News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
It was good to be offline for three weeks, read lots of books, and get recalibrated. One week at church, I heard from a visiting missionary that the US had bombed Iran, but when I logged back online this week, that seemingly significant story was nowhere to be seen. It was a reminder to me that the digital information ecosystem doesn't do a good job of encouraging us to attend in healthy ways to what really matters.
I'll just highlight this week's new essays below, but FPR has been publishing lots of good pieces, so you may want to scroll back through our recent archives. We've also added some new local porches, and plans are coming together nicely for the fall conference in Waco, TX. I'm looking forward to seeing many of you there.
- In this week's Water Dipper, I recommend essays about pints, children, and libraries.
- Gene Callahan asks us to remember that history's events do not a moral arc make: "Katha Pollit of The Nation entitled a talk she gave 'What?! It’s the 21st Century and We’re Still Fighting for Reproductive Rights?' (I wonder if someone gave a talk in 1240 entitled, 'What?! It’s the 13th Century and We’re Still Fighting About Whether Trial by Ordeal Works?') You can even buy gay-pride t-shirts for toddlers emblazoned with a pride rainbow and the words 'Hello, It’s the 21st Century', as though just mentioning the current century could determine sexual ethics. It is noteworthy that this was recognized as a fallacious argument over 2000 years ago, as the argumentum ad annum, or 'argument from the year.'"
- Holly Stockley describes the value of being responsible for a bit of earth and proposes some ways to make that possible for more people: "We’ve largely traded the idea of a plot for the modern concept of a lot. One letter, but a world of difference. A plot is that piece of creation over which we exercise a tiny modicum of our mandated dominion, to practice stewardship. A lot is a registered subdivision of geography, whose value is managed by assessors and determined by market forces. It transforms land from a place to a commodity."
- Sarah Silflow meditates on dissonance and harmony and draws on Bach, Tolkien, and others to consider how we might gain ears to hear: "Life, like music, depends upon context. The discord of Melkor, when taken up into Ilúvatar’s theme, became something more wonderful than could have been imagined. So too, dissonance in our stories, when placed in the right context, can become more meaningful than we could have imagined."
- Jeffrey Tabone reviews Molly Worthen’s Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump and ponders the strange history of charisma: "Let us pay heed to Worthen’s argument and be cautious of our own hubris, lest we too become “spellbound,” and drawn towards ends incompatible with human flourishing, both for our sake and for the sake of our neighbors."
- Caleb Miller contrasts those who have almost nothing with those who have far too much and finds surprising commonalities: "When I paid attention to the excesses and lack of others, my work and the relationships I formed through it took on a far greater meaning. In my transition from work with refugees to wealthy homeowners, the stark contrasts of their excess and lack were obvious. But I’m certain that all of us can find similar contrasts in our workplaces or neighborhoods. When we become more fully aware of the constraints of others, we begin to understand their priorities and decisions because we know what they have to work with."
I recently got to a book that’s been on my to-read pile for some time: Helen Rebanks’s The Farmer’s Wife: My Life in Days. It’s a frank account of the joys and travails of making a home in rural England. Rebanks reflects throughout the book on the tensions between wanting to define her self through modern notions—professional success, fashionable clothes and tastes—and through her relationships with others—her husband, children, and neighbors. The latter path is fraught with challenges, and her honest reckoning with these makes her embrace of community all the more compelling. At one point, she describes living in Oxford while her husband attended school there:
Curled under a blanket on the sofa in my pajamas, I felt safe in the cocoon that I had made, but looking back it wasn’t living, it was just existing. Endless episodes of Friends and Sex in the City were on TV, and I felt empty. I didn’t have a group of friends around me all the time like the TV characters did. I knew there lives weren’t real, but I slowly realized I had shut myself off from any kind of fun, friendship, and support.
Oxford was a city of revolving doors. By June all the students had vanished. Then came the tourists with cameras around their necks, forming crowds around the monuments and college entrances. People living around us kept to themselves. I realized after a while that no one really knew their neighbors, and there weren’t any local events that helped people get to know each other. There wasn’t a community that I could see. I overheard conversations in the cafe about where people had come from and how long they’d be staying here. Oxford was a city that felt more like a bus stop.
Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,
Jeff Bilbro