March 18, 2019
Gleanings
- It’s why I love swimming. When I’m swimming, swimming is the only thing I can do.
- What if writing helps you understand the world and the people in it today just a little better than you did yesterday?
- I think I kind of love uncertainty, if I’m being honest.
- Collectively, we have a role to play against the spread of hate.
- Maybe what we need is not more explorations of how meaningless everything is, but a radical reassertion of that meaning, the kind of hope that kept Woolf alive.
- Ardern’s leadership not only impressed the world, but also sadly reminded us what’s missing in most leaders.
- “We’ve got a pact,” Ziegler said. “You have permission to read for an hour, with no other interruptions.”
- On unknowingly reading a Christian novel.
- …a lot of stuff has been written at my kitchen table. I’ve daydreamed there. I’ve been happy in my kitchen.
- I find it moving to imagine Welty reading To the Lighthouse when Woolf was still alive, just as Welty was alive when I first found that story.
- That’s precisely the way a “grab”-heavy text reads to me after a while.
- I have to admit that every time I seal up a letter or finish a postcard, I stand back and admire it with a feeling of warmth and accomplishment.
- Thanks mostly to all my farmer friends who have ever so patiently(?) educated me, I have a grander appreciation for winter.
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how kind of you to again include me among your Gleanings. I’ve been enjoying visiting the other blogs and reading what you’ve gleaned from each one. A lovely buffet.
That post about accidentally reading a Christian novel made me laugh and cringe and feel so bad for the blogger. Sounds like the problem with that book though is not so much religion but poor writing. God – if they exist – may be powerful but clearly not powerful enough to save a bad writer from excess and cliched lazy shitty writing. God helps the writers who help themselves!
I loved the post so much. I still am of about six minds about it all. I think the problem is making “Jesus Saves” a plot twist—to those of us who aren’t Christina (or even “Christian”, I am just going to leave my typo there, okay?) this is is pretty shoddy device. Also, the discussion of religion has to have universality. “God” to the writer has to mean something to me too, even if it is not the same thing.