Further Up with Timothy Willard: Recent Episodes

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Episode Summary

In this week’s episode, Chris and I sit down in her study to talk through the heart behind Oh Night Divine, my new Advent series. It’s a short, intimate conversation about the power of nostalgia and how hope acts as a structure for our days. Enjoy this quiet companion to today’s reflection.

My Peace I Give You

We step now into the second week of Advent, the week of Peace. But the word “peace,” as Jesus uses it in John 14, is so layered and so full of divine fullness that it’s almost impossible to hear it the way his disciples heard it unless we recover what he actually meant when he said, “My peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives.”

Here’s the full verse:

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” (NIV)

That word for peace is eirēnē, and it is not the Greek equivalent of “no conflict” or “good vibes” or even the sentimental peace on earth, goodwill toward men that we all hear this time of year. Those phrases live on the surface of things, and they aren’t necessarily “bad.” Of course, we want peace in our world—the end of conflict.

But Jesus is speaking of something more dynamic.

He is giving us His peace. Which means: whatever this peace is, it originates from the divine life itself. Take a moment and think about that. I think we too often buzz by these words without considering their actual depth.

This is where C.S. Lewis’s idea of transposition becomes helpful and a necessary theological grammar. Lewis argued that whenever a higher reality enters a lower one, the lower realm can only express it by analogy.

And this, Lewis believed, is how God meets us. He is not reduced to humanity; he is transposed into it. That means he doesn’t lose the fullness of who he is; he is both fully God and fully human. It’s mindbending.

I like to think about it like the full ocean entering the narrow fjord (we discussed this a few weeks back on the podcast). When that happens, it creates a tidal current: the ocean water is still the ocean water, but narrowed into this small space, forming maelstroms, and causing the water level to rise.

That’s a transposition; the infinite (ocean) pressing itself into the finite (fjord) without ceasing to be infinite. This is the shape of the Incarnation. And it is also the shape of the peace Jesus gives.

He is not offering the world’s kind of peace: the negotiated ceasefire, the absence of trouble, or the temporary relief from chaos. He is offering a heavenly peace, originating in the Trinity and given as a gift to humanity through the miracle of the Incarnation.

It is cosmic in scope.

This is the time of year when we celebrate the ultimate transposition of the higher going into the lower. The peace we find through Jesus is his peace. Not the world’s version, but His own. It is not about a feeling, but about a way of being, rooted in his wholeness.

When we have that kind of peace, we can face trials of many kinds because it is a peace not based on human acts. It is the steadying nature of God himself, giving you the peace of mind to endure as you rest in his divine fullness. So, it’s not the absence of trouble, but the presence of Himself.

Today and this evening, take a short walk and reflect on God’s peace; where it comes from, what it contains, and the potential for it to shape your life.

Is it even possible that God has offered you peace, but you have yet to partake of it? We do this, as humans, don’t we? We go out of our way, almost, to muscle through hardship on our own, all the while, Jesus stands there saying, “Here, take my peace. Let it renew and restore you.”

I love how Eugene Peterson frames this notion of peace in his New Testament paraphrase, The Message:

Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. (Philippians 4:6-7)

A sense of God’s wholeness—he nailed it. In other versions, the final part of verse seven reads like a doxological blessing.

May the peace of God guard your hearts.

Doesn’t that make more sense now, when we understand peace as God’s wholeness? That’s how peace guards your heart. It is him guarding your heart with a divine tranquility that surpasses our comprehension.

Isn’t the Christian life so wonderfully cosmic?

An Invitation

If you’d like to walk through the rest of Advent with me—day by day, under the stars, in Scripture, and in the wonder of Christ’s coming—you can join Oh Night Divineanytime. Each morning brings a fresh reflection, an audio reading, and a simple printable to mark the day.

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timothywillard.substack.com/subscribe

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Episode Summary

What if love isn’t a moral checklist but the shape of reality itself? In this episode, Tim contrasts the world’s idea of love with divine love by exploring agapē as the self-emptying gravity of God—the Trinitarian life that holds the world together—and how our own speech, identity, and action regain weight when we participate in that divine motion.

The Beautiful Disruption is a reader-supported publication. Join the disruption and be part of the machine resistance 🤓. The Big Fall Discount is still available. Get a forever discount today.

Hello Friends,

Why the cosmic night sky photo? Because, as you’ll hear in today’s episode, love—God’s love—is cosmically big. And, as it’s turned out, our exploration of agape has now brought us to the big self-emptying moment of the incarnation. That will be next week’s episode. I can’t wait.

Let me break down what we covered and give you a few questions to ponder related to today’s episode.

Oh Night Divine

We are in the season of the incarnation. And Advent draws near. In today’s episode, I talk more about my new Advent series, Oh Night Divine. It will be great for spiritual reflection, family discussion, and personal enrichment.

Will you join me for this special Advent series that explores what it looks like to chase beauty during the Christmas season?

—> Oh Night Divine — Chasing Beauty During Advent is available now for presale. Buy today and get 20% off: $16.00

Many people are opting for the spiritual formation route. When you buy my Marveling course, you get Oh Night Divine free.

This is my favorite project right now. I’m honored and humbled so many of you are resonating with its theme and are joining the journey.

Riven—When Light Pours In

I mentioned—as the oversharer that I am—my dream of Riven. Over the past few weeks, as I’ve returned to the rhythm of weekly podcasting, I’ve been thinking about what it means to build something that’s more than just a recording schedule.

The reason I moved my family to Oxford was to be equipped; to learn what it was that God wanted me to say and spend the rest of my life saying it.

My new revived rhythm of public writing and teaching has reignited this dream. I keep imagining a small space on our property—a 26x26 studio tucked among the trees. A place to paint, write, teach, record, pray, and gather. The Riven Studio 🥰.

“Riven” means split open, but not in a destructive way—it’s the kind of opening that lets the light in. Christ’s body was riven; the temple veil was riven; and through those openings, life poured into the world.

That’s the kind of work I want to build—work where beauty and truth meet us at the level of the heart.

I’ve always envisioned Riven as a re-imagining of what a 21st-century L’Abri might look like—not an institution, but a small fellowship of beauty, imagination, and sincere searching. A place where people could come to ask questions, to heal, to make things with their hands again, to rediscover the presence of God through beauty.

Whether Riven becomes a press, a creative space, or one day even a retreat house, the dream is simple: to carve out a haven where the riven places of our lives become doorways for grace.

If this inspires you—stirs something in you. Please drop me an email or leave a comment below. Or click over to my website and read more about the dream and ways to give towards it

I’m only in the early stages of developing the vision statement, but you’re welcome to review it and prayerfully consider how you can be part of what we’re planning. —> Click here.

Questions & Reflections from the Episode

• Which “dimension” of God’s love is hardest for you to believe?

• Height — God’s transcendence and sovereignty

• Depth — Christ’s descent into your grief

• Width — God’s embrace of the whole world, including you

Why? Journal about it or discuss with a friend, co-worker, or loved one. This is what I discussed with my parents. It was fun and very encouraging.

• What would it look like to “empty” something this week? Not in a self-negating way, but in a Christlike way:

• A preference?

• An agenda?

• A need to control?

• A hidden resentment?

What would creative relinquishment look like? I’m referencing here what I described as God withdrawing himself to create—the higher into the lower (Lewis’s “transposition”).

• In what ways has sentimentalism shaped your understanding of “love”? I know, that’s a hard one. Now think about culture. How has culture’s version of love:

• Softened its cost?

• Drained its power?

• Replaced holiness with niceness?

• Emphasized preference over truth?

Where is God inviting you into the real thing?

• What kind of “beauty” do you chase? Like Psyche: a beauty that leads upward into transcendence—outside and beyond yourself? Or like Orual: a beauty you want to possess—like a commodity, like a thing you control?

• Which part of the divine-life invitation stirs you most?

• Participating in God’s self-giving life

• Being drawn into the Trinity’s eternal exchange

• Seeing love as ontology, not ethics

• Becoming a person of weight and substance

• Entering the “riven” places where the light gets in

Why? Journal the answers. Discuss with a trusted friend.

Ok, that’s all for this week. I’m excited for next week, and plunging into the incarnation and Oh Night Divine. I’ll see you then!

And, for paid subscribers. Be looking for another “live” posting. We’ll go behind the scenes and discuss more about love and the Advent series.

Cheers,

Tim

The Deconstruction Video

Check out from 1:43 onward—and definitely around 1:55(ish). That’s where Rhett talks about the greatest of these—love. And then ask yourself. What love are you talking about? What does that mean? If faith and hope matter less, then define the love that should rule the faith and rule the world.

TBD Library

• “Transposition” — C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (An Essay Collection)

• Till We Have Faces—C.S. Lewis

• Confessions—Augustine, “… my weight is my love.”

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timothywillard.substack.com/subscribe

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Episode Summary

What if love’s absence is more than heartbreak—it’s collapse? In this episode, I explore Paul’s haunting triad in 1 Corinthians 13 —speech without love, being without love, and action without love —and follow it through the narrows, where divine self-giving holds the world together.

If The Beautiful Disruption inspires you, join us and become a paid subscriber. If 10% of all my subscribers upgrade, I'll leap to full-time writing, teaching, producing, and speaking—bringing beauty to a world in search of meaning. Thank you all for your support. I’m here in this space because of and for you.

Hello Everyone,

This week is special. I promised something for Advent, and today I’m making it available for pre-sale:

O Night Divine: Chasing Beauty During the Christmas Season

O Night Divine is four weeks of meditations on the journey of Advent and what it means to chase beauty during the Christmas season. I’ve loved creating this project for you. The journey begins on November 30th.

Oh Night Divine will include:

• 22+ reflections during Advent

• Audio reflections

• Bonus seasonal essays for reading by the fire

• I’ll compile all the reflections into a neatly designed, downloadable, and printable PDF

• Price: 20$.

• Today’s Pre-sale Discount: 20% off, now $16.

So, here’s the special I have for you. Well, actually, there are three ways to receive a pre-sale discount:

• By purchasing Oh Night Divine by itself today, you will get a 20% discount for a limited time. So, this one is for anyone and everyone. Click HERE to purchase.

• When you join Marveling—my signature three-chapter course on cultivating wonder—you’ll receive O Night Divine, free, totally on me. Click HERE to purchase.

• Paid Substack friends: check your inbox tomorrow for your inner-circle discount link. Just a hint, there’s a six and a zero in your discount. So, if you’ve considered upgrading to a paid subscriber, now is a great time to do it.

Advent is coming. Let’s prepare our hearts for the Light together.

Finally, my art shop is live. I’ll be adding new pieces regularly. Click on over and explore. If you have a question, DM or email me.

Through the Narrows

What happens to the world when love withdraws?

In this episode of The Beautiful Disruption, we return to Paul’s opening verses in 1 Corinthians 13. He begins not by giving us emotional sentiment. He invites us to consider a very important possibility: the world without love.

Without agapē, Paul says, our words deform into noise, our being collapses into nothing, and our actions lose weight. It’s a sobering reality for us who live in the machine world.

Love is what holds reality together. Because we all know, “all you need is love.”

Think about our unraveling culture: our content-saturated speech, our curated identities, and our performative activism. We are a culture devoid of heavenly love, the costly kind of love, the high mountain pass of love.

But there is hope. And it comes through the narrows. It’s the way love creates through self-limitation. Simone Weil and George Steiner describe creation itself as divine withdrawal, the torrent of infinite being pressed through the constriction of finitude.

Like a massive river flowing into the narrows, it’s reduced to a small area, producing a glorious spectacle of raw power and beauty.

Like the tidal current at Saltstraumen, Norway, God’s self-giving love surges through the narrows to carve beauty into the world.

This is the withdrawal of the loving one: the withdrawal creates a givingness in the world. This is the power of love's presence. When love enters, truth, goodness, and beauty cohere again.

But when love is absent, everything collapses.

One thing I loved thinking about was how all this relates to us in our everyday lives. I like thinking of myself as a tidal current, don’t you? For artists, makers, parents, pastors, craftsmen, entrepreneurs, and well, basically everyone, this is a call to live through the narrows—to pour ourselves into acts of love that give form and radiance to others.

• How can you live through the narrows today, this week, next? How can you pour yourself into others, into your craft, into your daily work that gives radiance to others?

• For the artists here, it is not about self-expression. That is the lie of modern society. Art is about withdrawal. Your challenge this week is to create through this lens. Create one thing that expresses beauty—that radiance beyond—so when others see your work, they see that which is hidden and wonderful in our world expressed in your creation.

• Evaluate your speech, your gifts, your actions. Are they full of the high mountain pass withdrawal nature of love? Or are they loaded with void? That's a tough question, yes, I know. But it’s what I ask myself all the time.

Ok, that’s all for today. Love you guys! Please leave a comment below with your thoughts. Or shoot me an email or DM. I love hearing from you guys.

Head on over to my fresh site and pre-order the Advent special, Oh Night Divine,and tell a friend about it.

I’ll see you next week!

Cheers,

Tim

Links to the Advent Special:

• Pre-Order Oh Night Divine HERE.

• Explore my Marveling course HERE.

Links Mentioned

• Explore what a tidal current is here.

• The Narrows— “where the trail is the Virgin River.”

What I’ve Been Watching

• Alex O’Connor & John Lennox: Why this Oxford Mathematician is Confident God Exists

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Word Study

• γίνομαι / γέγονα – gegona, “I have become,” “to become,” denoting change of state. Used here to show the deformation of the speaker.

• εἰμί – eimi, “I am,” “to be,” the core verb of existence; without love, ontology collapses.

• ὠφελέω / ὠφελοῦμαι – ōpheloumai (the verb that was too long for me to pronouce:), “I am profited,” “to profit, benefit, be helped”; Paul uses it to deny the moral utility of loveless deeds.

Without love, speech, being, and action collapse. This is literally what is happening in our culture at every level. Speech: rhetoric, communication, writing, education, reduced to mere content. Being: identity, existence—confusion and distortion of what is real; we no longer know who we are as individuals, male, female. Action: virte signaling, activism without heart. See how when you look at the verbs, you can place an overlay of cultural distortion over it and see how important it is to follow the more excellent way … of Christ, of love.

From the TBD Library:

• Real Presences & Grammars of Creation, by George Steiner

• Gravity and Grace, Waiting for God, The Need for Roots, by Simone Weil

Coming Next Week

We’ll get into—finally!—what love is. Until then, gush your presence through the narrows and love like Christ.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timothywillard.substack.com/subscribe

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What if love isn’t sentimental—but structural? In this episode, I explore Paul’s “more excellent way” in 1 Corinthians 13 as a high mountain pass—the narrow, risky, breathtaking road of transformation. Love, it turns out, isn’t comfort; it’s ascent. It’s the way that changes the air you breathe.

The Episode

Love is the most overused word in our world—and the least understood.Paul’s words, “I will show you a more excellent way,” aren’t about feelings. They’re an invitation up the mountain, a call to the “beyond-measure path” where beauty, risk, and endurance meet.

In this reflection, we trace:

• Faith, Hope, and Love as the architecture of existence—the divine geometry that orders our being.

• Tolkien’s “eucatastrophe” and why hope is the structure of time itself, bending us toward reunion.

• Paul’s “hyperbolic way,” as the noble path that elevates and refines.

• Why our culture’s definition of love—mere affirmation—falls short and can lead to isolation.

• How true love carries the grit, endurance, and thin-air beauty of a mountain pass.

“Love is the mountain pass. Love is the “way beyond measure.” Love is the geometry of God’s own heart.”

This isn’t a how-to on relationships. It’s a pilgrimage—a way of seeing again.When Paul speaks of love, he’s describing the very curve of divine being: a love that ascends, stretches, and never stops reaching.

Listen + Share

🎧 Listen on Substack🎧 Listen on Spotify🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts

If this episode stirred something in you, I’d be honoured if you shared it with a friend or left a five-star review. Every little bit helps new listeners discover The Beautiful Disruption.

Thanks for listening! This episode is public, so feel free to share it.

Support My Work

This podcast and publication are 100 percent listener-supported. If you believe in work and want to help me make it full-time, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

For a limited time, get 25% off a paid subscription for life.

Word Study: Hyperbolē Hodos — The Surpassing Way

Paul’s phrase in 1 Corinthians 12:31, “a more excellent way,” comes from two Greek words:

ὑπερβολή (hyperbolē) — literally “a throwing beyond.”Later used for what is surpassingly great, beyond measure, even a mountain pass.

ὁδός (hodos) — a road, journey, or way of life.In the New Testament, it becomes a name for the Christian life itself (Acts 9:2; 19:9). Also, Jesus refers to himself as “the way.” And the writer of Hebrews writes about a “new and living way.” The repetition invites us to look deeper.

Together, hyperbolē and hodos give us a breathtaking picture:

Love is not a static virtue; it’s the high mountain pass of the soul.It’s the surpassing way—demanding, ascending, yet leading toward light.

This is the geometry of love: Alignment with the Good that reorders the self.Love is not a shortcut to ease and affirmation but the formation of our days—our way of being with God and one another that transforms everything it touches.

From the TBD Library:

• The Anxious Generation — Jonathan Haidt

• The Four Loves — C.S. Lewis

• On Faerie Stories — J.R.R. Tolkien

• 1 Corinthians 12–13 — Paul’s “more excellent way”

• AI, Gravitational Time Dilation, and Learning to Love Life - The Podcast of Blaine Eldredge

Coming Next Week

We’ll go deeper into Paul’s words—“Without love, I am nothing”—and explore how a world without love becomes hollowed of meaning. Actions lose weight. Speech loses Logos. Until then, stay rooted in light.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timothywillard.substack.com/subscribe

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Episode Summary

In this episode of The Beautiful Disruption, Tim Willard explores how Romans 1 exposes our modern blindness. Creation still reveals God’s power and beauty, yet we suppress that revelation—laughing at horror, aestheticizing death, and drowning in noise. From Paul to Jude to the Psalms, Tim traces how beauty and truth become acts of resistance in a culture of suppression. The call is simple but demanding: fight not with rage, but with love and presence. Be rooted. Be planted in light.

Hello Everyone,

My apologies for the late posting. Not only was today a full day, in the best way, but it was also one in which I had to deal with technical difficulties. Oh, how we love our machines, right? Meh.

I want to welcome all the new subscribers. I’m so honored you’ve decided to give the Disruption a chance. And, a reminder to everyone, that the entire archive is open to all for, well, a little while. So, please, take a moment and poke around. I hope you find something here that inspires you.

Today, I piggyback off of last week’s reflection, extending it into how we can resist the undercurrent of our zeitgeist of evil. And what’s exciting is that working on these two episodes inspired me to take a deep dive into Christian love—what is it, really? And is Paul’s famous passage more than just a blueprint for romantic relationships? I’m excited to share that with you next week.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this episode. If it sparks a thought, leave a note in the comments and share it with your friends.

Thank you all for trusting me with your inbox and for the time you spend with my words and thoughts on this platform. I’m humbled you’re here.

Support My Work

This publication and podcast are completely listener and reader-supported. You are the lifeblood of this space, and your contributions through paid subscriptions make all of this possible. Please consider how you might help me reach my goal of making this writing project my full-time occupation. For a limited time, get 25% off a paid subscription forever.

Rooted in Light: My Study on Psalm 1

The Hebrew Triad of Evil

Ok, in this section, I’ve included my study notes. I love translation—and translating through an uncommon lens. For example, sometimes, when commentaries skew more moral in their insight and context, I like to look at the range of meaning of the words from a cosmological or ontological perspective. It’s fun, and it pushes me to think about God’s word from a broader perspective, rather than always focusing on behavior (ethical/moral). So, I hope this inspires you.

Psalm 1 opens with three words that thrum like a warning drumbeat:

רְשָׁעִים (rĕšāʿim) – “the wicked”Those who act against justice; the morally restless.

חַטָּאִים (ḥaṭṭāʾim) – “the sinners”From ḥāṭāʾ, “to miss the mark.” Not the ignorant, but those who habitually aim wrong.

לֵצִים (lēṣim) – “the scoffers”From lûṣ, “to mock or deride.” These are the cynics—the ones who sneer at holiness itself.

Each ends with that heavy -im (ים) plural. The words stick out and their guttural sound sits in your throat, congested and communal. What I’ve learned is that evil in Hebrew poetry is rarely solitary—it gathers, councils, sits. The righteous man is singular; the wicked arrive in crowds.

The Descent: Walk → Stand → Sit

Psalm 1 traces a moral kinesis (movement) in three verbs:

• Walks in the counsel of the wicked – curiosity.

• Stands in the path of sinners – identification.

• Sits in the seat of scoffers – residence.

This movement is striking. It’s the physics of corruption: movement slows into stillness, stillness hardens into cynicism. I asked myself, “Why is scoffer at the end and not the beginning. But it makes sense that that scoffer is sitting—I picture a bitter person, hands folded, mocking and scoffing at the world. They are sedentary in their wickedness.

By the final line, the scoffer has made wickedness and unbelief a home. Mockery is the terminal posture of the soul—it cannot truly see what it laughs at. The film of evil blinds it.

The Righteous Contrast: The Planted One

Then comes the reversal. I love this:

“He shall be like a tree planted by streams of water…” (1 : 3)

שָׁתוּל (shātûl) – “planted” or “transplanted.”Not wild growth. This is a cultivated planting—a deliberate placement. The blessed life is cultivated and rooted by design.

פֶּלֶג (peleg) – “channels, divisions.”Irrigation streams—ordered flow. Grace moves with structure.

יִצְלִיחַ (yatsliaḥ) – “to prosper, to go forward well.”The image is not material success but rhythmic fruitfulness. Think, life in season, rest in winter, renewal in spring.

The psalmist contrasts the scoffer’s sterile seat with the believer’s fruitful rootedness. Where the mocker calcifies, the righteous grows in the light of God—a spiritual photosynthesis. 🌲☀️

The Sound of Depth in a Surface Age

Modern culture mirrors the scoffer’s posture—quick to react, thinly rooted. Our digital lives resemble what Deleuze and Guattari (see below for a link to their insane book) called the rhizome: surface-level connections without depth, crabgrass culture sprawling endlessly but never descending.

Psalm 1 answers with the opposite architecture: the tree. A life that descends before it ascends (think, Lewis’s “Corn King” analogy). Roots before branches. Silence before speech. 🫚

To live righteously is to grow down into mystery before reaching up toward light.

A Meditation

I like to think of blessedness as a kind of weight of love pulling us homeward. The NLT renders blessedness as joy of delight. Either way, it’s not empty happiness; it’s a movement of blessing toward God. To be “planted by streams” is to dwell in the flow of Logos, the Word whose water renews creation.

Where the scoffer sits, the saint stands; where the world mocks, the faithful marvel. To mock is to wither. To marvel is to grow.

Liturgy

Practice: Each morning this week, name one place in creation where you sense God’s presence breaking through the visible. Journal it. Thank God for it. And let that gratitude root you for the day.

Prayer: Lord, plant me by Your streams. Make my life rhythmic, not reactive; rooted, not restless. Guard me from the seat of cynicism and let my words bear fruit in their season.

Hard Reflection Question: No one likes to think of themselves as a scoffer. But, in prepping this, I got honest and asked myself: Tim, are you a seated scoffer in areas that you’re blind to? Evil doesn’t always rip us from our day to day. It uses subtlety to slither in and move us away from God. How about you—any areas of your life where the scoffer rears its head?

The Beautiful Disruption Library

This is a living canon of wonder, clarity, and truth. For the beauty chasers, the light bearers, and those who still believe there’s more to the world than meets the eye. Here you’ll find links to our growing list of resources. Each episode, I will add to the list so that we can, together, build an excellent resource library. Today’s new additions are bolded.

Links to Resources Mentioned in Episodes

• The Beauty Chasers: Recapturing the Wonder of the Divine, by Timothy D. Willard

• C.S. Lewis

• The Abolition of Man

• That Hideous Strength

• Mere Christianity

• The Screwtape Letters

• The Last Battle

• George Steiner

• Grammars of Creation

• Real Presences

• The Aesthetics of Architecture, by Roger Scruton

• The Aesthetic Understanding, by Roger Scruton

• Beauty: A Very Short Introduction, by Roger Scruton

• Roger Scruton, “Why I Became a Conservative | The New Criterion,” February 1, 2003, https://newcriterion.com/article/why-i-became-a-conservative/.

• The Hebrew Bible: A Translation and Commentary

• Simone Weil, The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind

• A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze & Guattari

• Pierre Marie-Emonet, The Dearest Freshness Deep Down Things

• The Old Way of Seeing, by Jonathan Hale

• Blaine Eldredge’s post on re-enchantment:

• My former podcast, in which I discuss more of Jonathan Hales’s thoughts on architecture: The Saturday Stoke

The Saturday Stoke #51

Timothy Willard

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Episode Summary:

Charlie Kirk’s assassination shocked the culture—but what does it reveal about the world we’re living in? In this episode of The Beautiful Disruption, Tim Willard explores the machine world, the aesthetics of evil, and the deep longing for a lasting city—the polis tou Theou. Drawing from Hebrews 13:14, C.S. Lewis, and the writings of John, this is a reckoning with despair—and a call to live toward the City of God.

Hello Everyone!

I know. It’s been a minute. But if you’ll give me your ear, in today’s newest episode of the revitalized podcast, I explain where I’ve been, what I’ve been doing, and what’s on my heart.

It’s been a full few months, in the best of ways. In that fullness, I’ve been writing—studying—and preparing the next phase of my work. My next book proposal will, Lord willing, go out this week to my agent, then to publishers. I’ll be sharing more about that soon. I think you all will like the concept!

I’m also returning to regular rhythms here on Substack. The essays will be monthly, and, for the time being, will go to everyone. And, I’ll be posting more audio reflections here on the podcast. Finally, I’m opening the archives for a few months so everyone can explore the conversations we’ve been having here over the last couple of years. So, if you are new here, please take this opportunity to poke the tires and see if you like the ride.

If you’ve been tracking with me for a while, thank you, thank you, thank you. You mean the world to me. If you’re new: welcome to something a little slower, and hopefully, a little more human, and a lot more disruptive. The Beautiful Disruption.

As always, I love hearing your thoughts. So, if you have a moment, please join the conversation in the comments below.

Support My Work

This publication and podcast are completely listener and reader-supported. You are the lifeblood of this space, and your contributions through paid subscriptions make all of this possible. Please consider how you might help me reach my goal of making this writing project my full-time occupation. For a limited time, get 25% off a paid subscription forever.

Earlier this month, I was blessed with the opportunity to join my friend Jeanne Oliver on her podcast. I love talking with Jeanne—she’s so thoughtful, and is a true seeker of beauty, goodness, and truth. Hit the link button below to listen to our conversation.

My Study on Evil:

Two Faces of Evil in John’s Writing: Diabolos and Ponēros

In his letters, John uses two distinct Greek words to speak about evil—each revealing something different about how darkness operates.

• διάβολος (Diabolos) – literally “the slanderer.”This is the Devil as personal tempter and deceiver—the voice that divides, distorts, and accuses. John uses it for the individual instigator of sin (1 John 3:8; John 8:44). Diabolos is intimate: the whisper that corrupts a single heart.

• ὁ πονηρός (Ho Ponēros) – “the Evil One.”This term reaches further than the personal tempter. John links it with the κόσμος (kosmos)—the world system that “lies in the power of the Evil One” (1 John 5:19). Ponēros describes the architecture of evil itself—the atmospheric, systemic distortion of truth that shapes culture, language, and desire. It is what we might call the spirit of the age (zeitgeist).

