Dear Reader #1: Happy Feast of All Saints

A goodie bag

Greetings,

For today, the Feast of All Saints, I wanted to give you a treat bag for your soul. It’ll be (relatively) short and sweet, as all good emails should be.

Below, you’ll find some goodies to please the head and the heart.

A Movie to Watch

A Hidden Life. Why watch a movie that lost ~$2.5 to $4.5 million at the box office? Because it is about a saint-to-be, a man who understood that Christ’s life is a demand and who offered himself up as a sacrifice in imitatio Dei.

A Poem to Read

Field. My wife participates in the Well Read Mom reading group, and this poem turned up in the reading companion the group puts out. My recommendation is either to skip the “spoiler alert” at the top of the page or read it after you’ve let the poem go to work on you.

A Painting to Contemplate

The Crucifixion by Mantegna. This painting is most extraordinary for so many reasons: the heavenly Jerusalem far off in the distance (you have to travel through the Cross to get to it), the city of man to the upper left, the two centurions gazing, Mary and the women weeping, etc.  Look at the painting and ask yourself: Who is The Good Thief? Finally, at the level of composition, it is like Mantegna discovered what a sphere was for the first time and wanted to tell everyone about it. It gives the viewer the closest thing to what you’d see through a fish-eye lens that I’ve ever seen in a painting.

A Rhetorical Concept to Learn

Decorum. Decorum is our sense of what goes with what, our sense of appropriateness. As I like to ask students: Is it appropriate to wear a clown suit to a funeral? Of course not. Unless the funeral happens to be for a clown. And everyone else also happens to be wearing a clown suit, too. Then it would be inappropriate to come dressed in a black suit. Our sense of decorum structures what to say, when to say it, and how to say it. You’ll find decorum (also referred to as prepon) in Isocrates, Aristotle, Cicero, Horace, Quintilian, St. Augustine, and more.  

A Book to Get

Saints: A Year in Faith and Art. I stole this book from my wife, and I try to look at it each morning before or after reading Scripture. For each day, you’ll find a picture of a saint (typically a work of fine art) as well as a short biography of that saint. The image for All Saints Day today is Maestà by Simone Martini.

A Pair of Songs to Listen To

Explosions in the Sky, “Your Hand in Mine.” Not everyone knows what “post-rock” is. Well, here’s your chance to experience it firsthand. There are no lyrics—only layered guitars, drums, delay, reverb, etc. I first heard this song probably back in 2005 or 2006. It’s been with me ever since.

Also check out their song “Postcard from 1952,” which has a most remarkable music video to accompany it. If I were tasked with writing a prescription for a drug that could cause nostalgia and gratitude and a sense of beauty all at the same time, I’d prescribe the music video for “Postcard from 1952.”

A Question to Ponder

Do songs without words mean more than songs with words? See #6 above.

A Quote to Take to Heart

“Day dies into night, and is buried everywhere in darkness … But yet it again revives, with its own beauty, its own dowry, its own sun, the same as ever … slaying its own death, night—opening its own sepulchre, the darkness—coming forth the heir to itself …. Nothing perishes but with a view to salvation. The whole, therefore, of this revolving order of things bears witness to the resurrection of the dead.” – Tertullian, on the Resurrection of the Flesh

That’s it. Thanks for reading and for being a subscriber. Happy Feast of All Saints!

God bless you,
jnb