the 2026 World Cup.

Here is some news from Theo of Golden author, Allen Levi:

What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance. -Jane Austen

I don’t have much to say about celebrity weddings, but I wanted to mention that if I had more money than the Rockefellers and I lived within spitting distance of the Newport, RI, mansions, I would simply use one of those as a wedding venue. Their entire reason for existence was hosting large formal summer parties for the rich and famous.

But hey! Some people make different decisions with their money, and that’s ok.

The Part Where There’s an Essay: Charity Made Manifest

This week I’ll direct your attention to the most recent issue of Cultivating magazine, with the topic of “Charity.” My essay is entitled “Charity Made Manifest.” Here’s an excerpt…

We live in an age now when the word “charity” most often refers to a nonprofit organization, founded for a specific cause, kept afloat by the monetary donations of people who may or may not know anything about the cause itself. The proximity of participants to a charity usually varies from the highly involved, devoted volunteer to the distant donor who made a deposit for the sake of a tax write-off. Ideally, everyone involved ought to be familiar and attached to the cause at hand, but reality is quite different.

Often when the word “charity” is used in the Vulgate translation of the Bible, it’s in place of the Greek agape, referring to a self-sacrificing type of love. One definition has charity as “Christian love in its highest manifestation.” Far from thinking of charity as a synonym for giving money, charity was once a hefty word, carrying with it the full meaning of the highest form of love.

Love of this kind demands nothing of the recipient and everything of the giver. The Latin carries the meaning of “dear, beloved.” This is not casual philanthropy from a distance, or money thrown at a “problem.” Instead, it is an up-close interest in another’s welfare; it is a willingness to give until it hurts— to be with the person and relieve their pain. At the very least, it would suggest a close proximity to the recipient. There is no distance here. There is no assumed benefit (like the tax write-off) to the giver.

If Covid lockdowns taught us anything, it is that no amount of virtual settings can make up for being physically near one another. The representation of someone’s face, sent through the magical internet signals, can be a nice placeholder for a visit, but it’s not a true substitute for the real thing.

Read the rest of the post here.

For the Anglophiles

While I was on my break, a trailer for a new Jane Austen adaptation dropped. What do we think, Janeites?

The nineties film version of this book is one of my very favorite movies, but I think this looks promising.

Reads & Listens of the Week

Alan Noble wonders What Happens When No One is Curious? “As people grow more comfortable with AI, people will turn to Claude and ChatGPT with their search questions instead of Google, and we will have the same problem: answers instead of exploration.”

This is a fun tool that doesn’t work where I live, but maybe it will where you are: Bookpile. If you enter a book title or ISBN, it will tell you the closest bookshop or library where you can get a copy of that book. It’s supposed to be growing, so here’s hoping it comes to North Carolina one day.

I don’t post links to political material that often, but I appreciated this one from The Dispatch. “It’s about the state of our affections. It’s about what we’ll abide. How do people I love look at all of this and call it good?”

A nice short piece on How to Read Dickens. “Dickens is prophetic in the way he illuminates the distinctions we of a modern, increasingly secular world often fail to make between real guilt and false shame, between true repentance and cheap substitutions.”

What art offers is space—a kind of breathing room for the spirit. -John Updike

We’ve reached the first full week of July. I had a lovely month of June off from this publication, watching lots of soccer and trying to keep the flowers in the front yard alive in spite of our severe drought.

As I write this, I am ensconced in a cool hotel room in southern Indiana, having visited the city known as “Santa Claus” earlier today. It was my first time. It seems like Santa Claus is doing OK monetarily. He has a big theme park here.

The Part Where There’s an Essay: Advice and Opinions Nobody Sought.

Regular readers know the drill here: every quarter I capture some of the mad rantings that zoom around in my head and send them all your way. I’m sorry, or you’re welcome, or both.

First up, I want to talk to the people who enjoy getting to the airport at the last possible moment before boarding the plane. You are denying yourself so much stress-free joy. Imagine if you will: your trip has already started when you are in the airport. You can enjoy a cool beverage, buy a ridiculously overpriced magazine, or stare out the window at giant machinery. Recently I was in an airport during the final round of the Masters, and I met so many jovial strangers crowded around the bar TVs. Not needing to go anywhere faster is the secret to not resenting the airport and the people inside it.

I will probably write more on this soon, but the movie Project Hail Mary is such a delight. Please watch it. It is a return to an earnest, unafraid hero story that we have not seen in a long time. Ryan Gosling is perfect in the role of the reluctant astronaut Ryland Grace, and there’s also a character named Rocky, who is all over Etsy, I recently learned.