Where Diabolos deceives individuals, Ponēros corrodes civilizations. One whispers to use personally; the other builds structures of falsehood.

This is why John speaks of “the world” not merely as humanity, but as an arranged order of rebellion, a cosmos bent away from the Light. The Christian task is to walk in the opposite direction—to live as children of the Light within a system ordered by darkness.

Faith, Hope, and the Architecture of the City to Come

Here are my notes from my continuing study on “city” and “hope.” Can you get a hint at what my next book might be about? 🤓

The writer of Hebrews weaves one of the most breathtaking metaphysical tapestries in the New Testament. His words turn philosophical terms from both the Hebrew Scriptures and Greek thought into a single architectural vision—faith as the structure of hope, and God as the architect of reality.

1. Faith as Substance, Hope as Orientation

Hebrews 11 opens with a sentence that sounds almost like poetry:

“Now faith is the hypostasis of things hoped for, the elenchos of things not seen.”

The Greek word hypostasis can mean “foundation,” “reality,” or “that which stands beneath.”

In classical Greek, it described:

• a building’s substructure,

• the essence or real nature of something,

• and even the steadfastness of soldiers holding the line.

When Hebrews uses it, faith becomes the underlying reality—the solid floor—of all we hope for. Hope itself (elpizomenon) means more than wishful thinking; it’s the active expectation of the good and beneficial. Faith is therefore the present solidity of future goodness.

Think of it like this: Hope gives direction, faith gives structure.

2. God the Architect and Craftsman

In Hebrews 11:10, the author describes Abraham as looking forward to “the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”

The Greek titles are striking: technitēs and dēmiourgos—“artisan” and “maker.”The second term, dēmiourgos, comes straight from Plato’s Timaeus (a text I love), where the Demiurge is the cosmic Craftsman who shapes the universe after eternal patterns. But here’s what's awesome. The writer of Hebrews baptizes this idea:

The God of Israel is not merely shaping pre-existent matter; He is the Creator who gives being itself its form and permanence.

Faith, hope, and divine craftsmanship thus belong together—God builds reality; faith and hope are how humans participate in that construction.

Faith and hope are not whimsical notions from the religious crutch of Christianity. No! They are bold, big, and beautiful words that define our daily reality and give us a structure for living.

3. The Polis Motif — City as Belonging

Hebrews uses polis (city) four times (11:10, 11:16, 12:22, 13:14). In Greek, it means more than a cluster of buildings; it’s a community of shared life and purpose.

By choosing polis instead of kosmos (“world”—as in many of our Bible translations), the author shifts the focus from geography to belonging.

• In 11:10, Abraham longs for the city whose foundations are divine.

• In 11:16, the saints desire a better, heavenly homeland.

• In 12:22, worshipers already “come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God.”

• In 13:14, believers “seek the city that is to come.”

This “city” is the same radiant community glimpsed by the prophets—“We have a strong city; He sets salvation as its walls” (Isa 26:1)—and later by John in Revelation, the New Jerusalem descending, radiating God’s own light.

4. The Architecture of Hope

Read together, Hebrews 11–13 sketches a cosmic blueprint. The result is a call to build now in light of what will endure. Faith lays the foundation; hope shapes the plan; love furnishes the dwelling with a kenotic people driven toward the divine act of a self-emptying love. Our lives become small replicas of the polis menousa—the “abiding city” whose light, in the end, will fill creation.

The Beautiful Disruption Library

This is a living canon of wonder, clarity, and truth. For the beauty chasers, the light bearers, and those who still believe there’s more to the world than meets the eye.

Here you’ll find links to our growing list of resources. Each episode, I will add to the list so that we can, together, build an excellent resource library.

Links to Resources Mentioned in Episodes

• The Beauty Chasers: Recapturing the Wonder of the Divine, by Timothy D. Willard

• C.S. Lewis

• The Abolition of Man

• That Hideous Strength

• Mere Christianity

• The Screwtape Letters

• George Steiner

• Grammars of Creation

• Real Presences

• The Aesthetics of Architecture, by Roger Scruton

• The Aesthetic Understanding, by Roger Scruton

• Beauty: A Very Short Introduction, by Roger Scruton

• Roger Scruton, “Why I Became a Conservative | The New Criterion,” February 1, 2003, https://newcriterion.com/article/why-i-became-a-conservative/.

• Pierre Marie-Emonet, The Dearest Freshness Deep Down Things

• The Old Way of Seeing, by Jonathan Hale

• Blaine Eldredge’s post on re-enchantment:

• My former podcast, in which I discuss more of Jonathan Hales’s thoughts on architecture: The Saturday Stoke

The Saturday Stoke #51

Timothy Willard

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The Choice Between Everlasting Light and Everlasting Entropy

"At that time Michael, the archangel who stands guard over your nation, will arise… Many of those whose bodies lie dead and buried will rise up, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting disgrace. Those who are wise will shine as bright as the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever." (Daniel 12:1-3)

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Light does not die. Every photon ever created still moves through the cosmos, untouched by time.

So does something else.

In Daniel 12, the angel Gabriel describes a time when two kinds of everlasting people will rise—those who shine with wisdom and those who fall into everlasting contempt. This is not poetic language. It is a description of metaphysical reality.

We exist in a world that is both physical and metaphysical—a reality that is more than what our eyes can see. The Christian view of eternity is not an abstraction; it is the foundation of existence itself. Eternity is not just a future hope—it is woven into the fabric of reality.

Did Plato See the Same Light as Daniel?

Daniel’s vision speaks of those who “shine like the stars.” Simile, yes—but also a deeper truth about divine wisdom and its radiance.

Consider Moses—his face burned with divine kavod (glory) after encountering God. This kavod was weighty, dense—a divine density. And then, the Light entered history itself.

C.S. Lewis called it transposition—the higher entering the lower. The Incarnation was the great transposition of divine radiance into flesh. Jesus did not simply bring light. He was the Light.

Plato, long before Christ, also envisioned an eternal reality. He described a realm of Forms—unchanging, weightless, perfect. In Timaeus, he saw the material world as a mere reflection of an eternal blueprint. In Phaedrus, he spoke of the soul glimpsing eternal truth before birth, then spending life trying to recollect it.

For Plato, wisdom meant ascending to the eternal, escaping the transient world.

But Daniel’s vision speaks of something descending—eternity entering time. The everlasting is not just something to reach for; it reaches us. And when it does, it transforms.

Why Light Never Dies: The Science Behind the Eternal

Imagine a world with no light. Not just without the sun, moon, or stars—but without light itself.

Light is paradoxical. It has no mass, yet it shapes reality. A photon never decays—it exists forever unless absorbed.

Roger Penrose’s Conformal Cyclical Cosmology (CCC) suggests the universe undergoes infinite cycles or “aeons.” Over time, all matter decays, leaving only massless particles like photons. In this vision, the universe becomes pure light—until it collapses into another Big Bang, and the cycle begins again.

Yet, for all his theorizing, Penrose cannot explain one fundamental mystery: Why does something as infinite as light exist at all?

Science offers no answer to this paradox. But Daniel’s vision does.

Divine wisdom is light that does not fade. As light remains while matter falls into entropy, so too does wisdom transcend decay.

What happens to those who embrace divine wisdom? Do they, too, become unbound by time? Everlasting?

And what if we reject the Light? Do we enter into everlasting entropy—dissolution, loss of density, eternal contempt?

Jesus, Light, and the Physics of Glory

Jesus did not bring light—he was the Light.

“I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.” (John 8:12)

The Incarnation is the ultimate paradox: the infinite Light bending into finite form.

Think of light’s infinite nature—massless, unbound by time. Now think of the Light of the World stepping into a world of decay. The divine kavod—the weight of God's glory—wrapped in flesh.

This is the confrontation: the weight of light versus the entropy of decay. The universe itself hints at the choice we must make.

Light or Entropy: The Choice Before Us

Daniel’s vision presents us with two paths:

• To shine forever—to bear divine wisdom, to take on weight, to become luminous.

• To fade—to collapse into disorder, to dissolve into nothingness.

Every day, we make this choice. Do we move toward the weight of glory, or do we become weightless?

Etched in Gabriel’s words is a promise—light is the inheritance of the faithful.

To shine forever is not an escape into a Platonic ideal. It is the endurance of real substantial transformation. The weight of light is a refining fire, not an easy ascent. To fade is not to cease existing—it is to lose all density, to be carried away by the entropy of meaninglessness.

We stand at the threshold. The eternal does not remain distant; it reaches for us. Light bends low, calling us not merely to look upward but to embrace its radiance.

The question is not whether eternity exists. The question is whether we will bear its weight.

✨ Please leave a comment below and share how the Light of God’s love has shaped you and encourages you daily.

✨ Welcome to all new subscribers! If you’re new to my writing, a great place to start is my book, The Beauty Chasers: Recapturing the Wonder of the Divine. I’m so glad and humbled you’re here. Thanks for entrusting your inbox to my writing.

🙏 Wishing everyone a wonderful, Light-filled week!

Cheers,

Tim

🏔️ Enroll in my new Marveling Course. Click here to explore more.

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Happy Monday Everyone!

Apologies for posting today’s Monday Memo so late. I had some tech difficulties mixed in with the reality of life with a family of five. And so, here I am at Panera Bread finally getting the edit to work, and this is a word of encouragement to you.

In today’s terrace conversation, I discuss the importance of embracing the winter season and finding stillness amidst the darkness. I encourage you to engage with the changing environment, emphasizing the beauty of twilight and the need to step outside and experience nature.

We must battle against inactivity during winter and realize the significance of intentionality in cultivating a stillness of mind and heart.

Here are a few takeaways for you to chew on this week:

• Intentionality is key to finding stillness in a busy world.

• Finding stillness can lead to deeper connections with loved ones.

• Winter is a time for contemplation and deep renewal.

• The changing seasons provide opportunities for personal growth.

• Twilight is a magical time that can enhance our mood.

Special thanks to Cash for being such a good boy during the recording of today’s memo. :)

Have a wonderful week!

Cheers,

Tim

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If you’re new to The Beautiful Disruption, welcome! I love that you’re here. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with short video posts. Some I use as podcasts, and some I post as videos. Today’s video is a short seven-minute encouragement that gives you three practices I use to overcome fear.

I’d love to hear your thoughts after you’ve watched the video. What is that thing that you can’t find the time to do? What keeps you from doing it or trying it? Or maybe you’re on the other side and can share how you moved beyond the voices of fear and discouragement to do the thing.

A Note on My Fiction

Last week, I posted the Prologue of my newest novel, The Misadventures of Leighton Fig. Go read it before Wednesday, when I’ll post chapter two!

You can also read my first novel, The Tempest and The Bloom, on Substack. Click here. I will release it in book form very soon, so stay tuned.

The Beautiful Disruption is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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If you’re new to The Beautiful Disruption, welcome! I love that you’re here. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with short video posts. Some I use as podcasts, and some I post as videos. Today’s video is a short nine-minute encouragement to do that thing you put off because you think either it doesn’t matter or you simply don’t have the time.

God did not allow us to sit and watch the world pass us by. He created us to move, cultivate our passions, and find new ways to experience his joy and bring joy to others.

I’d love to hear your thoughts after you’ve watched the video. What is that thing that you can’t find the time to do? What keeps you from doing it or trying it? Or maybe you’re on the other side and can share how you moved beyond the voices of fear and discouragement to do the thing.

A Note on My Fiction

Finally, I’ve threatened to share my latest fiction work with you. I had to shelve finishing it for a season, but I’m back at it now. On Wednesday, I will post the prologue to my story, The Misadventures of Leighton Fig. I’m nervous, but you know me. I’m an oversharer and excited to get it out there.

The Beautiful Disruption is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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Hello Everyone,

Welcome to The Beauty Disruption Podcast and welcome new subscribers! This publication and podcast are completely listener—and reader-supported. You are the lifeblood of this space, and your contributions through paid subscriptions make all of this possible. I’ve extended The Big Forever Sale for just a few more days. Get 30% off forever. Okay, let’s get to it.

Introductory Remarks

In this episode, I compare the modern church's format with Scripture's teaching about what should be included in our worship gatherings.

As I said in the previous episodes, the point of these reflections on our protestant Christian church spaces and format is not naked critique. It is to reassess what I feel we have uncritically allowed our worship spaces and gatherings to become. I hope this spirit comes through in the discussion.

In this episode, as I was relaying a story about a small revival that I participated in as a twenty-year-old, my phone, on which I was recording, died. Please excuse the technical difficulty. I tried to transition back as best I could.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about church format! Do you think we’ve drifted from how church gatherings should be conducted? Are we underutilizing the congregation regarding who can contribute to teaching, prophetic words, and music on Sundays?

Links to Resources Mentioned in the Episode

• Stop Marketing the Soul Out of the Church

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Hello Everyone,

Welcome to The Beauty Disruption Podcast, and welcome new subscribers! This publication and podcast are completely listener and reader-supported. You are the lifeblood of this space, and your contributions through paid subscriptions make all of this possible. Please consider how you might help me reach my goal of making this writing project my full-time occupation. I’ve extended The Big Forever Sale. Get 30% off forever. Ok, let’s get to it.

Introductory Remarks

In this episode, I continue our discussion from last week on the uglification of the Church. I received many DMs and texts about that episode—some encouraging, some challenging. I welcome it all.

The point of these reflections on our protestant Christian worship spaces is not naked critique. It is to reassess what I feel we have uncritically allowed our worship spaces to become. I hope this spirit comes through in the discussion.

As I interact with more and more people on this topic, it’s become evident to me that the Christian community approaches aesthetic judgment from a postmodern perspective—we allow for subjectivism and approach aesthetics from the “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” standpoint. I’ll be talking more about this in the coming episodes.

Links to Resources Mentioned in the Episode

• The Beauty Chasers: Recapturing the Wonder of the Divine, by Timothy D. Willard

• The Aesthetics of Architecture, by Roger Scruton

• The Aesthetic Understanding, by Roger Scruton

• Beauty: A Very Short Introduction, by Roger Scruton

• Roger Scruton, “Why I Became a Conservative | The New Criterion,” February 1, 2003, https://newcriterion.com/article/why-i-became-a-conservative/.

• The Old Way of Seeing, by Jonathan Hale

• Blaine Eldredge’s post on re-enchantment:

• My former podcast, in which I discuss more of Jonathan Hales's thoughts on architecture:

• Roger Scruton on beauty and belonging:

• Excerpt referenced in The Abolition of Man:

In their second chapter Gaius and Titius quote the well-known story of Coleridge at the waterfall. You remember that there were two tourists present: that one called it 'sublime' and the other 'pretty'; and that Coleridge mentally endorsed the first judgement and rejected the second with disgust. Gaius and Titius comment as follows: 'When the man said This is sublime, he appeared to be making a remark about the waterfall... Actually ... he was not making a remark about the waterfall, but a remark about his own feelings. What he was saying was really I have feelings associated in my mind with the word "Sublime", or shortly, I have sublime feelings' Here are a good many deep questions settled in a pretty summary fashion. But the authors are not yet finished. They add: 'This confusion is continually present in language as we use it. We appear to be saying something very important about something: and actually we are only saying something about our own feelings.'1Before considering the issues really raised by this momentous little paragraph (designed, you will remember, for 'the upper forms of schools') we must eliminate one mere confusion into which Gaius and Titius have fallen. Even on their own view—on any conceivable view—the man who says This is sublime cannot mean I have sublime feelings. Even if it were granted that such qualities as sublimity were simply and solely projected into things from our own emotions, yet the emotions which prompt the projection are the correlatives, and therefore almost the opposites, of the qualities projected. The feelings which make a man call an object sublime are not sublime feelings but feelings of veneration. If This is sublime is to be reduced at all to a statement about the speaker's feelings, the proper translation would be I have humble feelings. If the view held by Gaius and Titius were consistently applied it would lead to obvious absurdities. It would force them to maintain that You are contemptible means I have contemptible feelings', in fact that Your feelings are contemptible means My feelings are contemptible. But we need not delay over this which is the very pons asinorum of our subject. It would be unjust to Gaius and Titius themselves to emphasize what was doubtless a mere inadvertence.

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Hello Everyone,

Welcome to The Beauty Disruption Podcast, and welcome new subscribers! This publication and podcast are completely listener and reader-supported. You are the lifeblood of this space, and your contributions through paid subscriptions make all of this possible. Because of my travel and work schedule encroaching on my writing time, I’ve extended The Big Forever Sale. Get 30% off forever. I appreciate your patience! Let’s get to it.

Introductory Remarks

Thanks for reading and listening. As a bonus, I’ve included voiceovers in all my written posts. Now, I’m going for it with the podcast. I will post free podcasts and special bonus episodes for all the paid subscribers.

Today’s episode is a thought experiment. Last week, on Instagram, I shared my experience at a conference where I gave a keynote address and led a breakout session afterward. In the breakout session, I talked with everyone about the scandal of beauty in culture. In my opening remarks, I made a tangential comment about how beauty vanishes from the Church—in the form of our actual gathering spaces and even in the format of the services themselves.

In this episode, I recount that conversation and ask: Does the church suffer from uglification?

I have attended and am attending a church like the one I discuss in this episode. So, the spirit here is not naked critique. I genuinely want to be part of helping the church be a beautiful beacon of hope in a world of chaos.

Links to Resources Mentioned in the Episode

Francis Chan: “If Jesus Christ had a church in Simi Valley, I bet you mine would be bigger.” LINK

Chan authentically shares his internal conflict, admitting to being “a little more popular than Jesus.” He recounts leaving his church temporarily to reevaluate his motives and the true essence of worship.

Challenging the Status Quo: Chan reveals his proposal to redirect a significant portion of his church’s budget to aid the poor, challenging the status quo of church infrastructure. Despite initial resistance, he emphasizes that true worship demands sacrifice and a profound concern for the needs of others.

Francis Chan: Rethinking Church

Good Order in Worship (NIV)

26 What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up. 27 If anyone speaks in a tongue, two—or at the most three—should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. 28 If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and to God.

29 Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. 30 And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. 31 For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. 32 The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. 33 For God is not a God of disorder but of peace—as in all the congregations of the Lord’s people.

Beauty: A Very Short Introduction, by Roger Scruton, Oxford University Press

The Master and His Emissary, by Iain McGilchrist, Yale University Press

The Beauty Chasers: Recapturing the Wonder of the Divine, by Timothy Willard, Zondervan Reflective

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Hi everyone, It’s Thursday, July 11th. Today’s newsletter is the second installment in our Arts & Culture Series. People make up the core of the arts and culture, so I wanted to spend some time encouraging us all to fight the Alien voice of resistance in our lives and live as works of art.

Don’t forget. We’re having our biggest sale of the year—The Big Forever Sale. If you value my work here, it’s a great time to upgrade to paid and get 30% off forever. The sale ends soon! So hop on it.

The Beautiful Disruption is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

For Those About to Shimmer

There is a force at work in you right now. It is lying to you. It tells you that you’re not good enough—that you’re foolish to dream, and that failure is all you’re good for. It also tells you to stick to the familiar paths. Don’t veer. Follow the formulas for life, just like everyone else.

This is an Alien force, and you know it. But you’ve lived for so long with it that you believe the lies. You give in to the lies. The lies become you.

Where did this lying Alien come from?

You don’t remember.

You suffer from the guilt that floods your insides when you give in to the Alien. You worry about what other people think. This anxiety you feel disturbs the way that you think about yourself. You feel like people are watching you. And not just some of the time. All of the time.

How did you arrive at this platform that never turns off? Why do you always feel the pressure of outside eyes upon you? You never asked to be looked at all the time.

Or did you?

“It was them,” you tell yourself. “They did this to me. I’m a victim of their scheme.”

You didn’t always tell yourself this, but you heard someone else say it and felt good when you said it, too. It removed some of the pressure. Every time you say it to yourself, you feel lighter. But always, the pressure of the outside eyes returns, and the Alien presses its lies upon you.

But there is another force at play.

You know something Shimmering lives inside of you. You can’t articulate it, but you can point to specific times when it leaks out of you. When it leaks, you remember a time when this Shimmering was how you always felt. And you dare to say, “I was the Shimmering.”

But the Alien pounces on this thought.

“The Shimmering lies,” says the Alien. “It speaks in faerie tales. The Shimmering isn’t even real. Look around you,” it says in its smooth and inviting voice. “The outside eyes are what’s real.”

The Alien fills up your world. Its voice presses in on your thoughts so often that you can’t decipher your thoughts from the whispers of the Alien. Its voice shapes your perspective on everything, from your identity to your studies, work, and family—touching every part of your life. You use the temporary healing power of “it’s them, their scheme, they did this to me,” but you never feel truly free of the Alien’s voice.

Then, one day, you run into The Teacher.

The Teacher was with you early on, in those times of innocence. But it’s been a while now since you’ve seen him.

You embrace The Teacher, and after catching up, he asks, “Why has your voice changed?”

“It was them,” you say, nervously tugging on your shirt.

But The Teacher does not reply.

“Don’t you see,” you continue, “they changed my voice. It’s all part of their …”

You stop. You can see The Teacher isn’t buying it.

“Can I tell you a story,” says The Teacher.

“Will it help me become a better me?”

“That depends.”

“On what,” you say.

“On you.”

How do I know about the Alien? I’ve listened to it and believed it. I invited it into my life, even after I became a Christian.

But I’ve also fought with it—and still do. I hate it because its voice sneaks in, and in weak moments, I listen and find myself nodding in agreement.

But I also met The Teacher. I embraced him, but he rebuked me and asked me the same question: “Tim, why has your voice changed?”

And I’ve blamed them. I still do.

But I’ve also listened to The Teacher’s story and was surprised to find it was about me.

Each year, I sketch a map of the significant events in my life. This life map shows me how my decisions have shaped my path. It also shows me the mysterious hand of God in my life.

Let me put it this way: My decisions and significant life events are not a shining line of success stories. There are plenty of ash heaps—failures, screwups, and pain—but somehow, the ash heaps shimmer.

And my story? It's a work of art.

And so is yours. To reach past the failures and seize the shimmer, we need spiritual grit.

Remember the words of the apostle James:

Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

James 1:2-4, NLT

Life is a Work of Art in Motion

There is a war for your identity, attention, and thinking. The adversary seeks to erase meaning, purpose, and human value.

In his book The War of Art, Stephen Pressfield famously pinpointed the activities in life that arouse our great enemy, resistance. His list, however, reached far beyond the realms of art. Indeed, it reached into the fabric of the human life. He said, “Any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity” will elicit resistance.

Pressfield touched on a truth rooted in the Christian view of life: Life is a work of art in motion. Each day, we face resistance to getting up, putting our pain and failures behind us, and cracking on.

Viewing life as a work of art in motion is no romantic ideal. Art is war, beauty is hard, and life is both.

To resist is to struggle, and struggling wears on us. It’s easier to give in, go with the flow, do what we’re told by the cultural conditioners, and call it a day.

But you’re not ready to call it a day, and neither am I.

Like you, I’ve struggled with weariness and lies. I’ve felt beaten and haggard. I’ve felt like I don’t measure up. I’ve felt like I’m only as good as my latest failure. Can you relate?

The Antidote to Failure & Resistance

I’ve learned that the journey of life is not about success as the world defines it. The world sells you the lie that everything we set our minds to, every work of our hands, and every endeavor should end with some form of success. And success in our world often takes the form of money, status, influence, or power. These forms of success are often visual—they show others how successful you are.

But is the goal of our work about this kind of success?

I want to share five characteristics of spiritual grit that help me along life’s journey:

• Obedience

• Curiosity,

• Friendship

• Passion

• Glory.

Obedience.Obedience trumps success.One theologian said that you and I are not responsible for success in this world. That's up to God. Our responsibility is obedience. What a freeing thought, right?

This perspective challenges our thinking because our culture makes us believe that successful outcomes should follow our work. But this view of success yokes us with anxiety and feelings of failure when "success" doesn't follow our efforts.

Obedience works like this. You feel a call on your life to do or become a specific thing: a doctor, a painter, a teacher, fill in the blank. You obey your calling regardless of what the world says you should be to be comfortable. In obeying the call, you stay true to how God has made you. He's fashioned you with unique qualities. When he sees you, he sees a work of art he created to do specific things during this lifetime.

For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

Ephesians 2:10, NLT

Sometimes, people tell me, “I get confused about how God wired me."

I, too, have dealt with the same confusion. But what I've learned is this. The things that inspired me as a youth, to which I naturally gravitated, are a good clue to discovering how God wired me. I've always written, I've always been a thinker, and I've always been involved in the arts. These are clues along my path that guide me in my decisions. So, pay attention to your natural inclinations, make a list, and proceed with confidence.

Curiosity. Your journey is about staying curious. It's about walking the path before you. When we walk a path, we learn with each footfall. We learn about our environment, our strengths and weaknesses, our surroundings, and the people we encounter along the way.

Cultivating a curious mind invites wonder. Curiosity fuels the pathway of learning. Don't view "learning" as something negative. Instead, view it as cultivating a wonder-full perspective in your life.

God made us naturally curious. When we spend too much time with entertainment, we numb our curiosity. My prescription for this numbing ailment: Get off the screens, get outside, and stay curious.

Friendship.For this one, I take my cues from one of my literary mentors, C.S. Lewis. Lewis knew the power of friendships. We know his band of friends as "The Inklings." But they did not set out to be a famous group of friends. They sought to share the things they loved and had in common.

People ask me how they can form their own “Inklings.” I tell them that Lewis would not ask you to mimic their weekly gatherings at the pub or in his rooms at Magdalen College. Instead, he would encourage you to do what you love with those you love. Not because they are the people with whom you should keep company, but because you like spending time together.

Lewis’s secret to enduring friendship is cultivating a strong group of friends with whom you nurture joint affinities. Don’t surround yourself with “yes” friends who do nothing but always agree with you. Learn to be friends with men and women who will challenge and inspire you.

Lewis encouraged us to stop trying to get into the "in crowd." Instead, he urged us to be busy making and building while surrounding ourselves with the people we naturally love, to pursue our vocation in the life-giving confines of our own "Inklings.” Not seeking fame but pursuing our passions.

Passion. Passion is the great anxiety killer. When you approach each day passionately, fueling your spiritual and physical pursuits, your anxious thoughts and notions fall by the wayside. Passion focuses vision. Once fixed, our hearts move toward the wilds of life.

Focused passion gives us the strength to set our sails for the far north and harness the wildness of the wind. The journey swells with danger while also invigorating our spirits. Passion fuels us in this way.

It's time to get a move on!

Fear is one of the primary vision killers. "Will this even work?" we say to ourselves. "Is this who I'm supposed to be?"

But we gain clarity when we allow our innate passions to guide our work. Some fear passion, thinking it will muddle our vision.

“You must be practical,” shouts the world.

But the opposite is true.

“Fortune favors the bold,” you shout back as you hoist the main sail.

Let’s set a course for deep waters!

Glorifying. When my daughters leave the house on Friday mornings for their homeschool co-op, I love to tell them: "As unto the King!"

They love it. Because they know I'm letting them off the hook to perform. Forget the pressure to achieve. Work for an audience of One—for God himself. When you and I approach the work of our hands and the inquiry of our imaginations with the humility that comes from seeing living as a form of worship, we find peace beyond comprehension.

