On Fairy-Stories

This book (available free online from that link) is a long essay, well - originally lecture, by J.R.R. Tolkien, regarding the fairy story and fantastical fiction in general. It is widely known as a key touchstone for thinkers in and around the genre on how to do it well, and as I am currently working on my own series of fantasy novels (as well as being generally interested in how the father of the modern genre approached it) I thought it would be well worth a read* - and I was not disappointed. Tolkien begins with a broad attempt to define the fairy story, before delving into the historical and cultural origins of the genre; he then considers the stereotypical association of the fairy story as being intended for and only enjoyable by children (a proposition he roundly rejects) and then goes on to develop a definitional theory of what precisely "fantasy" is - this is the meatiest part of the whole essay - as being a genre that should ideally provide recovery, escape, and consolation (it is in this part that he coins the term "eucatastrophe" to describe the inexplicable, unpredictable, yet inevitable happy ending of all true fairy stories***), and finally concluding with a statement about art's essential nature to human flourishing under God in consideration of our relationship to truth and imagination. This is a deeply stimulating essay, and whether you're active in writing fantasy yourself or you're simply an enjoyer of the genre who wants to take a thorough stare at the nuts and bolts of what makes it so vibrant and long-enduring as a form of human expression, you will find a great deal of food for thought here. Well worth a read - especially if you're a fan of Tolkien's fictional works, as this essentially provides the manifesto statement of how he approached all of his writings of the fantastical ilk.

* Although if you're interested in the ideas talked about in this post but don't have the attention span to read a forty-page essay,** assuming you still have the attention span to watch a forty-minute video essay, Jess of the Shire has you covered.

** In which case, what the heck are you doing on this blog?

*** Key example in point - at the culmination of The Lord of the Rings (spoiler alert), the ring is destroyed not by intent but by accident: Frodo caves to its power at the very last step of his journey, and Middle-earth is saved only by Gollum slipping into the lava having bitten off poor Mr. Baggins's finger to reclaim his precious. Textbook eucatastrophe.

Garden of Madness

This book is a collection of poetry by Pete Bearder (author of this book about spoken word generally). I picked it up on the solstice when I saw him live at The Shakespeares doing very cool things with a loop pedal, and have just finished reading it in one sitting. It's difficult to give justice to these poems in a coherent summary - they are largely consistent in style and tone, all somewhat existential, dealing with humans as conscious embodied creatures and the myriad confusions and convictions that come with that. Bearder delves into dark depths of psychology and glimmering heights of spirituality that all seem to knit together into the same, single tapestry of - well, the title. Knowing his gifts as a performer I know full well that I would have enjoyed this collection immeasurably more had I heard Pete himself performing all of them live, but even on the page these poems jostle indignantly and thump their way from page to brain before once more evaporating into nowhere, but leaving you with a distinct moistness that knows the fog that had been just then settled upon your mind. Big ideas but not distractingly philosophical or overly verbose; grand humanity but never obsequiously sentimental. Any enjoyer of poetry will get a lot out of this, I think.

Mechanicum

This book by Graham McNeill is the ninth book in the Horus Heresy series, which I am doggedly working my way through, and oh boy this one is a doozy. Here we have a completely new angle on the events unfolding across the nascent Imperium, as we follow developments among the technology-deifying civilisation on Mars once the ripples from Horus's heresy make themselves felt across the stars. So yeh - other than a very brief glimpse of Rogal Dorn there are no primarchs in this one (we do get a fairly decent lore-dump about the doings and sayings of the Emperor himself though - and a fleeting appearance in a historical prologue), and no Adeptus Astartes at all; instead we have a diverse cast of tech-priests, Titan Legions, officials high and low, corrupt and loyal. The main character though is an ordinary human - the first, and if you ask me realistically probably last, female protagonist in the series so far - one Dalia Cynthera, a scribe with an abnormally good memory and a knack for being able to figure out how things work. Dalia is summoned to Mars by Adept Koriel Zeth, who has some hardcore secret experiments underway while simultaneously navigating tentatively through the ongoing religious schism between the Mechanicum and the Imperium. Of course, once the heresy takes root on Mars everything falls apart very quickly, and long-forgotten esoterica, blasphemous machineries and good old turf wars all play their part in driving humanity's oldest forge-world to the brink of absolute promise and utter doom. I'll be honest, this was probably my favourite one of the whole series so far - I kind of just love the Mechanicum, they're so weirdly not-quite-human but with such distinctive foibles; also Dalia was a much more compelling protagonist than the stoic, distant Space Marines who have stood at the gravitational centre of most of the books prior to this one.

