Books I read 2020-2023

Forward asterisks indicate intention to read again (1-3, more is better). Following asterisks denote previously read.

2023:
Cathedrals and Castles by Henry James
Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers*
The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff
Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff
With Poor Immigrants to America by Stephen Graham (lovely but not as touching as With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem—he loved them more)
Walks in the Wheat Fields by Richard Jeffries (sweet)
Have His Carcase by Dorothy Sayers*
An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Eye of the Heron by Ursula K. Le Guin
*The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien*
A Tramp’s Sketches by Stephen Graham (I’m realizing he is a mystic)
*Beowulf trans. by Seamus Heaney*
Horses of the Dawn: The Escape by Kathryn Lasky (I read this for Jack)
*The Gentle Art of Tramping by Stephen Graham (delightful guide on how to travel in the wilderness)
Believing Is Seeing by Michael Guillen
The Last Shadow by Orson Scott Card
Symbology of the Sagrada Familia by Albert Fargas and Pere Vivas
Motel of the Mysteries by David Macaulay
*The Best of Shakespeare: Retellings of 10 Classic Plays by E. Nesbit
Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino
Three Philosophies of Life by Peter Kreeft*
*Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss with Tahl Raz
*“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” by Richard Feynman
The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico
The Lion’s Gate by Steven Pressfield (want to read more about Israel as state)
*The Epistle to the Romans by Karl Barth
Where are the Customers’ Yachts? By Fred Schwed
Constructing in Massive Stone Today by Giles Perraudin
**The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent by Robert Caro (realistically, I probably won’t reread this series because it’s so long, but I highly recommend it!)
The Moffats by Eleanor Estes
**Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
The Orthodox Way by Timothy Ware
Has American Christianity Failed? by Bryan Wolfmueller
*Half Magic by Edward Eager (wonderful, inspired by E. Nesbit)
The Children’s Choir compiled by Ruth Krehbiel Jacobs
*At the Back of the North Wind by George Macdonald (childhood nostalgia plus it’s that weird genre that teaches kids about death which I kinda enjoy)
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Shadows on the Grass by Isak Dinesen
Junior Choirs by Helen Kemp
*Babette’s Feast and Other Anecdotes of Destiny by Isak Dinesen (the title story is wonderful, the others are fine)
The Golden Goblet by Eloise Jarvis McGraw (good for kids, Egyptian historical fiction)
*The Lord’s Service by Jeffrey Myers
*A Year of Miss Agnes by Kirkpatrick Hill (I have ended up recommending this a lot)
The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall
A Comedy of Errors by W. Shakespeare
Class: A Guide Through the American Status System by Paul Fussell
Luther on Galatians ed. by Alister McGrath and J.I. Packer (great, has 1 or 2 big things to say, unlike Barth who has 1000 small things)
Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard Feynman
The Story of Painting for Young People by H.W. Janson and Dora Jane Janson
Athanasius on the Incarnation
Winter Fire: Christmas with G.K. Chesterton by Ryan Whitaker Smith
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
*Letters from Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien*
The Death of Yesterday by Stephen Graham
Black Ships Before Troy by Rosemary Sutcliff
The Wanderings of Odysseus by Rosemary Sutcliff
Herodotus and the Road to History by Jeanne Bendick
*Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton*
*Poems 1943-1956 by Richard Wilbur

