Raindrops on roses, fall 2023

Sharing a few of my favorite things

Oct 02, 2023

∙ Paid

Gentle reader,

This post is the second edition of a quarterly feature at Church Blogmatics: recommendations for some of my favorite things. (You can find the first installment here.)

Church Blogmatics has a fresh logo and some other fresh graphics. I’ll keep using my simpler logo in some places, but I like this one for showing up well on the new homepage for Substack’s app.

Also, I, um, really like green:

My streaming video course at Seminary Now is on sale this week: $60 off an annual subscription with discount code FALL. Get access to my course and so many other courses from great authors and professors.

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Scroll on down for my current favorite things. I’d love, in turn, to hear your recommendations. What are you reading, watching, doing, loving right now?

Reading (books)

My favorite recent read in nonfiction is Still Life with Oysters and Lemon: On Objects and Intimacy by Mark Doty.

I never would have picked this up without a strong recommendation, but I found 80 pages of some of the most beautiful prose I’ve ever read. The book is about how stuff matters, so it’s good fare for thinking about the doctrine of creation and being human. It’s also about still life, a genre I’ve never liked or understood. Doty led me to see it and love it. Any book that can achieve a conversion is a remarkable book.

“…I have fallen in love with a painting. Though that phrase doesn’t seem to suffice, not really—rather’s it that I have been drawn into the orbit of a painting, have allowed myself to be pulled into its sphere by casual attraction deepening to something more compelling. I have felt the energy and life of the painting’s will; I have been held there, instructed. And the overall effect, the result of looking and looking into it’s brimming surface as long as I could look, is love, by which I mean a sense of tenderness toward experience, of being held within an intimacy with the things of the world.”

— from Still Life with Oysters and Lemon

I have two recommendations for novels. First is Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.

This is a story about work and love, which are pretty great topics. The love in question is almost-across-the-board not romantic love, which is a nice change from standard fare and acknowledges the importance of friendship. The book is set in the world of video gaming, which I don’t care about, but the book made me care; another conversion, another great book!

“To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk. It means allowing yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt. It is the human equivalent of the dog rolling on its back—I know you won't hurt me, even though you can.”

— from Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus is my second novel recommendation.

This debut novel is also about work and love. Throw in warmth, humor, casual sexism, a quasi-magical dog, an evil secretary, and a cooking show, and I found I couldn’t put the thing down. The characters in the novel are not fond of religion and religious folks, but their critiques of are things that ought to be critiqued.

“‘Sometimes I think,’ she said slowly, ‘that if a man were to spend a day being a woman in America, he wouldn't make it past noon.’”

— from Lessons in Chemistry

Finally, in theology, I recommend Christianity Rediscovered by Vincent J. Donovan.

This book is about as old as I am, and I’ve loved it for a long time, but it’s back on my bookshelf right now because I’ll be teaching it this fall in my class on the mission of the church. Donovan’s tells his story of sharing the gospel with the Maasai people. It’s not perfect (duh!), but it is a radical exercise in thinking about what Christianity is and what it is not and what it might mean to share the good news of Jesus in the foreign culture of contemporary North America.

“Never accept and be content with unanalyzed assumptions, assumptions about the work, about the people, about the church or Christianity. Never be afraid to ask questions about the work we have inherited or the work we are doing. There is no question that should not be asked or that is outlawed. The day we are completely satisfied with what we have been doing; the day we have found the perfect, unchangeable system of work, the perfect answer, never in need of being corrected again, on that day we will know that we are wrong, that we have made the greatest mistake of all.”

— from Christianity Rediscovered

Wearing

This maxi dress, from amazon. It’s comfortable and washes well and is letting me drag summer a little ways into fall.

I will never not recommend my favorite shoes, Rothy’s. They’re made of recycled water bottles and are machine washable, and I’m eyeing that new chunky heeled loafer for fall. If you’re interested, use my referral link for 20$ off.

Rio sol de janeiro hair & body fragrance mist in Rio Radiance. My daughter loves the Cheirosa scent, and we both picked some up in those silly duty free shops in the airport after summer vacation. The stuff smells like vacation, and so I’m definitely clinging to it now that it’s fall, when I’m feeling the loss of sunshine.