No one in the earliest Christian communities thought in terms of a ‘theology’ developing alongside a ‘spirituality.’ What we see is an evolving practice (both communal and personal) that generated a variety of challenges to language, imagination and self-understanding. As has often been said, Christian doctrine took its distinctive shape only through reflection on the distinctiveness of how Christian woman and men actually prayed.

Rowan Williams, Passions of the Soul. I’m appreciating his effort to unpack the language of the early Fathers for a modern audience. No small job: we tend to translate important concepts into off-putting terms like ‘intellect’ and ‘dispassion,’ and the fiery, eye-opening teaching gets lost.

My wife & I had a fun conversation today about all the songs that have become incomprehensible to a younger generation due to changes in phone technology. We thought of “Operator,” “Driving Wheel,” and of course Chuck Berry’s “Memphis”. Remembered too trying to get some privacy to talk intimately on the one phone in the house, which was always placed in a high-traffic area like the kitchen.

Started reading Jeffrey Bilbro, Words for Conviviality: Media Technologies and Practices of Hope. It promises to be very rich.

“It’s changed expectations about what’s worthy of attention,” Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at UVA, told me. “Being bored has become unnatural.”

(The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books)[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/]

According to the article they have trouble sustaining discussion of a whole sonnet, too. One factor: many students now leave high school never having been assigned a whole book.

Stumbled on Wendy Cope’s “The Orange.” And that poem, it made me so happy.

“for prayer is the sister of the birds.” - Francis Jammes

I’m looking for recommendations of a good English translation of the Septuagint that reads well. I’ve been interested in NETS but have read that it’s better as a study tool than for devotional reading. Suggestions welcome! Cranky proviso: use of “Yahweh” rules out a translation for me.

A rare political note: The speed with which Jew-hatred is being mainstreamed in American politics is, to me, breathtaking and frightening.

I just got an Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets volume, and the physical object is so pleasing that I love it even before looking at the contents. Good hardcover binding, good paper, good printing, even a ribbon bookmark, at a reasonable price. Somebody cares!

From @jeremycherfas’s fine Eat This Newsletter: You know all those Blue-zone studies that look at countries with a lot of centenarians and prescribe lifestyle fixes based their practices? The unusual “longevity” might be mostly a result of poor record-keeping and pension fraud. Oh well.

Bonnie Kristian takes the concept of repair and runs with it. Thoughtful.
>Mending may be visible—an embroidery of flowers over moth-eaten holes instead of a seamless weave. To oppose the tendency against repair is not to reject everything new, prescribe a universal solution, or deny the reality of brokenness. It is rather to have a bias toward the restoration of good things. It is a tendency toward repair over replacement, resolve over resignation, conservation over chaos, staying over leaving, and building up over tearing down.

Post: Theology.

Kitchen simplification. I’m the main cook in our household, and can fall prey to the seductive call of Interesting Recipes (from news sites, that attractive new cookbook, etc.) There’s a good reminder in Viana La Place’s Unplugged Kitchen: Your beloved Nonna, whom everyone remembers as such a fantastic cook, probably had a repertoire of maybe ten (or fewer) dishes that she served in rotation and tweaked over the years. This was how normal households worked. I like to try new approaches, but need to look out for kitchen consumerism and the lure of food as entertainment.