Friday Links, May 8, 2020
"Christianity Gets Weird: Modern life is ugly, brutal and barren. Maybe you should try a Latin Mass."
The above link is from Natalie Morrill, Dappled Things Fiction Editor, "Very strange to read this NYT article featuring a bunch of my Twitter pals. LOL all the twitter responses are like 'NYT fails to understand us again, but nice try.'"
Morrill also recommends: "2001 Polish stations of the cross art, in a Twitter thread)."
In March 2001, the late Polish painter Jerzy Duda-Gracz presented the monastery of Jasna Góra at Częstochowa with new Stations of the Cross. Gracz entitled the series "Golgotha", but many of the landscapes and faces he included in them are recognizable to present-day viewers."—Fr. A. Schrenk @frajds
Gratuity: Who Gets Paid When Art Is Free
Katy Carl, Dappled Things Editor in Chief, shared the above link to an article by writer and musician Ted Gioia at Image Journal. Gioia explores the dilemma faced by those who share their creative gifts in this digital era and find what they have freely given turned into a commodity that enriches the exploiters and doesn't put bread on the artists' tables.
Gioia names the problem this way, "But the cruel truth of the web is that the gifted contribute to the digital world (often for free) only to see their gifts quickly appropriated by others who, like the buyers and sellers in the temple, debase everything they touch. The gift gets turned into a commodity. The ruthless economic underpinnings of the internet serve to punish the giver and destroy the spiritual, disinterested essence of the gift." Not to despair. He suggests what might be done to expose and put an end to the exploitation.
Carl also recommended Cats and Sixty Foot Whales: Reflections on Children’s Books by Tara Thieke at Mere Orthodoxy. This insightful essay is persuasive about the need both to give children unscreened encounters with reality, and to give them books that enrich them with realistic images of God's Creation. Thieke also helpfully provides "A Brief List of Books for Young Children"—with a warning to get the older editions over newer ones, because in the newer ones fine detailed illustrations have often been replaced with flat abstractions.
‘The responsibility of parents and educators is to mediate reality to children so they can learn to know and love God with all their heart, mind, and soul. The wealthy in our country do their best to grow their children’s imaginations and their capacity to think creatively through books rich in imagery, texture, and wonder."
Once, though, these stories were the common property of every child who could sit by his grandmother’s knee. Let us aim to give every child, rich and poor, those stories which plant wonder and gratitude in the heart, causing them to run and sing the psalms, and to consider the whale and the cat the way their Maker intended."
Latest Poems in the Quarantine Notebook
The "Quarantine Notebook" guest series by James Matthew Wilson is being updated frequently. For convenience, here are links to all the posts so far, including new links to the latest parts 10 and 11: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, and Part 11.
