On "The Birds and the Beguines"
Welcome new subscribers, and a friendly "hello again" to longtime readers of my newsletter!
I am a fan of newsletters, especially by writers, chiefly because as a medium, they allow us to exercise the writing muscles we writers need to flex regularly. As a subscriber to other newsletters, I enjoy reading some of the inner working of the "live human being" behind the words.
It is a grace to welcome and dialogue with you, an equally "live human being," to my words. I do not take for granted the massive privilege and responsibility of "being read." Thank you.
Of course, newsletters are also a modest way to offer samples of one's work, like a tray of tiny cubes of fudge and saltwater taffy outside the boardwalk sweets shop at the beach. I enjoy lifting other people's work here, as well as my own from time to time.
So, like the plucky teen holding the tray, let me invite you to the greater feast of Comment magazine, helmed by editor-in-chief Anne Snyder, and published by the good people of Cardus, a non-partisan think tank in Canada. Comment hosts all kinds of delicious communications these days, from "The Whole Person Revolution" and "Zealots at the Gate" podcasts in oral/aural form, to their beautifully crafted print magazine, which you can have delivered right to your mailbox. The editorial shepherds at Comment are doing the kind of quiet, hidden work that helps us all stay human in a dehumanizing world.
I have a feature essay in the latest edition, called "The Birds and the Beguines." Part of my own learning as a writer these days is to take my perfectly ideal, unrealized imaginations and permit them to become real and actual somethings. The essay is evidence of my exercising that particular muscle, along with the exceptional skill of Comment's editors as midwives to my words.
It is currently only available to subscribers so consider becoming a subscriber of this gorgeous magazine at a quite reasonable list price! You can read Anne's editorial without a subscription, "Cooperating with God." Her list of questions is both slowing and stirring, worth taking in and chewing on in your life and your corner of the world.