Plot Points #97 💌
Trad Millennials, "good guys", church buildings, and a library of letters
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Hello! Happy Friday to you and thanks for being here.
Well.
The snow never came our way and the ice barely did, but the frigid temperatures showed up in full force. On Tuesday morning, it was ten degrees outside and the speakers in my car would not work for love nor money. It wasn’t until temps warmed up to thirty degrees that afternoon that I could hear a thing. I guess GMCs are not made for winter weather. (Alas, neither am I.)
The world is weird right now. It’s being the world it has always been—complicated, beautiful, and terrible—only now we’re seeing all of it at once. I’ve prayed more this week than I have in a long time. I hope wherever you are you’ve got a friend to talk with, a warm place to come home to, and the knowledge that there may be pain in the night, but joy always comes in the morning.
Love,
Wendi
Word of the Week ✍🏻
Absquatulate: (v.) to leave without saying goodbye.
Point #1: “We couldn’t save the world. We just wanted to raise our kids and sleep peacefully at night.”
Over the years, I’ve watched as my generation has moved from chasing Big, Important Things in the Name of Jesus to smaller, quieter lives more content with ordinary holiness. I wrote a piece this week about the shift for Millennial Christians and what I think has caused it. Let me know what you think.
Point #2: I had a pen pal in middle school.
And the highlight of my month would be a surprise letter in the mail from a girl named Lauren who lived somewhere in Kansas. We sent notes, stickers, and friendship bracelets back and forth, some of which I still have stowed away in a trunk. In the latest essay from Ruth Gaskovski, she writes, “Typed text homogenizes” and there are real, material benefits to our getting back to paper and ink. (Also, wax seals, anyone? ❤️)
Point #3: “After all, they were just risking their lives for you.”
Stop what you’re doing and go read this right now.
“How do we justify crimes against a people group? We make it legal. We make it seem like goodness and protection for us. We frame those opposing the lawful deportation, degradation of citizen rights, and violence toward a people group as anti-patriotic. We make the violence of the military and police force heroic instead of terrible.”
Point #4:
Get used to seeing Mere Orthodoxy around here, friends.
What is a church building really for and why? Each one communicates something to those who enter. This piece from Marc Sims asks us to reconsider the sacred space and think more deeply about creating “non-distracting excellence” in the places we worship.
Reading in The Nook 📚
Sigh.
I finished all The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion. I know another volume is coming this year, but I feel as though my best friends have gone on a long trip and I don’t know when I’ll see them again. Do I grieve? Go for a walk? Rejoice that there is a world, however imaginary, where Hawkes, Lion, Islington (Duke of), and Pierce are somewhere drinking tea and plotting? Beth Brower, I need a release date STAT.
Pierce (mine, not Emma M. Lion’s 😆) and I are reading and studying John Bergsma’s Stunned by Scripture: How the Bible Made Me Catholic. It has already stirred up some wonderful conversations between the two of us. Am I the only one who loves to talk theology with her spouse? Move over, Bridgerton, we’ve got Thomas Aquinas!
I have so many books on my list for this coming month:
Great, Big, Beautiful Life by Emily Henry
The Crooked Branch by Jeanine Cummins
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
All of which will be first reads for me. Any you’ve read and loved? 👇🏻
(All Bookshop.org links are affiliates. Thank you for supporting The Nook with your purchase.)
“God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does.”
—Martin Luther—