News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
We've hit a few technical hiccups on the website transition, but it should be happening soon. Stay tuned! In the meantime, don't forget to encourage a student in your life to submit an essay for our contest, and makes plans to register for our fall conference in Waco, TX.
- In this week's Water Dipper, I recommend essays about life, death, and branding day.
- Lenny Wells visits rural Spain and reflects on different cultural modes of relating to the land and to other people: " Though we may choose to live out our lives differently upon the land, there remain in both places people who still care for and respect land and community. I have learned much from the Spanish way of life that I hope to apply to my own life, in a way appropriate to my place and culture."
- Jon Schaff commends Ross Douthat's new book Believe: "We are pilgrims in this world. We must be content to wonder as we wander. Douthat is asking his readers to cast their nets into the deep. If we seek, we shall find."
- Jared Phillips notices the loss of people and creatures from his community and considers how to tend the health of this damaged place: "Every year that we farm in the old ways, more of nature returns, despite the mistakes we make. Each return teaches hope."
- John Heaton considers the conditions necessary for humor and faith: "The laughter of a faithless culture is bitter, derisive. It no longer springs from a merry heart but from dry bones. A culture of faith is a culture that can truly laugh."
- David Bannon bears witness to the presence of the miraculous: "My miracles are many, too many to count or explain. Maybe yours are too."
- Carter Johnson wonders if good teaching might be a bit like good boxing: "To throw pedagogical punches is not to berate students; it’s to engage them in the ring. Most of them just need a nudge, a little jab that’s meant to be blocked."
Each year, the Henry David Thoreau industry cranks out many new books. As only a part-time Thoreau scholar, I don’t even try to keep up with them all. But Richard Higgins’s Thoreau’s God makes an actual contribution to our understanding of Thoreau. And as a former journalist, Higgins also knows how to write a readable book. He doesn’t try to sandpaper Thoreau’s incongruities but instead places the different facets of Thoreau’s religious life alongside one another to present a nuanced and just presentation of this prickly yet profound writer:
The biggest problem may be what it means to call Thoreau religious, given his antipathy to institutional religion or fixed beliefs. One could point to his simple, ascetic lifestyle, which Alda Balthrop-Lewis presents as a religiously informed practice of political dissent; his reclamation of ancient wisdom from the world’s religions; or his sometimes strident philosophical views on the topic. What makes him religious even more in my view are certain attitudes or habits of mind and heart he possessed—those of reverence, devotion, aspiration to a higher life, disciplined attention, awe, gratitude, and subordination to something larger than himself. In essence, Thoreau’s whole life was a prayer.
Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,
Jeff Bilbro