American Fascists

This book by Chris Hedges seemed topical for some reason.*

    If you are even halfway familiar with the actual biblical ethic of Jesus Christ and the actual political ethic of modern-day American 'Christianity', you do not need me to tell you how grossly divergent these things are. The roots of this go pretty far into the past but since the latter decades of the 20th century have metastasized into something truly dangerous and that I can only imagine how much God grieves over. Hedges, who studied at Harvard Divinity School before becoming a foreign correspondent, goes into great and granular detail about how the intricacies of personal faith are distorted and manipulated by the nationalist right-wing of American political actors, and just how far so-called 'Christian' leaders have either been complacent or wholeheartedly capitulated to this scheme of outright power-grabbing.

    This is not an easy read for a Christian as it so depressingly and thoroughly shows how the fabric of our faith can be manipulated for truly hateful ends. The lengthy anecdotal passages in this book are just as harrowing as the insightful theoretical explanations of what exactly is going on. I know I am too young and thus too late for a blogpost about this book to have any meaningful impact on future politics, as we have already swung far enough that I genuinely fear there may be no coming back for American democracy. The only way in which I would thus recommend this book is if you want to salve your confusion by knowing a bit more about how exactly the religion of the world's superpower became so co-opted by capitalism, racism, anti-intellectualism and so forth, that we now face ANOTHER FOUR FUCKING YEARS with the "leader of the free world" being a draft-dodging, tax-evading, bigoted rapist who prior to his entry into politics was most famous for telling people on reality TV that they were fired - ugh, but yeh, if you want a fragment more insight into how American Christianity became so horribly un-Christlike, this book would be a good place to start. If only my blog had a large-ish readership and I'd read this when it came out nearly twenty years ago - then at least this post would have maybe had some kind of impact. Now it just feels like a whinge.**

* I actually meant to read it the first time Orange Fraudster Man was running for president, but never quite got round to it. This time however I beasted the whole book in a day out of desperation to understand a bit more about how a country could be so utterly dumb.

** Assuming I have readers - which is a stretch in itself - but assuming any of you are American - if you have them, please take close care of your LGBTQ+ friends and family in the days to come. Their fears are by no means illegitimate. Remember even Hitler came for the trans community well before any concerted attack against the Jews.

Battle for the Abyss

This book by Ben Counter is the eighth Horus Heresy novel in the series, and the first to feature precisely zero primarchs! Outrageous! Where are our oh-so-flawed demigods? Trust me when I say this book proves you don't always need one around to have an adrenaline-fuelled violent romp through space. In this instalment, the recently (and essentially, secretly) heresy-aligned Word Bearers have received from the shipyards of Jupiter the largest spacecraft ever commissioned in the Imperium's history - a ridiculously big behemoth called The Furious Abyss - and, surprise surprise, they plan on using it to lead a sneak attack on the Ultramar system, a core of loyalist Imperial worlds under the protection of the Ultramarines Legion, so crippling a vital centre of Imperial control before news of the heresy has even reached Terra yet. Events conspire to draw the Abyss into conflict with a loyalist cluster fleet, and a chase through the warp ensues - with a small contingent of the loyalists managing to infiltrate the Word Bearers' ship but with little they can do to stop it from achieving its goal. A haphazard, uncoordinated but determined series of efforts between Ultramarines Captain Cestus, Space Wolves Captain Brynngar, World Eaters (apparently this book takes place before their legion goes full heretic) Captain Skraal and Thousand Sons psyker Mhotep is all that stands between the Abyss and Ultramar - the stakes may not be as high in scope as they have been in most of the previous novels; no allegiances are being traded here, everyone stays standing where they stand - but it's the first sign of the heresy metastasizing past the watersheds of Isstvan and becoming a full blown civil war spanning the Imperium.

