A mini writing retreat, Not-a-Podcast, and Malcolm Guite's commencement address!
Hello, Friends!
I took a couple of days away from the school this week to force myself to spend a few hours at a time working on Rhythms of Habit. The result of these two days is that a full working draft (working, not final) is now ready. It is a little over 40,000 words, but there is still a good deal of revision to complete.
The book has grown since I first started the draft in 2017. At the time, it was a book about the Church Calendar as an apprenticeship in holiness. It has grown into a book about what it means to be a moral being, and how virtues, habits, and the church calendar all work together to shape us into the moral beings we are called to be.
In a landscape of several recent books about recovering ancient practices, this book aims to explain more about how humans operate in the moral realm, and therefore why these practices are needed and how they actually do their work.
The most current table of contents is below. After this most recent mini-writing-retreat, I think completing the final manuscript by the end of 2024 is a realistic goal.
I definitely do not have a podcast.
Podcasts have fancy intros, conversations with more than one person, and ads. They are also usually professionally recorded, instead of spoken into Voice Memos while the host is out on a walk. So in that sense, I definitely do not have a podcast.
But I did start recording short audio versions of some of my essays and other works, and those audio versions are available at the same sort of places you find real podcasts.
So, if you like reading some of what I am working on with your eyes: keep an eye on my website.
If you like listening to some of what I am working on with your ears, check out my Not-a-Podcast.
Malcolm Guite came to town, and it was everything I hoped it would be.
In what was a personal and professional highlight of a lifetime, Coram Deo Academy welcomed Malcolm Guite as our Class of 2024 Honored Speaker for our Commencement ceremonies this May.
After spending time with our faculty and students, he shared the following about our campus:
If I come from another world, then I have to say it’s also felt extraordinarily like a homecoming here. Because I have loved and recognized the mutual admiration and respect between student and staff, between teacher and learner.
It was a deep joy sharing Malcolm and his work with those who already know him and with friends who are now delighted to have met him.
You can hear his address—along with an introduction to his talk from some of our CDA Dallas Campus leaders—by clicking here. (His address begins around the 10:15 mark.)
I have listened to it no less than a dozen times. It is well worth your time.
I’ll leave you with perhaps the two best photos of the very full Malcolm Guite weekend. One is Viv in what I can only imagine was a wildly wonderful car-ride conversation, and the other is a ballerina trying to sneak up on the poet himself in our living room.
