Since we started this blog in March 2021, we have written 25 posts, and bookmarked dozens more articles that we found fascinating and thought would be interesting to our readers. Here are some of our favorite ones that we didn’t get around to expanding into full articles:
March 2021
How a Village United to Save Cinque Terra’s Ancient Terraces - “The iconic Italian landscape suffered decades of neglect, but a tragedy spurred locals to action.” A fascinating look at the efforts to save the terraced hillsides above some of Italy’s most famous small villages.
April 2021
In April 2021, Matt was reading Rubicon, by Tom Holland, and highlighted this passage from the book:
A city—a free city—was where a man could be most fully a man. The Romans took this for granted. To have civitas—citizenship—was to be civilized, an assumption still embedded in English to this day. Life was worthless without those frameworks that only an independent city could provide. A citizen defined himself by the fellowship of others, in shared joys and sorrows, ambitions and fears, festivals, elections, and disciplines of war. Like a shrine alive with the presence of a god, the fabric of a city was rendered sacred by the communal life that it sheltered. A cityscape, to its citizens, was therefore a hallowed thing. It bore witness to the heritage that had made its people what they were. It enabled the spirit of a state to be known.
Our research in April resulted in two posts on the topic of cities, particularly the idea that cities designed with biophilia in mind are more conducive to human flourishing.
An article related to this topic we found fascinating but that did not make it off the cutting room floor was a New York Times article about Amsterdam’s changing relationship to tourism: In Empty Amsterdam, Reconsidering Tourism.
May 2021
In May we turned to writing about efforts to save ancient places of worship and ancient pilgrim paths. In that vein, we share one of the most powerful pieces of spiritual writing we came across in 2021 - The Cross and the Machine - Paul Kingsnorth’s apologia for his conversion to Christianity:
Modern economies thrive by encouraging ever-increasing consumption of harmful junk, and our hyper-liberal culture encourages us to satiate any and all of our appetites in our pursuit of happiness. If that pursuit turns out to make us unhappy instead—well, that’s probably just because some limits remain un-busted.
Following the rabbit hole down, I realized that a crisis of limits is a crisis of culture, and a crisis of culture is a crisis of spirit. Every living culture in history, from the smallest tribe to the largest civilization, has been built around a spiritual core: a central claim about the relationship between human culture, nonhuman nature, and divinity. Every culture that lasts, I suspect, understands that living within limits—limits set by natural law, by cultural tradition, by ecological boundaries—is a cultural necessity and a spiritual imperative. There seems to be only one culture in history that has held none of this to be true, and it happens to be the one we’re living in.
Now I started to dimly see something I ought to have seen years before: that the great spiritual pathways, the teachings of the saints and gurus and mystics, and the vessels built to hold them—vessels we call “religions”—might have been there for a reason. They might even have been telling us something urgent about human nature, and what happens when our reach exceeds our grasp. G. K. Chesterton once declared, contra Marx, that it was irreligion that was the opium of the people. “Wherever the people do not believe in something beyond the world,” he explained, “they will worship the world. But above all, they will worship the strongest thing in the world.” Here we were.
June 2021
In June we provided an update on the efforts to rebuild Notre Dame Cathedral, and were honored to be able to interview Brad Genereux, a retired Navy veteran who leads the nonprofit “Veterans on the Camino.” Continuing with the cathedral theme, we recommend watching this CBS Sunday Morning special about the rebuilding process, which came out just last week.
July 2021
In July we came across this poem, Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth, by Victorian poet Alfred Hugh Clough. It could be a manifesto for everyone involved in cultural preservation, at times discouraged by setbacks or slowness:
Say not the struggle nought availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.
August 2021
August saw two devastating disasters - the earthquake in Haiti and the botched evacuation of Kabul, Afghanistan. It was hard to see hope in these scenarios, but as always some humans stepped up to the plate.
The New York Times profiled the destruction of many Catholic churches in Haiti, but also highlighted “the importance of the church as a source of aid, education and stability for much of the country, which has no other social safety net:” Haiti Quake Destroyed Many Churches, Shredding a Mainstay of Support.
The Wall Street Journal profiled some of the efforts of individual Americans to evacuate Afghans who had helped the US war effort: How a Handful of Americans Helped Free 5,000 Afghans.
September 2021
In September we wrote about the back-to-land movement in our post “Save Our Good Tilled Earth.” In that vein, we enjoyed this article from the Wall Street Journal: They Ditched the Office for the Farm. And Stayed.
October 2021
In October we were honored to interview Dr. Cameron Thompson, a proponent of the Benedict Option who put money where his mouth is by moving with his family to a small city in Italy. Dr. Thompson started his career as a teacher in a classical school, so in his honor we recommend this moving article by Thomas Chatterton Williams in the New York Times: Searching for Plato with My 7-Year-Old.
November 2021
We wrote a book review of Nicholas Crane’s book “Clear Waters Rising,” his account of a 1991/1992 trek across the mountains of Europe. In the spirit of walking, here’s a video promoting the newly re-opened “St Declan’s Way” in Ireland.
December 2021
We very much enjoyed this article in the New York Times: Meet an Ecologist Who Works for God (and Against Lawns).
If Bill Jacobs were a petty man, or a less religious one, he might look through the thicket of flowers, bushes and brambles that encircle his home and see enemies all around. For to the North, and to the South, and to the West and East and all points in between, stretch acres and acres of lawns.
Lawns that are mowed and edges trimmed with military precision. Lawns where leaves are banished with roaring machines and that are oftentimes doused with pesticides. Lawns that are fastidiously manicured by landscapers like Justin Camp, Mr. Jacobs’s neighbor next door, who maintains his own pristine blanket of green.
[Bill Jacob’s] house is barely visible, obscured by a riot of flora that burst with colors — periwinkles, buttery yellows, whites, deep oranges, scarlets — from early spring through late fall. They grow assorted milkweeds, asters, elderberry, mountain mint, joe-pye weed, goldenrods, white snakeroot and ironweed. Most are native to the region, and virtually all serve the higher purpose of providing habitats and food to migrating birds and butterflies, moths, beetles, flies and bees.
Mr. Jacobs is an ecologist and a Catholic who believes that humans can fight climate change and help repair the world right where they live. While a number of urban dwellers and suburbanites also sow native plants to that end, Mr. Jacobs says people need something more: To reconnect with nature and experience the sort of spiritual transcendence he feels in a forest, or on a mountain, or amid the bounty of his own yard. It’s a feeling that, for him, is akin to feeling close to God.
January 2022
Which brings us to this New Year, and the first article we recommend is right up our “Save Our Shrines” alley: A Spanish Mystery: Is a ‘Masked Restorer’ to Blame for a Church’s Botched Repair?
It could be said that the problem of Castronuño is the problem of Spain: This ancient land just has too many old things in need of fixing. There are Phoenician forts, Celtic castles, Moorish minarets, Roman ramparts, granite Greek graves — all left by bygone civilizations that came here conquering, all bent on leaving something for posterity.
We are looking forward to what 2022 will bring. Thank you for reading along with us! Subscription is free unless you choose to donate, and so we’d love if you would subscribe and share with your friends. Happy New Year!