Newsletters in a New Year
Welcome to another year of Peregrinatio! Thank you for being a subscriber. I hope to serve you as a reader too.
I've been trying to think explicitly about why I have this newsletter, as well as wondering why you -- YES, YOU! -- subscribe to it. If you are game to reply here to tell me, feel free!
In general I write a newsletter to have a place to communicate and reflect regularly to interested readers. In the main, I've focused specifically on writing, the intellectual life, and what brings me joy. The medium suits me as a writer - I rarely if ever post photos.
My newsletter's admittedly awkward title is precious to me personally. "Peregrinatio" is Latin for pilgrimage, traveling abroad, sojourning, which obviously connects to my Christian faith and theological training, as well as our family's life in the US Foreign Service. As a writer, I hear in it too the work of storytelling, documentation, reflection, and memory that are critical to being a pilgrim in the world, no matter where you are, where you are going, or what you are doing. As a birder, I see "peregrine" as in peregrine falcon, a bird I came to love during our years in Belgium.
In these early days of this new year, I've looked over the newsletters I subscribe to, and tried to name why I do. I subscribe to many, and I know why I do. Most but not all are written by writers, but many of them come from people at work in other professions too. Most are thoughtful creative communicators in some way, and every single one of them encourages me to keep going.
From time to time, I try to cull my subscriptions too. I've periodically subscribed to newsletters by the big names. (E.g., I suspect everyone in the known universe has subscribed at some point to James Clear's newsletter.)
There is, though, a narrow band of newsletters that help me keep going but are written by people who irritate and/or tempt me to envy, which I'm learning to treat as a reliable sign for me to look closer, get curious, and see what it is that I might learn from them. I look for the possible why, and a few of them are still worth keeping in my inbox. (For more on the invitation embedded in envy, writing coach Ann Kroeker brings the wisdom in this great reflection.)
I want to shine a spotlight on three writers of newsletters among the many who I am glad to have read:
Jen Pollock Michel. I've written about Jen Michel many times here; she is a dear friend and an accomplished writer, and her newsletter is proof. In this new year, I want to lift a particular resource of Jen's that may assist you in these often aspirational weeks of January. Last year around this time, I enrolled in Jen's Rule of Life workshop. Jen has developed a workbook based on her teaching -- a beautiful one! -- that you can order, and she regularly runs workshops like the one I took, so I truly commend her work on this subject to you, . She's a gifted writer and teacher.
Andrew DeCort, and his Stop and Think newsletter. (When you are prompted by pop-up box to buy his latest book Flourishing on the Edge of Faith, go for it!) Andrew is an insanely accomplished, whole-cloth/whole-life academic and writer. I learned recently that his wife, Lily, just launched her art website, and my goodness, her work is exquisite.
Not last, not least, and not even final in the writers with valuable newsletters category: Tim Hoiland, and his The Bookshelf newsletter. There, Tim writes thoughtfully about books he reads, and I find him to be such a cogent and creative thinker. He's Communications Director for 1MISSION, founder of Hoiland Media (a communications company), is an author and a very gifted filmmaker. Please take a few minutes to read the intro and then watch the film "This is Home" here.
Peace to you and good newsletters in this new year. Drink water, breathe deep, scan the skies for birds given to you, and know that there is always, always hope. Always.
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Some of my reading right now:
Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle, translated by Mirabai Starr
Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter series (third read in my life)
Margaret Miles's Fullness of Life: Historical Foundations for a New Monasticism
Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation
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