Driving Short Distances

This book is a graphic novel by Joff Winterhart - it was a birthday present from my brother, and I've just read the whole thing in a single sitting. It made me profoundly sad, and hopeful, and a tad confused about the relationship between these two feelings.

    What's it about? So there's a 27-year-old called Sam who is failing at life and needs a job. The second cousin of his absent father, a man called Keith, offers him one in his delivery business - the work essentially entails driving about for brief periods of time, getting out of the car, then getting back in and repeating the procedure. Over the course of the several months that Sam works for Keith, the pair make the same several dozen stops several dozen times, eat the same pair of pasties for lunch every day, and allow us as the reader an insight into a dizzyingly well-realisedly mundane community of genuinely believable characters, from a diversity of receptionists to jocular compatriots of Keith's from the local business community to a particularly flirty bakery employee to acquaintances of questionable history.

    Mundanity is the key word in that last paragraph. Almost nothing of import happens in this story - it's essentially a twinned character study between Sam's aspirations and Keith's mystery. And this is exceptionally well-drawn.* One almost feels as if postgraduate dissertations in psychology could well be written about these people, so complex and yet on-the-surface their portrayals are. Ultimately I think it's a story about hope - what we have always wanted to be the possible case of things despite where we start our stories, where we compromise to accepting our place when these plans don't quite work out, and where we desperately long to be when all chance of achieving what we once wished for have long since evaporated - yet how if we're lucky, or simply of a certain mindset, there is always either a get-out clause or the option to just decide to be content with our lot.

    This is a delightfully human book. I love the illustrations and these are at least half the fabric that carries the vibe of the story. The dialogue is so natural it almost feels like reading a comic-ized documentary shooting at times, and it is chock-full of minute profoundly-human observations that resonate deeply with the kinds of things one has always noticed but almost never heard authors mention. It's a brilliant well-told pair of character studies that goes on no longer than it needs to and doesn't try to do anything beyond its own scope. Even if you're not a fan of graphic novels per se, if you're a fan of any kind of pure fiction that's good because of what it says and affirms about humanity rather than because it has Big Exciting Moments, you'll almost certainly like this.

* And I'm not there talking about the art style - though that too is exceptionally well-drawn, with a minimalistic blue-and-brown colour palette that fits the soul of the story perfectly, and a shabby but detailed habit of portrayal that lends every frame a depth of character that makes the goings-on, basic as they may be, viscerally relatable and recognisable.

the Prophetic Imagination

This book is one that I have read before since the start of this blog, hence the link above leading back to my prior post. I've been re-reading this in chunks with my dad, and frankly have to say I found this an incredibly edifying procedure, as not only was I re-treated to Brueggemann's incisive theological points but also the rich and often surprising conversations with my dad after each chapter or so. I said before in my original post that this book is challenging but well worth a dive, and off the back of this more recent experience I will add that I particularly recommend this book as something to go through as part of a small-group study, as it has plenty of practical provocative material from both Old and New testaments that should get a cluster of Christians thinking prophetically, and that can hardly be a bad thing.

the Didache

This book, by anonymous first-century Christian authors, is one of those key texts that were fundamental to the early church and it is thus often asked "why isn't it in the New Testament then?" and I can't answer that. If you're interested it's available as a free online .pdf at the link above and it's very short - I read the whole thing (appendix* included) in fifteen minutes.