This life of ours is not about performance. It's about worship. Remember it this way: living is artful worship.

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Happy Wednesday, everyone!

It’s June 26, and I’ve been away for a couple of weeks. My last post was, I think, June 7th. Right after that, I went on a little backpacking trip on the Appalachian Trail in the Shenandoah National Park with a good friend of mine. As you might expect, it was soul-nourishing and physically challenging.

But it’s good to be back. Thank you for being patient while I was away.

In my last post, I took a Reader Poll to see what you all value most in this space—how I can better serve you through my writing as we journey through this culture together. Thank you for taking the poll! Here are the top two results:

• Culture and Faith posts - 34%

• Well-researched posts - 34%

Introducing The Arts & Culture Series

Over the next several weeks, I will post several articles about the arts and culture. I have four articles written, with a few more sketched. These articles are based on research I did for my book The Beauty Chasers. They will dig into the current state of the arts and entertainment in our culture, how beauty makes us better humans, and the need for Christians to advocate for artists and lead the cultural renewal for beauty, goodness, and truth. Now, even as I read this, I’m thinking, “Wow, Tim, that’s a tall order. But we can do it.”

Let me say a word about what we're doing here, both as a refresher for my long-time readers and listeners and as a brief summary of the layout of this newsletter for my new subscribers.

My goal for this Substack is to provide writing that inspires, equips, and guides you, my readers, to live a faithful Christian life in the secular world. I aim to serve this community through my writing, research, and teaching in theology, culture, and the arts. I aim to do this by cultivating this community and pouring into you all as we spur one another on toward love and good deeds.

We need a community of readers and supporters for thoughtful evangelical writing and scholarship to flourish. This series is the by-product of hundreds of hours of deep research. I’d be honored if you’d consider supporting my work by becoming a paid subscriber.

Because of wonderful readers like you, this space can continue to thrive and grow. My ultimate goal is to make my newsletter the primary hub for my writing ministry, allowing me to equip and disciple through the written and spoken word.

So, if this resonates with you, would you consider supporting my writing ministry? We’re opening up the community for a limited time with our “The Big Forever Sale.” Right now, you can lock in your subscription for life at a 30% discount. We don’t open up the community like this often—maybe twice a year—but when we do, you benefit. The offer ends on July 16, 2024. Your support helps us keep this space a thriving resource for Christian spiritual devotion.

Ok, let’s get to it.

Inside Out 2: A dialog review with my sixteen-year-old daughter.

Earlier this week, it was reported that Inside Out 2 overtook Dune 2 for the biggest box office hit of 2024 ($724 million globally). It’s a smash hit and the best release ever for an animated film.

The first film, Inside Out, debuted in 2015. My family had just returned from living in England for two years, and my oldest daughter, Lyric, was nearly 8. She turns seventeen in two months. When she returned from watching the film, she brimmed with thoughts and wanted me to go see it so we could have a proper chat about it.

So, I took my youngest daughter, Zion (age 11), to see it with a friend last Thursday. On the way home from the theater, Zion laughed at me, saying, “Dad, I saw you taking notes about the movie while you were watching it.”

Guilty!

When I returned home, Lyric and I had a two-hour conversation about the long-awaited sequel. We discussed what struck us as lacking in the movie or where the philosophy behind it fell short. Before I get into the shortcomings, I must admit the cuteness of the movie. And Lyric agreed. It hearkens to a time when Pixar was at the top of its game.

But for all its cuteness and zany fun, it thrusts young viewers into the heaviness of the modern identity crisis, leaving them with an oversimplified view of their emotions and what it means to be a person.

The Modern View of Emotions

One of Lyric’s first comments was, “Well, it definitely takes the modern view of emotions.” What she meant was how central emotions are in everyday life. She observed how many people are now hyper-aware of emotions—when their emotions are hurt or ignored—and how they lead people’s thinking more so than reason.

Lyric’s intuition on this is spot on. In Abigail Shrier’s new book, Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, she questions the therapeutic approach to, well, everything—parenting, education, pediatrics—and challenges parents to resist the cultural push to diagnose their children to death. Maybe our society’s hyper-focus on mental health needs challenged, especially by the Church.

Lyric picked up on this hyper-focus. She also sees how it affects teens, both her age and younger.

She observed how the main protagonist, Riley, who is now 13 and has just entered puberty, must deal with all new, more “grown-up” emotions: Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment, and Ennui. Anxiety. Lyric reminded me that when she was 13, she didn’t even know what anxiety was, let alone a panic attack.

Late in the movie, Riley experiences a panic attack. It’s an intense scene as Riley’s playing hockey but gets placed in the penalty box. As she sits alone, her emotions overtake her. She grabs her left shoulder and can barely breathe.

Inside her brain, all of her other emotions are overrun by Anxiety, including Joy, who wrestles with her own new irrelevance in Riley’s life. It is true that anxiety can rob us of joy. Anxiety removes our gaze from the here and now, creating worry for what will come. In the film, Anxiety incessantly plans for every possible scenario in the future, which is impossible.

It’s been said that keeping joy in our lives becomes more difficult as we age. Is this true? If so, why? And does it apply to the Christian life? I wrote extensively about joy in my doctoral research and my book, The Beauty Chasers. I want to include a snippet here and encourage you to consider whether or not the Christian view of Joy connects more to emotions or God’s love—things transcendent and brimming with life:

When we sense that mysterious vitality in the world we inhabit, we become hunters for its source. Joy reaches beyond mere feeling and reminds us that something deep within us resonates with our experiences of beauty in this world. Joy speaks of the life within life. It awakens our desire to discover the place from which all the beauty comes.

Joy is the “exhilarating moment when one is drawn out of oneself by the lure of something grander, higher, and elusive.” When we reach beyond pleasure, we discover the prismed world of joy. It’s a forgetful world, one where the worry of “self ” falls away, replaced by the beauty of presence. It is the resounding moment of life being lived.

Joy shakes our hearts and our hands as we steady the camera or phone in order to capture the first steps of our child, the first kiss of wedded lovers, the final moment of a graduation. Joy looks like an elegant collection of fine friends gathered in one place. Joy calls through the resounding landscape. You and I dip into joy’s world, and we feel strangely at home.

So, you see, when I watch the Inside Out movies, I’m not just rooting for Joy the entire time, but I’m waiting for her to reveal her true identity. That she’s not just an emotion similar to happiness. That she comes from another place entirely. That she’s the movement and vitality of all life—that she comes from God.

I know, I know. I’m an idealist and dreamer, what can I say.

The Big Forever Sale

Would you consider supporting my writing ministry? We’re opening up the community for a limited time with our “The Big Forever Sale.” We don’t open things like this often, but when we do, you benefit. Lock in your subscription for life. The offer ends on July 9, 2024. Your support helps us keep this space a thriving resource for Christian spiritual devotion.

The Missing Spiritual Element of Humanity

Lyric and I agreed that the movie gives a narrow view of what it means to be a person. The movie caricatures the imagination, framing it as a place for fun, whimsy, silliness, and creativity.

But the reality is that the imagination works with our intellects to give meaning to everything in our lives. The brain—or control center—is far more complex than a table of buttons governed by emotions with minds of their own. Our imaginations process reality and help govern our emotions.

The movie misses a golden opportunity to tell the story of the self as a created marvel. I know this is wishful thinking, but by omitting the spiritual element of the self, Pixar's writers present young people with a partial sketch of what a person consists of.

You don’t have to believe in the Christian God of the Bible to know that human beings are more than base emotions. Thriving as a human does not equal how well we manage our emotions. C.S. Lewis understood that the head and the heart must work in concert, governed by something higher than mere human will and emotional whim.

The film communicates to young and old alike that you are the sum of your good and bad experiences, and life is how you navigate those memories. There is no character who represents the spiritual side of the self. Along with the spiritual self missing, there was zero dialog about virtue and how striving for the Good in how we respond and act to circumstances in our lives shapes and matures our emotions.

This spiritual omission jumped out to Lyric right away. Is it that big of a deal? Yes, it is.

For the last several weeks, I’ve been returning to my former studies on the spiritual disciplines and what the Apostle Paul meant when he compared the Christian life to athletic training. The pursuit of godliness includes training your mind. In our culture of permissiveness, it’s en vogue to brush entertainment aside as harmless. But do we believe that the entertainment we consume has little to no impact on our hearts and minds?

It’s scientifically proven that the intentional practice of anything, especially in the young, changes the way we think and even changes the physical aspects of the brain. You can become an expert at almost anything with enough repetition and purposeful training. People don’t realize that when it comes to what our imaginations consume, each time we sit in front of a television, phone, or movie screen, we engage in the purposeful practice of entertainment consumption.

Our cultural education matters.

In Conclusion

Is it wrong to go watch Inside Out 2? I would not say it is wrong, per se. But I would say to any Christian parent to use the opportunity to talk about emotions: what they are, why God created them, how they’re shaped, what should govern them, how they interact with our imaginations, and the reality of the spiritual life.

I’d also say that it’s okay if your child does not know what anxiety or panic attacks are. It’s not that you keep it a secret; it’s that you become the antidote through affirmation, engaging play, and inspiring their imagination.

I think Pixar has done some great work in the past. To me, their magnum opus is UP. With the last two sequels, this one and The Incredibles 2, I felt like Pixar was trying to force the issue with all the psychological aspects of growing up and maturing. In UP, the movie itself was an odyssey of growing up—from being afraid and child-ish to being brave and weathered.

I’m going to do an experiment over the next couple of weeks. I’m going to re-watch UP with the family and get their reactions and comparisons to Inside Out 2. I’ll report back with my findings.

My gut tells me the floating balloon house will illicit applause, captivate imaginations, and win the prize. We shall see.

In the meantime, remember, adventure is out there—not in your brain. {Sorry, I couldn’t resist}

Notes for the really curious.

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Getting Back to Life’s Roots

In the last few posts, I’ve mentioned The Summer Slowdown resource.

At its core, The Summer Slowdown is the contrarian's approach to spiritual detoxing, renewal, and returning to the roots of life. It’s built on three core principles.

Let me explain the heart behind The Summer Slowdown.

My wife tells me I'm a contrarian at heart. This got me into trouble in my younger years, but now I rely on it to keep me from being swept along in the cultural flow.

We need routine perspective checks to keep our eyes clear and hearts full.

So, we must step back and look at life from a new perspective. Refreshing our perspective often requires change—change in view, change in action, change in thought, change of heart.

What if we took the summer and changed our view? What if we changed our hearts? What if we stepped back, slowed down, and embraced change?

To Slowdown, We Must Embrace Rhythms of Change.

Why change? Because the world wants you to be docile.

How often have you talked to a friend, co-worker, or loved one who said, "Wow, now that I'm back from vacation, I need another one to rest."

Even while vacationing, we can let the world dictate our pace of life. But slowing down doesn't mean doing nothing. It’s about creating healthy changes in your summer routine. It's about removing and replacing the same ole thing with a life-giving activity. It's about changing your perspective on what it means to be still, pursue silence, declutter your life, and rejuvenate your creativity as a human being.

This is why I developed The Summer Slowdown Challenge. It's about trying new things, gaining new perspectives, and challenging yourself to see the world with fresh eyes.

“The Summer Slowdown has encouraged me to take a breath this summer and enjoy life at a calmer pace. The magazine is full of ideas to savor life. To settle down and breathe. It is a life-giving resource for today’s hurried mentality.”

— Camie Schadie, Reader & Summer Slowdown Participant

Don't Just Consume All Summer. Focus & Do!

Summer calls to you, asking you to participate in the deeper things.

The ideas in The Summer Slowdown Challenge are meant to get you making, moving, refreshing, and re-establishing your imaginative flow as a human being.

The outcome of The Summer Slowdown Challenge focuses on building creativity and wonder into your summer.

The temptation is to let each season pass us by without dialing into the spirit of the season. Think about summer: longer days, deep nights, it's a time of growth and establishment, it's a time of storms, crickets, and owl songs. The stars change. The sun's path changes.

But it's also a time of waiting, of exercising patience. It's a time to focus on the relationships closest to you, to re-establish friendships, and to try new things. It's a time to be creative and dream.

Creativity Thrives in the Balance of Order & Chaos.

Let's establish an order & chaos rhythm, shall we?

Introducing change into your summer routine might feel a bit chaotic. But experts tell us that creativity thrives in a tight-wire act of order and chaos. We must challenge ourselves to see things new again, for the first time. We need the chaos of change to give us the epiphany of imaginative breakthroughs.

"But Tim," you say. "I'm not particularly creative or imaginative. So why do I need this slowdown concept of yours?"

"Ah, yes," I reply. "Well, sorry to disappoint you, but you are creative. God endowed every person with a creative mind fueled by imagination. You and I use our imaginations for useful and fun activities. But our imaginations suffer when we let the world dull our sense of pace and sight.

Ignore the Calls to Be More Productive.

The world ate half your brain, and you didn't even feel it.

We're fed a lie that says production is king. Wake up at 4 a.m.! Be a hyper-producer. Work a four-hour work week. This approach to life focuses only on the left side of your brain.

Experts tell us this is a problem.

We're designed to have our left brain interpret data while our right brain makes sense of it. And our imagination is the key cog of sense-making!

Instead of productivity, I suggest pursuing wisdom, taking time to deliberate, think, and use our creativity to see the world freshly.

Productivity culture hurts creativity. It’s a by-product of a culture bent on bottom-line thinking (utilitarianism) and operational efficiency. But there are some things an ROI cannot measure.

Remember what nature teaches. The produce from the apple tree does not flourish all year. The harvest occurs in its time. God makes everything beautiful “in its time.” This is a call to live content in the season God has us.

And that season is not always harvest time. Winters can last an eternity, it seems.

The wise farmer—a craftsman of the earth—understands that wisdom draws out the times and puts in the creative work for each season. Wisdom provides a beautiful slowing along the creative path.

We can live, not rushed. We can take the “tempests” in stride. We can delight in the calluses brought on by the plow handle.

Today is another day to create. Though my season may differ from yours, we together work towards a common harvest.

Remember your creative path—the one God placed you on. Remember the delight and pace wisdom brings to the creative endeavor.

Don’t be hasty or join the throngs aiming at productivity at any cost. Don’t ransom your imagination for efficiency. Do the work. Endure the season. Find wisdom along your creative path.

Work first to be creative, not productive. The creative mind begins in a posture of reverence and joy.

It is not wrong to produce. The apple tree produces a lot of fruit, but it does so in season. A productivity mindset robs your inner life, which is essential for your imagination.

Consider this quote by Henri-Frederic Amiel.

"The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings."

-Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Follow the Path That Leads to God's Voice.

Follow your creative path.

We must cultivate our inner lives by pursuing a different path, the creative path of nourishment, not stagnation.

To follow the world's drum beat is to pursue noise and consumption. We must chase beauty to keep our spirits pliable and our imaginations thriving.

What path are you on today? Is it noise that defines your life? Or is it something in the beyond?

The point of The Summer Slowdown Challenge is to get us all thinking differently. It's to get us discontented with the status quo. There's another rhythm out there.

Can you hear it?

The creative path is not about performance. It's about worship.

What You Get When You Buy the Summer Slowdown

✓ 90 minutes of video teaching

✓ 100-page full-color digital magazine

✓ Magazine includes 31-day Summer Slowdown Challenge

✓ Unlimited lifetime access

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timothywillard.substack.com/subscribe

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Hello Everyone!

Switchfoot wrote a song called “Meant to Live.” You’ve probably heard it. If not, I’d recommend playing it loud in your car with the windows rolled down.

One line in the song goes like this:

“And everything inside screams for second life.”

I love how Jon Foreman laces theology into his lyrics. This is a universal gettable, and it’s a little riff (see what I did there?) on the theological concept of second life, second chances, and that we were made for so much more. To me, this also touches on Ecclesiastes 3—how we have eternity in our hearts, but we are frustrated because we can’t quite grasp it.

We all know, without being told by a professor or scientist or other kind of “expert,” that everyone inside their heart of hearts longs for a second life—a second chance, a new path, another shot.

But it’s not just about a second chance. It’s about the more of life. That more that we know is there, out there somewhere waiting for us.

The more of life. Second life. Think about what you feel like when you say those words out loud to yourself.

There’s something beneath each moment of existence that whispers to us, “There’s more than you know, than you see, than you fee—and it’s me.”

Who’s the me?

The Corn King

God created the world on a structure of second life, of more than, of death and resurrection.

Consider the seasons. Each season is beautiful in its time. Spring and Summer bring vegetable life to the earth. From seeds, food comes forth.

In Autumn, we harvest. And the plants die in a conflagration of wonder—leaves turn to colors of fire, plants turn golden, then brown, then fade into the earth, and their seeds fall into the soil.

The seed comes from the dying plant and lies, entombed by the earth. This is Winter—where the earth sleeps, roots deepen, and the quiet land rests in wait for the great resurrection.

Spring.

C.S. Lewis loved this pattern of death and resurrection. He loved how, even in pagan myths, there were dying gods who, each season, would come forth in the jubilance of Spring only to die in Autumn. All pagan religions have their version of a Corn King—the dying and resurrecting seasonal gods.

But, in typical Lewis fashion, Lewis spun the pagan myth into The Myth Become Fact.

He called Jesus, The (once and for all) Corn King. Jesus doesn’t die each season only to rise again the next. His dying was not for the season crops—he was not the god of nature, but her Creator. Jesus’s death and resurrection made all things new.

The great second chance for all of humanity and for creation. The great so much more to life. The great emptying of glory into the soiled muck of humanity.

The Cycle from Despair to a Garland of Beauty

In our popular praise songs, we love to sing about how Jesus turns ashes into beauty. This is from Isaiah 61:3. But this verse does not say that Jesus gives beauty to ashes or turns ashes into beauty. It’s talking about the coming Messiah and how The Anointed One will come to us in our mourning and despair and raise us up, placing on our heads a beautiful garland. It’s a theological replacement theory.

The Anointed One—The Corn King—will go down to raise us up to him—to be with him. The prophet is proclaiming the Gospel message of the Dying God. He is telling the mythical story over 700 years before it happens of this vagabond healer who will reach into our sadness and grief and he will cover us with the beauty of his presence.

This remarkable prophecy tells of the second chance, the so much more, we all so long for.

The Cycle of Death to Beauty

I was reflecting on this whole replacement theory idea—that God replaces our grief with a beautiful garland, this metaphor for himself. And I told my wife how if you think about it, the world is founded upon the cycle of death to beauty.

We are constantly witnessing the death of vegetable life, waiting and wondering through the dead time of winter, only to find the garland of beauty captured in the bursting of Spring!

I said to her, “Our whole cycle of living is based on this replacement idea. Each day, we live through the replacement—ashes of the dead miraculously rising forth, given to us as a garland of beauty each Spring!”

It’s like we’re living our own Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The replenishment cycle sparks a thirst for holy fire. It’s the spark of meant to live, the pull towards so much more.

But here’s the best part for you and me. Though we live in the replenishment cycle of death to beauty, it does not have to mark our hearts, our countenance, or our families.

Christ covers us—he himself is our garland of beauty. He is our second chance. And this spiritual so much more transfers into our physical need for so much more.

More to life. More than muck. Mor than all the death.

We don’t need to live in failure or doubt or grief or hurt or loss.

When we wrap ourselves in the garland of Christ, our so much more is right here and now.

Thank you for reading The Beautiful Disruption. This post is public so feel free to share it.

What This Space is All About

As always, my goal here is to create a space that provides writing that inspires, equips, and guides readers to live a faithful Christian life in the secular world.

I want to serve this community through my writing, research, and teaching in theology, culture, and the arts. I aim to do this by cultivating this community and pouring into you all as we spur one another on toward love and good deeds.

For thoughtful evangelical writing and scholarship to flourish, we need a community of readers and supporters.

I’d be honored if you’d consider supporting my work by becoming a paid subscriber. It’s because of wonderful readers like you that this space can continue to thrive and grow.

Paid subscribers can support my work here at three subscription levels: Monthly, Annual, and Founding Member.

What’s a “Founding Member? When you become a Founding Member (guys, we need a great name for our Founding Members!) you pay it forward by allowing me to comp paid memberships to those who need it—think of it like our scholarship fund. Founding Members also act as ministry partners who want to see the vision of this space expand into gatherings and printed resources (see below).

The Beautiful Disruption is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a paid subscriber.

New Resources Available to You

The Summer Slowdown

Make this summer memorable—make it life-changing. Be intentional with the time God’s given you and find nourishment in slowing, seeing, and participating. God created us to thrive on soulish things, and that’s what The Summer Slowdown will give you.

The Summer Slowdown is what I call a mini-course or mini-workshop. When you purchase this creative resource you get three thirty-minute teaching sessions on my “Slowdown Methodology.” The teaching sessions are accompanied by a 98-page magazine that I wrote and designed. The magazine contains inspirational insights into the Slowdown Methodology and a 31-day Slowdown Challenge.

The Writer’s Workshop

I’ve been hosting The Writer’s Workshops for the last four months and have now moved them to Substack. Each month, I host a live Zoom workshop on all things writing. The Zooms include a lengthy Q&A session where I answer all your questions about writing and publishing.

We have three subscription options for The Writer’s Workshop: Monthly, Annually, and The Writer’s Cohort. Click over to the site and see what it’s all about.

Notes

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timothywillard.substack.com/subscribe

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Hello Everyone, and welcome New Subscribers! Apologies for my brief delay in the weekly postings. As many of you know, and to give new subscribers the lay of the land, my client work in the publishing world is how I make my living (currently), and sometimes, it interrupts my weekly posting rhythm. But the larger this community grows, the more time I’m able to give to my own work.

My goal here is to create a space that provides writing that inspires, equips, and guides readers to live a faithful Christian life in the secular world. I want to serve this community through my writing, research, and teaching in the areas of theology, culture, and the arts. I aim to do this by cultivating this community, pouring into you all as we spur one another on toward love and good deeds. As wrote in her wonderful article, “The Future of Evangelical Scholars,” for thoughtful evangelical writing and scholarship to flourish, we need a community of readers and supporters.

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Stop Arguing, Start Enchanting

In 2015, physics Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilzcek wrote a best-selling book titled A Beautiful Question, in which he describes the physical universe as the product of an artist. Wilzcek grew up Catholic but admits to losing faith in conventional religion and turning from God as a teenager.

When asked in an interview if he was religious, Wilzcek replied, “Physics is my religion.” Yet he remains sympathetic to questions about God and believes science has much to say about who or what God is.

He notes how many of the bright stars in the history of science espoused strong Christian beliefs: Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Maxwell. Even Einstein, though he was not a Christian, viewed “the world as God.”

In his book, Wilzcek says the physicality of the universe asks if the cosmos possesses a metaphysical source. He explores beauty through the lens of Core Theory and quantum physics and asks if the world we inhabit embodies beautiful ideas.

His answer: “A resounding ‘Yes!’”

Embodying beautiful ideas is what art does. A painting embodies the ideas of the artist. So, Wilzcek is saying that the universe is a work of art, which indicates that behind this cosmic work of art is an Artist.

Wilczek says that Nature’s Core does “embody beautiful ideas,” but those ideas are “strange and deeply hidden.”

Here’s how Wilczek summarizes his exploration of Nature’s Core:

“The world, insofar as we speak of the world of chemistry, biology, astrophysics, engineering, and everyday life, does embody beautiful ideas. The Core, which governs those domains, is profoundly rooted in concepts of symmetry and geometry, as we have seen.

“And it works its will, in quantum theory, through music-like rules. Symmetry really does determine structure. A pure and perfect Music of the Spheres really does animate the soul of reality. Plato and Pythagoras: We salute you!”

Wilczek’s lifelong adventure into physics and cosmology reveals his own quest to regain some of the meaning and purpose he lost when he walked away from religion.

Why is Wilczek’s work important for us to know about?

The World Thirsts for Beauty and Wonder

An argument seldom convinces unbelievers to change their minds. Beauty, on the other hand, works on a different plain.

When we push on the edges of the universe, God comes romping into the picture. Questions of God lead to questions of personal meaning. Why am I here? Why do I matter?

Beauty stirs these questions, even illuminates them.

Our chief desire in life is to discover and be in a relationship with the Person who created us. “God designed the human machine to run on himself,” writes Lewis. “He himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on.”

Wilczek’s work stirs people to consider how the mysterious contours of our world can only, at times, be described in terms of beauty.

All of us can describe an encounter with the beautiful. That unexplainable split second when a tingly sensation rushed into our hearts, gave us goosebumps, and froze us in amazement—what Cambridge professor Peter de Bolla describes as “mutism,” or being struck dumb. We somehow know that the cosmos is alive with beauty.

Wilczek is one voice among many in the academy exploring how wonder and beauty give meaning to our world. If we’re attentive to work like his, it will help us see that the world thirsts for the beautiful and help us form a relevant cultural apologetic.

It’s no secret how secular the world is in the 21st century.

Christians respond to this secularity with apologetic books that will train you to defend the Christian faith through reasoned arguments, be a better apologist, and have a better grasp of the common philosophical and theological arguments and objections and the best answers to those objections.

But there’s another way to bear witness to God in our secular age.

Beauty as Apologetic

An argument seldom convinces unbelievers to change their minds. Beauty, on the other hand, works on a different plain. It steals behind the “watchful dragons,” as C.S. Lewis liked to say, and works on their emotions, convincing their heart.

“Beauty bypasses rational analysis, appealing to something far deeper within us.”

In this quote, Alister McGrath was summarizing C.S. Lewis’s notion that beauty can disarm the gatekeepers of our rational minds and speak directly to a person’s heart. And by heart, I don’t mean a wishy-washy emotional clump of sentiment hidden within our minds. I mean the very seat of our intellect.

The sights and sounds of the world and the work of an artist not only affect our thoughts and emotions within but can expand and even open up new pathways of cognitive function. Beauty works on us like a gardener works the soil; she cultivates it into a life-giving source. A mind awake to the beautiful not only finds nourishment but nourishes the world.

Historian Cardinal Avery Dulles reminds us that before an apologetic, Christianity was first a message. This message was distributed through personal testimony and spoke of the truthfulness of Jesus Christ as the risen Lord.

Due to the nature of these testimonies, Dulles says that preaching in the early church often sought to answer responses to such a claim. So, apologetics first emerged as a formulated response to the doubts of the Christian message.

But those who employed a defense of the faith were not only concerned about making a true argument; they also wanted to make a beautiful one, an attractive one.

So what type of “defense” should Christians use? One that highlights the attractiveness of the message itself—the message of hope.

Enter the new wave of apologists from the early twentieth century.

C.S Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, Charles Williams, and T.S. Eliot, emerged as literary apologists or imaginative apologists or apologists of the beautiful.

Dulles says that Lewis’s work especially maintains its freshness and vitality today, more than a half-century later “while massive tomes of previous centuries gather dust on library shelves.” Lewis’s unique approach was an apologetic of beauty.

The imaginative apologist’s approach begins from the standpoint of basic Christianity, or mere Christianity, and engages with readers in such a way as to make Christianity not only seem reasonable but attractive. Lewis’s work reached general secular readers and the believing reader who didn’t have time for “technical theological works.”

Lewis said that the object of defense for the apologist is Christianity, not a person’s personal conception or opinion on a matter relating to religion. In defending Christianity, Lewis warns against “keeping abreast of recent movements in theology” as this can confuse what must stand as “the standard of permanent Christianity” in the mind of the apologist.

