Raindrops on roses, summer 2024

A few of my favorite things right now

Jul 01, 2024

Fellow Pilgrims,

Today, I’m sharing recommendations for a few of my current favorite things, including things I’ve been reading, wearing, and watching. I’d love to hear your recommendations. What are you reading, watching, doing, and loving right now?

Reading

I loved Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent and Melmoth, and her new novel Enlightenment is her best yet. The book wades deeply in theological themes (faith & science, providence, grace). The prose is gorgeous. Though love stories animate the plot, the book is ultimately about friendship and work. And a ghost astronomer. And dissenting baptists.

“Do you think you lose your faith, because your faith does not want you? That would be easy! My life would have been a happier one! But all these years there have been two fires in me and neither puts the other out!”

—Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

Lucy Caldwell’s short story collection Intimacies pulls us deeply into that title word. I loved the story rethinking Monica Lewinksy, and there are a number of stories which bring us into the exhausted, hazy vulnerability of new motherhood.

“In the underground car park, you sit with the children asleep as your husband takes the bags up, turns on the heating, makes a hot-water bottle for your son’s bed underneath the draughty window. These offerings, these devotions, banal and endless, our days going round and rushing from under us; the measure of our love.”

— Lucy Caldwell, Intimacies

Students in my D.Min cohort just read Catherine of Sienna. She’s amazing.

“The soul always fears until she arrives at true love.”

—Catherine of Sienna

Products making life a little better:

You need a budget (YNAB) is the best purchase I’ve made this year. I’d tried it once, years ago, but I’m now finding it life-changing. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Warning: YNAB makes it very, very hard for you to cheat yourself.

Arm & Hammer No Rinse Deodorizing Foam for Dogs. What can I say? It deodorizes the dogs. It smells like juniper. I’m so glad I found this stuff. The dogs don’t even mind getting rubbed down with it.

I’m probably late to the game on this sort of thing, but this charger grabs my phone and watch right by my bed and, unlike some other wireless chargers I’ve had, works reliably.

Wearing

Summer stripes from Amazon. I love this top. It’s a substantial knit, and the colors have stayed fast in the wash.

Giant 90s hair claw/clips. These are big enough to hold a lot of hair, and I always have one in right now.

Reading: substacks

I have often wondered about this paradox.

isn't that the craziest thing

The Pentecostal Gender Paradox

A few weeks ago, I mentioned a book. I finished reading it, finally. It took some time because it’s academic, and thus a slower read; but also because it’s a topic that impacts me personally, and I had to keep setting the book down to process my thoughts…

8 months ago · 14 likes · 3 comments · Patti Pierce-Miller

A helpful bit of writing encouragement.

Necessary Salt by Joy Sullivan

Write where it's warm

The other day, during a serious bout of second-book-paralysis, my friend and freelance publicist, Emily, said something really startling and lovely. Emily says a lot of startling, lovely things, but this one, in particular, stuck. Write where it’s warm. All you have to do is follow the heat…

8 months ago · 205 likes · 23 comments · Joy Sullivan

Chris EW Green

responding to my post on God the Father:

Speakeasy Theology

The Father is Not a Father

“To gender God is to make God in our image, the very definition of idolatry.” Beth Felker Jones Reading this piece (If God Has No Gender, Why Speak the Father’s Name?) by Beth Felker Jones reminded me of a passage from Nicholas Lash’s Believing Three Ways in One God…

7 months ago · 45 likes · 1 comment · Chris EW Green

A year ago, at Church Blogmatics:

Questions about hell

July 13, 2023

Gentle reader, I recently solicited questions you’d like me to address here at Church Blogmatics. A group of those questions cluster around Christian teaching about hell, a teaching which is very difficult for many of us. In today’s post, I’ll try to take those questions on (though each question could merit a much longer answer).

Read full story

Most popular recent post at Church Blogmatics:

The betrayal of the Butker commencement speech

May 20, 2024

Gentle reader, As a teacher, commencement marks the happy point in my yearly rhythm when I have grades wrapped up, and my summer goals still feel achievable: the point where the schedule yields a bit to longer days. It also stirs my hopes for my students; all the feels come up: my care for them, my gratitude for the ways they’ve encouraged me to hope for…

Read full story

Listening & Watching

Friends, Beyoncé’s country album is a literary and musical masterpiece. From the first strains of “American Requiem,” I was blown away. She’s doing it all. Playing with genre. Commenting on race and Southernness and femininity and motherhood. Singing her heart out.

There’s a new season out of the very sweet Trying from Apple TV. Plus, 2 more shows I’ve been waiting for are back: The Bear and House of the Dragon.

Things you can’t buy or link to:

watching the finches knock cicada-snacks out of the trees
visiting my folks
walking through the summer with the slow unfolding of the hydrangeas
appreciating it when the kids leave the house together to play pickleball
dreaming of the beach
breathing

Again, I’d love to hear about your current favorite things. What’s bringing you life and joy as we welcome July?

Grace & peace,

BFJ

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