    As to what this book is - it's essentially a practical guide for early Christians on how to do stuff. All manner of ecclesiastical practice as derived from the habits and insights of the apostles (the book is more widely known as "the teachings of the apostles") - from behavioural ethics, to church organisation, to appropriate liturgies and sacraments, with a final chapter dealing with how one is to think about eschatology (the end times). It's such a short and orthodox text that I don't think I have much to say about it that hasn't already been said many times on this blog in relation to Christianity and its history and practice. Though this is, I will say, a very interesting document if one is interested in delving deeper into the consistency and integrity of the early church.

* By appendix I mean a small collection of early Christian hymns and prayers.

Metanoia

This book by Alan Hirsch and Rob Kelly is, as its subtitle proclaims, a study of "how God radically transforms people, churches and organizations from the inside-out". The book is divided into two sections: why and how.

   The "why" section first deals with the potential problems that any church faces, and the grim apocalypse of failure in the face of such. We then dive into "metanoia" (a Greek word meaning roughly "to go into the Big Mind") as a practice of continually returning oneself to Godward sight and re-tuning our learned habits and ideas to better fit God's moulds. The next chapter looks deeper into the sinful, finite nature of human beings to explicate why this is such a necessary process. Then, a christological consideration of how only by decidedly and intuitively continuing to maintain our union with Christ is the kind of transformation metanoia brings possible. Finally a reflection on the human heart, and how only when in all its parts - mind, soul, and will - it is consciously and deliberatively united with Christ will we see the fruit we desire.

   The "how" section builds off of this seamlessly; after an introductory section emphasising the essentiality of being willing to unlearn and relearn things, we see how communities can be transformed by metanoia on three levels: at core a new paradigm (a fundamental kernel to "blow the collective mind"); built off which are new platforms (structural developments that help reshape and keep "the collective soul"); and lastly embodied in new practices (any practical habitual means of "engaging the collective will"). This section is littered with examples but insistent on its message that no single strategy can work conclusively in any context - our models of church must be Christ-centred and Christ-grounded, but beyond that everything we do that we think of as church must be open for question and evolution.

   I found this book eye-opening and liberating in many ways. Hirsch writes from experience as someone deeply involved in very innovative and effective church-planting/growing organisations - and that experience very much comes through in this text. Anyone involved in Christian leadership would benefit greatly from this profound little book.

Being Good

This book by Simon Blackburn (author of Think) is, as was his other book, a general introduction to some key philosophical issues and themes; it's also one that I had already read before I started this blog but I'm re-reading it now to see whether it's worth giving to my youngest brother who has just started studying philosophy for his A-levels.

   Anyway - Blackburn, in three large chunks, covers:

• Threats to ethics
• The death of God
• Egoism
• Evolutionary theory
• Determinism & futility
• Unreasonable demands
• False consciousness
• Some ethical ideas
• Birth
• Death
• Desire & the meaning of life
• Pleasure
• The greatest happiness of the greatest number
• Freedom from the bad
• Freedom & paternalism
• Rights & natural rights
• Foundations of ethics
• Reasons & foundations
• Being good & living well
• The categorical imperative
• Contracts & discourse
• The common point of view
• Confidence restored

   And that's the book.

   Though I have a lot of nits to pick with Blackburn in the minutiae, every philosopher has to come to their own conclusions, and he does to be fair present the things he discusses with a certain detachedness that enables the reader to continue their own explorations without being too bogged down with any of the biases found in what may well be their introductory text. A good book to kick off a habit of thinking about ethics with.

Think

This book by Simon Blackburn is a general, broad, accessible introduction of some of the key areas in philosophy. I had read it before, but shortly before I started my undergraduate in philosophy and therefore before I started this blog - but decided to re-read it because my youngest brother is currently studying philosophy for his A-levels and I want to give it him for his birthday but also make sure that it was an appropriate text for his level.

   Blackburn writes well, as eruditely as accessibly - he never introduces jargon terms without pre-empting them in common sense language, he never presumes that his readers are familiar with any particular thinkers or concepts, etc. Anyway, throughout the bitesize-enough-but-still-meaty eight chapters of the book he deals with: knowledge, mind, free will, the self, God, reasoning, the world, and 'what to do'. Across the brief sketches of philosophical history he outlines in these chapters he does manage to convey a largely helpful picture of some of the key themes that philosophers have been wrestling with for millennia, as well as diving somewhat deeper into particular thinkers who seem to shed further insight (though if you ask me, Blackburn has a bit too much of a hard-on for Hume).