“Our business,” writes Lewis, “is to present that which is timeless (the same yesterday, today and tomorrow—Hebrews 8:8) in the particular language of our own age.”

Stop Arguing, Start Enchanting

The Christian apologia is to be a defense not limited to sophisticated arguments but be a common explanation from the common person of their uncommon hope. But the form of explanation need not be an argument, debate, or formal discussion.

We need to stop arguing and start enchanting. C.S. Lewis believed in this. Later in his career, he wrote fewer apologetic works and focused on stories. Avery Dulles observed how formal apologetics became less effective after the late 1st century. It wasn’t until the 20th century, when the new imaginative apologetics hit the scene that we witnessed the largest impact ever in cultural apologetics. ”But Tim, isn’t Lewis’s Mere Christianity a reasoned argument for Christianity?

Yes, it is. But Lewis wasn’t didn’t set out to argue for the faith. He was asked to address his fellow Britons during wartime to encourage them. Lewis’s intent was compassionate service to his neighbors. He wasn’t trying to argue with anyone or denounce individuals.

In other writings, Lewis critiqued the cultural zeitgeist, but he also taught readers how to think about art and aesthetic judgment.

He also wrote stories utilizing pagan myth, adventure, and beauty.

Another example of Lewis’s apologetic program is how he combined his intellectual work with his works of fiction. Lewis wrote the third installment to his Cosmic Trilogy That Hideous Strength, as a creative way to show the argument that he laid out in his University of Durham lectures that we now know as The Abolition of Man.

Lewis used an intellectual-imaginative approach to express Christian witness, and he did so with the desire to comfort, guide, and inspire his readers.

There is a world out there hungering for significance. Let’s argue the faith less and woo the world with deep expressions of wonder and beauty.

Notes for the really curious.

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Vincent Van Gogh wasn’t trying to make an art statement about himself. He was trying to make paintings that brought joy and consolation. By creating works that evoked joy, he produced peace in his troubled mind and delighted others.

In a letter to his brother, Theo, Vincent describes the aim of his now-famous sketch, “The artist’s room in Arles” (1889).

“… to look at the picture ought to rest the brain or rather the imagination. The walls are pale violet. The ground is of red tiles. The wood of the bed and chairs is the yellow of fresh butter, the sheets and pillows very light greenish lemon. The overlet scarlet. The window green. the toilet-table orange, the basin blue. The doors lilac.”

Through color and composition, Vincent communicated his feelings about what he saw, aiming to ease the viewer's imagination. How different from the naked self-expression of today. Contemporary art—broadly understood—is about ultimate self-freedom, unbridled expression, and even transgression. When do we ever hear anything about serving the audience?

Painting was Vincent’s vocation. Art historian E.H. Gombrich said Vincent and Cézanne had all but given up on the idea that anybody would pay attention to their pictures. “They just worked on because they had to.”

Vincent worked in an exalted frenzy of emotion with speed and vitality. So excited was he when painting that he described the emotions as “sometimes so strong that one works without being aware of working … and the strokes come with a sequence of coherence like words in a speech or a letter.”

Though Vincent struggled to find his place in the world, he did find delight in his craft and longed for this work to be shared by an audience in search of hope.

I love seeing such a clear picture of the delight in doing one’s vocation.

Vocation comes from the Latin vocatio, which means simply “calling.” The German reformer Martin Luther sketched three arenas of human calling: the household, the church, and the state. In Luther’s day, the household was the primary arena of work and economy. As part of the household vocation, you’d find agricultural work, artisan craft, and the rule of nobility (politics).

The reformers understood one’s work as an act of love and service to their neighbors and community. C.S. Lewis would agree.

In his address “The Weight of Glory” (1941), Lewis describes how Christians should view their daily activities in work and community. Lewis begins the address by questioning the ultimate point of Christian love. He asks: What is the reward of sacrificing oneself in obedience and following Jesus? His answer is the weight of glory. But what is that?

The weight of glory, says Lewis, is to be loved by God and to please him.

Lewis concludes his address by challenging the reader to realize it is their duty to worry more about their neighbor’s weight of glory than their own. In some way, each person should consider how to help their neighbor be welcomed and to find fame with God.

According to Lewis, we do this through relational sincerity—by taking one another seriously, realizing the divine worth of each human being, and remembering that our senses have not beheld a beauty like the beauty and holiness of our neighbor.

A kind of holy magic is enfolded into our daily acts of calling. By aiming to serve our neighbors with our gifts, abilities, and resources, we overlay society with what I like to call heaven culture.

But we must battle against human nature. The mercenary spirit of our age bends the aim of calling inward (incurvates en se), inflaming our desire to work for selfish gain at the expense and exclusion of others.

Overcoming culture's bent nature is a daily challenge. But it begins with letting God transform the way we think about our work.

When my daughters were young, I’d tell them, “As unto the King!” before they left for homeschool co-op. It was my charge to them to work for God; when you do, I’d tell them you’ll find joy.

Historians tell us that Vincent rejected Christianity after growing up evangelical and working as a minister in his twenties. But I think his vocatio tells us a different story. Though he was hounded by bipolar disorder, he was lucent most of the time, was renowned for his work ethic, sought to bring delight to viewers, and found characteristics of God in what he saw in nature. All we can do is speculate, but it was almost as if Vincent threw off the shackles of institutional religion and worked as unto the King.

The beauty of Vincent’s work is in the delight the world continues to find in it, particularly in works like “Starry Night” (see notes below).

So, if I could encourage you today, it would be this.

In your vocation, don’t try to make a statement about yourself. Make a statement about your joy in pursuing what you love. In so doing, you will serve your neighbor and draw them further and further into God’s weight of Glory.

Notes

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This post follows up on my previous post, “Confessions of a Ghostwriter: Thoughts on Quitting Publishing, Writing Books, and the Life of the Mind.” If you haven’t read it, you might consider doing so.

After reading my post, a good friend emailed me and posed some tough questions about the publishing world. He asked if the reality of the publishing world we all live in, in which we must sift through commercialized content (fiction, television, film, Christian resources), has created audiences who no longer thirst for deep wells of thought.

To explain this better, let me tell you another publishing story.

When I Was Told No Audience Existed for Deep Books

In 2022, I published The Beauty Chasers: Recapturing the Wonder of the Divine with Zondervan Reflective. My publishing experience with Zondervan Reflective was wonderful, and the editing process invigorated me as a writer.

The Beauty Chasers took nearly five years to publish. And it went through at least four iterations. And by iterations, I don’t mean general edits. I mean, wholesale changes to the book itself.

After receiving my Ph.D. (2017)—my research explored beauty in the works of C.S. Lewis, a subfield known as theological aesthetics—I prepared a book proposal titled Where Beauty Begins. This first iteration focused more on C.S. Lewis’s thought of beauty as apologetic. I spent months preparing the proposal. My agent shopped it to at least 16 publishers (give or take). All but one rejected it. Nothing new, there.

The one publisher who did not reject it asked if I’d consider revising the proposal to remove the focus on Lewis. I agreed and resubmitted it. And they rejected it. It’s okay; you can laugh. I did what they wanted, and then they said, “No thanks.” Puzzling, right?

The book was eventually signed by a well-known American academic press that was signing authors to straddle the fence of academic and general audiences—think Brazos Press and Zondervan Reflective.

It was a long, drawn-out process of submitting and revising. But here’s the kicker.

During this process, one publisher said they loved my work but lamented that there was no audience for a book like this.

When I told my wife what the publisher said, she was stunned and saddened. I wasn’t stunned. I guess I knew the publisher had a good point; a book on beauty is not very “commercial.” But I knew it in my own head. I’d never had that thought confirmed by a publisher.

My friend who emailed me knew of my challenge shopping The Beauty Chasers, which led him to ask me if the glut of publishing, meaning the over-publishing of Christian books, had led to the watering down of content. It’s a good question—and a hard one.

I won't tackle all the nuances of this problem in this post. Indeed, it would take several months to unpack them all. Podcast series, anyone?

However, I do want to share my unrefined thoughts on the commercialization of content. I do believe that in general we as a culture overpublish. We flood the digital universe with content, we consume it on our phones and televisions, and we consume content through books and magazines (they still exist, right?). The question is, does this glut of content produce the shallowing of content? If so, what are the ramifications of overpublishing shallow Christian content?

First, let’s define commercial and literary writing.

Then, let’s explore the concept of commercialization.

Finally, allow me to digress into ranting thoughts about the cultural dance of the content creators and producers.

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What is Commercial Fiction and Nonfiction?

In last week’s article, I said that James Patterson writes commercial fiction. This is not a secret. You could Google “who writes commercial fiction” and find a long list of authors.

But how is commercial fiction different from literary fiction? How is commercial nonfiction—is there such a thing?—different than literary nonfiction?

Commercial fiction is fiction written for mass appeal. It focuses more on plot and character development than on the style of writing and the themes woven into the narrative.

In literary fiction, the plot and writing style are on equal footing. Commercial fiction is less concerned with writing style. It’s about getting an entertaining story to the masses.

Commercial fiction subgenres include romance, fantasy, thriller, mystery, suspense, etc.

You can loosely apply those same parameters to commercial and literary nonfiction. Literary nonfiction emphasizes thematic nuance, a beautiful writing style, a connecting narrative, etc.

Commercial nonfiction will focus on mass appeal, approachability of content, application-driven content, entertainment, and approachability of writing style—in fact, writing style in the creative sense will not be emphasized.

Commercial nonfiction will give you James Clear, not the Ernest Hemingway of nonfiction, a writer like Marilyn Robinson.

My friend argued that Christian publishing has lost its soul because it overproduces commercial nonfiction and neglects deeper, more thoughtful books, what we call “literary nonfiction.”

The proliferation of Christian books driven by mass appeal, which are commercial books written by platformed authors and influencers with massive baked-in audiences, has made it all but impossible for writers who focus on craft and nuanced themes to land book deals.

I’m sure we can discuss whether commercial nonfiction and fiction should even exist, making the case for art to win the day. But we’ll save that for another post.

What is Commercialization?

Commercialization is a term used in the world of tech and business. It entails bringing a new product to the market.

When business enterprises want to introduce a new initiative into the market, they don’t just build and release whatever they want. They pilot the idea, program, new store layout, gadgets or menu items, etc. After the pilot, they release the new product in certain markets and study the consumer’s reaction.

They scale it for mass production if it’s successful in the pilot and test markets.

Does commercialization apply to publishing? Of course, it does.

Publishers exist to publish works that appeal to a wide array of audiences. They use sales analytics and track market trends to see what resonates with people—you, the masses. It’s an economy of ideas. Well, it used to be, anyway.

The book proposal works like a marketing document in the nonfiction book world. It makes the case for the book idea, showing its relevance, audience need, and market readiness. It’s an idea proposal. Not all good ideas win. Usually, the idea coupled with a platformed author and a savvy launch initiative wins the day.

The market drives the commercialization of content. This is the reality of the world we live in.

Publishers seek books that meet a cultural need—they want a book that taps into an existing audience. They want to partner with authors who have already disseminated their message to a public audience. That author has already performed the market test. If a large audience likes the author's work, that message or story is ready for mass production.

Two good examples of authors proving market readiness come from the world of fiction self-publishing. Before The Martian became a blockbuster film, it was a self-published novel. The author, Andy Weir, sold a massive number of units through Amazon alone. In months, a movie production company and publisher picked up the book simultaneously.

The Shack sold millions as a self-published book before a publisher picked it up. The publisher 10xed it—probably 20xed it. Eventually, it was made into a blockbuster film.

In nonfiction, platforming is the market readiness test. A publisher seeks a content creator already cultivating a rapt audience with a vibrant message. This can be referred to as platforming. This means the author builds his or her audience with a specific message. That “platform” is the pilot for the content, if you will. Theoretically, when a platform is large enough, it is ready for mass production, i.e., a publishing deal.

A Tim Digression of Ranting Thoughts

You could make the case that the commercialization of content didn’t always exist to the extent it does today.

Where are all the popular essayists from bygone eras shaping the world with deep intellectual content?

Where are the days when poets were national heroes?

“But Tim,” you say, “Poets were never national heroes.”

“Ah yes,” I reply, “It seems fantastical. But it’s true!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was regarded as America’s poet. Interestingly, Longfellow’s work fell from grace as modernity passed over America like the mists of Mordor. Too much rhyming I suppose—how antiquated.

Wordsworth and Coleridge were also highly regarded as poets, public intellectuals, theologians, and artists.

I love this digression. Don’t you? :)

I often ask friends when opining around fall fires, “Where are the Lewises and Chestertons and Sayerses in the Christian publishing world?”

What I mean by that is, where is the writer who serializes letters between demons for a weekly magazine and compiles them into a genre-defying book? That book, of course, is The Screwtape Letters and is regarded as one of C.S. Lewis’s best.

And guess what? The Screwtape Letters is approachable and entertaining and gives incisive cultural commentary. I recommend it as the first read for anyone who’s not read Lewis. Lewis believed writing should be entertaining.

Where is the balance between producing content with mass appeal, pushing audiences in their thinking, and content that goes deeper?

Is the glut of evangelical publishing the publisher's fault or a by-product of a culture that emphasizes self-help, pragmatism, and utilitarianism and is drunk on the new social sciences? And by culture, I mean the greater and the Christian/Church cultures. We’re too interested in neuroscience and neuro-whatever to care about the beautiful. Too much?

I believe we do not have authors like this anymore because our culture, especially the Christian subculture, emphasizes specialty. Allow me to give you an example of what I mean.

When I pitched my 52-week devotional Longing for More, I had to meet with the publisher and explain my writing program to them. Do you know why?

Because they were confused. They asked my agent, “What is Tim’s writing all about? He has a cultural commentary book, a book of personal essays, and now a devotional. He seems all over the place.”

Really, it’s OK to laugh. I am laughing as I am writing.

Imagine what they’d think now that I’m pitching a YA commercial fiction novel! Have mercy!

“Tim—commercial YA fiction. Are you contributing to the commercialization of content?”

“Am I? Oh, I thought I was just being a writer.”

I share this story to give you a glimpse not only of a publishing reality—the need for authors to find a lane and stay in it but also to shed light upon the landscape of the modern audience.

We, as a collective audience, are what we habitually consume. And, when we consume Marvel movies for breakfast, Taylor Swift for lunch, and binge Netflix for dinner, our aesthetic taste gets molded into the insipid rut of pop culture.

I’m not letting publishers off the hook, but to a large extent, publishers are giving the public what they want. And what we want is not very deep, not very long, and not very beautiful.

Earlier, I asked if the publisher spearheaded the glut of evangelical publishing or if it was a by-product of what the culture wants. I see it almost like a cultural dance between the audience and producers.

I’m reminded of Natalie Merchant’s 90’s hit, “Give 'em What They Want.”

“If lust and hate is the candy … give ‘em what they want.” Man, where is Natalie when we need her most?

A Final Word

As I think about commercialized content, I think of Homer.

Now, remember, The Illiad and The Odyssey were written down later. In their infancy as stories, they were told orally. Homer translator, W.H.D. Rouse says that Homer (and Shakespeare) gave audiences what they wanted and what they were familiar with while also pressing their deeper themes into their work. It was a both/and. Homer used the language of the people to tell stories about things they cared about.

But here’s something important from Rouse. In his essay “Homer’s Words,” found at the end of his translation of The Odyssey, Rouse describes Homer’s audience.

I don’t usually go for long quotes, but I have to give you this one because it illuminates the context in which Homer wrote and paints a contrasting portrait of ancient audiences versus modern audiences.

Rouse describes Homer’s audience as practical people:

“… educated by life, but keenly alive to beauty, and sensitive to fine art, living amongst fine craftsmen and goldsmiths, delighting in song, and dance, and music, with their minds full of wonderful stories of gods, and dryads, and naiads.

They lived in the country, and knew all the sights and sounds of nature and her creatures; they lived in small towns, among fortresses and walls, mansions and temples; they had order and discipline, commerce, law and debate;

they were of a keen intelligence, and eager to hear stories of foreign lands; they pondered the meaning of human life, and had already that loathing for cruelty and brutal mockery which marked off the Greek from the barbarian.

But there was nothing in them of of the prig. They were not ashamed of enjoying themselves; they at huge meals and drank bowls of wine with as much gusto as Mr. Pickwick, but they knew good wine from bad, and the good was divine—put one cup of wine in twenty of water, and the fragrance filled the room, so that no one wanted to be an abstainer.

They were full of merry jests; wit and humour pleased them, and they did not despise a rough practical joke.

Notice how Homer’s audience was keenly alive to beauty, possessed keen intelligence, and weren’t cultural prigs. They used aesthetic judgment to discern the good and beautiful things in life.

Homer was a content creator who gave his audience the familiar, using common language while elevating the soul. I think that is a rubric for which we all should strive.

The fight for content creators lies in the very real lure of popularity, power, and money. Artists and writers are not immune to this. In the twenty-first century, celebrity and influence are characteristics of the language of culture.

Roger Scruton once observed how pop culture and fame dimmed the creative light of the twentieth-century painter Rothko. Scruton blamed the modern commercialized hype machine in the art world that likely got its fangs into Rothko, keeping him in his artistic repetition of rectangles for years. That’s what happens when your works go from selling for $200 to $20 million. Once we find something of some grace and beauty, the modern’s natural tendency is to mass produce it.

When we find what sells and works, we must keep the money train going. That’s what Marvel did. We loved Iron Man and now roll our eyes when another new Marvel movie gets set to extend the silly metaverse, or whatever it’s called.

What we need is time and space.

Time to be still and let silence reset our aesthetic filters and recalibrate our imaginations.

Space to step out from the flow of the cultural noise, hold up our affections to the light and see if we’ve left our souls on the altar of the zeitgeist.

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Notes

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Beauty is an ultimate value—something that we pursue for its own sake, and for the pursuit of which no further reason need be given. Beauty should therefore be compared to truth and goodness, one member of a trio of ultimate values which justify our rational inclinations.”

-Sir Roger Scruton

Thank you for reading The Beautiful Disruption. This post is public, so feel free to share it.

In the twentieth century, the art establishment and the entertainment world went out of their way to marginalize the concept of beauty. We don’t have the space here to get into the “Why?” behind that, but we need to observe that when a society removes the pursuit of the “beautiful” it is doing something more than hurting the world of aesthetics.

In the anciet world, as Roger Scruton’s quote above points to, beauty was an ultimate value and was pursued for it’s own sake. That means people pursued the Beautiful like they would pursue Goodness and Truth. The Beautiful was foundational to human existence and flourishing.

You and I face a daily battle in pursuing all these ultimate values: Beauty, Goodness, and Truth. Our society, though the most sophisticated in the world, is also the most decadent and greedy society on the planet. Flourishing today is related to financial success, social status, and power.

This needs to change. It’s why I moved my family to Oxford, England, nearly ten years ago to study beauty for two years, and it’s why I write and paint and promote outdoor adventure. We need to be beauty chasers, and we need to mentor younger generations in this pursuit.

Below, I’ve listed six reasons people use to relegate beauty to the margins. It’s not exhaustive by any means. But it gives us a glimpse at why our society has become so averse to pursuing beauty daily.

After the list, I conclude with a short explanation about this Substack newsletter and an invitation for you to join me in learning more about the value of the Beautiful (and the Good and Truth) and how it relates to our daily lives.

Ok, number one.

It's not for me.

We think beauty only matters for creatives, artists, and “imaginatives,” whatever that means. But this is a lie. Every person on earth benefits from beauty.

Truth: From symmetry of architecture, to how our brains feed on the beautiful (neuroscience and neuroaesthetics), to natural wonder, to the nuance of a beautiful relationship, we daily experience beauty or suffer from it’s absence—and that’s why The Beautiful Disruption—this newsetter—exists.

Beauty comes from within.

We think true beauty comes from within. But this goes against our everyday experience. Beauty covers every aspect of life, from the physical to the spiritual.

Truth: The expansiveness of beauty in our daily experience tells us that it is more nuanced and complex than we make it. Beauty weaves through our daily experience in the physical world and calls to us in the metaphysical places.

Human experience recognizes that something other is out there, calling to us through the beauty we experience. Even leading atheist thinkers leave room for the unanswerable questions brought on by beauty and wonder.

It doesn't matter.

In the real world, beauty is a luxury we cannot afford. It makes no impact on my job or my faith.

Truth: Beauty can and does bring deep meaning to our vocations. Manchester Bidwell in Pittsburg is an example of how developing a philosophy of beauty can transform people’s lives and a whole physical society.

Inspiring our citizens with grandeur, wonder, and beauty affects their daily attitudes and what they think they can accomplish in their lives.

Real men don't care about beauty.

To be a masculine man, you must be gruff and spartan.

Truth: King David of the Old Testament disagrees. A warrior, a king, and a poet, King David understood God to be a God of wonder, splendor, and majesty. Beauty touches concepts like honour, loyalty, and bravery. Beauty molds us with gentleness, discipline, humility, and courage.

Men, we need more poet-warriors in this world. You in?

It's not practical.

That’s right. It’s not. But this is Plastic People's thinking and leads to despair. Who are the Plastic People? I write about the Plastic People in my book, The Beauty Chasers. Plastic People are the efficiency people—who throw beauty to the side of the road in favor of all things utilitiatrian.

Truth: Are things like vocational calling, spiritual intimacy, and joy practical? Not as the world sees it. But that’s the point. The world is killing itself as it frames itself into an efficiency and production coffin. But that’s not how human beings are meant to live.

It doesn't get me ahead in life.

It doesn’t. But getting ahead often includes shallow practices that don’t feed our souls.

Truth: God made us to run on soulish things. Beauty nourishes us to be people of gentle and humble hearts. People manipulating others to get ahead disregard the treasure of beauty and wisdom.

Their bottom-line thinking gets them only so far. But those who seek beauty and goodness, and seek to serve others, find a treasure more precious than gold.

Let's chase beauty together!

We all desire meaning and purpose in our lives. And Beauty contributes to the deepening of meaning and purpose.

You and I experience it every day, in every way. Our relationships, the created order, our homes, times of quiet, times of laughter and joy, and I’m sure you and I could continue this list.

If you’re a subscriber here, you are already part of this movement to live like beauty matters. Free or paid, you are precious here and valued. So, thank you for being a part of The Beautiful Disruption.

But I want to go deeper into all of this. So, starting this month, in March, we’re doing just that—discovering more about how beauty shapes us inside and out, inspires our vocational calling, draws us closer to God, and infuses our daily lives with joy. And I’d love for you to join me.

Everyone who upgrades to become a paid subscriber will be receiving bonus weekly posts aimed at going deeper with me on topics like beauty, imagination and the arts, practical theology, vocational calling, finding your creative path, and all the things I usually post about here and on my Instagram channel.

Join me for monthly teaching sessions, private subscriber-only chats, and more!

And, to kick things off, for a limited time, everyone who upgrades to paid subscriber status will get my popular e-magazine resource The Summer Slowdown for free. I released this short course last spring as an encouragement and inspiration to be more intentional with our summer months. It contains:

• 90 minutes of video teaching on the subjects: Slow, See, and Participate.

• A 100-page digital magazine I designed and wrote as a visual inspiration to go deeper with my teaching.

• A 31-Day Summer Slowdown Challenge in the magazine will give you ideas for slowing down and seeing the world with new eyes this summer.

• I’m offering this resource for free for all paid subscribers here. And don’t worry all of you who are already in “Tim World” (ha!) as paid subscribers, I’ll be sending you all an email with your free access to The Summer Slowdown as well.

So, if you want to go deeper into these subjects, let’s do it. And, let me tell you, it will be a broad exploration. From how to improve your curiosity skills, to vocational insights, to exploring how colors can enhance our lives, we’ll get into it all.

If you want to stay on the free list, that’s great. You’ll still get weekly posts. But if you want to enhance your experience here, consider upgrading.

Beauty has been foundational to human existence and flourishing since the beginning of time. And I want to help bring this focus back to our culture. Thanks for being part of the movement.

Community Conversation

• How do you think our culture gets beauty wrong?

• Have you gotten beauty wrong before? If so, feel free to share what changed your thinking and turned you into someone who chases beauty.

• Why do you think it matters that we get beauty right and keep the right perspective on beauty and its value in our lives and society?

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timothywillard.substack.com/subscribe

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Do not underestimate the peace-givingness of silence. God speaks in silence and meditative prayer. He wants to meet you in your quiet meditation.He said to David, “Come and talk with me.”

David’s heart heard God speak and say this. David’s heart could hear God’s voice because David pursued God’s presence.

That’s what David means when he says he delights and seeks most to be in “the house of the Lord.” “House” here isn’t a real dwelling. It’s a metaphor for God’s presence.

Psalm 27 was most likely from David’s early poetry collection. Perhaps he’s still tending sheep and is out for days in the wilderness, sleeping beneath a blanket of stars. Imagine the night sky he witnessed back then! Imagine the head space David had to meditate on the words of God and the faithfulness of God.Sometimes, we let life get too loud. Noise? Chaos? These are antithetical to beauty. Though beauty will bear witness to God’s glory whether we let ourselves see it or not, we can annihilate it from our lives—from the eyes of our hearts—by letting noise reign.When we quiet our lives, God’s presence fills it in the most remarkable ways.

As a writer and artist, I’ve loved studying the life of Bach. His work comes from the profound meditative place where craft meets devotion. His brilliance—and I don’t use that word often or lightly—did not come through chaos. His craft bears witness to wisdom, understanding, and quiet devotion to God.Whether it’s art or any other vocation, our lives and work will bear witness to what reigns in our hearts. If it is chaos and noise, we reflect unsettledness, anxiety, and fear.

But, if it is silence, meditation, beauty, and the presence of God, then it is a settled, peace-givingness.Take some time to settle into silence this weekend.

Meditate on Psalm 8, the first nature psalm in the Psalter. God is seeking your company. “Come,” he says, “and talk with me.”Blessings to you, friends, on this week’s end. 🙏✨

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Every day, you step onto a battlefield—the frontlines of your thoughts.

A war rages here, bombarding you with a vision of the world and yourself that drips with lies. It is a war of perspective. The world wants you to believe that what you see is all there is. Nothing lies beyond it. The physical world we inhabit? It will one day pass away into oblivion.

Oblivion sounds dramatic. But oblivion is the sense of waste pressing into the human mind, to your mind, to my mind. Even Christians struggle with finding meaning and purpose.

Our jobs as humans?

To fight the lies by knowing and speaking the truth about ourselves and our reality. That reality is one created by God.

When we refer to God as “Creator,” we make a scandalous statement about reality. We refute ideas of meaninglessness that stem from an understanding of reality that says that the physical world is all that there is. It was not created. It was caused by rare and accidental moments in cosmological history that no one alive can explain—only guess at.

When God created, he did so with no pre-existing raw materials. He was the source of the raw materials used. That’s what ex nihilo means, “from nothing.” C.S. Lewis cautioned his readers to understand that humans do not create. We build using pre-existing materials. Only God creates, he reminded. We use a creative process that echoes the kind God used.

If you and I take a step back and consider how humans make works of art, it gives us insight into the first Creator’s imagination.

A Beautiful Question

In 2015, physics Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilzcek wrote a best-selling book titled A Beautiful Question, describing the physical universe as the product of an artist.