2022:
*Zero to One by Peter Thiel with Blake Masters
Sacraments of Life; Life of the Sacraments by Leonardo Boff
Turning Points by Mark Noll
**Voices of Akenfield by Robert Bly
The Wood by John Stewart Collis
The Work We Have to Do: A History of Protestants in America by Mark Noll
**The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien*
A Kingdom Far and Clear by Mark Helprin
Past Master by R.A. Lafferty
From Dover to the Wen by William Cobbett
Life of Anthony by Athanasius
Place-Based Education by David Sobel
The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton
Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition by Jan Shipps
*Working by Robert Caro
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel (really good but reallllllyyyy long)
The Pleasures of English Food by Alan Davidson
The New Class War by Michael Lind
For the Life of the World by Alexander Schmemann
The Landry News by Andrew Clements
No Talking by Andrew Clements
A Week in the Woods by Andrew Clements
Lost and Found by Andrew Clements
Lunch Money by Andrew Clements
*Conducting Choral Music by Robert L. Garretson
Dinotopia by James Gurney
A Song for Young King Wenceslas by Cecil Maiden
***Mapmaking with Children: Sense of Place Education for the Elementary Years by David Sobel (incredible insights into how children learn and interact with the world, plus how to encourage)
Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? By Richard J. Maybury (okay through ch 8, then goes off the rails a bit in fear of the future)
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
The E Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
The End of the Beginning by Avi
My Animal Friends by Dick King Smith
The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler
*Persuasion by Jane Austen*
Journey by Patricia McLachlan
*Spinning Thorns by Anna Sheehan*
Leepike Ride by N.D. Wilson
**The Path to Power by Robert Caro (realistically, I probably won’t reread this series because it’s so long, but I highly recommend it!)
**Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers*
**Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy Sayers*
Lord Peter (a collection of the LP short stories) by Dorothy Sayers
The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton*
The Lost Tools of Learning by Dorothy Sayers
Letters to a Disillusioned Church by Dorothy Sayers (I have mixed feelings about this. Some of her ideas are great but she usually fails to bring them home.)
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and Other Poems collected by the English Journeys series
The Book of Merlin by T.H. White
Essays Presented to Charles Williams by Sayers et al.
*The Nine Taylors by Dorothy Sayers*
**The Man Born to Be King by Dorothy Sayers
*The Orthodox Church by Timothy Ware
Between Heaven and Earth: The Greek Church by John L. Tomkinson
A Shropshire Lad by A.E. Housman
***With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem by Stephen Graham (lucid, touching, fascinating)
Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton
**The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon*
Danny: Champion of the World by Roald Dahl (this is a good Roald Dahl book—less bizarre than some of his others, but there’s a charm to that)
Mind of the Maker by Dorothy Sayers (not very interesting theology until ch 9, then gets quite good and more specific/applicable)
Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell (girl Robinson Crusoe, good for 13 and above)
The Bait of Satan by John Bevere (Nina said it should have been called the Click-bait of Satan)
*The Zeal of Thy House by Dorothy Sayers*
Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation by William H. Gass
Fifty Christmas Poems for Children selected by Florence B. Hyett

2021:
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Cinder by Marissa Meyer
Charlotte Mason Reviewed by Jenny King
The Dragons of Blueland by Ruth Stiles Gannet
*My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett
With All Your Heart by A. Craig Troxel
For the Children’s Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay
Competing Against Luck by Clayton M. Christensen
The Madonna of 115th Street by Robert A. Orsi
Know and Tell by Karen Glass
The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry
*School Education by Charlotte Mason
A Small Farm Future by Chris Smaje
*The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien*
The Tolkien Reader by J.R.R. Tolkien
Catch Me If You Can by Frank W. Abagnale*
Community and Privacy by Serge Chermayeff and Christopher Alexander
A Clearing in the Distance by Witold Rybczynski
*A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle*
A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L’Engle*
A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L’Engle*
***The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien*
*A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf*
The Walls of Windy Troy by Marjorie Braymer
*The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse by Fernando “Ferfal” Aguirre (I think about this a lot)
Gaudi: Complete Works by Juan-Eduardo Cirlot, Pere Vivas, Richard Pla
*Tremendous Trifles by G.K. Chesterton
The Future of the Commons: Beyond Market Failure and Government Regulation by Elinor Ostrom
Impro by Keith Johnstone
Wittgenstein in 90 Minutes by Paul Strathern
*Letters to Children by C.S. Lewis
Native American Literature: A Short Introduction by Sean Teuton (so bad I threw it away so no one else would have to read it)
Perspectives on Orthodox Education: Report of the International Orthodox Education Consultation for Rural/Developing Areas ed. by Constance J. Tarasar
Gorgias by Plato
Culture and Value by Ludwig Wittgenstein, trans. by Peter Winch (I really liked this because it was a compilation of little margin notes and things from W, and many were very insightful. I don’t think I would read it again but I’d recommend it.)
The Lost History of Christianity by Philip Jenkins
*The Once & Future King by T.H. White (interesting insights about women)
**The Father Christmas Letters by J.R.R. Tolkien
*Early Christian Writings trans. by Maxwell Staniforth
Gaudi by Gijs van Hensbergen
Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor’s Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond by Chris Burniske & Jack Tatar