I bought these pants in the spring, and now that we are in July, they are very much in danger of becoming my entire personality. I adore them. (Hi! Yes! That is an affiliate link. I sometimes use those. Influencer culture is weird, and I am not going to go into all that, but maybe you will enjoy some things that I also actually enjoy.)

It’s not time for soup yet, but when it is, you should make this soup: Marry Me Chicken Soup.

In the meantime, since it’s blueberry season nearly everywhere, this is the muffin recipe you need.

One of the funniest phenomena known to me is a dog with a human man’s name. Something like “Bob,” “Clarence,” “Norman,” or “Eugene.” This is why “Doug” from Up is funny right away. I love the experience of hearing someone call a name, expecting a sixty-year-old man to appear, and then seeing a dog appear instead. It’s funny every single time.

For the Anglophiles

(Note: sometimes this section includes the broader UK and British Isles. No offense is intended to any potential national identity.)

While I was off, the fanbase for the Scotland national team took over my beloved city of Boston. They had two matches there, scheduled a week apart, so they just moved in and stayed. The tradition of placing traffic cones atop statues was part of the visit. Here is the full roundup of statues that gained a hat during the week with Scotland in town.

Meanwhile the city where I actually live, Charlotte, NC, was hosting the Scotland team. They were all business. We got none of the fun.

Reads & Listens of the Week

While we’re sad about the US team crashing out of the World Cup, we’ve enjoyed so much of the competition along the way. Here’s a nice article about one small team’s run: Cape Verde’s World Cup Run Will Live Forever. “Had Cape Verde actually pulled off the victory, it might have been the greatest upset in sports history. A small island country with a population of 530,000 against a soccer-obsessed nation with over 46 million people. One country making its World Cup debut vs. the defending world champions and the best player in the sport. The no. 67-ranked team in FIFA against no. 1.”

I thought this was a good word: Spiritual Oneupmanship and the Dangers of Digital Discipleship. “Practically, it would deeply benefit Christians on social media to evaluate the kinds of voices they listen to. Find voices that are both intelligent and virtuous, thoughtful and kind, confident yet curious. They are out there, I promise.”

Could a Jane Austen Story Be Written Today? “Austen’s universe is a moral one in which, despite the unfathomably high stakes that come with social (and especially romantic) interactions, community with others provides a path not just to true love, but to justice: The vicious cad, no matter how charming, will receive his comeuppance, while the virtuous lover, no matter how much she’s suffered, will receive her reward.”

Do you guys know about Neil the Seal?

I have often noticed how foot paths and bridleways start just beyond the brambles at the end of tarmacked roads marked ‘dead end.’ And it seems to me that this is very often where prayer starts too. - Malcolm Guite, Word in the Wilderness

Welcome to issue number two hundred of this here publication. If you look at the writer’s dashboard in my Substack, this is actually the three-hundred-and-sixth time I’ve pushed the “publish” button. That number includes all the Ex Libris issues and the Book Basket, which now lives at Story Warren under the name The Mended Wood Literary Society. The fact that the latter is at Story Warren means that a winner actually gets copies of these books now—a far superior outcome to just reading my opinions of books. You should go subscribe over there if you haven’t already!

The Part Where There’s an Essay: Two Hundred

This newsletter is hot on the heels of our country, celebrating two hundred when America is two-fifty. Oh, maybe the metric is different. My mistake.

I am thankful for the hydrangeas blooming in my yard, the sound of the French press, the book of Ecclesiastes, rocking chairs, modern medicine, flannel pajama pants, dogs, percale sheets, laughter that refuses to be contained, the courage to say the thing out loud, corn on the cob, baseball, the smell of rain and the fact that someone called it “petrichor,” that barista at the coffeeshop who greets everyone, the book of Hebrews, the residents of Port William, Kentucky, dark chocolate, and the sound of gravel underfoot. I will keep writing here as long as it makes sense to do so.

As per tradition, I will be taking June off from this weekly publication. Tomorrow is my birthday, a square number, just shy of half a century. As such, I will be cashing in on all the freebies and maybe visiting an antique mall. The things there are older than me, but some of them I remember from my childhood. See you in July.

For the Anglophiles

I finally got to Tom Holland’s (no, not that one) interview with Paul McCartney.

