recommended READING

recommendations

Christie Purifoy drew her readers into a sanctuary for the soul in her debut book Roots and Sky, a memoir about her search for home and reaching it in Maplehurst - an old farmhouse in Pennsylvania. In Placemaker, Christie’s newest release, she builds a deeper foundation on the story of Maplehurst for creating places of incarnational beauty and peace. Placemaker acts as a lens or prism for every reader to find the truth about their own places to tend on their way home.

Christie’s voice is like no other voice in literature – beauty seems to roll off every word and invite us to consider a whole new way of seeing our lives and purpose. My own copy of Placemaker is already dog-eared, underlined, and noted in the margins. It is a book I will go back to many times. It is available today for pre-order and will prove to be one of this year’s best books. Give yourself a gift of quiet and get yourself a copy. (Lancia E. Smith)

Malcolm Guite, Chaplain at Girton College continues to enchant and illuminate his readers with this delicious column that runs each week on the back page of the Church Times. Delightful, thoughtful, and insightful – each week the reader is offered a glimpse in to life in various corners of England, as well as Malcolm’s own wealth of observations about modern life intertwined with our literary foundations. As a renowned poet, each week’s post is dipped in a perfect dose of poetry letting the reader come away with something as beautiful as it is anchoring. Many of these exquisite little essays have curated into a lovely collection published by Canterbury Press under the title In Every Corner Sing.

Literary Life is an uncommon feast for literature lovers. It is the single richest resource we know online for a daily, steady diet of pure, true, soul food from the best of literature coupled with stunning photography. Deeply steeped in the Word, Lit Life presents thoughtful, short selections for their readers to consider, and incorporates salient introductions to each author, with commentary and options for digging deeper. The book studies are a treasure. Do not miss it! 

It was my great privilege to be interviewed by Christianity Today to discuss their remarkable work in Beautiful Orthodoxy, Christ-Centered journalism, and how those two intertwine with the work we are doing with Cultivating. Christianity Today has been my hero in publishing for as long as I have been a Christian and it is an honour to help let others know about their magnificent work. 

Canadian musician Steve Bell sits down with Convivium's Hannah Marazzi to talk about his sources of inspiration and the geography found beyond physical parameters. 

Among educated people (especially in France and Britain and Germany, too) there was an attempt to find a rival source of meaning to the religious—to find that rival source of meaning in art because for various reasons, art struck people as having a different status from science. Science was a threat to religion. That’s true, because it was undermining the old explanation of things in which God took such an important place. But art seemed to represent a different way of looking at the world from science, one which preserved the mystery of things and didn’t undo the mystery. Since the mystery was so important, why not look to art as a source of meaning?

Eminent Scholar of aesthetics Roger Scruton raises important questions about the individual’s relationship with morality and the arts.