   I'm confident that this book will be helpful to my brother - and in saying such, I'm saying I would probably recommend it as an introductory text for anyone of the age of fifteen or up starting to study philosophy from scratch. One small gripe I have is that this book barely deals with ethics, that being only around half of the final chapter - but Blackburn has written a whole other book similar to this one on that topic, my copy of which I am also re-reading to see if it's worth gifting to my brother, so watch this space.

Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes

This book, composed by Rob Wilkins based on autobiographical notes made by the subject, Terry Pratchett, is a brilliant biography. I won't say too much about his life or character as portrayed herein as in an early (post-wise) recommendation I think everyone should read this book - it's a heartfelt and complicated and beautiful image of the man who probably has done the most anyone has done for fantasy fiction since Tolkien, and I do not say that lightly.

    Wilkins's prose is passable enough but it's the pictures carried therein that really move this book to something brilliant - one really gets to know Pratchett in an intimate sense, from his childhood as an under-achiever to his unwanted death to dementia.* Some of the earlier chapters are genuinely idyllic - his lifestyle throughout the 1970's read to me like some kind of fantasy it was so much so. One also gets a thorough picture of the blue-collar attitude he took to the business of writing novels - perhaps most perfectly displayed in the discussion of when Pratchett took six months of sabbatical to rest his mind, and then following this when Wilkins (as was at the time his personal assistant) asked him what he did with his time off, Terry grumpily replied "I wrote two books." Further from this though is an image of a man with an insatiable aptitude for practical learning - even though he'd never done particularly well at school, Terry would take an interest in something and learn the skills to master it. From his room full of old hardware that he never dared throw away in case it might still prove useful to the brilliant story of how when he recieved a knighthood he bought a small knob of metal from a meteor, found a local blacksmith and learned himself how to smith metal, personally mined a bunch of iron, forged a sword using this iron and the meteor-metal he'd obtained, and got knighted using exactly that sword.** Basically the man was a living legend, full of so much humour and wisdom that I sincerely believe the Discworld series will survive for centuries to come.

    As already said, I would recommend this book to anyone. It's a lovely read. But if you are already a fan of Pratchett's work, or at all interested in the kind of character who could produce such diverse and prolific literature - this is a must-do.

* I will say that this book, especially in the latter chapters dealing with Pratchett's struggle with early-onset Alzheimer's, is a hardcore manifesto for the right to self-dying. The tragedy of everything that you are, that you know yourself to be, degrading as your body decays, is an abhorrence, and though before reading this I had qualms about it, since, I am fully on Terry's side and think that one should be able to of sound mind & heart choose the time & method of their exit from this world should they, their family, and their medical authorities foresee nothing left for them but loss and pain. After all, if there's one thing Terry taught us overall, it's that Death is a friendly dude just doing his job.

** Tangential I know, but as a D&D dungeon master I've always had it in my head that were I to plan a campaign set in a magical post-apocalyptic England, then 'Terry Pratchett's Meteor Sword' would have to be a legendary item. I haven't worked out its stats yet.

Union with Christ

This book is a collection of essays by the Puritan thinker Thomas Boston, on a theme which the title probably makes clear enough. I've been reading this through with my dad and have found the experience soundly edifying and an effective mode of discipleship, intellectually and spiritually. Boston's prose, though old, is not archaic, and thus relatively easy to read and interpret. The points he makes are very gospel-grounded; I don't think anything in this book would be at all controversial to most orthodox Christians, and I do think that much of what is in here would be of great help to those same in the deepening of their conviction as regards their union with Christ, as is the gist of the New Testament.

the Reason for God

This book by Tim Keller is a reasonably accessibly-written but thoroughly intellectually-robust apologetic for the Christian faith. I recently read Francis Spufford's marvellous effort at proposing an entirely irrational apologetic, so I thought I'd balance it out with something that appeals more to the head than the gut - and this did not disappoint. I have read this book before, the summer before I started this blog, so retained a sense of its general gist, but it was truly a pleasure to revisit the concrete arguments.

