September Light and Magazine Reccs for You: Weekend Whimsy
Some poetic jottings and publications to follow closely
Welcome back to the Weekend Whimsy series. As a reminder, these will contain a few of my favourite resources I’ve encountered as of late. Topically, I find myself inhaling content on how ancient answers can speak afresh to contemporary problems. The Green Door reckons with this surprising notion despite the secularisation thesis1: that the religious life—its imagination, formational practices, and community structures—are more relevant than ever in our fractured and anxious times. We desperately need spiritual guides, words of wisdom, and bits of beauty to expand our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Hopefully, these posts can provide small bursts of stimulation of this kind.
The city of Oxford’s relationship to Autumn can feel clunky. With the academic calendar starting all the way in October, the month of September slyly parades as summer vacation. But the feeling in the air betrays this deception. It is polarised as is characteristic of fall, with the air being either empty, clear, and crisp against bright blue skies, or moody, groggy, and wet with dark furrowed clouds that hang low and move quickly. The images throughout this post will demonstrate.
Before I dive into the resource recommendations, here are some words I jotted down in my notebook while sitting in the local meadow the other day. I’m hesitant to call it a poem, but enjoy.
Magazine Recommendations
I thought I’d talk about magazines and journals since the academic year means several of my favourite publications have released their latest quarterly issues. Therefore, lots of their articles are making their rounds on the internet right now, do partake.
1. Comment Magazine: ‘Are We Really in Decline?’
Comment is doing brilliant and layered work when it comes to producing thoughtful conversations on religion in the public square. They remain ‘rooted in two thousand years of Christian social thought’. While Anne Snyder (Editor-in-Cheif) has a notably gentle disposition and voice, she is tenaciously bent on hope, as you’ll see this in her editorial for the issue. This fall, they ask the question, ‘Are We Really in Decline?’ saying, ‘The Western world has become a creaking stage for this question. Our civilizational muscles, more familiar with victory than with defeat, are feeling their age and leaving us grasping for something solid’.
Here’s a quote from Anne as she tees up the topic after discussing the grim landscape of social solutions being proposed by bureaucrats, revolutionaries, traditionalists, and the nihilists:
‘None of these reactions to the possibility of collapse cause my heart to sing. But more glaring is the absence of a constructive vision. Who is in touch with the shifting landscape of our place and time and coming up with creative ways to seed new forms of communion that will flourish in the ground of today, not yesteryear? Who is undertaking the slow, intricate work of regrowing roots, not roots that yield a false coherence or blurry tangle, but roots that interact with one another in soil capable of nourishing something beautiful, ordered, yet free?… As the meaning of our own faith tradition gets co-opted into the various reactive modes above (sometimes as friend and sponsor, sometimes as the positioned foe), we want to kneel and dig our hands back into the soil that was transformed by Christ’s entrance into human history and see if what we find there has nutrients to nourish the understory our world needs. The question before us is make-or-break: What kind of future did Christ actually inaugurate? If he came to be a doorway, not a stop sign, what is the path for those reborn into his life?'
2. Plough Quarterly: Freedom
With election season upon us, Plough decided to bravely take on this topic that so plagues America: freedom, both our greatest blessing and greatest curse. The issue analyses liberty at a national, communal, and personal level. Different articles take different angles— biblical/ theological, political, literary, and sociological perspectives are all represented. Plough’s articles are always thick with voices from the past, which is why I am drawn to them. For example, here’s a post where they solely pull quotes from historical thinkers on the topic: Yearning for Freedom. On the other hand, here’s a cultural critique article which sharply disparages America’s obsession with autonomy and removing constraints, especially relationally: The Autonomy Trap.
3. The Clayjar Review: Toil
This is a Journal/ Substack that posts lovely poems and thoughtful essays immersed in the seasons. This fall, they are grappling with the concept of work and toil. Do subscribe, especially for deliciously autumnal words, paintings, and thoughts. Here’s a quote from their recent essay, The Crucified Wood, by Carolyn Etzel Branch on Julian of Norwich (my favourite):
‘Trees are resurrection experts and these days they are rehearsing death. The dropping of leaves–the abscission process–begins when the air cools and the trees reduce their production of the hormone auxin. Their leaves caramelize in the setting sun of the calendar year and we revel in their color. The bond between leaf and branch tenderly fails, and the tree goes to sleep for winter. In the spring they will rouse and produce new leaves, but death must not be rushed. The cycle of the seasons toils unhurriedly. I wonder what it means to autumn well.’
Bonus Publications:
Ekstasis Magazine/ Ecstatic Substack: Issue 11 forthcoming, stay tuned!
Image Journal: Checkout Issue 121, Issue 122 coming in the next few weeks! (Also subscribe to their weekly update as well)
Drinking in all the beauties and oddities around me.
Warmly,
Carolyn
Wonderful collection. I need to check out “Comment”.
Thank you for linking “The Clayjar”!