2020:
Hammer Is the Prayer by Christian Wiman
Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Freddy and Fredericka by Mark Helprin
In Search of a Home by Alan Gilbert
*The Zeal of Thy House by Dorothy Sayers
The Hodgeheg by Dick King Smith
Heretics by G.K. Chesterton
Flush by Virginia Woolf
The Nature of Order Book 2: The Process of Creating Life by Christopher Alexander
*Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton*
Hamlet by William Shakespeare*
*A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix by Edwin Friedman
The Nature of Order Book 3: A Vision of a Living World by Christopher Alexander
*The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery*
**I Know a City by Katherine Binney Shippen (so good for children, contains lots of research)
Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman
*The Nature of Order Book 4: The Luminous Ground by Christopher Alexander (the spiritual foundation of CA’s work)
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
Godric by Frederick Buechner
*Spiritual Friendship by Wesley Hill*
*The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
*The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien*
Mathematics for the Nonmathematician by Morris Kline
Spiritual Friendship by Aelred of Rievaulx
*For the Time Being by W.H. Auden*
*The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart* (great for kids prob 8-18)
*The Culture of Building by Howard Davis
**Speaking with God from the Depths of the Heart by St. Grigor Narekatsi

Books I Read in 2019

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis
Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
The Life of Elves by Muriel Barbery (very flowery and religiously insulting)
The Elements of Style by Strunk & White
Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith by Eric O. Jacobsen
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis
The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis
The Pathless Sky by Chaitali Sen
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Shadow of the Giant by Orson Scott Card
The Oregon Experiment by Christopher Alexander
Unaccompanied Sonata by Orson Scott Card
I Am Sorry for Everything in the Whole Entire Universe by Kyle Flak
Shadows in Flight by Orson Scott Card
The Production of Houses by Christopher Alexander
Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card
Architectural Research Methods by Linda Groat and David Wang
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Home: A Short History of an Idea by Witold Rybczynski
Abide in Christ by Andrew Murray
The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch (good research inspiration)
Milk by Dorothea Lasky (ew)
One Hundred Twenty-One Days by Michele Audin, trans. Christians Hills
Star Dust by Frank Bidart
A City Is Not a Tree by Christopher Alexander; 50th Anniversary Edition with commentaries edited by Michael W Mehaffy
The Linz Café by Christopher Alexander
The New Theory of Urban Design by Christopher Alexander
Desire by Frank Bidart
House as a Mirror of Self by Clare Cooper-Marcus
Union with Christ by Rankin Wilbourne
Christopher Alexander: The Search for a New Paradigm in Architecture by Stephen Grabow
The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse
You Are What You Love by James K.A. Smith
Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christopher Alexander
Reflections on the Psalms by C.S. Lewis
The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth: A Struggle Between Two World Systems by Christopher Alexander
Christopher Alexander and Contemporary Architecture by Ingrid King
Year of the Griffin by Diana Wynne Jones
Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Descent into Hell by Charles Williams
La Ciudad Empieza Aqui by Hermida, A., Cabrera, N., & Calle, C.
1493 by Charles C. Mann
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection by Robert Farrar Capon
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Not-So-Big House by Sarah Susanka
The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien
Patterns of Anarchy: A Collection of Writings on the Anarchist Tradition ed. by L. I. Krimerman and L. Perry
Matilda by Roald Dahl
The New Theory of Urban Design by Christopher Alexander (again)
The Mary Rose Museum by Christopher Alexander (lovely; info on construction contracts)
Everyman Revived: The Common Sense of Michael Polanyi by Drusilla Scott (parallels with CA!)
The Nature of Order Book 1: The Phenomenology of Life by Christopher Alexander
The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The Heart’s Necessities: Life in Poetry by Jane Tyson Clement with Becca Stevens
For the Time Being by W.H. Auden
Fractals: A Graphic Guide by Lesmoir-Gordon, Rood, & Edney
Building like Moses with Jacobs in Mind: Contemporary Planning in New York City by Scott Larson
Block by Block: Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York compiled by the Municipal Art Society

Books I Read in 2018

Spiritual Friendship by Wesley Hill
Triumph of the City by Edward Glaeser (read the introduction and you’ll get the gist of this)
When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert
The Physiology of Taste OR Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy by J.A. Brillat-Savarin
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change by Myles Horton and Paulo Freire (ideal for anyone working in community- i.e. everyone)
Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones
Leaf by Niggle by J.R.R. Tolkien
Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard
A Long Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan
Spinning Thorns by Anna Sheehan (very fun YA fiction)
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (I cried)
After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre
Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin (confusing sometimes, but beautiful writing about NYC)
Momo by Michael Endo
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Possession by A.S. Byatt
The BFG by Roald Dahl
Volma… My Journey: One Man’s Impact on the Civil Rights Movement in Austin, TX by Carolyn Jones
Taliessin Through Logres, The Region of the Summer Stars, Arthurian Torso by Charles Williams (the poem about coins was my favorite)
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Stoner by John Williams
The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander (this is a work of art)
The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope
1491 by Charles C. Mann
The New Strategic Selling by Stephen Heiman and Diane Sanchez
The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett (I would make my children read this… ages 8-18?)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
For the Time Being by W.H. Auden
The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis
Maskerade by Terry Pratchett
A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander (the toolkit companion to The Timeless Way of Building)