   Keller splits the book into two sections of seven chapters each.* After a brief introduction exploring the helpfulness and limits of doubt in our contemporary skeptical culture, the first half digs into some of the biggest obstacles in the way of people coming into meaningful contact with the Christian faith, and for each shows how all of these hurdles are actually based on unprovable "faith" assumptions in themselves. These issues are:

1. the problem of Christianity's exclusivity when there are so many other competing religions
2. the problem of suffering, which exists despite God being supposedly purely good & all-powerful
3. the restrictive limitations following Christianity places upon a human life
4. the historical injustices & present hypocrisies of the Church
5. the thorny issue of Hell - surely a good God wouldn't be so extreme as to condemn people to an eternity of suffering?
6. the challenge supposedly posed by science, which many consider to have disproved religion for good
7. the logical and ethical snafus entailed in taking the Bible literally
   
   Having dealt with some of the strongest and commonest arguments against Christianity, we then have a short intermission chapter which considers the subjective nature of rationality itself. Then we head into the second set of seven chapters, which pose some of the strongest reasons for Christian belief.
   
   
8. the orderliness (and indeed existence) of the universe & meaningfulness
9. the innate sense of moral standards that seems essentially universal to humankind
10. the existential hole that sin leaves in the human heart, which we try to fill with idols but can only be satisfied by God
11. the radically distinctive nature of the Christian gospel as compared to other religions
12. the rationally revolting but emotionally intuitive core of Christianity - the incarnate God crucified for our sake
13. the resurrection of Jesus & the explosive emergence of the early Church being the simplest & best historical explanations for each other
14. God's Trinitarian nature providing a cogent & appealing explanation for the natures of creation & humankind

   Having dismantled some of the strongest arguments against and illumined some of the clearest arguments for Christianity, the concluding chapter is a gentle but confident prod for the reader of what to do if they feel themselves approaching a faith that they can truly call their own. After the philosophical and theological weight of the chief portion of the book this provides a comforting pastoral cool-down, though for non-Christian readers this may well be the most challenging part of the whole text.

   Overall I think this is a great book for making the case for Christianity in as best reasoned a way as possible. Keller never lands on absolute proof, but his earlier chapters show that nor do critiques of faith; and his points throughout cohere to short-circuit "absolute rationality" into a more pragmatic reasonability to which I think Christian belief is well-suited. A highly recommended book for Christians who want to supplement their own skillset in arguing for the Kingdom, and moreso a must-read for those whose curiosity about Christian faith is drowned out by overwhelming presumption that the case against it is too strong.

* Summarising the arguments Keller makes in each of these chapters is beyond the scope of this post, so you'll just have to take my word for it that his treatment of all matters discussed is intellectually humble but compellingly-put. And hey, I am a completely fallible blogger so if you don't want to take my word for it, you'll have to read the book and decide for yourself.

Unapologetic

This book by Francis Spufford is, despite his claims that it isn't an apologetic as it makes zero effort to engage with classic philosophical arguments for or against any particular theological claims, by far and away the best Christian apologetic I've ever read. I've literally just read the whole book in a single sitting* it's that good. The subtitle proclaims it as an exploration of "why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense" - and to say it achieves the goal of making a case for this with aplomb would be a grand disservice to the word aplomb. It runs its course over eight perfectly-structured chapters:

1. a general introduction; statement of intent for the book
2. the existential experience of sin, or as he translates it the Human Propensity to Fuck Things Up
3. the frustrating ineffability of God in light of people's recurrent sense of needing, if not Him, then something to fill that gap
4. the confounding problem of suffering
5. the personality, teachings, mission and passion of one Yeshua from Nazareth
6. the historically improbable paradoxes surrounding the emergence of Christianity as a coherent religion
7. the complicated legacy and situational state of the Church
8. the subjective feeling entailed in having faith that one is forgiven, and the challenges and opportunity implied herein

