5 Quick Things #426 🏘️

learning to hear, real confession, start a dynasty, & waiting for fall

Sep 18, 2026

We’re dogsitting for my parents this week, so we’re juggling life with two canines in the house right now. Both dogs get along great (my parents have dogsat for us for years), but it’s interesting how much of my focus throughout the day diverts to making sure one larger dog (ours) doesn’t intimidate the other one (theirs). Both are older, both are terriers, and both are sweet as can be—yet terriers like to, well, be territorial….and our dog is annoyingly loyal to me and thinks she needs to protect me at all costs. Even from things that are the furthest thing from danger. All this has meant my daily concentration on work has rather taken a backseat the past few days.

This weekend I’m also (hopefully) finalizing my new office-library! …I thought I’d be done two weeks ago, but it’s been so humid around here that the new paint on my shelves has taken ages to cure, and thus my books have remained in piles on the floor. It hasn’t really been a problem until this week, when I could not for the life of me find my copy of Beowulf (for my class). I stacked them relatively alphabetically, but still... I have a lot of books, and when they’re not facing outward by spine, it’s a smidge hard to tell what’s what. I finally found it—of course at the bottom of a stack—and was ultimately a minor issue. But it’s made me all the more fired up about my new wall-to-wall bookshelf situation, and I hope to share it with you soon.

*Baltimore Oriole and Plum Blossoms*, by Robert Bateman #

5 Quick Things ☕️

1. I plan to dust off A Drink With a Friend for the fall season soon! In the meantime, listen in on some of last season’s conversations (of which this next season’s will be quite similar, but with a little additional thought): fighting dementors & 19th-century parables, a girl with power & a powerful woman, and three desires & a 14th-century headstrong Norwegian.
2. Our local coffee shop still has its summer menu out for a few more days because they don’t switch over to the new seasonal menu until the actual, calendar-says-so season change. This means that, as much as people are asking them for a pumpkin-spice-whatever, they’re sticking with their (delightful) summer menu through September 21. I love their fall menu so I’m stoked to get one of my favorites next week, but in the meantime—mad respect for sticking to their guns.
3. I really appreciate these thoughts on learning to hear ourselves again from Griffin Gooch (on behalf of C.S. Lewis): “Our enemy loses ground when we stop rejecting the silent wandering mind and embrace it as the very substance of raw prayer. The distractions we interpret as an excuse to call ourselves undisciplined are often exactly what God wants to surface.”
4. Good stuff here from Word on Fire on the difference between confession and psychotherapy, and why so many in the modern world conflate the two, treating the confessional like a free mini-therapy session without the posture of true repentance and a desire not to sin again: “Psychotherapy may help us understand why we fell and offer us the natural comfort of connecting with another human being. However, confession assures us that, by God’s grace, we need not remain on the ground. In an age devoted to explaining ourselves, that may be the most subversive idea of all.”
5. And finally, why you must start a dynasty (I love that there’s a legit Habsburg active on the internet à la Eduard Habsburg).

Currently Reading, Watching, Listening 📻

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Quotable 💬

“You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.”

- Annie Dillard

What’s your least favorite area in your life to clean and organize? 🧺

I mean, I don’t love doing any of these, though I do love having a clean and organized space... I suppose if I were forced to pick today, I’m going with closet/garage, because in our case that’s our added-on backyard shed (our old cottage came garageless and nearly closetless). It’s our catch-all place for things to get to eventually, and right now, it’s a bit of a scary place. Plus, I’m not going near that in this late-summer heat. I look forward to the day when it is finally organized—but today is not that day.

Closet/Garage: 39.3%
Bathroom: 32.5%
Car: 12.2%
Kitchen: 9.9%
Bedroom: 6.1%