Wilzcek grew up Catholic but admits to losing faith in conventional religion and turning from God as a teenager. When asked in an interview if he was religious, Wilzcek replied, “Physics is my religion.”

And yet, he remains sympathetic to questions about God and believes science has much to say about who or what God is. He notes how many of the bright stars in the history of science espoused strong Christian beliefs, like Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Maxwell. Even Einstein, though he was not a Christian, viewed “the world as God.”

In his book, Wilzcek says that the physicalness of the universe—like trees, oceans, planets, and humans—poses a question, asking if the cosmos possesses a metaphysical source. Basically, he’s saying that physical objects point to a metaphysical origin.

Wilzcek looks at beauty as explored through the lens of Core Theory and quantum physics and asks if our world embodies beautiful ideas. His answer is “a resounding ‘Yes!’”

Wilzcek examines the Core of Nature, which consists of the four basic forces, gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak forces—which have only been discovered in the twentieth century, with Wilzcek’s doctoral thesis introducing the world to the idea of a strong force—and determines Nature’s Core does “embody beautiful ideas” but those ideas are “strange and deeply hidden.”

Check out what Wilzcek says about Nature’s Core:

The world, insofar as we speak of the world of chemistry, biology, astrophysics, engineering, and everyday life, does embody beautiful ideas. The Core, which governs those domains, is profoundly rooted in concepts of symmetry and geometry ...

And it works its will, in quantum theory, through music-like rules. Symmetry really does determine structure. A pure and perfect Music of the Spheres really does animate the soul of reality. Plato and Pythagoras: We salute you.”

For Wilzcek, the beauty and artistry of the cosmos suggest an artist.

Wilczek’s lifelong adventure into physics and cosmology reveals his own quest to regain some of the meaning and purpose he lost when he walked away from religion."

Now, consider Wilczek’s question: Does the universe embody beautiful ideas?

Art is the expression of embodied ideas.

The artist’s vision begins in the imagination. Then, that idea gets transposed onto the canvas or in and through other mediums like a musical score, a piece of pottery, or a sculpture.

In a very real sense, we see the artist’s ideas through their work.

And that’s what Wilczek is saying we see in the universe through science. The world we see can be observed as a work of art that embodies an Artist’s ideas.

And guess what? You are part of that created world. The idea of you came from the Artist’s imagination. That’s a reality you won’t hear the world discuss on podcasts or talk shows.

Pushing on the Universe

God comes romping into the picture when we push on the edges of the universe as Wiczek has done. Beauty stirred his questions and illuminated them.

If there is an Artist, and that Artist is God, what does that mean for us?

Our chief desire, as humans, is to discover and be in a relationship with the Person who created us. “God designed the human machine to run on himself,” writes C.S. Lewis. “He himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on.”

Questions of God lead to questions of personal meaning. These are the questions Dr. Armand Nicholi, Jr., a psychiatrist and former professor at Harvard Medical School, tackled in his best-selling book The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and The Meaning of Life.

In his clever book, Dr. Nicholi pits Freud's and Lewis's thoughts side by side on questions of significance and purpose.

Lewis and Freud thought questions of personal significance were the most important ones in life. To Lewis, the answer to this question revealed the secret of the universe.

Why am I here? Why do I matter? This is what we want to know, and Freud agreed.

Pushing Back Oblivion

Earlier, I said that even Christians struggle with finding purpose and meaning. I’ve been there. So have countless others. Maybe you’re there right now.

If so, here’s what you need to know.

First, struggling to find meaning and purpose does not make you less of a person. It is a universal struggle. The struggle makes you human.

Second, the struggle requires you to fight.

So you struggle. Fine. But that is not the end of it. Now comes the fight. God wants you to push back on the oblivion mindset and win the battle of the mind. God wants us to focus on him and the things of heaven, not things on the earth—not the doom and gloom of the daily news cycle and not the soul-sucking death scroll of social media.

We fight oblivion by focusing on the eternal. Once your heart is infused with the eternal, oblivion melts away.

Finally, remember: You are God’s beautiful thought.

Some of King David’s most beautiful psalms speak about how God thinks about him, delights in him, fashioned him in his mother’s womb, and loves humankind.

When God created, he looked at his creation and called it beautiful, including you.

Remember, your actions and words embody the ideas swirling inside your head. You are a walking expression of your thoughts. Don’t let oblivion win the battle in your head. You are God’s beautiful thought—God’s masterpiece. Let that reality shape your thinking, renew your perspective on life, and color everything you do with glory.

The Beautiful Disruption is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Notes

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Hello,

Last week, I wrote about Spiritual Grit. Today, I’m sharing a quick thought about pain and suffering.

“Pain is the road of life,” someone once told me. True enough. But thank goodness for life’s backroads. You know, the ones marked with a green-dotted line in the old Rand McNally Road Atlas.

They’re scenic routes. Roads off the beaten path. They take longer, but they sweeten the journey. How do you find them? Go down Pain Blvd. and take the next exit. There’s always a scenic route close by.

When my wife and I deal with the pain and suffering of a wilderness season, we seek rest, the margin for resetting, and find encouragement in the fellowship of close friends.

Remember, the road does not define the traveler. My friend Edie says, “Pain is a given. What matters is how we choose to handle it.” Edie’s smart and joyful, and she’s not wrong.

Each day, life presents us with a choice. We can choose to live in the mistakes and pain of yesterday, or we can seize the mysterious mercy of God that reboots each day.

That choice is hard. Sometimes, we get so used to the pain, bitterness, and anger that we almost prefer it to the new morning. But that’s on us. We choose to chew on the darkness. Or, we choose to seize the new mercy God extends every morning. I can choose to replay my pain and suffering in my head and let it consume me, or I can set about the work God’s put before me.

Framing pain like this doesn’t minimize suffering. On the contrary, it places it in a context and helps us see that there’s a way to manage it. It doesn’t mean pain disappears, and all is fixed. It means we’re not perpetual victims. It means we possess a will to act. It means that reprieve is available.

“Come to me,” says Jesus, “and I will give you rest.”

An invitation with no RSVP is needed.

But you must act. You must show spiritual grit and meet him, wrestle with him, and allow him to hold you.

The Beautiful Disruption is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

More Articles You Might Enjoy

Announcements & Reminders

Calling all writers and creatives. Over the last several months, I’ve been hosting Zoom workshops called The Writer’s Workshop. Hosted one Saturday a month, The Writer’s Workshop gives writers the opportunity to ask questions about writing and the writing life as we explore various topics related to writing. February’s workshop is on Saturday the 24th. For more information or to get pre-registration pricing, click the button below.

Speaking & Teaching

In addition to my monthly online workshops, I’ll be speaking and teaching at various venues this year. In March, I’ll be teaching and sharing at the Foraged Beauty Art Workshop hosted by my dear friend Daune Pitman of Cottage in the Oaks. For more information on this workshop, click the button below.

For all you homeschool families and lifelong learners, I will also give a keynote address and a fireside chat at this year’s annual Charlotte Mason Institute National Conference, held at Asbury University. This year’s theme is “The Joy of Making.”For more information on attending, click the button below.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timothywillard.substack.com/subscribe

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Pray always. Never give up. Be persistent in what you ask for from God.

Jesus himself reminded us to do this. (Luke 18:1-8)

The Beautiful Disruption is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Spiritual Grit doesn’t get a lot of press. Maybe because we live in an entitled society. We expect to “get” just because we show up.

There is a humility embedded in persistence. And a tenacity. God likes both.

The easy response to hardship is to give up or give in. To yield.

Jacob did not yield. He wrestled with God and demanded his blessing.

Moses pursued God—pressing him to see his wonder.

David wrote a gazillion poems crying out to God, emploring God, ranting, asking God to listen: “Can you hear me, God!? Here I am! Help me, for crying out loud!”

Paul wrote from prison, facing death, and reminded the Church that the faith journey with God is like running the 100 meters in the Olympics—a race in which we throw off our clothes and run like the wind towards the medal podium.

Just because you’re in a wilderness time doesn’t mean you can’t remind God of that fact.

“Hello!? God? Remember me? My bones are decaying in this valley. Send me the ravens! Break open the stones so I can drink. Part these waters! Or I’m gonna die.”

This morning, before dawn, I found myself struggling with an adversary—we wrestled by the brook. Blow for blow, we contended. My opponent was strong, but I knew a couple of moves, too. He hurt me a few times, but I did not relent. Finally, he nearly broke my leg, but not before I got what I was after.

“Yes, Tim—I hear you. My blessing is …”

And he whispered it to me in the dark hour of dawn, in the cold, as we panted, bloodied and beaten. And then he was gone.

The spiritual life cannot be bottled in a sanitized worship service and sold online as a self-help course or book.

It is often lonely: midnights filled with bloody prayers, enduring betrayals, facing demons for days on end, all the while being ground to dust by temptations that sear your spirit. This was the Jesus way. And even he cried out for his ABBA to hear him.

I’m with you, friend. Preaching to myself here and praying for you as you wrestle in the darkness.

Spiritual Grit. It’s what’s for breakfast.

“I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God. It changes me.”

—C.S. Lewis

Thank you for reading The Beautiful Disruption. This post is public, so feel free to share it.

Announcements & Reminders

Calling all writers and creatives. Over the last several months, I’ve been hosting Zoom workshops called The Writer’s Workshop. Hosted one Saturday a month, The Writer’s Workshop gives writers the opportunity to ask questions about writing and the writing life as we explore various topics related to writing. February’s workshop is on Saturday the 24th. For more information or to get pre-registration pricing, click the button below.

Speaking & Teaching

In addition to my monthly online workshops, I’ll be speaking and teaching at various venues this year. In March, I’ll be teaching and sharing at the Foraged Beauty Art Workshop hosted by my dear friend Daune Pitman of Cottage in the Oaks. For more information on this workshop, click the button below.

For all you homeschool families and lifelong learners, I will also give a keynote address and a fireside chat at this year’s annual Charlotte Mason Institute National Conference, held at Asbury University. This year’s theme is “The Joy of Making.”For more information on attending, click the button below.

If you are interested in me speaking at your event, you can contact me here*.

The Beautiful Disruption is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timothywillard.substack.com/subscribe

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*Note - My apologies for the late posting. Substack experienced technical difficulties today. So, I waited until they were back up to send it out. Thank you for your understanding.

The Prelude: Going All-in on Substack

So, I want to use this opportunity to speak directly to you, my beloved readers, and explain to you just what it is I’m doing here and why Substack has become a wonderful place for writers from every background to ply their wares, and even make a living doing it. I am one of these writers. And my aim is to make Substack my primary hub for writing and one of the central means by which I make my living.

I want to lay out this manifesto in five sections. These sections will build out my philosophy of writing and also give insight into what’s going on behind the scenes.

Further Up with Timothy Willard is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Manifesto Summary

I am a writer, storyteller, and independent scholar seeking to create a place, both through my writing (books and online) and in-person retreats, that is a refuge for all seeking rest and restoration of the soul. A place where good counsel can be found, where wisdom can be sought, and where the imagination can be fueled.

Section 1 - The Human Behind the Screen

First, let me say a hearty, “Welcome!” to all the new subscribers here. Further Up is growing! We are nearing 6,500 free subscribers! I’m humbled and excited by this new growth. The growth tells me that topics like beauty, wonder, and faith & culture are subjects that many want to explore. I’m looking forward to deeper connections here, and a lively exploration of these topics.

Since there are so many new folks in the Further Up email family, I thought I’d share a quick note about me and my family.

Behind your phone or laptop or desktop screen, behind the words you scroll through, I’m here—existing. I am a fortysomething father of three; two teenagers and one delightful ten-year-old. I’m married to Christine Michelle Willard and have been for 21 years.

We live on a wooded lot on a culdesac in the small southern town of Waxhaw, North Carolina. While I wrote this post, I ate an English breakfast, drank coffee, and made some tea. I also put on my hoodie because I was a tad cold.

We have a two-year-old golden doodle named Cash who thinks he’s a human.

I have feelings, dreams, and worries, but not many regrets.

Blood runs through my veins. I’m not part of the Matrix. In fact, I’m fighting against it. You’ll know this if you follow me on Instagram or have read my new book The Beauty Chasers.

So, us Willards? We are a real family living in a real town in a real country and are doing our best to use what God has given us to glorify him and make a living.

My desire has always been to make a difference in the little sliver of the world in which God has placed me. And this newsletter represents the central hub for this difference-making endeavour.

For a more “professional” biography, click over to my about page.

Section 2 - The Dream Behind the Writing

“Tim, what do you actually do for a living.”

I love it when people ask me this question. And trust me, I get asked it a lot. And it’s a fair question. Even my mother asks me how I make a living doing what I do! Here’s a little bit of “Tim history” to help you understand how the dream of my writing ministry has taken shape.

For over 15 years I’ve worked as a ghostwriter, editor, and creative consultant—all freelance. The word freelance means that I work for different companies and clients. This is the pathway that opened up before me when Christine and I moved to Atlanta so I could pursue a full-time writing career. It was in Atlanta, after running my own landscape company back in Lititz, Pennslyvania so that I could finish my undergraduate degree, that I began freelancing for various organizations like Catalyst Conference, Q Ideas, Relevant Magazine, and Chick-fil-A.

Though my dream was always to be a writer, God instilled in me a much broader vision of what I could do through writing and teaching. It took me over a decade to figure it out, and a large chunk of the time was spent in graduate school at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (MA) and at King’s College London (PhD).

“Why was a writer attending seminary?”

I got this question often during my time in seminary. My reply?

“I’m not sure, but God is making it plainer the further I go.”

After seminary, I felt the Holy Spirit stirring in me and pushing me towards more schooling. I was never academically minded. In my twenties, I sang in a band and toured the country. But the Lord persisted in my spirit and the opportunity to study under Alister McGrath opened up, and we followed God’s leading. But I still received questions about my journey.

“Why was a writer getting a PhD?”

To which I replied, “I’m not one hundred percent positive, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with inspiring Christians to rediscover God through beauty and imagination.”

I thought perhaps, one day, I’d take a professorship at a small college and teach theology. Early on, after I finished my PhD, I applied for a few open positions. You’ll love this response I received from a prominent Christian university where one of my friends was already teaching:

“Well, to be honest, Tim, your background and CV are rather, well, unorthodox. You have an academic pedigree but you also write books and articles in the popular space and do art. We’re looking for more ‘traditional’ teachers. But we’d love to have you come speak to our students!”

They meant no disrespect by this at all. In fact, I took it as a compliment and felt encouraged. But it also gave me a glimpse into what most universities are looking for and convinced me that, for now, carving out this space here on Substack or through my books was the place God wanted to use me.

So, this kaleidoscope journey as a writer, theologian, and storyteller was leading me to begin something new but not so new. Something related to teaching but not as traditional as a college. Something outside of the mainstream, but not a hippie commune.

What was it?

Section 3 - The Beauty Behind the Unorthodoxy

“What we need is a different kind of interpreter, less Reinhold Niebuhr, that establishment figure who lived and taught in New York City, and more Francis Schaeffer, the missionary-in-exile, far removed from the hubs of power and influence and better equipped to speak to them in distinctly Christian ways precisely because of his distance from them.”

The answer to, “What was it?” comes by way of a story.

Many moons ago, I was expelled from Liberty University at the ripe age of 19. Getting expelled might become a badge of honour in your forties, but when you’re a preacher’s kid at 19, and you get kicked out of university, it’s a big deal. And it was the catalyst for me coming into the Christian faith.

During that next year, as I studied the Bible for the first time on my own and began journaling in earnest, I believed that God wanted me to start a camp. An adventure camp where I could harness the power and beauty of the wilderness to reach young adults like me—young adults who had drifted from their faith.

Then the dream expanded into a camp that might also reach CEOs and burned-out missionaries. I couldn’t shake this vision.

Then I read Francis Schaeffer’s The God Who is There, and I discovered the L’bri community he founded in Switzerland. Schaeffer stepped out of American culture and became a cultural critic. And I mean “critic” in the positive. L’bri was a place young adults and really, any adults, could come and live for a brief time in the community of the house and property and ask questions about the God of the Bible.

But Schaeffer’s L’bri was more than a place of physical refuge. It was a symbol of a different way of life for Christians living in a splintered materialistic world bent on the acquisition of consumer products and the heaping of wealth for moths. Jake Meador writes of Schaeffer’s influence like this:

Francis and Edith’s ministry at L’Abri recognized this splintering {of modern culture} and refuted it, not by explaining Christianity to a social order that can be reconciled with the faith if we finesse it enough, but by modeling a radically different way of life to a society at odds with the {Christian} faith on the most fundamental, basic levels.

The hospitality of L’Abri, Francis’s way of talking about Christianity as comprehensive “True Truth,” the hidden art embodied by Edith’s tireless work… all these things contributed to making L’Abri a shelter of coherence in a fractured and declining world …

If you’ve followed my work for any length of time, you’ve undoubtedly heard/read me rant about the need for a revived discipleship in the American church. You’ve heard/read me call for a revival of beauty and wonder in our church gatherings. You’ve heard/read me emphasize how important our cultural education is as human beings made in the image of God—and especially how important this education is for the younger generations.

“But Tim,” you say, “are you suggesting that this newsletter here on Substack can be a kind of L’bri? I mean, Schaeffer moved to a different country and bought an actual property. This newsletter is online. Humans don’t gather here.”

“Ah yes,” I reply, “your point is well taken. But I humbly ask that you use your imagination for just a few moments, and see this online space as a kind of first step into re-imagining what a twenty-first-century L’bri might look like. Think of our newsletter family here as the first step in a progression that gathers online, and then in person. Think of this space as the beginning of conversations that though explored deeply here, can get more personal and more intimate at an actual gathering place.”

What if this new twenty-first century L’bri was more than a place for people to ask theological questions, but actively sought to disciple the younger generation, to bring rest to the weary adults serving in ministry, to bring restoration and a place for adults to contemplate the beauty of God’s love for them.

Imagine a place like that. A place that begins online—here. And then grows into this place—this place my wife and I are praying into existence!

This, my friends, is what I’m working towards. And this newsletter is the first step.

Further Up with Timothy Willard is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Section 4 - The Heart Behind the Efforts

Here are three small ventures I’ve attempted over the last three years that many of you have contributed to:

The Daily GritThe Beauty Chaser CommunityThe Fellowship

These represent all the different efforts I’ve attempted to establish an online hub for this twenty-first-century writing and teaching ministry. The most recent one, The Fellowship, was birthed as a way to house a community that was engaged and learning from one another. But days before I launched it, the Holy Spirit stirred in me—the kind of stirring where you know you shouldn’t move forward with something.

All the work, designing, and planning I’d put into The Fellowship? For nothing—that’s what I initially thought. And when I didn’t heed the stirring, the same day I launched the site and sent the email, the site crashed for weeks!

You can click here to read the full explanation. The Spirit was telling me: “Tim, simplify, simplify, simplify. Keep it clear and direct. Pour into one place, and serve readers there.” So, I’m heeding this spiritual nudging and simplifying.

This newsletter, Further Up, is the only place you’ll find my writing and teaching for the foreseeable future. The video teaching sessions I prepped for The Fellowship will now be short weekly video sessions hosted right here on Further Up.

Here’s what you can look forward to with this Substack newsletter:

• Paid subscribers will receive teaching delivered in video format on a monthly basis. You can preview what to expect here.

• An affordable monthly membership at around $5 a month (this is the fall special price being offered). If you want to be part of this community but can’t afford it right now, or you’re a student and you’re strapped for extra money, I totally get it. Just email me and we’ll work it out.

• I will be doing a monthly Q/A session with my wife, , through the private Substack podcast feature on this newsletter. You can submit your questions about anything I write about here.

• All of my writing will be hosted here, instead of being spread out over multiple outlets.

• You can upgrade to a paid subscription right now with our biggest discount of the year. This offer is running until the beginning of December. If you don’t want to go to “paid” right now that’s totally fine. I’m thrilled you’re here and not to worry, I’ll still be posting weekly free posts for everyone. Everyone is welcome!

Section 5 - The Joy Behind Simplifying the Vision

So, here are the online spaces where you can find me:

• My newsletter: Further Up - Join me here to go deeper into the topics we all love to discuss that relate to beauty, wonder, faith & culture, and so much more. Think of Further Up as our own private magazine space.

• Instagram - Join me here for daily/weekly inspiration.

• The Saturday Stoke - Back by popular demand. Look for new episodes in the new year! As you can imagine, I’m pretty … wait for it … stoked about this. And yes, this will be a free podcast. You can get caught up and dive into the first 52 episodes here.

In my own pursuit of beauty, I’m reminded of how harmony is a characteristic of the beautiful. In making this decision to keep all of my writing and teaching here, I hope to step into God’s harmony for my work and writing. My prayer is to be more focused on the needs of readers and to be a resource of hope, encouragement, and inspired learning.

“But Tim,” you say, “I want to hear more about this physical space that you envision, this ‘L’bri for the twenty-first century.’”

“Ah yes,” I reply, “I’m so delighted you asked. If you’re excited to be a part of this new endeavour and partner with me, you can do so in two ways. You can make a donation or you can sign up to hear more about the vision using this form.

Thank you in advance for your understanding and support. I hope to see you further up.

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It’s time to crank up the week and get moving. But in our haste to get back to our work, studies, or duties, let’s not forget to remain spiritually aware during the week.

Sometimes you and I can struggle to stay connected with God during the week. Here are three questions I ask myself and revisit often. Play or download the audio episode above for some quick inspiration on staying connected with God during the week.

What am I chasing in my life right now? Is it something in my career path? Is it notoriety? Is it power? Is it numbness? Is it distraction? We can chase all sorts of things, even without knowing it.

We can go through our daily and weekly routines almost without knowing that we’ve established habits of pursuit. If we lack spiritual awareness then we should ask for it. If we are ignoring the spiritual tugs on our hearts then we need to ask ourselves why?

Our spiritual pursuits reflect in the way we live our lives each minute of every day. We either live with a heavenly mindset, or we live with a worldly mindset. Identifying which one is key to realizing how close or how far away from God we really are.

How can I connect with God outside of the church walls? It’s easy to “feel” connected to God when the music is playing in church and the emotions are rising. What about Monday through Friday at work, at school, or at home? Staying connected with God is not about rote habits that carry little meaning. It is about learning how to “be with” God. Remember, Jesus often woke before dawn to pray to his Father. If Jesus needed heavenly nourishment, then we certainly do as well.

How can I love the people closest to me as Christ Jesus loved me? This is hard because it means that we must serve the ones closest to us until it hurts. And I don’t mean physically hurts, but spiritually and emotionally and intellectually. Dying to ourselves for our family and friends and co-works is no joke. We want our way. We’re used to doing and getting what we want. But the Christian way orders our loves around Jesus. When he is our primary love—and not ourselves—his way becomes our way, his desires, our desires.

I’d love to hear some of your ideas on how you spiritually focus your week. Please share in the comments below!

“Monday, Beautiful” is a weekly column that I offer to paid subscribers affectionately known as The Beauty Chasers. I’m offering it to everyone until April 18, 2022. You can test out what it’s like to be in this special intimate Beauty Chaser Community with a special 30-day free trial.

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A Note on the audio above: And by “Squarespace” I meant Substack, this newsletter. I’m still in a fog getting over a head cold, as you can tell from my voice in this audio. :)

“A consumer church is an antichrist church.”

—Eugene Peterson

A group of wealthy anonymous Christians are unleashing a $100 million dollar ad campaign. Their goal?

To make Jesus the most popular brand in your town.

If you’re following along with me on Instagram, you’ll remember this ad campaign stirred me enough to cause me to offer a “Tim rant.” Here, I’d like to go a bit deeper if you’ll allow me.

I’m going to offer a general history here of what happened to the church that led us to think this way about Jesus and the church. It’s not meant to be an exhaustive resource, just a sketch.

I will be leaning on my own experience within this Church culture—having written for major church leadership conferences and brands over the years—and my seminary background in Christian Thought and Church History.

Why Does the Church think God Needs Branding?

Image and acceptance drive our consumerist culture. Christians (broadly speaking) believe that if we as the Church can make the Christian faith and Jesus more culturally acceptable, then people will be less put off by the “narrow way” that Jesus talks about in the Gospels.

Two main branding elements are image and messaging (among various other elements). You get those right, and you can build a strong brand. When you think of a strong brand think Nike, Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, etc. The public love those brands. I won’t get into why, but I think we all have at least a surface understanding as to what makes a brand strong.

In the twentieth century, Christianity took a bit of a downturn with regards to its messaging and image. With the emergence of televangelists, their many failings, church corruption, the moral failings of the Catholic church, the emergence of the political Christian (i.e., the “Moral Majority), and other things, the universal Church and the Christian faith at large became a cultural polarizing entity.

The 80s and 90s saw the rise of the seeker-sensitive model of church. The idea was to make the church feel welcoming by attaching the bells and whistles of popular culture: coffee bars, slick bands, relaxed atmosphere, no more piano and organs, high church gone, and so on.

Create a space that felt comfortable to outsiders. Don’t offend them before they even sat down with archaic cultural trappings. Give them a concert atmosphere, give them the consumer feel of the mall.

These seeker-sensitive churches grew to enormous sizes. The by-product of the size of the church was the power and influence of the pastors leading them. In capitalistic fashion, bigger equalled better. Success equalled size.

Power was assumed by leaders because they’d led a successful organization. Their success insulated them from accountability. No one challenged their methods. In fact, the mantra about church methods became, “church methods must always evolve; change the methods, but keep the message the same.”

But in an image-driven society in which television and screens became the main arteries with which to distribute information, these leaders forgot that method does matter: “the medium is the message.”

In the 2000s Christian leaders sought to correct the church’s image problem. But the question was, how?

Simple. Use the language of culture to persuade people that Christians really aren’t that bad; the faith really isn’t such a narrow Way.

What is this language of culture?

It’s using the platform to influence the way people think. And how do you build a platform? You become popular by using the machinations of poplar culture: cool church, slick worship “experience,” give the people what they want.

Rise in popularity. Gain influence. Control the narrative.

The Birth of the Cool Christian Leader

In the culture of the "Platform Christian Leader,” exposure equals validation. This unhealthy mindset compels leaders to believe the fallacy that the more exposure, the bigger the platform, the more “celebrity” they can cultivate will lead to more influence.

Leaders look at culture and deduce that if they can formulate a powerful platform then they will be able to wield influence. And that’s what they want, to influence the world for the Good, right?

This is why defining influence as leadership is dangerous in a culture where influence is perceived as celebrity capital.

The flow of thought goes like this:

Influence = leadership

To lead, I must gain influence

How do I gain influence?

Speak the language of culture: build a platform, adopt celebrity methods of cultural engagement.

End game = Utilize platform for “personal brand” message

You can find this progression of thought exposed in the fall of megachurch pastor Carl Lentz of Hillsong Church in New York City.

This is how Ruth Graham, in her New York Times piece titled, “The Rise and Fall of Carl Lentz, the Celebrity Pastor of Hillsong Church” describes the celebrity approach to doing “church” like Hillsong:

By now, Hillsong is not just a church, but a brand. Hillsong is a look: neutrals, streetwear, body-conscious fashion. And it is a sound, too. The church’s bands have won a Grammy. Their most popular song, the soaring ballad “Oceans (Where Feet May Fail),” has been streamed more than 235 million times on Spotify.

And the formula works. The global church now has congregations on six continents, and claims an average attendance of 150,000 people weekly.