   It's deeply insightfully clever without being scholarly**, bewilderingly matter-of-fact in what it says and completely down-to-earth in how it says it, balancing common-sense public presumption with personal but universally recognisable experiences and dazzlingly original points that lead him into compelling conclusions without ever making anything that so much as looks like a rational argument. Spufford not only doesn't avoid the prickly areas of conversation around Christianity in its contemporary context but actively leans into them and tries to give them as much benefit of the doubt as possible, and somehow still manages to wrangle cogent and meaningful ways of sidestepping or outright neutering them. He writes with a disarming simplicity and a refreshing honesty that if such style was wider emulated by Christian authors (and indeed everyday evangelising believers) I hazard to expect that we would see a great many more folks showing interest in the faith.

   Overall, this is a more-or-less perfect example of communicating Christianity effectively in a postmodern culture. If we are presumed by the world around us to be irrational, then give up on trying to convince people by reason - and talk about what it feels like to have one's messy spiritual life wrapped up in what never has been and never will be scientifically verifiable but is indisputably salient in its psychological cohesion to those who try to believe it. If you're a Christian, read this and be inspired to draw on your own emotional experience to communicate your own faith more fluidly, with less intellectual trumps and more confounding expressivity. If you're not a Christian - this book won't convince you to become one, but it may very well provoke you to give it a bloody good consideration.

* With minor breaks only to piss, smoke, and make more coffee.

** Spufford humbly boasts in a note at the end of the book that aside from checking to ensure the accuracy of certain factual claims and quotations used, he conducted exactly no research whatsoever throughout his writing process.

George Herbert - the Complete Works

This book is, as you probably inferred from the title, a complete collection of the works of the 17th-century poet George Herbert. I've been reading this very slowly for the past four years, having been gifted it by my second-eldest brother when he was very concerned about me (as I was having a psychotic episode at the time) and thought some archaic Christian poetry would break through to me, which it *kind of* did - I heavily annotated the first thirty or so pages of it in purple biro, emerged from the psychotic episode (after about a week) and then finished reading it bit by gratitude-debt bit in the time since then. It's a hard book to binge, being 17th-century poetry and so rather archaic and (sorry Josiah) stuffy in tone while also being deeply overtly deliberatively Christian in content, theme and message, which makes every poem, no matter how artful (and they are artful - the majority of the poems in this book are as technically well-constructed as their theology is orthodox-Anglican), feel somewhat like you're being sermonised at.

   The poetry is all lumped together in one big collection called The Church, with poems (mostly rather short, and often sonnets, which seem to be a particular specialty of Herbert's) unsurprisingly centring thematically around classic weighty Christian concepts, such as consciousness of one's own sin, prayer, confession, hope, grace, forgiveness, love, joy, peace, etc. This bulk of the book is prologued by a longer poem called The Church Porch which is much meatier in terms of a challenging mental/spiritual engagement as it explores the inner dynamics of a person weighing themselves up before entering a church (in both a day-to-day instance and in the lifelong sense), and epilogued by another longer poem called The Church Militant which is a triumphal hearty toot on the eschatological trumpet of what God's people look like from an eternal perspective.

   Alongside the poetry which forms the core backbone of the collected works, there is a 37 chapter prose piece called The Country Parson which is half essay, half sermon, half manual on how to be an effective parish priest (I will freely admit I somewhat skimmed this - it has a good deal of wisdom in it but nothing particularly groundbreaking), and a compiled list of 1,024 "Outlandish Proverbs", which initially I was rather excited by as I assumed George had come up with them all himself - however it seems more that he simply collected folksy wisdom from all over the place and put it all together in one big wodge (some of which is retained in proverb and idiom to this day, some of which is mere tautology or common-sensical to the point of banality, and some of which is downright impenetrable). Finally there is a small array of letters, lectures, translations, and his will, none of which I bothered to read at all.

