Plot Points #95 💌
Good women, ethics of the body, money probs, and Emma M. Lion
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Hi there and happy Friday! Glad to have you here.
It’s supposed to snow in Georgia this weekend, but I remain suspicious. One must in climates like ours where last week it’s sixty degrees and the this week it’s thirty-five with a wind chill of twenty. Everything turns on a dime, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if we got another Narnia snowfall like last January? 🥰 One can dream.
There’s not much to report from the Nunnery house. We’re slowly getting back into our school rhythms, but I’ll admit the cold weather and the fact that our house is perpetually drafty has us doing a lot more read-alouds under the cozy blankets than double addition problems. A time and a place for everything, right?
I hope you all have a lovely weekend.
Thanks for being here,
Wendi
Word of the Week ✍🏻
Nepenthe: (n.) Something that can make you forget your own sorrows or suffering.
Point #1: We need good women.
I won’t pretend it hasn’t been a heavy week in our country. Important, difficult questions are being asked about the harm committed when power goes unchecked, as well as what our roles are as citizens in a free society. No one asked for my response to these questions, but I gave one anyway. I hope you’ll read it.
Point #2: “Perhaps we were meant to form our souls to reality. But now, we bend the nature of the body to the will.”
Life Considered is pretty much always making me uncomfortable about the human body, and I mean that in the very best way. We need Protestant voices calling us to higher bodily ethics, and Hayley Baumeister is one of the best. Her latest piece for Mere Orthodoxy is a must-read: “If Christianity is good news, we need to show in our very selves that it is. That trusting Him and living under His sacred order is not an intellectual exercise, but flows into the whole of life—including our bodies, sexuality, pregnancy and parenting. We can trust Him and submit to Him in our flesh, because we are the clay and not the potter.”
Point #3: It’s just school.
This piece from The Preamble is a fantastic exploration of the reasons homeschooling has continued to grow in popularity since the pandemic. I really appreciate the way Elise Labott honors both public and homeschool parents by highlighting that these choices are ultimately about what’s best for the child.
Point #4: “If we treat money like it’s a tool that can solve all our problems, it eventually starts using us as a tool.”
What is the true measure of contentment for the modern person? Is it a life free from money worries? Or is it the acknowledgment that money, like all of life, is ultimately out of our control? Griffin Gooch’s examination of these questions is a timely source of wisdom for us all.
Reading in The Nook 📚
I finally did it. I started reading The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower and in less than a week I’ve finished FIVE of them. This series of novellas is now officially in my top five book series of all time, and I still have three left to go! It’s that good.
Emma M. Lion is a young Victorian woman living in the fictional village of St. Crispian’s, where neighbors are a delightful mix of lovely and odd, a Roman ghost appears at random, and quirky (mis)adventures abound. Emma is the best sort of protagonist: flawed, funny, and never without a book reference. I swear I’ve gotten an entire classics education just by reading her journals. Brower’s writing is full of charm and she writes with the kind of wit that made me fall in love with my husband. I’m a sucker for smart humor that gets to the very heart of things.
The best part? The entire series is available for free on Kindle Unlimited. I cannot recommend it enough!
What are you reading right now? 👇🏻
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“The times are never so bad that a good man cannot live in them.”
—Thomas Aquinas—
Thanks for sharing, Wendi!
Those books are on my list for the year! I just finished The Mythmakers, which was so good.