But there was another side to Hillsong in its most popular branch in America, according to many current and former attendees: a pastor who was so swept up in ministering to the famous that ordinary congregants felt neglected.

A culture that worshipped wealth, while making volunteers cater to leaders as royalty. And a sense that for all the celebrity surrounding the church, its soul was harder to find.

This is the idea. When the “brand” connects with the target audience, leverage it. Grow it. Because, of course, the best metric for the success of anything in our culture is if you can scale it. In this case, scaling means duplicating this “style of the church” in multiple zip codes. That’s the message.

Like everything else in the advanced world, if you can franchise it, you’re a success.

It’s hard to believe this “seeker-sensitive” model has endured since the early 1980s, but it is, perhaps, now more popular than ever. Megachurches like Lentz’s have taken up the mantle of Rick Warren of Saddleback Church and Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church.

With the proliferation of social media and the ability to build online followings—just like celebrity musicians and actors—megachurches can now promote their high definition worship experiences as if it’s a weekly concert.

The ubiquity of social media insulates individuals and churches from asking even basic questions about the appropriateness of promoting a worship gathering. Questions like:

Is there a disconnect with my faith if I post a photograph or video of me playing an instrument or singing a worship song?

What is the point of singing songs of worship?

Does self-promotion or the emphasis of a band playing a worship song on our church’s feed send the wrong message?

Does a worship service require promotion?

What is worship?

What does our contribution to the millions of views of worship bands playing on YouTube contribute to the ethos of celebrity culture within the Church?

Do young viewers see this as the way worship music works?

Are we emphasizing a standard of “cultural engagement” that is contra the Scriptures?

What will result from practices in which individuals are idolized because of their status, i.e., pastor or worship leader on stage, on camera, on the feeds?

What is the purpose of the Church, anyway?

The Christian culture seems more excited about hearting a photo in a church’s feed than they do about considering the nature and purpose of gathering for worship. The result?

A Church of consumption. A Church driven by market desires and individual tastes.

Presumably, the idea driving church leaders to upload photos and videos of worship sessions and sermons is to evangelize—to promote the message of the Gospel.

I understand this mentality, and often I hear folks citing how even Billy Graham utilized the technology at his fingertips to further the Gospel message.

But let’s look at that for a minute.

Billy Graham began using television for his evangelistic ministry in 1951, only 24 years after television was invented. But television didn’t become common in culture until 1946. Televisions grew from being in 6,000 homes to 12 million homes between 1946-1951.

At the advent of Graham’s ministry, television was a very young technology. Meaning, it was so new, no one knew the influence it was to have on our culture.

Remember, the early twentieth century was not far removed from the end of the 19th century, in which the aeroplane (1903), the automobile (1885 invented, but not mass-produced until 1908), and television (1927) did not even exist. They were all complete novelties to western culture. Now, they’re almost obsolete with online media dominating screen time and the dissemination of information.

But is the question wholly about the technology involved? What of Graham’s stewardship of his platform? Is that a consideration? And that same question can be levelled at me; I mean, I use technology and utilize social media to spread my message.

Did Billy Graham embrace his global stardom, or did he eschew the popularity, the money, and fame for the sake of the Gospel?

Graham chose the latter, and this aspect of his witness was testified to by all who knew him at the time of his death. He left behind a profound legacy of humility. Perfect? No. But, remarkably, Graham remained rooted in his faith and humble as a leader.

To use technology with such shallow thinking about the consequences is bad stewardship, poor leadership, and evidences the moral decay of Church leadership.

The late Eugene Peterson wrote, “The cultivation of consumer spirituality is the antithesis of a sacrificial, "deny yourself" congregation.” Peterson believed the western Church had replaced the Jesus Way with the American way.

Our celebrity culture has exploded and the cult of personality has become the twenty-first-century currency of men and women who desire influence.

To use technology with such shallow thinking about the consequences is bad stewardship, poor leadership, and evidences the moral decay of Church leadership.

What Does a Beautiful Witness Look Like?

What if we deferred the so-called opportunities to increase our own influence, platforms, and celebrity status?

What might we find? Would we find a freedom to be the person God intended us to be?

"We are not responsible for success," writes theologian Klaus Bockmuehl, "but we remain responsible for obedience."

What God creates with our obedience is his concern, not ours.

The Christian leader often struggles to understand this. He or she thinks because a person can create a celebrity persona they should. And, once they obtain influence in the form of power or visibility or even wealth, then they will leverage it all for the good of Christendom.

I have sat in meetings with prominent pastors who have told me: “Tim, I want to leverage my influence …”

This is brand marketing talk, not Christian leadership. One pastor introduced me to his wife and said, “This is Tim. He’s going to help me sell a million books.”

Needless to say, we did not work together.

As a writer and collaborator, I aim to bring stories to audiences who can benefit in a deep and personal way from the author’s story. But Christian publishing caters to the established voice; the individual who’s created a name for themselves by building up their platform and expanding their influence.

The Christian leader, it seems, has fallen prey to the lie that says in order to win the world we must speak its language forgetting that Christian leadership is not about "power and control, but a leadership of powerlessness and humility."

But not all of us struggle with the temptations that come from leading people. The veneer of cool, the veneer of celebrity manifests itself in other ways.

For many of us, our temptations emerge in the subtleties of popularity or the cool factor in how we dress, what we drive, how popular our social media feeds are, how successful we can make everyone think we are.

One way or the other, the "Look at me, I'm someone" complex surfaces. Somewhere in our heart of hearts, however, we hear the still small voice that whispers, "It's a sham."

We all face the temptations of fame and power just as Jesus did in the wilderness. But we must remain obedient, just as Jesus was, recognizing the temptations as cheap versions of the truth.

James reminds us that true religion “guards against the corruption of the world.” (1:27) We either obey, and conform to the will of the Father or, we conform to the world.

In C.S. Lewis's classic book, The Screwtape Letters, Uncle Screwtape warns Wormwood of the obedience that God demands of his followers. It’s a good reminder.

"But the obedience which the Enemy [God] demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk of perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His."

The veneer of celebrity elevates our hunger for affirmation while pinning us in the muck of our own bent affections for self-gratification. Such an appetite crushes our spirits.

We feel unsatisfied unless we have influence over others.

We feel irritated unless others approve of us.

We feel discontented unless we receive recognition in our work.

Influence, approval, achievement; in the celebrity world, these are our idols.

I’m reminded of the words of Jewish philosopher Martin Buber: “Something has stepped between our existence and God to shut off the light of heaven … [and] that something is in fact ourselves, our own bloated selfhood.”

But no matter how hard we try, an idol cannot fulfill man’s need for God—a real, living, intimate God. We need our God to be accessible, not with the on-off button of a remote control but through relationship.

“An idol leads a man, by necessity, into loneliness,” writes Bockmuehl. “An idol leads man into loneliness when what man needs is a god with whom he can have dialogue.”

The God of Abraham does not lead anyone into loneliness. He leads us into himself. He calls each by name toward himself, the essence of all that is good and holy, full of fear and wonder. This is where he calls you. It's a place where the self decreases and God increases.

I titled this post “The Death of Beauty in the Church” because I understand beauty to originate in God. God created the world out of love for us—a beautiful bouquet to remind us how much he cares for us.

All around us we see and experience his steadfast love. The Psalmists talk about the faithfulness and steadfastness of God’s love as seen in nature. The sunrise and sunset are constant reminders of how he cares for us. Each day is new. Each day his love and mercies reboot for us—they are new every morning, says the writer of Lamenations.

The beauty of the Church comes from its love for God and its witness in the world. Remember, the first century church flourished not because of celebrity Apostles. Quite the contrary. It flourished because to be a Christian mean to court death. The beautiful tree of the Christian Church was watered with the blood of marytrs, they say.

There is something sacrificial, something humble, something sweet, about the witness of the Church that is seen not by it’s size, success, or shimmer, but by it’s brilliant irrelevance in a shallow world where everything is transactional.

The Christian life is anything but transactional. It is sacramental, sacrificial, indeed, it is cruciform. And this is the beauty we must regain if we aim to offer hope to the world.

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The Saturday Stoke #52

Beauty unconnected to the Divine leads humans into pagan idolatry. For the disciple of Jesus, the one groping for deeper intimacy with God, the revelation of these joys—of God’s power and divine nature—remind of his unlimited grace and care.

But even more than that; they remind one of the lover who leaves flowers on his beloved’s doorstep. The flowers signal his loyalty and tenderness. But they also impart something of his heart concerning his beloved.

The flowers say, “You remind me of this bouquet—full of life, bursting with color, alive with fragrance, a bounty snatched from the mountains.” The bouquet is a symbol of love.

*Thanks to all of you who’ve hung in there with me and The Stoke. I’ve now posted a year’s worth of Stokes. If you enjoy it and find it inspiring, please share it with your friends and consider becoming a paid subscriber or one-time donor.

Subscriptions keep The Stoke and my sites up and running. Thank you for supporting my work. I couldn’t do it with you.

Vitalogy: Pearl Jam and the Preciousness of Life

I’m writing again at Patheos.com! The blog space will be where I post thoughts on the arts and culture, as well as bits on philosophy and theological musings. They’ll be short and feel more like a “journal” than a polished article. Thank you in advance for joining me there!

Beauty & Culture: An Unscientific Poll

I’m considering giving a few short online seminars on “Beauty & Culture.” I’d love to hear if this would be something that might interest you, your family, your students, your church group. Here are a few topics it might cover.

Does beauty matter today?

Why should Christians care about beauty when there’s so much need in the world?

Does true beauty really only come from within?

What is culture and why should we engage with it at all?

Why the Church should wake up and return to a posture of wonder and worship.

This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but if any of these topics strike you as interesting, or “Beauty & Culture” in general interests you, please take a quick moment and shoot me an email with your thoughts. Thank you in advance!

Housekeeping

Thanks for your patience with my sporadic postings of late. I’m under the pressure of two looming deadlines, so much of my output is focused on those projects.

For those new to this newsletter, welcome! This is an example of a free monthly newsletter style. It will be “digest” in form.

If you want to go deeper with me, consider subscribing and get the full enchilada.

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In 1994 architect and critic Jonathan Hale wrote a brilliant little book titled The Old Way of Seeing. In it, he laments the loss of life and play in modern American architecture.

Hale points to 1830 as the turning point.

Hale says prior to the 1830s architecture was altogether focused on something different. There was a magic to it—and intuitive beauty that made a person feel at home in their town.

“Architecture,” he says, “is the play of patterns derived from nature and ourselves.” He says that design is play, and “The disharmony we see around us is the exception.”

Architects now build lifeless structures that lack an identity and convey a kind of chaos rather than harmony. We feel this intrinsically, he says, though we may be unable to explain it fully. We sense it when we walk our neighbourhoods that tend to look monolithic, struggling under the burden of sameness and laden with symbols of times past in an attempt to convey something.

He attributes this loss of play and life in architecture to a lack of sight; a loss of the old way of seeing. Hale tracks this loss of sight to the 1820s when architecture lost its charm and delight. Buildings, says Hale, began to strike poses using symbols, like pillars, to communicate some kind of code, like heroic democracy or “greatness of vision.” Architecture turned from “expressions of the human spirit to structures laden with symbols.” A loss of magic and life.

Pattern ruled architecture before the 1820s. Patterns are ends in themselves and communicate directly to the viewer. After the 1830s everyday architecture attempted to either communicate through symbols instead of patterns or not to communicate at all.

The pressure for the modern designer of the 19th century, yea, even the artist, was to be always new. And by new Hale means strangeness. Not only is this is a burden for the designer but it also moves beauty further out of reach of the everyday person. Beauty becomes the province of specialists.

“Eh, but Tim,” you say, “I’m no architect. The only thing I design is avocado toast or perhaps my evening salad. What do Hale’s observations of modern architecture have to do with me?”

“Ah yes,” I reply. “Yes, architecture does sound like a distant discipline. But I had to remind myself that the buildings that surround us contribute to our immediate environment. Consciously or not, the vision of the Waxhaw Mainstreet affects my mood, my visual delight or visual disgust. And that which comes into my optics does indeed affect me on a deeper level.”

There is a sacredness to the places we build. You and I were created to create. We are, by design, builders and makers, and even if that is not our profession, we are wired to interpret the places we inhabit.

A place of chaos breeds tension. A place of pattern and play breeds, well, magic.

Whether it is a flower bed design, a perfectly patterned deck, or a playful chapel inviting us to worship, the places we inhabit connect us to something beyond the brick and mortar. Their pattern and play give us the joy of something familiar, the delight of home, and remind us that flourishing—that life itself—can and should be found in the places we gather.

Stay stoked my friends.

Support my work by becoming a beloved subscriber.

Thank you for your dedicated readership. Writers are nothing without readers.

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Why are we drawn to the idea of adventure?

What is an adventure? What does the word mean?

Certain words in our culture suffer from overuse and adventure is one of them. Watered down, these overused words become castaways in the lexicon of everyday language; once carrying significance, only to drift into the strange land of ubiquity.

Adventure for the modern person relates to our sensibilities now almost primarily through simulacra. When we do experience adventure in the physical, it comes via a controlled environment where safety and knownness dominate the experience. The rise of the novel contributed to our current sanitized relationship with adventure.

Since the nineteenth century, the public engaged with the idea of adventure by way of the novel. Stories like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1820), and James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826) captured the imagination of generations of readers who longed to travel and see new parts of the world and engage with foreigners.

The novel, however, lives downstream, so to speak, of the real frontier; of expanding cultures around the world. Fiction springs from experiences in the real world. We hear stories, seek to emulate them, and live them vicariously through an entertaining medium.

But adventure novels do touch something within the human psyche, something profound and on an existential level. We sense a calling to go forth and see for ourselves what lies in the beyond.

If we peer further into history, nearly 700 years ago, we find the world opening up to global travel.

Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521), a Portugues explore, is credited with organizing the first circumnavigation of the world. Magellan founded and named the Pacific Ocean—if it’s possible to name such a thing.

The story goes, when he and his caravan of ships entered the waters of the Pacific, the ocean was calm. Pacific means “peaceful.” It took over two months for them to cross the peaceful ocean—what we now call the Pacific. Many died from starvation and scurvy.

What prompted Magellan’s curiosity to plan such a voyage?

He set out to discover a way to travel westward to South-East Asia where he hoped to find exotic spices and gems. He only knew of the great ocean that lay beyond the Atlantic. He heard the call to, “Come, see, find.”

And, in order to reach his goal, he had to set out into the literal unknown, with only an off-chance of discovering a passage between the Americas. And he had to convince 260 men to join his expedition which required five ships.

But Ferdinand did not successfully complete the journey. He died searching for the gems and spices. He planned the expedition, but it was a man from his crew who would end up completing the circumnavigation around the world.

Adventure is something that happens along the journey. It’s what happens to you on the expedition. It cannot be planned. It must simply be experienced at the moment.

Born To Roam

Why do human beings risk death for the sake of discovering something new?

Experts in landscape, geography, and navigation remind us that a symbiotic relationship exists between human beings and the world in which we live. There is more to the space around us than simply location.

From birth, human beings exist within and explore space. Even in the womb, we come to know and understand the space in which we exist at a base level. As soon as we enter the world, our minds and emotions churn with an innate curiosity to understand our surroundings. We make mental maps of everything. The world imprints on us, spacially, psychologically, and spiritually (self, or creaturely, awareness).

John Stilgoe, a landscape historian, bemoans the twenty-first century’s trajectory as it careens into what economist Klauss Schwabb calls the Fourth Industrial Revolution—a time of digital, physical and biological fusion; a time that will redefine what it means to be human and “what it means to be completely embedded in this world.”

Stilgoe says living in a world in which everything is mapped out for you, where everything is known and safe, is a disaster for our lived experience. This kind of pre-planned and safe world is exactly the world found in a smartphone.

As new generations grow up on portable digital devices from a young age, they will lose their sense of curiosity, wonder, and desire to find their own way in the world.

Getting lost says Stilgoe, is an essential component of the human experience. It forces us to find our way, to explore the landscape, to truly see the world and how to live in it.

Even the way we adventure in our hyper-modern world reflects our inability to actually see the world aright. With the Global Positioning System (GPS) and Google Maps and a plethora of other smartphone apps, we no longer drive to a place reliant upon our experience of it. We listen to the computer. “Alexa, how do I get to Pisgah National Forest?”

We follow the silly blue dot, when we should be “seeing” the landscape and what it’s doing, how it’s shaped, and our place in relation to it.

Since the early Babylonian and Sumerian empires, humans relied upon the landscape, beneath the feet and in the sky, to navigate. Wayfinding was part of what it meant to live and travel. They knew the stars, how they signalled the seasons, and where they moved in relation to their own land.

Today, however, if you want to know how to get somewhere, you enter the data in your device and follow the directions or ping Siri. Having lost the ability to navigate on our own, having lost our relationship with the physical world, the true notion of adventure can only be grasped in a film or television series or a novel.

“But Tim,” you say, “aren’t you being hyperbolic. Adventure does not need to be month-long expeditions into unknown territories. Besides, haven’t we explored everything already? Do we really need adventure in our lives at the level you’re suggesting?”

“Ah yes,” I reply. “I agree there’s little left to discover over land. I do, however, wish to point out that adventure is not a consumer commodity. It is our human heritage. We’ve been given space on a terrestrial planet and launched, so to speak, by its Creator to learn and know who we are in relation to it, thus giving us a deeper understanding as we relate to him. Adventure, you see, is that, in part, for which we were made.”

One of J.R.R. Tolkien’s most beautiful lines comes from The Fellowship of the Ring: “… all who wander are not lost.” The line from Tolkien’s poem reminds us of two things. First, wandering is our natural state. And second, navigation isn’t always about certainty.

The ancients used the stars to navigate, and sometimes they used planets. Plantes, according to Harvard scientist John Edward Huth, are not as reliable as stars for navigation. The word planet means “wanderer.” The brightest planets (Mars, Jupiter and Venus), says Huth, can act as “temporary beacons for travellers, but they move against the fixed background of stars.”

Huth reminds us, however, that planets can still be used for navigation if one understands their motion. The motion of the planetary wanderers reminds us that wandering is a natural state of being. We are planets, in motion upon the fixed background of the earth. But if we cease moving, we lose our birthright as wanderers.

What Happens Along the Way

In this short reflection, we’ve still not defined adventure. Adventure comes from Latin and French and means to arrive, or what’s about to happen. We dub men like Magellan “adventurers.” But that moniker comes after the journey has ended in some fashion. Magellan was an explorer. He employed his natural curiosity to discover that for what his heart yearned. In his case, spices and gems.

The late literature professor Joseph Campbell, famous for his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces said heroes are called into an adventure. The call might be something tangible, like gems or spices, but there is something else under the surface that calls. As a professor of literature and world religions, he said this call came from the World Navel, the source of existence. As a Christian, I call this source the Creator God.

The landscape or something behind the landscape, the stars, the cosmos calls to us. It is the voice of God whispering to us through creation. To answer His call is to set out on the expedition of human existence. And what happens along the way? Well, that’s the adventure.

Stay stoked my friends.

You can still snag my birthday subscriber special, which runs through the end of the month.

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The stoke is back. And in my mind, we need it now more than ever.

2020 jolted us with a bit of despair and a dash of “Get me out of here,” or “Come, Jesus, come.” Seems like everyone believes their view is the best and if your view doesn’t jive, then you’re outta here.

But we all know that reasonable people don’t think like that.

We all know that respecting one another and our backgrounds and experiences is what it’s all about. These are universals. And we need it all to thrive—to survive, even.

We gather here in this little digital space because we believe in the stoke. We believe there’s a better way forward than what’s offered by talking heads and social media.

But just so we’re all on the same page, I thought I’d give a little stoke review.

“Eh, but Tim,” you say, “we know where the stoke comes from. And besides, shouldn’t you be discussing more relevant topics; you know, the kind that people like to gossip about and all of that. Why do you always veer away from the “in crowd” stuff into your little world of adventure and beauty?”

“Ah yes,” I reply. “So you do know all about the stoke. I am thankful for that. But I want to review, because who doesn’t need a bit of inspiration from the past. Furthermore, I believe the best way to stay relevant is to be about one’s own business; to be building and creating and imagining and marvelling. Besides, who wants to rehash trendy topics until your brain explodes?”

Well, here’s a quick review.

In the 1950s “the stoke” became a popular term for surf riders. For them, being on the waves was enough—you were “stoked” to be out there, feeling the ocean, drinking in the experience. To be stoked meant to be “overjoyed, ecstatic, thrilled, or delighted.”

We also find the word “stoke” attached to town or village names in the United Kingdom. It comes from the Old English term stoc, which means a settlement or farm. So, as a noun, stoke can mean a place.

But the word “stoke” also has roots in the Germanic language, from which we get the word “stick.” And the German was influenced by the Latin instigare which means, “to spur on.”

Turns out the German and Latin “stick” and “spur on” root their meanings in the idea of “adding fuel to the fire,” or using a stick to push the coals of a fire together—to get the flames raging, and burning brighter.

I love that we find this idea of “stoke” in the New Testament.

The writer of Hebrews urges his readers to stoke the fires of their faith.

He writes: “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.” But it’s not just about offering fellow Christians a word of encouragement.

The stoke comes from gathering together. Picture human beings as coals of a fire and also the sticks that poke those coals to get them burning brighter.

So, it’s when we gather, that we should be caught up in the act of stoking one another on toward love and good deeds.

But how do we do this in a COVID reality? That’s the question, and a difficult one.

Well, joining together here in this space is one way.

But you can also stoke those people around you, in your own sphere of influence.

Have you thought about how you’re doing that lately? Inspiring others with the way that you live out your faith?

Are you a source of stoke or despair?

Without the stoke in our lives, we stay in the status quo. We don’t challenge ourselves to elevate, we don’t seek whatever it is that lies out there beyond the horizon, we don’t look to the stars and imagine our place among them.

Here’s a quick hack for being the stoke for someone who needs it:

Remember that you carry eternity in your heart.

The writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us that all humans carry eternity in their hearts. But the tension comes from our inability to grasp it fully.

But, that does not mean we don’t reach for it, pray it in our lives, or do our utmost to mine the wonders of nature and Scripture for clues that will help us grasp how wide and how deep God’s love is for us.

Cosmologists tell us that there are at least 10 dimensions in our current reality. It’s mind-bending to think about God not only caring for us within the confines the of our trans-dimensional reality, but that somewhere beyond the realms of the cosmos he’s there, preparing something for us.

What does it mean to carry eternity in your heart? It means you carry the hope of glory within you. And hope does not disappoint.

The person who hopes rests her thoughts not on the things in this realm, but in God’s eternity. And the mere contemplation of such things can and does open our spirits up to new possibilities.

It’s the idea that if you just focus on the worst thing you’ve ever done, you’ll not move beyond that mistake.

But if you constantly flood your mind with an aim or goal or some big dream that pushes you beyond what you thought you could achieve, you discover how the mere thinking of that good goal can radically change your life.

That’s what it is to carry eternity in your heart. That’s what it is to be the shining bit of hope for your neighbour.

That’s how we stoke one another on toward love and good deeds.

Stay stoked my friends!

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A Foundation of Blood & Truth

Now is not the time to hide.

In-doors, in yourself, in your heart, in your faith.

A price was paid for you. Two thousand years ago the one they called Immanuel did something that shook the world. He introduced a new way to live, a new way to be alive.

He invited me and you to be part of his kingdom—a spiritual kingdom—a spiritual revival.

Give the Gift of Joy

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, y’all! Don’t forget to check out my Christmas audiobook, Shine So Bright, which is now available on Audible and Google Play and iTunes!

I wrote the story while we lived in Oxford for my three daughters. After a successful Kickstarter campaign to self-publish the story, my daughters thought it would be fantastic to have a version of me reading it.

Well, we loved how it turned out, and we hope you and your family will enjoy it too! It’s just under 20 minutes long, and is perfect for commutes to church or the apple orchard, car rides to Grammy’s house, and bedtime!

If you don’t like the traditional audiobook outlets, I’ve also got it for sale on my own site. Just click the blue button to check it out.

A New Daily Devotional

I’m launching a new devotional for 2021 just for men! And don’t despair ladies, I’m also working with my wife to produce one just for women!

Stay tuned as I’ll be giving you more information on it next week!

I’ve spoken with a lot of guys who said they’d love a super short devotional sent directly to their inboxes. So that’s what this will be: a short, maybe-two-minute read, as well as a few extra content bonuses each month.

Drop me a note and let me know if this is something that gets you excited and/or if it would be something you might gift to your husband, brother, or son.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! See you next week!

Cheers,

Tim

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“The fire is the main comfort of camp, whether in summer or winter.”

Henry David Thoreau

Sometimes, all you need is a fire.

The other day I went to the doctor for a routine check-up. The nurse and I chit-chatted about COVID and the crazy year we like to call 2020.

I told her about the bonfires we like to have in our cul-de-sac and the thought of it made her so happy.

“That’s so lovely,” she said. “I think we’re going to do the same thing with our cul-de-sac on Thanksgiving.”

Then, she went on to explain how if COVID has done anything positive for our society, it’s brought neighbours closer. She told of how her neighbours are meeting up like never before, sending notes, and doing projects together.

Of course, I nodded and agreed with everything she said.

Bonfires are like a balm to the soul. If I’m having a downer of a week, a fire under late autumn skies will lift me up quicker than almost anything.

Big Announcement:

My Christmas Audiobook is now on Audible!

LoLo Star just wants to fit in. She loves to dance in the Low Heavens, but the other stars make fun of her because her shine is so dim. But one day, LoLo Star meets a very different star who has a very special task for LoLo Star.

Shine So Bright is the delightful Christmas story about a little star named LoLo Star. The High Stars make fun of LoLo Star because she doesn't shine so bright. When the Naughty North Wind blows LoLo Star out into Far Heaven LoLo Star feels sad and thinks her star-shine is no good.

Then she is visited by Mr. Moon who brings a very special message to LoLo Star. Someone is looking for her and has a very important task that only LoLo Star can do.

What is this wonderful task?

Huddle with your family around the Christmas Tree or fireplace and enjoy the beautiful story of Shine So Bright.

Now, available on Audible!

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If you and I want to contribute to making the world a better place, a more beautiful place, then we must learn to give up our self. This is a requirement of beauty—the kind of beauty we understand and see with the eyes of the heart.

But beauty doesn’t seem to be on the minds of the public right now. It seems like the thing people love to do at the moment is to tell others who to vote for or how much of a bad person they are if they hold to certain views or embrace certain values. We enjoy shouting one another down.

I remember, as a young boy, my dad telling me that the kids who fight the most are the ones most in need of a friend. And I seem to remember some grunge lyric from back in the day saying that the empty can rattles the most.

Our culture sounds like a host of rattling cans.

Start the Holiday Season with a Jolt of Joy

I’m receiving great feedback from several of you about my children’s Christmas audiobook Shine So Bright. I couldn’t be happier.

And now, I’m excited to tell you that it’s available in several more audiobook outlets! Click on any of the links below to listen to a sample and purchase for you, your kiddos, your grandchildren or your cat.

iTunes

Google Play

Walmart

Audiobooks.com

Chirp

Libro.fm

The Edges

StoryTel

Booktopia (AU)

LoveReading4Kids (UK)

LoveReading (UK)

Parting Thought

The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within and attacked from without.
— T.S. Eliot, The Rock

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What does it mean to be an outsider? How do we deal with the pressure to be included, to be accepted in a culture that likes to dictate who we are to be, what we are to like, and who our friends should be?