   Christian readers who enjoy neatly-constructed if somewhat repetitive and decidedly unadventurous poetry will find a lot of edifying stuff in this book. Non-Christian poetry enjoyers will probably find it coming on far too strong a moralising and proselytising voice to read past. And non-Christian non-poetry enjoyers probably have no reason whatsoever to engage with the works of George Herbert unless it's part of your current academic syllabus to whatever extent. All that said, receiving this book four years ago was a significant moment in helping me claw me way back to sanity, so I will forever owe it that at least.

What Would Jesus Post?

This book by David Robertson takes that classic wristband acronym WWJD* and transplants it into the chaotic modern context of social media - hence the title. It's a good question. Were history's most famous Nazarene to have accounts on one of those half-dozen websites that constitute today's internet, what kind of content would he be putting out? Would he be a TikTok influencer? Instagram inspirer? YouTube video essayist? Twitter rage-debater? Reddit helper-outer of strangers lost in Google searches? Verbose blogger? Tumblr sharer of unprompted unhinged angles on stuff? Facebook shitposter? Some combination of any or all of the above? We simply don't know.**

   That doesn't mean we can't take the lessons learned from him and try our best to apply them to the communications landscape in which we find ourselves today, and I think Robertson has done a pretty solid job in this book of applying 2000ish-year-old meta-ethical precepts to Very New Paradigms of Possibility. It's far from a comprehensive*** manual, but as a starting point offers some healthy and biblical broad principles we can bear in mind as we engage with online communities as Christians. I think this is a very helpful and well thought-out book, and I would highly recommend it as a resource - most especially for older generations who have immigrated to the internet after an analogue life, and so aren't as adept as The Youth at navigating the psychosocial turbulence that all online society entails.

   Before concluding this post, I will give a special mention to the format of the chapters in this book, as they're all broken down into the same sections that help lend flow and intentionality to the reading process. We open with an introductory overview of "the way it is", before digging deeper into some relevant theological concepts, then having a "pause for thought" in which what's just been discussed is thrown over to us to particularly consider, after which in a "joining the dots" section we consider contextual or social elements that apply what we've just read to the realities of contemporary internet use, then "a way forward" points us toward particular behaviours or attitudes that help us maintain Christian consistency on these issues, a Bible verse or two with an explanation of how it helps us navigate this, "wisdom from the Psalms" as far as I can tell being simply a nice balm to the soul to concentrate on the spiritual side of life rather than being prompted to relate everything back to the online, and finally a few questions to prompt further thought. The length and order of these sections varies chapter to chapter but overall they are consistent throughout the book and make it a much more engaging discipleship experience as a reader.

* "What Would Jesus Do?" for you heathens unfamiliar.

** My money's split between Facebook shitposting and completely out-of-left-field Tumblr dumps, both of which would be essentially parables converted to fit the format. If ministry responsibilities left him with enough free time he'd probably have a YouTube channel with over 10,000,000 views but only 372 subscribers, on which the Tumblr parables are delivered vocally (as you'd expect, the comments sections are full of confusion, people who only watched the first ten seconds, and a minority of people saying "this changed my life"). He'd probably have Twitter, but unless he had something that absolutely HAD to be said there and then, he'd only use it for ironically retweeting Pharisees and Roman officials. If anyone in Jesus's orbit has a blog it's probably Matthew, and Peter and John would have competing Instagram and TikTok accounts documenting the day-to-day doings of the disciples.

*** There are chapters on: the internet as a public arena, prayer, porn, confession, sowing seeds, our digital tongue, dwelling in God's presence, wisdom and discernment, humility, hospitality and generosity, the Sabbath, spiritual gifts, spiritual fruit, gossip, persecution, the footprints we leave, and community. For a pretty short book it covers a lot of ground, but with Christianity and the internet both being as diversely complexly themselves as they are, one can easily imagine entire books being written about any of these chapters. Which is what I mean when I say this is more of an introductory provocation text.