New York

Wide, deep streets. Rich color. Silver, grey, tiny shops, lines out restaurant doors. Murmuring underground trains, hustle, people flowing like water. French speakers, Spanish speakers, frustrated voices on the phone, small dogs walking small circles in small squares of grass. Central Park: no identical bridges, squatty pine trees, maples, elms, running and biking, the sound of a waterfall, the stink of horses, no identical lakes. Joel Pafford who knew everyone who worked at the Italian restaurant and told us that New Yorkers are extremely tied to small localities. Flashing lights in Times Square-not-a-square. Falafel and hot dog vendors, the smell of food, the smell of trash, the smell of sweat, smoke, coffee. Calf-length trench coats, yellow cars, black cars. Blue bikes. Hissing of buses and of steam coming up through fat orange pipes that loom in the middle of the street and are fenced off with plastic. Bagels with cream cheese. Repaired tenements, gilt condos, windows, occasionally bay windows. Steel bridges stretching like neural dendrites between Manhattan and the other islands. A secluded community garden near the wharf. Children walking unaccompanied and unafraid. A snaking line to get in the Met, gentle rain. Umbrellas, dogs wearing shoes, Lincoln Center all gold in the dark. A man organizing pumpkins in a Greenwich Village shop window, delivery men climbing in and out of basements. A hazy and distant Statue of Liberty looking tiny and kind. Lindens in far north Ft Tyron park, Robert Moses’s visible or invisible stamp on everything. Construction noise and scaffolding, car horns, maple leaves clicking together overhead and crunching underfoot, out-of-tune carousel, cellist on the Highline, boy choir at St Thomas. Suited business people, tourists with iPhone cameras out. Amy’s Bread: narrow and bustling. A New Yorker bag slung over a shoulder. Making walking into a dance: darting through crowds, shifting my shoulders, shaping my body to the narrow breaks that open before me.

cross

A lunch box dangles from a man’s hand, waiting to cross the street at the
intersection of Dean Keeton and Robert Dedman, going to law school.

When the light turns, we start across. I count the lanes:
2 west, 2 east, 1 for turning. Bike lanes on both sides, back-angle parking.

In class, I draw the cross-section, imagining renovations and repairs.
18-foot sidewalks, timed lights.

Streets and intersections: I can know these. I can cross them over and over
Unlike some bridges. I measure lane widths.

Meagan says I am a slightly dampened version of myself.
I am cross and flustered. I redesign roads while my emotions lie cluttered.

An undergraduate in sweatpants walks past, carrying a lacrosse stick.
Its netting is stiff like his expression and my lately limber mind.

I loved someone who didn’t love me. That’s all it is.
It is like being stuck at an intersection, unable to cross.

I watch the red pedestrian signal, feel the cars plummet past,
north, south, west, east, I cross myself.

a poem for january 15

What is it called when two people have an ESV Bible,
A Spanish New Testament,
A Merriam-Webster dictionary,
A Greek New Testament,
A Greek lexicon,
And the internet
All open at the same time, looking up the etymology of jealousy versus envy?
Then later a roommate, in a black and white sweater,
lilts across the kitchen making sweet potatoes and a salad-
from one counter to another, she leans into what she does
like grass leans in the wind-
and salmon goes into the oven.
And there is a recording of “Gaudete” in sung in cockney accents.
Then a friend comes over with music in his hands,
Trying to put it into your clumsy hands, and you practice conducting entrances on the second eighth note of the down-beat.
What is it called when he and Meagan sit in the afternoon-lit living room
And talk about thought and emotion and the Aeolian harp
And whether a Brahms piece sounds like it was meant for strings or organ?

We have all of this and no name for it.
O peace of imprecision, of gifts that waft like fragrance, out of definition’s reach.

365 beautiful things

Back in April, I wrote about lists: The truth is, I have internalized Rilke when he said that perhaps we are here simply to make lists: House. Bridge. Fountain. Gate. Pitcher. Apple tree. Window. To say things as they are in their integrity, without embellishment.

