5 Quick Things #329 🩱

rural dwellers, AI priests, local book clubs, & swimsuits for Christians

Hey there,

As you’re reading this I’m on a 24-hour personal quiet retreat, which is why I’m actually writing this on the Thursday morning before… I’m keeping it simple: a few items for working out, prayer + journaling, three books to prepare for whatever reading mood hits, and stretchy pants for either going on a hike or taking a nap (or both) depending on the need at the moment. I plan to do a lot of thinking — about the summer, my writing projects, health and wellness stuff, and whatever else God sends my way. Hopefully there’s enough brain cells remaining to do a bit of debriefing on this current school year as it winds down, since it was wildly different from all our previous years and yet so very formative for my entire family.

I don’t take any of this lightly, and I am SO GRATEFUL to Kyle for bestowing this time on me. It’s been literal years since I’ve had a personal retreat, and I highly recommend them if you’re able. Even a half-day set aside for reflection — not for getting things done — can do wonders for your mind, body, and soul. 10/10, would recommend.

Girl in the Hammock (1873), by Winslow Homer

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5 Quick Things ☕️

1. New episode of A Drink With a Friend! Why do we humans, as embodied creatures, need to make things? And more specifically, why do we need to make things with our hands? What’s the benefit on both a personal and societal level? Nathaniel Marshall and I chat about trade work (and the culture’s side-eye of it), what we learn about our souls when we work with our bodies, and what to do about this if we tend to live up in our heads. I could have talked for hours with him about this!

2. I really enjoyed Katherine Johnson Martinko’s defense of rural dwellers: “our society has decided that [nature + solitude] are desirable only in small quantities, i.e., a cottage weekend or a retreat, and [sociality + culture] matters more on an everyday basis. Someone who chooses to opt out of cultural and social events to live in the wilderness is often portrayed as checking out, giving up, withdrawing from society—or, in the case of my parents, depriving their child of a ‘normal’ childhood.” (Related: poll results below!)

3. Perhaps it’s a niche topic, but I was fascinatedly annoyed at Catholic Answers’ decision to release an AI search tool cloaked as a digital priest (I wasn’t alone). Leah Libresco Sargeant has done an excellent job getting to the heart of why this — and any other form of humanized AI — is a bad idea: “Non-human tools work best when they free up our time for our most humane work. I run the laundry machine, rather than wash clothes by hand, so I have more time to play in the dirt with my daughters. God invites us to imitate him as sub-creators. It is a profound misuse of that invitation to build tools to take over our most human and relational tasks.”

4. This past year I joined a local Well-Read Mom group, and I’m so glad I did! Even though I’d already read 75% of this year’s books, it was a delightful excuse to re-read them and then discuss with other bookworms. I love how this organization started — here’s a lovely interview with its founder, Marcie Stokman: “I said to myself, I want friends. I want to live. Women aren’t reading these books, and they’re actually written for normal people like me, not for people in the ivory tower of academia. These books aren’t written to stay on library shelves and never be checked out. They are classics for a reason. They help us live.”

5. And finally, thank goodness we have matthew pierce’s 2024 Summer Swimsuit Guide for Christian Women: “Probably the best way to achieve total modesty is to activate a large force field around your body. In my day, this was done by placing a copy of I Kissed Dating Goodbye next to your Bible and holding them both to your chest as you walked from the Student Ministry Annex to the parking lot. I don’t know how Christian women generate force fields now; I guess maybe it involves energy or electricity or maybe by aging naturally.”

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Currently Reading, Watching, Listening 📚

Mystery and Manners, by Flannery O’Connor

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Quotable 💬

“‘When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,’ said Piglet at last, ‘what’s the first thing you say to yourself?’ ‘What’s for breakfast,’ said Pooh. ‘What do you say, Piglet?’ ‘I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?’ said Piglet. Pooh nodded thoughtfully. ‘It’s the same thing,’ he said.”

-A.A. Milne

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You must live in one environment for the rest of your life, but you get to choose. Which one? 🏘️

My honest answer is what I currently have: a small, historic, walkable town — it’s definitely not urban nor rural, but it doesn’t necessarily feel suburban in the modern-day connotation of the word either. But limits are good in asking multiple-choice questions, so between these three, I’m going with rural. Land and a nice-sized porch from which to gaze at it with my morning coffee? Yes, please.

• Rural: 53%

• Suburban: 32.8%

• Urban: 14.2%

Find this week’s poll here.

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Quick Links 🔗

• 📐Create your own Rule of Life

• 🎧 Listen to A Drink With a Friend

• 📖 Read my books

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Question(s) For You to Ponder… 🤔

What project or task do you just need to finish and call it ‘done’?

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Have a good weekend,

- Tsh

p.s. Women, what’s stopping you from working out like this?