New Book - Sneak Peak!

 

I have exciting news! I've been diligently working on my next book!

Back when I was in Oxford earlier this year, I had the great privilege of spending several weeks there, acquiring a Bodleian Reader card to work in the libraries every day. It was a dream come true, to put it mildly. I was overjoyed every day to get to swipe myself into one of the magnificent, ancient libraries of Oxford University, searching for books on the shelves, requesting books from the offsite storage, and viewing precious archive materials like manuscripts and letters from some of my all time favourite authors.

The reason? I wanted to write a book, a kind of group biography, of some of the Oxford authors - those authors from centuries past who have greatly influenced and inspired me. I wanted to explore what inspired them across space and time and how they might have influenced each other. Oxford the place plays a huge role in that. What did they read and study at Oxford? Where did they live and what were they thinking about? Did they know each other?

I spent weeks reading books and compiling research to help me answer these questions. I researched authors like C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Dorothy L. Sayers, Evelyn Waugh, Lewis Carroll, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Percy Bysshe Shelley and more.

A short section from my introduction:

We have the great benefit from our position in history to have such a backward-looking stance that we can go study the life and writings of someone like Robert Burton in the 1620s and then review those writings of C. S. Lewis in the 1930s and see how they interact and speak across time. Did anything that Lewis read in Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy influence his writings? Is it mentioned in his letters, notes, or other works? Does it matter when we engage with the writers and thinkers who have come before us? Is it somehow part of our foundation where we draw ideas from as we move through this journey of life?

This is what I explore in my book. 

I am currently working on the edits and formatting and as I work on these steps, I thought it'd be fun to share a few little bits and pieces here on the blog with you as I get closer and closer to releasing my book out into the world! So, please join along, and I hope you are as excited about this book as I am. Or at least, curious to learn more about these authors and what they were up to in Oxford!

Written on the Heart

 

Jeremiah 31. 31-40

One line from this passage:

I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.

Our heart. It has a depth that reaches to our true, fullest self. The deepest place of who we truly are and how God sees us in our fullness. We cover up our heart, though, with selfish, inward looking stances that spiral down to self pity, falling farther into ourselves (closing in on ourselves). We diminish ourselves, becoming less and less ourself. The true self, the heart, it is made to expand outward. In the best ways it should thus expand so that others see our true self, as a reflection of God within us. But that is so rare. We are too busy and too caught up from past hurts that stick with us in ways we don't notice. We cover up our heart with worldly things, desires and hidden vices, behaviors, and deeds. We don't get to experience our heart, the hungry heart continues to feel starved and empty. So we show the facade - the world tells us what we need to show. So that layers onto ourselves to make us "happy". And it's not true. But we believe it because we no longer have access to our deepest parts. Everything is shallow, fleeting, and full of selfishness.

I am inspired by Saint Augustine and his writing reflecting on the heart as being the true deep self we so often cover up with selfish desires that spiral inward, specifically as he wrote about his journey in his Confessions, which is his conversion story, so beautifully written. I am exploring this more and more, and it's deeply enriching. 

A few lines from Saint Augustine: 

And you pricked the rawness of its wound, so that abandoning all else it should be converted to you, who are above all, and without whom nothing else would be, yes, converted to you and so find healing.

....

Then, Lord, little by little, with most gentle and merciful hand, you touched and quieted my heart, as I thought of the countless beliefs I held about things I could not see, nor had seen when they occurred.

....

Instantly at the end of the sentence, as if a light of confidence had been poured into my heart, all the darkness of my doubt fled away.