Last New Year’s Day, I made my first and only New Year’s resolution: to make a note each evening of something beautiful I saw or experienced that day. I set a repeating reminder on my phone and didn’t miss a day. It became a precious ritual, and I think it made me progressively more mindful and grateful. I want to share some of the 365 beautiful things with you, interspersed with a few mediocre iPhone pictures.

1. Ben climbing to the outside of a fence at the arboretum to look over the ledge: “Everything is an adventure.”
6. Driving to Austin in 30 degree cold with rhapsody in blue on the radio and the clouds rolling away from the sun
16. Ran past restaurants this morning- and past Christmas trees left out for bulk pickup. It smelled like breakfast on Christmas.

31. Quiet at Trinity university, surrounded by walkers, next to a sculpture like Stonehenge, under the thin moon and two stars

39. I fed stingrays. In addition, I felt quite acutely homesick, and I think there is a beauty in that awareness.

50. Jesus changed death from a weapon against us into a weapon to be used by us. “Unless a grain of seed falls into the earth and dies, it cannot bear fruit.”

52. Two hawks flying between South Lamar and Rio Grande

60. Bible study and communal prayer. Emily Serven showing emotion in the tiniest facial muscles as she talked about her family

79. Sunrise pervading the spring sky. This poem about the Boeing 777: http://onbeing.org/uncategorized/working-together/

81. My choir kids leaning over Jeffrey Blair’s shoulder at KMFA

87. John talking about Paris- the boulevards and the monuments and how he used to go into restaurants and talk to the owners when they were closed

99. Sitting in noon service. Cold chairs. Small organ and the rumble of heavy rain.

112. Tears in service. Urban walking/prayer with Bethany and Cara. Football huddle with choir kids after rehearsal.

118. Community walk in Clarksville led by a vibrant and energetic woman who cares about Urbanism and this city.

132. Walking A&M with Dad and hearing stories about his college years

135. The way Joshua says “humongous distinction”

138. Laughing around the Lills’ tiny kitchen table

143. Thudding over the white iron bridge in montopolis. Whiteness and the sensation of drumming

149. Joking with Geoffrey in our TPPF conference room– he smiles honestly around me now

166. Two American Airlines employees in Raleigh thinking hard and working together to get me home to Austin

168. Unbelievable red extravagance of a plum cut and bleeding sweetly on a plate

174. Holding sway over a choir of VBS kids, conducting them through Rutter and them smiling back at me

180. Going through the taco cabana drive thru to get one 35-cent tortilla

188. Camaraderie in the office; Emily holding her chin in her hand as she listens

193. Mars Hill cello, a description of Charles Williams, and use of the word “posit”

197. In the very early morning hours, a long and healing conversation. Alternatively talking about serious pain and laughing at it.

217. Tumbling with Brooke, holding Lily, squeezing John Mark, singing to Amber

227. The slow ordering of cleaning supplies and the patient consideration of homemaking

234. Anna knowing me so well in ikea

236. Lived vision and visceral love at community first village

245. Caroline telling me about her lessons in pterosaurs

247. An afternoon with Dad: planting a garden and watching a documentary about Wendell Berry afterwards

260. Meagan’s early Sunday morning soliloquies on the nature of the good, true, and beautiful as she seasons crockpot curry

264. Hill country clouds in soft colors; conversations about handed-down and aspired-to faithfulness with my family in our favorite vacation cabin

275. Two little girls waving joyously at my train as they roll beside us in the back seat of a black convertible

285. Joonho sight reading a Billy Joel song at the Ahrens’ house and trying to help me sing along

306. Biking through the HEB tunnel, seeing the light at the end fill more and more of my sight; the lovely, silly, cruel, innocent world opening to me again as it always does

308. Hearing a south Dallas developer talk about his investments as farms that he commits to for life…knowing I was born for this work

324. Walking up lavaca with Nina and Josiah, talking city and economics and the reformation and laughing like crazy college kids

334. Meagan in a garishly adorable sweater dress, sewing and telling me how to do archival research

339. Roo Panes’ Little Giant album and 59 degrees

342. Austin commuters exiting the train and sliding down the icy platform ramp- some joyously, some with trepidation

358. Breathlessly singing Christmas carols on my bike to and from church on Christmas Eve

363. Sitting at a hospitable and homely Ethiopian restaurant with Aubrey, flavorful food eaten with hands, rich-smelling coffee, and sensitive conversation