This is the topic of today’s Stoke. Take 7 minutes, have a listen, share with a friend, and get busy with life.

Read The Stoke

Listen to The Stoke

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Until next week, stay stoked my friends.

Cheers,

Tim

PS: For those of you podcast subscribers, I’d be delighted if you took 25 seconds to leave the podcast a nice five-star rating. The more positive ratings it receives, the more people will find the Stoke.

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The weather has turned here in Waxhaw, North Carolina. A cool wind swept through the woods this morning signaling that autumn was making her entrance.

I trust your week went well and that today is filled with rest and renewal. I’ve pared back my posts these last few weeks because I’m working on a new project I hope to tell you about soon. I know I’ve been threatening to do that for a while now, but trust me, the announcement is coming. Until then, please enjoy this bit of encouragement for your weekend and feel free to look me up on social media.

Read the Stoke

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All the best,

Tim

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And here it is, another Saturday. Welcome, dear friends, to the weekend. I trust your week was full of life and laughter. I hope you enjoy the Stoke, that it brings you a smile and some inspiration.

I’m working on a newly revamped site with a few surprises I think you’ll like. Getting close to unveiling it to you all.

In the meantime, have a listen, drop a note and let me know how you’re doing and what you’re most looking forward to this autumn.

Listen to the Stoke

Read the Stoke

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Want to get whisked away to a faraway land? Join me today for The Stoke as we take a quick jaunt to the Four Corners and sit with me beneath the whale stars. What does brilliance sound like? Find out, and breathe in the majesty of the stillness of God. And have a fantastic holiday weekend!

Listen to The Stoke

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Stay stoked, my friends.

All the best,

Tim

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Just in time for your afternoon cup of tea. Or coffee. Or lemonade. Or perhaps you don’t drink fluids on Saturdays. In that case, here’s something to chew on.

Read The Saturday Stoke

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Stay stoked my friends!

Cheers,

Tim

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Good Saturday to you all, my friends. Earlier this week we returned from our trip to the great north—the great state of Pennsylvania, what my youngest daughter, Zion, likes to call “the mountains.” I have a feeling that summer will relinquish it’s grip sooner than last year. At least, I’m hoping it will. I’m ready for flannels, fires, and friendy bonfires once again.

For those of you who are looking at homeschooling for this coming school year, I’m very close to having two courses ready for high school age students. One will be on Apologetics & C.S. Lewis, the other will be a practical guide for writing a research paper. I’ll also be offering personal tutoring on writing for students and writers alike! Drop me a note to let me know of your interest. And please do pass this info on to friends who are looking for resources for their high schoolers.

In the meantime, I’ll be working on my patio, riding the local trails, and getting to the Black Mountains as often as I can.

Keep the faith, my friends, do the work in front of you, and stay stoked.

Cheers,

Tim

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Good Saturday to you all, my friends. Today, I’ll be working on a patio I’m building in the back yard. It will be in the 90s so pray for my hydration. We’re readying to head to Pennslyvania for a week, so next time you hear from me I’ll probably be fawning over the wonderful landscape of Lancaster County.

In the meantime, keep the faith, do the work in front of you, and stay stoked.

Cheers,

Tim

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I know what you’re thinking.

“Boy, I wish I had something to listen to that was maybe five or six minutes long—something that would transport me for the briefest of moments, and leave me feeling, well, inspired.”

Well, I can’t guarantee goosebumps or total inspiration or if you’ll even like it. But I can guarantee it was made with love with the hope that perchance a bit of inspiration might find its way to your heart on this Saturday afternoon.

So, by the time you’re done pouring some sweet tea or making your parfait or frying up some grilled cheese, the Stoke will be over, and you, my friend, will feel, well, inspired.

Have a great weekend friends!

LISTEN OR READ THE SATURDAY STOKE.

SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES.

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It’s Saturday! Got five minutes? Then you have time for a little stoke.

During term time for our girls, once a week they pack in the old rover with their mom and head off to their Classical Conversations co-op. The fun and frantic morning fills up with feet running up and downstairs, with lunches being made, with arguments and laughter and finally kisses and good-byes.

I like to walk them out to the garage and kiss them and hug them multiple times.

And my favorite thing to say to them is, “I love you, my sweet love. Remember, do your best work as unto the Lord.”

Have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Tim

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Thoreau said, “All good things are wild and free.” His now-famous statement comes at the end of a rather lengthy but well-wrought and important essay on the value of “Nature,” walking, and wildness.

In the essay, Thoreau notices how all great founders of nations and empires did so after being weened on wilderness. Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome, for example, were suckled and reared by a wolf. And ironically that great empire fell at the hands of other children of the wolf—the northern barbarians. Why did Rome fall? Because the children of the wolf-brothers became fat and sophisticated and soft—they traded their wolf-ness for the tameness of “proper” society.

I wonder too if we, as Christians and the Church, haven’t lost our own wolf-ness. And by wolf-ness I mean our innate wildness. Think for a moment about how we view the wilderness in today’s world of luxury. We understand wilderness in this way: the wilderness we see and experience is rugged yet beautiful; remote yet accessible; dangerous yet Instagram-worthy. We can visit the wilderness when we want to, keeping it at arm’s length. Wilderness in today’s world has almost become a commodity; something we control, something used for branding, something we consume rather than experience in deep ways that speak to and minister to our spirits.

THE TEMPEST AND THE BLOOM

Don’t forget to sign up to receive this week’s brand new installment of my serial novel, The Tempest and The Bloom. I’ll be kicking off the KICKSTARTER campaign for the novel right after THE FOURTH OF JULY. And you’ll be able to hold the novel in your own hands and read it in its entirety!

Go Deeper into My Rabbit Hole

This email goes out to everyone on my email list. But if you like what you see here, and want support more of my work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll have my eternal gratitude! Take advantage of this special Book Club offer.

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The empty page. For some people, an empty page is hell on earth. They can’t stand it. The empty page intimidates because it’s on you, the writer, to make the mark on the page. And please, let it be good. Let it be compelling, right?

The almighty page! Full of death or possibility. Which will it be?

Writers have been filling empty pages for a long time. Have you ever thought about what makes the act of writing words down on paper that is powerful? We’ve been doing it now for millennia.

On today’s new episode of The Saturday Stoke, I explore the power of an empty page and reflect on how each day we have the opportunity and responsibility to fill the empty pages of our own lives.

The Tempest and The Bloom

There’s a new instalment waiting for your viewing pleasure! Head over and sign up so you never miss the adventure.

Tim’s Book Club

Don’t forget, my new book club begins on June 22!

We’ll be reading The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. Click here for info on the club!

This book club is for paid subscribers only. Right now you can sign up for the price of two Chick-fil-A milkshakes a month! Join the growing community of readers supporting my work and who are eager to engage on a deeper level.

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I’ve been doing some evaluating and fielding comments from some of you faithful podcast listeners and have decided to change things up. Though the Stoke began simply as me reading a special Saturday blog post, I’m now going to veer from that format into something more loose and organic. I hope you listen along. My ultimate goal with The Stoke is to inspire you for the coming week.

So, let me know what you think.

The Tempest and The Bloom

PART 3—BEYOND THE BORDERLANDS is now live. Relax on the back porch and give it a read. And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an instalment.

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Why do you love stories?

Have you ever thought about it? Here’s my short answer, because I’ve been rolling this question in my head lately.

Stories take me to a far off place only to inspire my right-here-and-now. The pilgrim-wanderer in me loves the epic journey but also the sense of home in finally getting there, wherever there is.

But as a writer, creating stories does something to me as well. Crafting a story, as I’ve been doing lately with The Tempest and The Bloom, allows me to report imaginary events, yes; allows me to be a world-maker, sure. But for me, the raucous joy of storytelling lets me guide a reader from the mundane to the mysterious, through hell, and to the mountain top of glory.

Storytelling gives me the power to send hope to a reader, like blue light from Gandalf’s staff.

Hope, too, is what we long for each day. It’s central to the human condition. Without it, we wither. With it, we conquer the enemy, we save the princess, we restore order, we quell the chaos, we kill the dragon.

Kill your dragon today. And help someone else kill theirs. Write another line in your story today, but remember. Epic stories aren’t “about” heroes. Instead, they tell the tale of hope. We’re not the main characters in “our stories.” We’re guides for all the pilgrims of this world looking for hope.

Read My Story

Join me weekly as I share installments of my novel The Tempest and The Bloom. We’re a community of readers and thinkers, wanderers and pilgrims. Part 3 drops this week!

Jack the Storyteller

“The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity.’ The child enjoys his cold meat, otherwise dull to him, by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savory for having been dipped in a story…by putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it.”

―C.S. Lewis, On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature

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The Other Side of the Wind

She crawled up beside, her slight frame a twig against the trunk of my body. Then, as she’s prone to do, she slipped up and over my leg and onto my lap. She burrowed her head into my chest as if she could somehow make it inside of me, her a tangle of gold and spring sunshine.

“What are you doing,” she said as she finally emerged from the hole she was burrowing into my chest.

“Oh, I’m just sitting here, listening.”

“To what?”

“Listen … do you hear it.”

She squirmed over, her back on my belly. I closed my arms around her and we sat for what felt like her lifetime.

“Oh, the wind,” she said after she’d grown up in my arms.

“Yes, you stinker. The wind. Look, look there—that one tree. See it swaying back and forth.”

“Uh-huh. And all the other trees aren’t swaying. Just leafing.”

I smiled. “Yes, just leafing. Look at how far it sways. And it’s so big.”

“Daddy?”

“Yes, my love.”

“I love how wind feels on my skin, so soft and light, and how it’s strong enough to move trees.”

I looked down her frame and smiled in disbelief at the magical power of seeing she possessed. She held her arms out to the treeline and moved her left hand over her right arm—acting like the wind was gently passing over her rosy skin. And then she pointed both hands to the treeline and with fingers spread she made a grabbing motion, acting out the other side of the wind.

Suddenly, a gale pushed through our woods—violent with clacking wood sounds.

She squirmed around and burrowed back into the hole in my chest, and fell asleep.

The Tempest and The Bloom

I’d only read the first few lines when the journal trembled briefly in my hands. My eyes widened but I kept reading. And as I read the words, a web of crystalline light rose up from the page. I wanted to drop the journal, but the rising light possessed me and forced me to keep reading and holding it. Each word leapt off the page, quite literally, and formed an image—the exact image or scene I was describing. I saw the girl being chased by a dark animal-like figure. It was as if she was running towards me, looking back over her shoulder through dense woods.

Then I saw her escape the beast by leaping off of a cliff and into a deep river below. I gasped as I read. The words controlled me as the scenes gathered more detail. I saw the rain hitting her face, the fir trees cutting her arms, the pain in her face, and the figure I could now see was a gigantic bear—unearthly in its size, with terrible eyes aflame with rage.

Tchik-awww—I heard the gunshot. My gunshot.

And then the scene shifted. I was seeing through her eyes, lying in the mud, looking up into raindrops. I could hear her shivers. And then there I stood. I reached down and picked her up, and then the scene dissipated. As quickly as the crystalline web appeared, it vanished.

Hope is Greater

Is anyone thirsty? Come!
All who will, come and drink,
Drink freely of the Water of Life!

—The Bright and Morning Star

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Wrens don’t ask for permission to nest in the empty crock on your back porch. They just do it.

And then, they sneak in and out of the perfectly woven nest. But, if you sit perfectly still—while sipping your tea of course—you can spy the little winged bandit hopping around the deck chairs and kurplunking in its nest.

He’s a bandit because he’s stolen his spot. The abandoned crock isn’t his, but hey, nobody was using it, so, finders keepers.

And he’s a bandit because he’s stolen my attention and the attention of all three of my daughters—a distraction from distractions.

“I’m sure he’s got friends. I wonder if they'll show?” I think to myself, muttering quasi-out-loud while I return to the kitchen for more tea.

And he does, and they do. Only they don’t steal sites for their nests. They sit perched, cloaked in the green of the forest, hooting their approval of their Wren Bandit buddy.

There’s not much we can do in this life that doesn’t require a smidge of bandit-ing. Stealing nesting spots is just like stealing hearts. Only without the feathers and matted moss lining our spirits.

And sneaking into our stolen spot is a lot like getting closer in our friendship. One, two, three, and look at me, I’m your closest friend.

Bandit some today. And make the world a stealing place of wonder and nesting—or friendships and love. You get the picture.

The Tempest and The Bloom

What’s This All About?

The Tempest and The Bloom is a novel I began a few years ago and decided to do a major rewrite on it during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The story follows the adventures of Will Taylor as he tries to save the life of a strange and enchanted young woman named Aylin.

I’ll add more here soon regarding the synopsis.

I plan to publish the novel through Kickstarter, so when you sign up, you’ll be on the ground floor of getting this project into the hands of readers everywhere. The goal is to publish it by the end of fall, in time for the Christmas season.

The Saturday Stoke

Yeah, It’s Monday

“The sun himself is weak when he first rises; and gathers strength and courage as the day gets on.”

—Charles Dickens

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“I don’t want to forget what I love when I get older.”

That’s what my daughter, Brielle—who is ten years old—said to me the other day. She observed how grown-ups, as she called them, stop doing the things they love to do.

“Why do they do that, Daddy?” she asked. And it’s a good question.

Why do adults stop singing and playing? Why do adults stop using their imaginations? Why do they stop listening to music?

I remember years ago a friend of mine, who was a mentor of sorts, told me that he couldn’t remember when it happened, but he had stopped listening to music—the kind he grew up listening to.

“Tim,” he said, “I don’t listen to music now. Ever.”

I was stunned. And I vowed right then and there that was never going to happen to me.

I told Brielle that it was because adults start to listen to the cranky voices of the world that whisper lies to them about what it means to grow up and what is expected of you as a quote-unquote older person.

But this theme of adults fading away and becoming very unlike children—yea, unlike humans at all—continued at dinner.

All three girls debated the behaviour of their friends and some new kids they were playing with that day. They struggled to find common ground in their “game”—which is their word for playing pretend in the woods with forts and clans and rules and a whole sub-world. You know, really fun stuff we all wish we were still doing.

When they asked my advice, I told them to take care to learn how to empathize with people and to observe how they resolved their issues because many of the problems they’re encountering now, don’t change or go away when they get older.

“When you get older,” I said, “you will argue, debate and even fight with your friends and your not-quite-friends over the same basic things: acceptance, popularity, being excluded, hurting someone’s feelings, and on and on.

“But the difference,” I said, “is that grown-ups stop talking to each other. When one gets offended, they will more likely hold a grudge or just stop talking to you than seek to work things out right there on the spot. And if things get really debased, they’ll post something about you on social media.

The girls did not understand this. They did not understand why adults, having quote- unquote-grown up, would not have figured out how to be good friends to one another and not fight and be kind and accepting.

“Why do adults not care about each other,” they asked.

I didn’t have a good answer. But I gave it a shot.

“Adults,” I replied, “just like kids, want to be accepted. They want to feel “cool,” and they want others to care for their feelings. But something sad happens when you age. You lost that kid-power that allows you to not hear that voice of fear that keeps you from confrontation.

“When you’re a kid, there’s a beauty and simplicity to fighting and getting over it. But when you’re an adult, new invisible rules apply to relationships. And these rules are founded upon selfishness, fear, and pride.

“So,” I said to them, “if you can figure this stuff out now, and be aware of how you work things out and how deeply you care for others as well how badly you want others to care for you, then you’ll be ahead of the game when you get older.”

They nodded their heads in silence, finished their peas and rice, and dashed off for the woods with new hope for their most precious friendships.

“But Tim,” you say, “are you suggesting we all remain as little children, wearing our hearts on our sleeves, and fighting through our problems so that we can get back to playing in the woods?”

“Ah yes,” I reply. “That’s precisely what I’m saying.”

Stay stoked my friends.

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The Tempest and The Bloom

Part 2 just dropped! And you can read all the previous posts on the e-reader of your choice. Subscribe and come along with us as we adventure with Will Taylor and his mysterious new friend who’s on the run from a demon bear. No, really. It’s intense. And fun. And you don’t want to miss it.

Wisdom for the Weekend

“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”

—Marcus Aurelius

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They say that the average tree holds about 50,000 leaves.

Now imagine the number of leaves in the forest down the road or at your state or national park. Millions, even billions of leaves.

Now imagine the sound that many leaves create in the world.

Just a few months ago, the trees stood bare and dormant. With spring, the world fills with sound. And that sound changes in the autumn before the leaves fall. For three quarters of the year, the leaves perform in dance and song—a ballet and symphony of wondrous sound.

We may be experiencing a time of “winter” in the world right now; a time of stillness and dormancy. But our hope rests in the coming spring when we can again make music as the leaves of humanity.

Let us consider the song of the leaves today and determine to add to the cacophony of sound in our unique God-ordained way.

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How My Daughters See Me

The Tempest and The Bloom

More and more of you, each day, are signing up for my novel. That’s so exciting! The next instalment is coming soon. In the meantime, get caught up on Part 1!

Parting Thought

“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”

― Theodore Roosevelt

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Each day the decision lays before us. Will I trust in myself, the work of my own hands? Or will I trust in the Lord, even when I can’t see a sure outcome?

Outcomes rule our societal language. Investors seek a return on investments. Business executives want to see positive outcomes each quarter of business. And it’s not wrong to pursue outcomes like this—signals of growth.

But when it comes to our personal lives and our daily sustenance, it’s nice to see that check coming in a week. It’s nice to know the insurance is paid up. And it’s nice to know that I made that happen. I worked hard. I earned the money. I put bread on the table. It’s tangible, this work of our hands.

But what happens when the work dries up, or a pandemic takes away your job? What then? The confidence we so quickly put in our own efforts diminishes, and suddenly we have to trust in something other than ourselves.

This is the plight of every person: to seek first the kingdom of God, to walk humbly with your God, to put your trust in him in all things.

Trust builds over time. The more we place our trust in God the more we see him provide. And then, the more we are willing to walk in his footsteps when the pathway narrows when we can only see to the next bend.

Today offers me and you another opportunity to trust in God. Will we take it?

The Psalms Audiobook

Several of you have emailed asking for me to narrate the entire book of Psalms. So, I’m mulling and quasi-planning to produce an audiobook of the entire book of Psalms.

I’ve inquired with some translations with regard to rights, so some of it hinges on whether I can obtain them. But, raise your hand if this interests you. And by “raise your hand,” I mean, leave a comment below with a thumbs up or quick note or some fun signal of affirmation. It would take some time, but I’d love to do it.

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Don’t Ever Give Up—Regaining Our Spiritual Grit

The Tempest and The Bloom

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Parting Thought

“I try all things, I achieve what I can.”

—Herman Melville, Moby Dick

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Today’s reading comes from a Psalm that challenges us to check our perspectives when we see others who maybe have not done good things find success. It’s hard to maintain an eternal point of view when those who seek only their own success find it, while others might suffer, or only find failure.

The antidote to this reality in life is adopting God’s point of view. He sees everything from an eternal perspective, so he knows what will come of this person’s supposed success. Adopting his point of view, however, requires us to live out our trust in him. It’s one thing to express faith in God, it’s another thing to entrust into his care the success or failure of our endeavours.

We’re trained to seek success and to measure ourselves by it. But God desires our obedience above all. Seeking success for its own sake brings its own problems.

We can trust God because he is good, and has our needs in mind as a provider, but also our desires in mind as our creator. When we trust in his goodness, the bad things in life can hardly deter us from God’s plan for us.

The Tempest and The Bloom

More and more of you, each day, are signing up for my novel. That’s so exciting! The next instalment is coming soon. In the meantime, get caught up on Part 1!

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How To Become a Spiritual Minimalist

Parting Thought

French theologian and poet François Fénelon wrote:

“Let your anxiety flow away like a stream. Turn toward devotion and simplicity. Listen to God and be deaf to yourself. When you are in a place of calm and quiet rest, do all that you sense within your spirit.”

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Welcome to this week’s Saturday Stoke. It’s a reflection on how we live out our story day in and day out. How we manifest hope in our lives and a reminder that though calamity and pain find us on our journey, this narrative we call life, Christ remains our hope.

As always, share with friends, leave a note in the comments, and click the heart to show some love for the stoke.

The Tempest and The Bloom

A new chunk of my serial novel just dropped. You should check it out. After all, it’s Saturday and you could easily read it while sipping lemonade on the back porch.

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Some years ago, author and apologist Ravi Zacharias described modern times as perhaps the bleakest in world history. His words ring a bit truer today, don’t they?

Think about this. If the history of humanity can be viewed as a narrative, then what kind of story do we find ourselves living?

If it is a tragedy, as some would have us believe, then the only thing we have to look forward to is an endless cycle of meaninglessness. Others describe this life as one long journey in which the destination holds no importance; what matters is to travel hopefully.

C.S. Lewis, however, replies to that notion by saying, “If that were true, and known to be true, how could anyone travel hopefully? There would be nothing to hope for?”

Something beyond us makes hope what it is.

Walk backwards with me a few months to the Christmas holiday. Doesn’t it seem so long ago?

In Revelation 12 we find an almost mythical rendering of what transpired in the heavens just before Mary gave birth to Jesus. It’s Christmas but from the angels’ perspective. Writer Philip Yancey says it’s what Christmas must have looked like from somewhere beyond Andromeda. The great red dragon storms the gates of heaven intent to devour the Child-redeemer. But the archangel Michael and his angel army war against the dragon and throw him to the earth, victorious.

Lewis’s good friend and fellow fantasy fiction writer J.R.R. Tolkien described the truth of this glorious heavenly battle by invoking his made-up or seussed word “eucatastrophe,” which means the joyous upturn in storytelling. “The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe {joyous upturn} of man’s history,” he writes. “The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends with joy … such joy has the very taste of primary truth.”

For Tolkien and Lewis, the primary truth of this story was the Christmas and Easter eucatastrophe—the joyous turn for all of humankind. And this is exactly the hope of our faith.

The magic Tolkien and Lewis wield in their stories keep us reading their books. But perhaps the greatest magic they weave comes to us through the very winsomeness of their myth-making ability.

Writer and poet G.K. Chesterton said the mythologies of the ages “sought God through imagination, or sought truth by means of beauty.” If that’s true then Tolkien and Lewis have guided us past the dragons and that much closer to the truth and beauty and hope of our collective story.

And today, we need more myth makers, more hope wielders. We need to be people who write the hope of the world upon the very minutes of life lived, day in and day out.

We may find ourselves marooned in strange times. But we possess the hope of a way out. And it’s our duty and task to show others that way, through the hope of glory.

The Tempest and The Bloom

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One of the benefits of this quarantine is that it’s forced the world to slow down. And I hope we don’t miss the opportunity to see this world again, for the first time.

The English poet Gerard Manly Hopkins believed, “What you look hard at seems to look hard at you.” It’s the idea that the more time we spend observing something, the more knowledge we gain.

Have you ever noticed that when you know little of something you have a hard time describing it?

“That seems obvious, but so what?”

Well, have you ever considered how well we even know how to describe a tree or the sky or the ocean? One of the favorite examples of this is Victorian British art critic John Ruskin’s explanation of our common misconception about the nature of ocean waves:

Most people think of waves as rising and falling. But if they look at the sea carefully, they will perceive that the waves do not rise and fall.

They change.

Change both place and form, but they do not fall; one waves goes on, and on, and still on; now lower, now higher, now tossing its mane like a horse, now building itself together like a wall, now shaking, now steady, but still the same wave, till at last it seems struck by something, and changes, one knows now how,—becomes another wave.

When I first read Ruskin’s observation of the nature of an ocean wave, I sat stunned. “Of course,” I thought. I was amazed at my own inability to describe something so common as a wave.

Then I began looking at other natural things we (read: I) take for granted, like the sky and trees.

When I really stopped to consider their makeup, their nature, even their colour, I discovered that I’d raced right passed these objects, or even worse, I simply ignored them.

If I valued beauty, if I pursued beauty, would it not show in my understanding and appreciation of the world?

Had I fallen prey to our photographic and convenience-drunk society, failing to look at things that I can’t scroll?

Perhaps we don’t see all that well, because our lack of patience creates in us an attitude of not caring.

How has this time of “slow” helped you with regard to slowing down?

To read more on the value of chasing beauty, continue the post here.

The Tempest and The Bloom

What readers are saying:

“Wow. I’m sitting on edge, and can’t wait to read more. Hurry up with it please.”

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Dear Friends,

Today’s evening reading is Psalms 150, a psalm of praise and adoration. It reminds us that even in the darkest times, the most uncertain times, God deserves our praise. Indeed, praising God delights the heart and revives the soul. Here are five things you can do right now to praise God:

For what can you praise God today? List them.

How can you express your adoration to him? A prayer, a painting, a monetary gift.

List the many things for which you are thankful.

Remember the times God provided for you in the past and tell him, “Thank you, Lord.”

Sing a song, write a note, or listen to your favourite worship song as a way to give him raise.

Cheers,

Tim

The Tempest and The Bloom

Don’t forget to check out the newest instalment of my novel this evening, after you put the kids down, or finish your evening snack or walk. It just dropped today!

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Dear Friends,

It feels like Christmas. No, not with winter snows and gift-giving and warm cider. But the spirit of Christmas.

That’s what I told my wife Sunday evening after we finished watching the remake of Little Women, quite possibly the most beautiful film made in the last five years. But that’s a post all its own. I told my wife it felt like Christmas because of the intimacy felt during this Easter season.

Usually, Easter feels rather thrown together. A Sunday service, lunch or dinner with family or friends or both. And a nice afternoon nap.

This year, however, our family, much like yours, had more time on our hands. Or at least it feels that way since we can’t go anywhere. We’ve lingered longer at the dinner table. We’ve read Scripture together longer, and prayed more. On Thursday we turned our dinner into a three-fold communion service, complete with a love feast, a foot washing, and the bread and the cup. It was a sweet time reading John 13 and talking about Jesus being the Bread of Life and what the season meant with our daughters.

We took the opportunity to place a pause on Easter baskets and let the girls know we weren’t doing eggs this year. And there would be no gifts, like new outfits or chocolate. Some might think this excessive, but we found it rather freeing.

We teamed up with our neighbours and met out by our fire pit in the woods for an Easter Sunrise Service. And almost of all the neighbours came out at 6:30 am. We read from John and Revelations and shared thoughts on the meaning of Easter in the time of COVID-19. I felt rejuvenated and blessed.

So, today I feel especially revived in my spirit. We still can’t go anywhere. And our economy is still on pause. Many people are suffering and without jobs and lost and confused, but one thing remains the same: He is risen, indeed.

In a changing world, I find great comfort knowing that God does not change and that his saving grace reaches beyond the grave and shows us the way to eternal life.

This is why it feels like an extension of Christmas for the first time in a long time. Because the light that came into the world has shown us the way home through Christ’s work on the cross and his conquering of the tomb.

I pray you safe and encouraged today, y’all, and hope that you the words of Psalm 101 will minister to you.

Blessings to you all.

Cheers,

Tim

Special Easter Edition of The Stoke

If you missed the specialEaster Edition of The Saturday Stoke, you can listen to it and/or read it by clicking the button below. I included a song I recorded back in the band days called, “Away.” Check it out.

