a powerful story

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Salvage the Bones is a powerful story. It is about struggles, both small and large, both overwhelming and overcome, about family, about love and loss. But mostly, it's about living and life, in all its grit and grime, joy and sorrow. As with Sing, Unburied, Sing, we experience many aspects of being poor in the rural south. The story was difficult to read (not because of the writing, but because of the content) but at the same time compelling, inviting the reader to participate in the struggle, to overcome, or just to survive.

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revisiting C.S. Lewis on Patriotism

I remember being impressed back in 2006 by the section on patriotism in "The Four Loves" by C.S. Lewis. The text can be found here:

https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/lewiscs-fourloves/lewiscs-fourloves-00-h.html
it starts in what they call Chapter II with the paragraph beginning with

"I turn now to the love of one's country. "

through nearly the end of that chapter.

Since it has been many years since i read it, but it made an impression at the time, I'm going to go back and re-read just to freshen my memory and critique it anew.

So i re-read it last night. 

Keeping in mind it is written by a British Christian literary scholar in the 1950s (born 1898), i think it holds up very well in our discussion (of Jesus & John Wayne). If you do read it, you'll see the wisdom that originally drew me to reading CSL back in my progressive Christian days. The writing is not a style that we typically read, so it bears reading slower and more carefully. Anyway, it makes me feel good that what made such an impression on me back in the 2000s, that was written in the 1950s,  still holds up pretty well today.