364. A doubled waffle recipe and an impromptu breakfast party

365. T S Eliot in cherrywood coffeehouse: “take no thought of the harvest, but only of proper sowing.”

reading list 2017

Books I read in 2017:

Are Women Human? by Dorothy Sayers (insightful and full of clarity- probably the book I recommended most often due to its relevance)

Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy Sayers

The Way of the Modern World by Craig Gay (I need to read this again, but it was an excellent treatise on post-modernity and made me think)

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

Why Business Matters to God by Jeff Van Duzer

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Blue Horses by Mary Oliver

Parzival: The Quest of the Grail Knight by Katherine Paterson

Middlemarch by George Eliot (a novel full of wisdom and gentleness)

On the Mother of God by Jacob of Serug

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Night by Elie Wiesel (this shook me seriously)

Home from Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler

The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges

Knowing God by J.I. Packer

The Martian by Andy Weir

How to Kill a City by Peter Moskowitz

Evicted by Matthew Desmond (“without stable shelter, everything else falls apart” — highly, highly recommended)

I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai

Welcome Homeless by Alan Graham (the written companion to Mobile Loaves and Fishes and Community First Village here in Austin)

Deep Work by Cal Newport

Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy

Switch by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (this book tried and didn’t quite succeed– struck me as a failed attempt to be The Book Thief)

Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry (a wealth of beauty here- even better than his prose, which I didn’t think was possible)

Every Good Endeavor by Tim Keller

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

On China by Henry Kissinger

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff*

For the Time Being by W.H. Auden

Closely Observed Trains by Bohumil Hrabal

Robert Moses, The Master Builder of New York City by Pierre Christin and Olivier Balez

* previously read

lists

This morning I resolved to ride my bike- just in the neighborhood, to check its alignment before I frighten drivers on busier streets. But now rain streaks my windows and drools out of the gutters, so I sit squinting at IRS forms and thinking of poetry.

You asked why I don’t write more poems.
Quite actually, you didn’t, but there I’ve beaten you to it,
and in bending the truth thus, accomplished that subtle
weave of fact and feeling that I associate with poetry.

But I undid the threads. The truth is, I have internalized Rilke
when he said that perhaps we are here simply to make lists:
House. Bridge. Fountain. Gate. Pitcher. Apple tree. Window.
To say things as they are in their integrity, without embellishment.

So every night at 9:50 I add to a list: Train going by in the dark.
Small singers’ hugs. Kitchen table. Two hawks. Dent in my car.
One huge arched cloud trail. Skeletal trees.

I notice the way the rain envelopes and becomes the sky, content to sink through the earth and change its form, abandoning flight and keeping me indoors, where I sit like a reservoir of simple things, making my lists when I ought to be doing my taxes. Rilke says we ought to speak the lists aloud, or write them, as the most fitting beginner’s form of poetry. “There are the hurts,” he writes. “And, always, the hardships. And there’s the long knowing of love – all of it unsayable. Later, amidst the stars, we will see: these are better unsaid.” So I write: the soft way light reaches through the window to rest in stripes on a girl’s brown hair during church. A friend talking about Paris. Unexpected meetings and free food and my hand out the window to feel the warming air and, of all things, Call Me Maybe on 95.5.

These are no more than fragments that I, in listing them, weave into a body. Rilke, again: “And the things which, even as they live, pass on – understand that we praise them. Transient, they are trusting us to preserve them – us, the most transient of all. As if they wanted our hearts to transform them into – o endlessly – into us. Whatever we are.”

I cannot yet call that transformation Poetry. I slowly fulfill my human duty to name things, but it is ironic that I have no name for the Opus that results. There is great and solemn joy in the mystery. To all the spoken and word-upheld world, I say: be.

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jogging

I weave through the city.
The squirrels keep up; they understand
the urge to race in the dappled light.

A recorded voice drawls out, slow and Texan:
“The walk sign is on to cross 24th street at Lamar,”
and the woman at the crosswalk repositions her earbuds.
She runs north, and I, south– past Shoal creek looking rocky
and innocent, as if it did not flood west downtown just last year
and the year before that.

A girl’s dog pulls her to the ground straining to greet me.
“He’s excited to see you,” she pants. I understand
the urge to run toward the new and the strange.

The silvery exhale of a bus
matches the uneven pulse of
my breathing as I see my city’s skyscrapers
like a collective shout, loom over the 15th street bridge.

Living in a city is like lying eye level with the grass,
watching it grow.