Reads & Listens of the Week

Booktok, BookMaxxing, and What Reading is For. “It is not an achievement for a child to eat 43 pieces of candy on Halloween. Nor is it beneficial to sprint through an art museum so that you can tell others you appreciate the work of Raphael. The goal of the literate life cannot be to read more for the sake of more.”

I had the chance to review the new book called Stories Woven in Silver. You can read about it right here.

Since it is my two hundredth issue, I am going to over-promote myself and link to a second article I have written. This one is from the World Cup the last time around. I tried to be of assistance to people who might not know what’s going on: So You’ve Been Invited to a World Cup Viewing Party.

Meet Samuel Henderson:

Great as your affairs may seem to you, they are only a small strand in the great web. - J. R. R. Tolkien

Titles I’ve read recently:

Tim Keller on the Christian Life, Matt Smethurst. I think we’ve talked before about how helped I’ve been by Tim’s ministry. This is a great summary of the major themes in his teaching over the course of his life. If you want to get a high-level look at the ideas that defined his teaching ministry, Smethurst has gathered them up nicely here. I felt like I was listening to all the best sermons all over again.

Bully Pulpit, Michael J. Kruger. This book came out in 2022, and the author admits up front that he wishes he didn’t have to write it. Similarly, I wish that I didn’t have to read it. But it is extremely helpful in diagnosing harmful patterns—both intentional and unintentional—in churches. The book ends with a chapter on how to prevent such things before they start! This is a straightforward, Biblical resource. Highly recommended.

Jupiter Rising, Gary D. Schmidt. Here’s the sequel to Orbiting Jupiter, which I told you about last month. Though I don’t think this one rises to the level of the first, it’s nice to have the end of the story. Schmidt’s writing is so hospitable and lovely. It’s like a warm blanket. I’m so glad I picked it up!

Cannery Row, John Steinbeck. The story Steinbeck tells of the residents of Cannery Row is a picture of community in spite of all the shortcomings of the people therein. The action takes place over the course of a few months. There is a road trip (of course), a party gone wrong, and a few older, wiser people who hold things together. Not my favorite of Steinbeck’s, but I enjoyed it.

It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children, Mac Barnett. Barnett is—brace yourself—the ninth US National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, appointed by the Library of Congress. This means he has an office in Washington, D.C., which is unfortunate, since he lives in Oakland, California. This book celebrates children’s literature and the people who consume it, children. It’s encouraging and very, very funny. I didn’t learn until I was halfway through that this book caused a bit of a controversy, due largely to a quote taken out of context (surprise, surprise). You can read about that here if you’re interested. It also contains a nice observational chapter all about the book Goodnight Moon.

Fiction is that rare place where the adult and child can meet as equals. Equals, but not the same: It is true that adults know many things that children do not. But it is also true that we have forgotten many of the things kids know—not just about what it is like to be a kid, but about the world we all share.

A note on purchase links: I’m a happy supporter of independent bookshops, so the links I provide will almost always go to my affiliate link at bookshop.org. For my local readers, I heartily recommend you buy them through our favorite, Goldberry Books, but you might have a shop closer to you. Of course, you can always find these selections on That Big Website That Ships Quickly, But Not As Quickly as It Used To, and Remember How They Sucked Us All In By Being a Bookstore to Begin With? I’m also a big fan of saving money and patronizing your local library. Happy reading!

We’ve packed up a significant portion of our home library recently, to make way for some new bookshelves. If there is one thing that can send me into a dream state, it’s planning how I will arrange the books when they reemerge. We’ve done every arrangement you can think of—except for by color, because neither of us can understand that trend. Marital harmony over how the books are arranged is important and underrated.

The Part Where There’s an Essay: Abundance

Every Easter Sunday, once most people are eating, I pull a glass mason jar from the fridge and bring it to the dessert table. I remove the lid, tip it over, and dump the contents all over a cake. Since I do this every year, by now, sometimes there is a small audience when this happens. We stand back and watch salted caramel drip down the sides of the London Fog cake I spent hours on the day before.

Although there are more things I could be doing on Easter weekend in preparation for the gathering we usually host, I love digging in and spending a reckless amount of time on a lavish dessert for no good reason other than that it’s fun to give good gifts of delicious food to my friends. I am always terrified that I am going to burn the caramel sauce, and I have burned it a time or two.

Have you ever made homemade caramel? It requires very few ingredients, but a large measure of attention. You stand and stare at the pot for ten minutes or more, waiting for the precise moment when the sugar browns enough but does not burn. The difference between properly browned and burned is less than a minute, and if you miss the window, you need to throw it out and start over. There’s no redeeming burned caramel.

