Finished reading: Shield the Joyous by Chad Holley 📚

I loved this little book so much! Brief thoughts here.

Finished reading: Ingrained by Callum Robinson 📚

Excellent.

Because to my great shame, the coasting was something I had drifted into not merely in my working life but in my consumer life as well. With more and more choice out there at the touch of a button—same-day delivery, landfill-black-Friday-buy-it-online, and a hundred other kinds of commercial awful—it has been all too easy to forget that independent local businesses, the kind of hardworking businesses that are right here on my doorstep, may be waiting in the silence for someone like me to swish through the door. That no matter how original or full of charm and quality they may be, many will not be able to survive without our support. And that they aren’t really businesses anyway; in towns and villages up and down the country, they are the lifeblood, the culture and the character of communities. They are somebody’s hopes and dreams.

Currently Reading: Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman by Callum Robinson 📚

Martha Nussbaum:

The vine-tree image, standing near the poem’s end… confronts us with a deep dilemma in the poet’s situation, which is also ours. It displays the thorough intermingling of what is ours and what belongs to the world, of ambition and vulnerability, of making and being made, that are present in this and in any human life.… Human excellence is seen, in Pindar’s poem and pervasively in the Greek poetic tradition, as something whose very nature it is to be in need, a growing thing in the world that could not be made invulnerable and keep its own peculiar fineness.

The crucial question for us:

To what extent can we distinguish between what is up to the world and what is up to us, when assessing a human life? To what extent must we insist on finding these distinctions, if we are to go on praising as we praise?

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Currently Reading: The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy by Martha C. Nussbaum 📚

We must never forget that tragedies were vehicles of political deliberation and reflection at a sacred civic festival — in a city that held its empire as a “tyranny” and killed countless innocent people. For that audience, tragedy did not bring the good news of resignationism; it brought the bad news of self-examination and change.

In short, instead of conceding the part of ethical space within which tragedies occur to implacable necessity or fate, tragedies, I claim, challenge their audience to inhabit it actively, as a contested place of moral struggle, a place in which virtue might possibly in some cases prevail over the caprices of amoral power, and in which, even if it does not prevail, virtue may still shine through for its own sake.

(Extended quote here.)

Finished reading: At Work in the Ruins by Dougald Hine 📚

The resonance overflows. I will be revisiting this one, and hopefully posting more about it. One thing that kept coming to mind thoughout the book was an essay I wrote for a global health class in 2020: What kind of expertise shall we look to? For me, it’s never been Hans Rosling. It’s Paul Farmer!

Currently Reading: At Work in the Ruins by Dougald Hine 📚

People are going to have to stop setting the bar so high with these killer introductions.

Finished reading: Love’s Braided Dance by Norman Wirzba 📚

The introductory essay was excellent.

The way of hope is inspired by an acknowledgment of what can be called the miracle or grace of life itself, the realization that your own life and the lives of others are the never-again-to-be-repeated embodied expressions of life’s primordial, gifted goodness. Affirmation of the love-worthiness of this world is the spark that ignites a hopeful way of being because it calls people to give their love to the world in return. When love is given, the prospect, but not the guarantee, of a better future emerges.

The book mostly dropped off after that, at least for me. But Wirzba does bring it back toward the end of the book. If I get a chance, I may try to say some more about the final chapter. But don’t hold your breath. I’m easily distracted, and lately have the attention span of a

Currently Reading: Love’s Braided Dance: Hope in a Time of Crisis by Norman Wirzba 📚

A logic governs the way of hope. It is difficult to articulate because the way of hope is not linear, systematic, or smooth. It does not follow twelve neatly defined steps that, when taken in succession, lead a person into a hopeful manner of being. Instead, it is often meandering and circuitous as people attempt to live faithfully and mercifully with each other. False starts, improper motivations, and harmful choices, but also felicitous decisions, serendipitous encounters, and enduring commitments, often reveal themselves only along the way. This is why this book’s chapters take the form of essays that explore paths into what I take to be hopes animating logic. My aim is to narrate the experiences and journeys of various people so that the heart of a hopeful way of being can come into view.

These chapters, then, are complementary sketches that together draw a picture of what a hopeful life looks like, or, more exactly, they offer a series of improvisational movements that make a compelling theatrical performance in which hope appears. As people go through life, what do they encounter, what should they accept, how should they respond, and to what end? Hope registers as the desire to celebrate and further the loveliness and love-worthiness of this life. When we live a hopeful life, love animates what we do and why we do it.

An excellent book haul this week 📚