News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
This week, we welcome a new editorial intern to the Porch: Sarah Soltis. Sarah is an English major at Grove City College, and she'll be doing some editing and website work; keep an eye out for her own writing at some point as well! We're quite grateful for the good work that Anna Bailey has done the past several months.
In this week's Water Dipper, I recommend essays about reparations, trainings, and forgiveness.
I meditate on a stanza from the Mad Farmer (and some wisdom from G.K. Chesterton) to consider how we might stay sane amid the insanity of our political and cultural discourse.
Elizabeth Stice responds to Ken Burns's new series. By holding up the life of Muhammad Ali, Burns seems to be asking us pressing questions: can we maintain our principles and move from outspoken and oppositional to loving and virtuous? Will we use our beauty and gifts not to belittle others but to better them?
Jeffrey Wald draws our attention to a new novel: Earth Without Water. Katy Carl's story invites us to ponder the mystery of seeds, the mystery of faith, and the mystery of Divine action in the world. The novel is not about farmers, or even about the literal planting of seeds. Instead, it is about two painters and sometimes lovers and the germination of their faith and submission to God’s will.
The ongoing debates about public health bring to mind Wendell Berry's classic essay "Health is Membership." If you haven't read it in awhile--or ever--it's worth taking the time to do so. I'll offer just a couple of paragraphs to give a sense of his argument:
If you are going to deal with the issue of health in the modern world, you are going to have to deal with much absurdity. It is not clear, for example, why death should increasingly be looked upon as a curable disease, an abnormality, by a society that increasingly looks upon life as insupportably painful and/or meaningless. Even more startling is the realization that the modern medical industry faithfully imitates disease in the way that it isolates us and parcels us out. If, for example, intense and persistent pain causes you to pay attention only to your stomach, then you must leave home, community, and family and go to a sometimes distant clinic or hospital, where you will be cared for by a specialist who will pay attention only to your stomach.
I believe that the community-in the fullest sense: a place and all its creatures-is the smallest unit of health and that to speak of the health of an isolated individual is a contradiction in terms.