I’m not sure how this tiny tradition started, but there’s a friend whom I notify every Holy Saturday—she gets a text once the caramel is off the heat, properly salted, and in its jar, cooling. She is also a baker, and she knows the victory of having properly prepared homemade caramel.

When I consider the works of God, there are many places where there’s more than necessary: abundance, lavishness, and, if I may, a lack of economy, win the day. Nature shows us the cup overflowing; any walk outside in the first bloom of spring or the last gasps of fall shows us the same. There is more than necessary; there is not just function, but beauty.

It is in the same spirit of lavishness that I make my Easter Sunday dessert. It is more than necessary.

Fifteen years ago the King James Bible marked its four hundredth anniversary. In celebration, Crossway commissioned artist Makoto Fujimura to create an illuminated manuscript of the four gospels. The finished book is oversized, high-quality, and sits in a slipcase for safekeeping. Fujimura’s artwork splashes across the pages—especially striking on the pages with the crucifixion, where blood red ink drips dramatically. The end of John has an illustration of a tree, verdant and symmetrical, with a branch clearly grafted in.

Though we could look at this book in confusion, wondering why the money was spent in such a way, it fills the same role of lavishness and beauty. It was seen as an act of worship to create a piece of art that attempts to pay tribute to the great book in which it is housed.

There is a time for economy to be sure, but there is also a time for abundance.

[The] dinner party is a true proclamation of the abundance of being -- a rebuke to the thrifty little idolatries by which we lose sight of the lavish hand that made us. It is precisely because no one needs soup fish, meat, salad, cheese, and dessert at one meal that we so badly need to sit down to them from time to time. It was largesse that made us all; we were not created to fast forever. The unnecessary is the taproot of our being and the last key to the door of delight.

Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb

For the Anglophiles

This is a rerun if you follow me on Instagram, but I just love it. Watch how this man lights up because of this chance meeting.

Reads & Listens of the Week

My friend Carrie and my friend (and colleague) Sam had a conversation on the Banderpod podcast. This conversation gives you a good picture of why I enjoy both of these people. I thought he really nailed the BBQ restaurant question.

I was reminded of this article from a long time ago. It is far superior to the “I have a gun” approach: Notes to a Young Man Interested in my Daughter. “…if you find that what it turns out you were creating all along was not just a garden, but a castle and grounds where the rest of your lives and the lives of your children and your grandchildren and all of your friendships and your service to God will be lived out, well then, all the more reason to have built well, with care and with tenderness and with unselfishness, from the beginning.”

How to Be Rejected: On Creative Risk, Audacity, and Faithfulness in Failure. “There are many inducements to hide your creative light under the proverbial bushel. Rejection is one of those inducements. It hurts when your heart’s deep work gets stiff-armed.”

This is one of the most beautiful things I’ve read in a long time: Judson’s Last Ride. “Rationally, I know this is where almost all of us end up sooner or later, but for some reason, it just hits harder thinking about him: a gentle, loving soul who never gossiped, never insulted anyone, never lied, and who for some reason never got a chance to even try to write his name in the history books.”

The aim of an artist is not to resolve a question irrefutably, but to compel one to love life in all its manifestations, and these are inexhaustible. -Tolstoy

Last week I sold a few items on Facebook Marketplace. The number of messages I received made me wonder: are there people who spend every Saturday morning asking, “Is this still available?” to any seller they can find?! It made me understand those ads that say, “if it’s listed, it’s still available; I will not answer messages asking if it’s …

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Our spring of 2026 was made up of travels to hither and yon, and I could not be happier that this season is coming to an end. Was it Chesterton who talked about how the real function of travel is to help us see the wonders of home properly? It’s nice to be here.

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Please tell me which utility you’re using more this week:

There’s been a lot of flipping back and forth here. You?

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It’s been a while since we’ve done a round of opinions and advice nobody asked for, so let’s get to it.

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I’m so sorry that the links in last week’s post were not all correct. I have fixed them now, and you can revisit the corrected version of that post right here.

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It’s been pretty practical around these parts recently. Thanks for all the great feedback! I love hearing your stories of hospitality, too.

Next week we’ll be back to the random topics that fill my noggin.

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If you have any middle grade readers in your home, be sure to stop by Story Warren early and often! We’re celebrating Middle Grade March all month long.

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