The Tempest and The Bloom

Join others in reading my serial novel, The Tempest and The Bloom. If you haven’t read the introduction, take some time before bed tonight to get caught up. I’m excited about the good feedback thus far and can’t wait to see how you all like the second instalment.

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Dear Friends,

Think how special this Easter weekend really is. I mean, in our world in which we too often speed from one appointment to another, from one errand to another, here we all are, at home. We’re not running to and fro. We’re waiting, listening, learning.

I hope today’s Stoke finds you safe and doing well. I hope it encourages you to pull your loved ones a bit closer. And to sit with Jesus and just be. And to consider the wonderful gift of life he’s given to you. What’s more, I hope the joy you receive from reflecting on these things, inspires you to share your joy and your hope with others.

He is risen, my friends! He is risen, indeed.

Happy Easter.

Cheers,

Tim

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John Muir Wilderness, Sierra National Forest

Dear Friends,

In early October of 1877, John Muir travelled by boat and train from San Francisco to the Middle Fork of the King’s River to explore ‘the new Yosemite.’ In his unpublished journal, he describes a night storm he experienced out in the wilderness.

At midnight the storm songs of the wind began to sound on the mountain-tops, and, looking up twenty-five hundred feet, I saw a cloud ragged with streamers on the edges. In a few moments snow flowers began to fly with the awful deliberation of a mountain storm. The gray light of the coming dawn began to mingle with the dull starlight.

Then a thin metallic white clearness appeared on the canyon cliffs, below which the storm wrapped the peaks in gray. … Then a yet stranger light came on. The cliffs here and there caught a glow of yellow, changing the white gradually to rose. One beheld a thousand views of clouds—a new climate, a new world. The mighty pines glowed like flames, and the falling waters rejoiced as if conscious of the treasures being heaped in their fountains. … Shafts of glad, warm sunlight came streaming through the pines.

We understand wilderness in this way: rugged yet beautiful; remote yet accessible; dangerous yet Instagram-worthy.

But wilderness takes different forms and expresses varied meanings. We need only turn to the Scriptures to find another kind of wilderness.

It’s easy to get caught pitching wilderness with negative hues; a place of evil, uninhabitable, fraught with danger and demons.

But wilderness in the Bible is also, paradoxically a place of refuge, deliverance and preparation.

I think of Jesus, who often retreated to the wilderness to seek the will of his Father. How, after he shouted into death and brought Lazarus back to life, he retreated to the wilderness area with his disciples and stayed away from the Jews.

Have you ever thought about what he was doing during those days before he returned to Bethany? Did he struggle in the nights with fervent prayer, knowing the path that lay before him? Did he try to spend just a few more carefree evenings by the fire with his brothers, talking about his “kingdom” and the place his father was preparing? Did he walk into the wilderness where angels met him to minister to him? Did he and John peel off from the group for a “talk”—the kind intimate friends have before one of them must endure something hard, like a surgery, or months away from family, or going off to war?

Perhaps for Jesus, wilderness was that place of utter dependence upon his Father. There, he regained his physical strength. There, he remained, abiding in the awe of heaven.

Wild and Free

Some say the Enlightenment stripped the wilderness of the western mind of holiness. Gone were the theophanies and meetings of demons and pillars of fire. Only the sanitized wilderness of conservation, animal rescue and park services remained—a romantic view of a most beautiful and terrible place. I am first among those who seek to preserve the beauty of the land. But I am also among those who notice how materialism has even moulded wilderness into a commodity.

Thoreau said, “All good things are wild and free.” His now-famous statement comes at the end of a rather lengthy but well-wrought and important essay on the value of “Nature,” walking, and wildness.

Thoreau notices how all great founders of nations and empires did so after being weened on wilderness. Romulus and Remus were suckled and reared by a wolf. And ironically that great empire fell at the hands of other children of the wolf—the northern barbarians. Why did they fall? Because the children of the wolf-brothers became fat and sophisticated and soft—they traded their wolf-ness for the tameness of “proper” society.

I wonder too if we haven’t lost our own wolf-ness. Of course, ours is not such a wolf-ness as can be found here on earth. We were suckled in the imagination of the greater and powerful logos. Breathed into by the avian wonder of the Holy Ghost, and spoken into existence by the voice from thunder and storm.

Yes, this is our wilderness—a cosmic glory of wild sanctuary.

We find ourselves, today this Good Friday, in a time of wilderness. And so many of us are not comfortable. We feel unsettled in isolation. We thirst for the normalcy of speed and pace and bustle. We feed ourselves by bingeing the nights away. We gorge ourselves on whatever is simple and easy. Why?

Because we’ve lost the ability to rest and retreat. We’ve lost the grit needed to spend days in isolation from society. We’re not content with a walk in the woods. We’ve not trained ourselves in the childlike art of marvelling at the simple wonders of the world—like the full moon in late evening, or Venus striding the western heavens, or the noble blue bird dipping and diving up and over branches to her little ones.

We live generations on from the bloodroot of the early church and have forgotten the wholeness and beauty that comes from the simple acts of prayer and fasting.

Today my mind drifts to Jesus, and how he readied himself on the fringes of wilderness so that he could journey to the wilderness of the spirit world and set us free from a dry and weary land of sin and separation.

He took the cat of nine tails. He took the rod upon the back. He took the strikes in the face. The crushing of thorns into his scalp. He took the ripping out of his beard. He took on the shame of the tree and the heaving of mockery and slander.

He is the wild one. And he has set us free.

Blessings to you all.

Cheers,

Tim

The Tempest and The Bloom

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Dear Friends,

Welcome to this evening edition of The Psalms.

Easter cometh. Can you feel it? I sure can. And it’s different this year, isn’t it? No running about gathering baskets or gifts (if that’s your thing). The mood, though sombre, feels more focused. At least, that’s how I’m feeling about it.

{And yes, I’ve set my spellcheck to British rules, in case you were wondering:)}

I’ve mentioned before that we’ve been reading through John’s gospel account as a family. Last night, we read all the way until Jesus wept over his dear friend Lazarus and then shouted into death and brought him back to life.

And then we read how Jesus left there and spent time out near the wilderness with his disciples.

Then the vagabond band of holy wanderers returned to Bethany where they had a feast in honour of Jesus. Lazarus was there, too. Can you imagine?

Not even a week ago the man had been dead for four days. And now here he was, reclining with Jesus and his sisters eating and drinking. What a scene!

I stopped reading for a moment and said to the girls, “Can you guys imagine this scene.”

Without skipping a beat, Lyric, my twelve-year-old said, “It’s so crazy to think that all those people gathered and there was Lazarus who was just in a tomb just days before. What did those people think?!” Ha! Exactly!

No doubt word had spread like wildfire what Jesus had done in Bethany. “The whole world had gone after him,” says the Scriptures.

The many who came to the feast to see Jesus and Lazarus greeted Jesus shouting for whom they thought was their new king. They laid palm branches in front of him as he rode a donkey into Jerusalem for the Passover celebration.

My girls loved when the voice from heaven came down. I’m sure it might have seemed that all of heaven was indeed coming down to earth. First, all these signs throughout Jesus’s ministry: water into wine, the many healings of leprosy and blindness and lameness, then Lazarus walking out of the tomb all wrapped up in burial rags—then days later eating with Jesus! Now a voice from heaven.

Truly, this is the Messiah!

Here we stopped reading, saving the next part for tonight.

The Unthinkable

The part of tonight is this …

Jesus does a strange thing. He meets with his disciples in an upper room for the Passover feast. And after dinner, he does the unthinkable.

He takes off most of his clothes, fills a basin with water and kneels down to wash the feet of his disciples. The was scandalous. A rabbi would never stoop to wash the feet of his followers. That was the role of the servants in this culture. Thus Peter’s indignation: “Lord you shall never wash my feet!”

I grew up in the Grace Brethren Church, and when we observed communion we did so in a “three-fold” manner. We’d meet, sing hymns, and the men and women would split up to wash one another’s feet. Then we’d return and enjoy a love feast, and we’d end the evening taking the bread and the cup.

We are observing this tonight at our house. We’ll read the ‘Upper Room’ passage and then we’ll partake of a love feast.

Then, I’m going to wash my daughter’s feet one by one. I’m sure they’ll giggle a bit, and that’s okay. But if I’ve learned anything as a father, it’s that my kids tend to value what I value.

If I value God’s Word, they’re eager to listen to me read it. And if I can model for them the gravity and significance of what it means to wash someone else’s feet, I’m confident that truth will be engrained in their hearts.

Today’s Reading: A Special Edition

Today, I’ve included Psalms 116 as our reading. But I’ve added an extra bonus; the Upper Room passage from John 13. I hope you not only enjoy the reading but that it might inspire your imagination to grasp the beauty and scandal of a God who stoops to love.

Be encouraged, my friends. God loves you. And so begins our observance of the most significant event in human history. And what better way to do it, than with our families.

Cheers,

Tim

The Tempest and The Bloom

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The Mighty Peaks

I received an inquiry last night about the mountain pictured in the post: “Is it Manaslu?”

My answer: “Nope. But that picture’s amazing, right?” :)

Here’s an actual photo from my trip of Manaslu peak. I hope you enjoy it.

Thank You for Your Support

Many of you have taken the leap into the paid subscriber pool. Mega thanks to you all! Before COVID-19 hit, I had planned exclusive content for the paid crew. And that is still coming.

But for now, in light of the financial stress, so many of us are experiencing right now, I’m keeping the flood gates open so everyone receives every post. When this thing blows over, the exclusive content will come. Thank you for your patience.

Substack, the platform from which I send these newsletters, has recently made it easier than ever to support the content creators (me!:) who produce newsletters such as this one. You can now become a “Founding Member,” and give whatever amount you desire that is above the normal subscription rate.

So, if you’d like to support my writing above and beyond the normal subscription offer—and some of you have asked about this—feel free! You’ll see a suggested amount in the field, but you can make that amount whatever you like.

Once again, thank you for your support. And don’t forget, if you like social media, you can find me on Instagram posting pictures of my sourdough bread and other such shenanigans. :)

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Dear Friends,

Thanks for all of your kind notes concerning yesterday’s post. Today, thanks to Psalm 91, I’m thinking about what it means to live in the shadow of the Almighty.

To me, that sentiment feels like what it’s like to camp at the base of a great mountain.

I remember a few years ago I had the opportunity to travel with a mission’s organization to Nepal and hike in the Himalayan Mountains. We’d stay in tea houses as we trekked down the valley. The peaks soared above us, and we were already at nearly 16,000 feet in the valley!

I remember the first day walking out of my room at the tea house. The sky blazed blue and Manaslu peak rifled up into it with a grandeur unrivalled (it stands at 26,700 feet!). There was something almost otherworldly about the snowy peak. It was like a granite sentry watching over us as we slept and hiked. But it was also a bit unnerving. It made me feel insignificant and frail.

Sometimes, when I think about living in the shadow of the Almighty, I think of Manaslu peak soaring above me, and I marvel at the awe and grandeur of our unrivalled God. We, his children, rest safely as we camp at his feet.

I pray this Psalm finds you at base camp, in the shadow of the Almighty. And might I encourage you, dear friends, to spend just a few moments marvelling at the unrivalled majesty of the God who loves, cares, and provides for us all.

Cheers,

Tim

The Tempest and The Bloom

I see many of you are finding your way over to the Preface of my novel. That’s wonderful! If you’ve found it entertaining and interesting, do share it with your friends and on your various social networking sites. Remember, sharing is caring—or something like that.

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Dear Friends,

Please do forgive my absence these last several days. Without going into much detail, yet, I simply needed some time to think and be quiet. The news cycle and incessant posting to social media by everyone, including me, these days bore down on me, and I needed to retreat. The daily Psalms will continue, and a new episode of The Stoke is on its way.

Sourdough baking is in full force in our house, and my 12 and 10-year-old daughters have learned how to do it basically on their own. I suppose my work is done with them as a parent now that I’ve taught them how to bake bread. (smirk)

Eating Christ and Drinking His Blood

We’ve been reading through the Gospel of John as a family at dinner time. There’s power in reading Scriptures out loud. Our last reading we read about how Jesus fed the 5,000 with loaves of bread (sourdough?) and some fish.

After that incredible sign, Jesus realized the people might try to make him their king and so he retreated to the mountain to be alone and to pray. Later, the disciples hopped on their boat and started to row back from whence they came.

Jesus came to them, walking on the water. My girl’s eyes looked like moons during this part, especially when they heard that as soon as he stepped into the boat it was immediately back on the shore.

We talked a lot about Jesus’s words to the crowd when they again caught up with Jesus and asked him: “What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”

Jesus responds by telling them that God gives them true bread from heaven.

“Well, from now on, give us this bread,” they tell Jesus.

“I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Then he tells them, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.”

We talked for some time about what it meant to eat Christ’s flesh and drink his blood. It was after this very long and rather confusing discourse that many of the hoards of disciples that had been following Jesus turned and left him. Jesus turns to the Twelve and asks if they too will leave him and Peter pipes up:

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are Holy One of God.”

Wow! What a statement of faith! They believed that this carpenter’s son from Nazareth was the Son of God, the Bread of Life.

We talked about what it meant to put your faith in Jesus, even when no one else does. That’s a hard thing to consider. Especially in times such as these; times of uncertainty, turmoil and death.

The Gristle of Our Faith

In reflecting on today’s Psalm, in light of our present calamity, my heart fell on the theme of faith.

Sometimes, all we have is a psalm. And the hope of an ancient poem that reaches, somehow, to the Ancient One.

Sometimes, all we have is the next word of a sentence we don’t fully understand. And we must abide in the mystery; waiting around for some explanation of this unknown place in which we find ourselves.

Hope isn’t something we see coming down the mountainside covered in the light of glory like we so often see in the movies. Hope is being in the moment; feeling the darkness all around, yet reaching with our physical eyes and the eyes of our hearts to what we’re sure will happen.

We still face the darkness. We still face the unknown. And it’s not easy. It’s not the cool breeze of heaven upon our faces. It’s often the blank moments, the hard to explain moments, the please please come Lord Jesus moments.

In these moments of physical and spiritual doubt, it’s all we can do to summon our spiritual grit and apply the gristle of our faith to the very real calamities facing us:

Will I find work after all of this?

Will my retirement ever return to what it was?

Will our country survive?

Will I lose my house?

Will I lose my life?

And yet this spiritual grit pulls us along, founded upon the faith of Abraham. Asked to sacrifice his only son to God, Abraham obeyed.

He readied the caravan. He loaded the mules with wood and supplies. He travelled and talked with the son he’d lay on the altar. He didn’t wait around for an angel to intervene. Instead, he wrangled his boy down, tied him, and raised his knife.

Our faith is a knife-edge lifted in obedience. A willingness to gut our most precious love, for God.

Faith is not some heralded time of epiphany in a glistening church building surrounded by lights and smoke machines and a feel-good sermon. It’s the lonely moments of pre-dawn prayer where no one sees your tears.

Faith isn’t picking up pieces of bread from heaven that lay strewn on the ground so you don’t starve in the wilderness. Instead, faith is the life of the spirit; it is eating the Bread of Life and worshipping in spirit and truth; it is a confidence in the future even though the present seems to be falling apart.

The Tempest and The Bloom

Join me as I post installments of my novel. The first post went up yesterday. Head over, check it out and sign up so you never miss a chapter.

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Dear Friends,

How are you all doing? I’d love to hear from you. I’d love to hear what things you're doing differently with your daily rhythms. Are you struggling? Overcoming? Stoked to be doing new things. Let me know!

If you’re looking for a new book to dig into during these stay at home days, I highly recommend this new book from my friend, Sara Hagerty: Adore: A Simple Practice for Experiencing God in the Middle Minutes of Your Day. Here’s the book trailer:

Here’s what Sara writes about adoration:

Adoration is for the minutes that we need a win, that need His eye, His breath, His thoughts. Adoration is where I can come, raw, and bruised, tepid and full of questions, and expect His response. All the minutes I’ve given to fears, insecurities, and inner woes I can now offer to Him for his interpretation.

Adoration takes my eyes off what I’m not and puts them on who He is at the very moment I decide I’m distasteful.

Adoration, beginning with one single minute, is where my grit meets His beauty. It’s where the still rough and hardened places of my everyday living meet His person.

Taking our eyes off ourselves—that’s tough. But this is why I love what Sara is writing about. It’s tough, but when we take the time and the breath needed to just center on Christ in quiet adoration, the picture before us becomes clearer.

Today’s reading of Psalm 18 ties into this idea of adoration. David is remembering how the Lord was there for him, and he’s responding to those memories with adoration. I’m going to keep exploring Psalms of adoration. If you have a favourite one, I’d love to hear about it. Include it below in the comments.

I hope today’s reading encourages you, and that you continue to look to the Lord who is our rock, fortress and deliverer.

Cheers,

Tim

The Tempest and The Bloom

If you’re interested in receiving installments of my serial novel, click the button below to sign up. For all of you who’ve signed up—it’s coming soon! : )

The Saturday Stoke

Get caught up on my podcast, The Saturday Stoke. It’s about 10 minutes long and aimed at inspiring and encouraging you. You can listen while doing dishes, walking the dog, swinging in your hammock, planting pansies, riding your bike, running on the greenway, or when you’re supposed to be paying attention to a conference call. Wait, did I say that out loud?

On Spring

“Now every field is clothed with grass, and every tree with leaves; now the woods put forth their blossoms, and the year assumes its gay attire.”

– Virgil

Your Support Matters

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Dear Friends,

I love the honesty and truth in David’s poetry. Even when he’s attacked seemingly on all sides, he finds refuge in going to God and letting it rip. And yet he always comes back to the greatness of God, the steadfastness of God, the love of God.

Do you find yourself needing to go to God and let it rip today? Do it! He loves when his children come to him with open and honest hearts. He loves to help and heal.

Do you know someone else who needs this reminder? Send him or her a link to this recording, remind them that God is big enough for our hurts and disappointments.

In this with you, my friends.

Peace of Christ to you.

Cheers,

Tim

The Tempest and The Bloom

As promised, I’ve created a way for those interested in reading some fiction to follow along as I write and edit my novel, The Tempest and The Bloom.

I welcome everyone, and feel free to interact with comments and inquires as the novel takes shape.

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Dear Friends,

I love this Psalm (19). You can hear three voices in it.

In verses 1-6 you hear the voice of creation. What’s interesting about this voice is that you hear it through your intuition. The sun does not possess a voice to tell us about God. We understand the sun’s praise through its very existence. The created order’s speech is a silent speech; a proclaiming quietness of God’s glory.

In verses 7-10 you hear the voice of the word, which utters perfection. David describes God’s word in six ways: as law, as testimony, as precepts, as commandments, as worthy of reverence and honour, and as rules or ordinances. Then he describes the word as wholly trustworthy giving us nine qualities. Can you list all nine of the qualities?

Finally, there is the voice of the sinner. She is warned by the word, enlightened, convicted, encouraged to seek forgiveness, and eager to obey. As you listen, reflect on each voice, and ask God to speak to you through the power of his mighty Word.

Praying for you all.

He is our Peace.

Cheers,

Tim

The Tempest and The Bloom

Be on the lookout tomorrow, those of you interested in reading along with my serial novel. I look forward to sharing with you all.

Your Support Matters

Thank you so much for your support. I’m very grateful for those of you who have become paid subscribers. Your generosity makes all this possible. Once we get past the Coronavirus craziness, those who’ve subscribed will receive exclusive articles, reviews and other fun resources. Consider subscribing and help us keep this thing going. Blessings to you my friend. Here’s a link to the current special.

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Dear Friends,

Good evening! I trust you had a restful day, filled with family and friends—well, at least virtual friends—and that you found some time to spend with our Savior today in worship and praise.

I have a special evening edition of The Psalms and The Saturday Stoke ready for you. And I’m very excited about them both.

Today’s Psalms reading is 104, my personal favourite Psalm of all time (I think—I love them all so much). Last night’s reading had an inadvertent 20-second runoff for which I apologized. But Shannon, a dear friend of this newsletter, wrote this about the 20 seconds in the comments:

Thank you for this. For me, the 20-second roll-off showed me how quickly I wanted to jump up and get to 'doing something' instead of thinking on my Lord. Even for 20 seconds. Grieved at how little time I give the One who gave me life. Thankful that He waits, patiently.

Wow! So good. So, taking my cue from Shannon, today’s reading gives you a little run-off with some soft music so that you can pray over the reading, and ask the Holy Spirit to minister to your heart and soul. Thank you, Shannon!

This special Sunday Evening Edition of The Stoke is all about the beauty and hope provided by our Pilgrim King, Jesus. I hope it inspires you during these trying times.

Please share your thoughts in the comments if you have them, or even a prayer for the community if you feel so inclined.

I’ll see you back here tomorrow for another reading, and for those interested, the first installment of my novel.

Have a great evening, friends. Hold your loved ones close. And remember, He is our peace.

The Saturday Stoke

Read / Listen to The Stoke

Your Support Matters

Thank you so much for your support. I’m very grateful for those of you who have become paid subscribers. Your generosity makes all this possible. Once we get past the Coronavirus craziness, those who’ve subscribed will receive exclusive articles, reviews and other fun resources. Consider subscribing and help us keep this thing going. Blessings to you my friend. Here’s a link to the current special.

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Dear Friends,

I hope you’re gathering with neighbours at a very safe distance or sitting on your back porch or deck, or your front porch, or sitting in your chair reading, or in your bed reading, or in your kitchen baking (like me).

And I hope that this Psalm finds you well on this Saturday evening. I hope you’ve found time to do something new and exciting. I hope you’ve gone on a walk. I hope you’ve spent time with our Savior.

Tomorrow is the Little Easter. That’s how the early church viewed Sundays. An every week occurrence to celebrate the risen Christ. And I hope this reading adds to your Little Easter joy, and that tonight you find rest and peace. For He is our peace.

Cheers,

Tim

Post Script

Thank you for all the great feedback on the serial novel idea. I’m a bit tentative with it, but I think for those interested, there will be a new link for you to follow next week!

Post PostScript

Apologies for the 20-second roll-off at the end of the recording. No idea why that’s there. Ha.

The Saturday Stoke

Apologies also for no Stoke today. Because of some work projects, it was delayed. But, you may or may not find it tomorrow in your inbox. I suppose we’ll see. :)

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Dear Friends,

Some days it proves difficult to keep the provision and sovereignty of God in perspective. Pressing in on all sides, the world and its cares distract us and cause anxiety, which can produce doubt and feed fear.

I believe this is one of the reasons the psalmist, in Psalm 147, gives for praising God whenever we can. Praising God returns our gaze to him. We remember his works, his provision, his mighty power, that he has everything under control and in his hands.

A new day dawns, and God yet remains our Creator and Sustainer. And that’s a very good reason to give praise.

Try tuning out the news and social media for a few days. Take a break. And discover God’s provision and steadfastness within the Psalms.

Cheers,

Tim

Post Script

If you’d be interested in reading my work-in-progress novel as a “serial novel” delivered in weekly chapters to your inbox, reply to this email with a thumbs up or “Yes!” Gauging interest right now. I know people are looking for ways to escape the boredom, so I thought perhaps a story on your phone or laptop might interest some of you. The novel is titled: The Tempest and The Bloom, and I’d put it in the fantasy category.

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Dear Friends,

It’s okay to ask questions of God. And it’s okay to ask questions of yourself. It’s okay to struggle in your heart and wrestle with doubt. This was me last night.

I love Psalm 42 because the poet notices that something’s not right in his spirit. He’s struggling with melancholy.

And yet, he remembers the things in his life that bring hope to his bones. And he remembers that God’s salvation is his hope. If you’re struggling with doubt or melancholy today, “Put your hope in God … my salvation and my God.”

Blessings,

Tim

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Dear Friends,

This morning I met, via Zoom, with a few men to read and study Scripture and to pray. One of the men noted how reading Scripture aloud was such a refreshment to him.

It’s easy to tune into podcasts and sermons and special speakers who talk about God. And those are all fine and good. But, as we’ve been saying now for a few days, there’s something special and powerful about reading God’s Word aloud.

I hope these short readings encourage you to either get up a little earlier or stay up a bit later and read the powerful words of God aloud.

I pray today’s reading of Psalm 121 will comfort and encourage you. Just click on the link above to hear the reading. Or you can connect it to your favourite podcast app and listen (and subscribe) in the app.

As always, if you find encouragement, feel free to share this email or post to your social media platform. Now’s a time to spread the hope of glory.

Blessings,

Tim

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Dear Friends,

I hope you found some inspiration in yesterday’s reading. One reader, “RP” left an inspirational comment about a friend of his who read Psalm 31 (or 29) during their training in the Army Special Forces. You can read his comment here. Their squad had been training in the mountains for some time when his friend pulled out his Bible and began reading the Psalm aloud.

By the end of the reading, all the warrior soldiers had gathered to listen.

There is power in the reading of God’s word. And I pray today’s reading of Psalm 31 will comfort and encourage you. Just click on the link above to hear the reading. Or you can connect it to your favourite podcast app and listen (and subscribe) in the app.

If you find encouragement, feel free to share this email or post to your social media platform. Now’s a time to spread the hope of glory.

Blessings,

Tim

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Dear Friends,

One of my favourite things to do is walk outside, alone, and read the Psalms aloud. If I can’t get outside, then I will read aloud in my study or in my cozy chair by the fire. There’s something beautifully calming about hearing the Word of God read aloud.

The Word is living and powerful, and I believe it can literally change our hearts when we hear it. So, why not take the opportunity during these long days at home to fall in love with Scripture again?

Just click the play button in this email to hear Psalm 139.

Just a little encouragement from me to you. May the Spirit of God quicken your soul today. May he speak through His Word with power and peace.

Blessings,

Tim

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What is going on in this world of ours?

How do we look at the suffering, uneasiness, confusion, and fear as it relates to life on planet earth right now? Does God care about us?

We all have questions and those questions are valid. Today, in an effort to encourage and inspire us, I want to spend a few moments digging into these questions. I hope you’ll join me.

Cheers,

Tim

ICYMI - Don’t Ever Give Up

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Greetings Dear Friends,

I want to welcome all the new subscribers to this newsletter. I’m stoked you’re here! On Saturdays, I post new episodes to my podcast The Saturday Stoke. You can find it on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and Spotify. It’s a short inspirational podcast designed to encourage and challenge you on the path ahead—it’s a place where, if I’m doing my job right, I’m spurring us all on toward love and good deeds.

It’s a podcast that sounds like the screams of children playing on a zipline and tastes like fresh marmalade on whole-grain toast.

It’s a crazy time to be alive. The Coronavirus has the world in a frenzy and for good reason. In these unprecedented times, it can be hard to know how to “be.” Fear grips some. Uncertainty plagues others. Some carry on like nothing’s happening.

I have a few thoughts I wanted to share during these weeks of uncertainty. Because what are we if we don’t take advantage of every opportunity to encourage one another. My thoughts begin with a letter—a very old letter.

There's a second (or third) century document in the early church known as "The Letter to Diognetus: The Mystery of the New People." To find out what we can learn from this very old letter, along with a short passage from one of C.S. Lewis’s essays, click the nice blue button below. You can subscribe to the podcast and never miss a post. You can also hit the play button above and listen to this week’s episode right in this email.

Thanks for reading and listening, and I’ll see you here again next week!

Cheers,

Tim

The Round-Up

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