The Weekly, December 9, 2024
Hi all,
This will be something of a Christmas letter, though it does include the usual links and books as well.
A couple months ago our third child turned seven. Watching him open gifts I had the thought “you are the age now that your sister (our oldest) was when your younger brother was born.” In other words: At one point we had four kids seven and younger. Looking at him and having that thought was in itself enough to make me tired.
Life is a bit different now: Our oldest is 12 and going to youth group every week and getting rides to Culvers afterwords with our pastor’s wife or one of the college girls who helps out with youth ministry at our church. Our youngest is five and going to preschool. Our oldest son has an advanced red belt in taekwondo. Our second son is doing piano and tumbling and probably just needs to get into gymnastics because he seems to have a natural aptitude for it. They enjoy playing outside, Minecraft, and time with friends. The older two are big readers. The oldest has been for awhile. The nine year old has grown into it this fall—he’s now read a couple 400 page young adult books that his sister recommended, which I wouldn’t have imagined him doing a year ago. We’re trying to teach them about the permanent things—God and the Gospel, his love for them, his call on their lives. Sometimes I think they’re getting it. I think that’s just how parenting is.
Meanwhile, my wife and I celebrated our 13th anniversary over the summer and today is actually the 14th anniversary of the day we got engaged. I’m going to be 37 in a few weeks. It’s a different phase of life. Professionally, I’m having to think about my own work differently. It’s amusing and not inappropriate to be a bit of an enfant terrible early in your writing life. But to continue in it forever is unseemly. I’m also thinking about formation and trajectories differently, I think. I don’t want to spend my time on polemics, but on construction. I’d like to build something with Mere O that can be handed on to someone else someday and, in the interim, is of real service in the reconstruction of the American church after what I think has been a very dark several decades in our life.
In one of the pieces linked below, Kirsten Sanders suggests that a better question, particularly once one reaches a certain age, than “who will I become?” is “who will I have been?” I’ll be thinking about that line for awhile.
More generally, things are well for us right now: Joie is homeschooling our three oldest this year. She’s also teaching dance alongside a Catholic friend of ours in a studio that is basically half Catholic and half Protestant, which suits us, I think. We’re part of a church plant. Mere O is the healthiest it’s ever been. We enjoy our kids. It’s a good season, and feels like we might be finally exiting what has been a very hard decade of life. We’re grateful.
Blessings to you during your Advent and Christmas season. Thanks for reading!
Books
I reread A Severe Mercy for the first time in many years—probably my fourth or fifth time through it overall. It remains one of my absolute favorite books. Vanauken is a marvel and if you don’t already love C. S. Lewis you will once you’re done reading Vanauken.
I’m also going through Bray and Keane’s How to Use the Book of Common Prayer, which is excellent, and Justin Phillips’s C. S. Lewis in a Time of War, which has been full of history I hadn’t previously known despite the fact that I’ve read quite a lot on Lewis. I also have my pastor’s old copy of The Mystery of Providence by John Flavel, and have just started to dip into that. It’ll be my first text of Flavel’s—a lesser known but, from what I’ve been told, quite exceptional Puritan divine. Finally, I’m reading Archbishops Chaput’s Things Worth Dying For, which came out a few years ago. I’ve not met Chaput, but I know a few people who know him reasonably well and to a man they all praise his piety and devotion to Christ. So given the season of life I’m now in it seemed worthwhile to read what a man far further along in Christ’s service has to say about the things that are worth dying for as he himself nears his own meeting with Christ.
Articles
Myles Werntz on the new Bonhoeffer movie
Ian Harber on some surprising cultural trends around booksales and what it might mean for Christians
Kirsten Sanders on ETS and AAR/SBL and the significance of thinking together with others
James Davison Hunter on nihilism, both passive and active
A. M. Hickman on upstate New York
Elsewhere
So the neighborhood grocery store sells these pre-packaged “dessert shells” which are basically a small circular sponge cake with elevated edges so that you can fill them with whatever topping you like and serve. We had a Husker watch party this weekend with our church the weekend of the USC game (I don’t want to talk about it…) and so I went to the store, got the dessert shells and the cheapest berries they had (blackberries, which were on sale) and put a dessert together for the game.
Briefly, I made a simple blackberry compote using 24 oz of blackberries, the juice of one lemon, and sugar to taste—maybe three tablespoons? I don’t recall how much I put in. Mix all that together in a saucepan and reduce to desired thickness and you have your compote.
From there, it’s very easy: Once the compote has cooled in the fridge for a few hours, spoon it into the shells, top with a bit of whipped cream, and then put a couple mint leaves on top for garnish. Looks very nice and it’s dead easy to make.
Thanks for reading!
Under the Mercy,
~Jake
PS I know there’s lots of chatter right now about the new social media site—the butterfly site that replaces the bird site by basically being what the bird site was five years ago. I am not planning to make the jump. Organic social media is dead. The future of healthy, worthwhile media is independent, subscription-based media projects plus curated email newsletters—which means my energy will continue to be focused primarily on Mere O with bits of time in the margins going toward this. So you can continue to find me right here. That said, we do have a Mere Orthodoxy account on the butterfly site so if you’re on there you can find us here.