“The Weekend Wanderer” is a weekly curated selection of news, stories, resources, and media on the intersection of faith and culture for you to explore through your weekend. Wander through these links however you like and in any order you like. Disclaimer: I do not necessarily agree with all the views expressed within these articles but have found them thought-provoking.
“The Mystical Catholic Tradition of Jon Fosse” – Christopher Beha in The New York Times: “I came to the work of the Norwegian writer Jon Fosse — who receives the Nobel Prize in Literature this week — by way of ‘Septology,’ a novel cycle that began appearing in English just a few years ago. I’d been told by more than one person I trust that “Septology” was Fosse’s masterpiece, but I will admit to a personal reason for finally picking up a writer I’d been meaning to read for many years. In quick succession about a decade ago, Fosse married (for the third time), quit drinking, and converted to Catholicism. “Septology” was the first thing he wrote after these life-altering events, and they are all reflected in its pages. So “Septology” was recommended to me not just as a great literary novel but as a great Catholic literary novel, and I have a special interest in the genre. As it happens, I also married (for the first time), quit drinking, and converted to Catholicism in quick succession about a decade ago. (In my case, this ‘conversion’ was a return to the faith in which I’d been raised.) I’m a novelist myself, though not nearly so prolific or distinguished as Fosse, and my writing life is linked to my religious life in ways that remain fairly mysterious to me. Given all this, it may seem overdetermined that ‘Septology’ would feel from its very first pages as if it were written especially for me, but many readers who do not share these autobiographical affinities have reported the same reaction.”
“Science vs greed at COP28” – Katherine Hayhoe at her Substack, Talking Climate: “COP28, the big international climate meeting held by the United Nations each year, is still underway in Dubai. The conference wraps up tomorrow, and while a lot has already happened, most of the negotiations don’t conclude until the eleventh hour. As I mentioned last week, I am not attending in person, but I’ve been following the news closely. Here are the highlights – and lowlights – so far. On Friday, negotiators released the latest draft of the Global Stocktake agreement they’re hammering out at COP28. A ‘global stocktake’ is a report card on where things stand eight years after the Paris Agreement and where countries go from here. More than 80 countries, including the U.S. and the European Union, are calling for fossil fuels to be phased out completely. The latest draft calls on countries to ‘take actions that could include … phasing down unabated coal, accelerating efforts towards net zero emissions and low carbon fuels, enhancing efforts towards substitution of unabated fossil fuels, substantially reducing non-CO2 emissions such as methane, and phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.'”
“The Poet’s Burden: On Czesław Miłosz: Visions from the Other Europe by Eva Hoffman” – Rowan Williams in Literary Review: “In a late poem about a friend’s death, Czesław Miłosz writes of the long passage between youth and age as one of learning ‘how to bear what is borne by others’. It could be a summary of his own poetic witness. Eva Hoffman’s moving and eloquent essay traces the ways in which that simultaneously guilty, compassionate and fastidious response characterises Miłosz’s work from its earliest days. Bearing what is borne by others is, for Miłosz, close to the heart of the poetic task, but it is also fraught with risk. Hoffman pinpoints how Miłosz’s hypersensitivity to the risks of sentimentality and grandstanding led to what many readers saw as an evasion of necessary commitment. He stood aside during the Warsaw Rising of 1944, wary of the overheated and unrealistic rhetoric surrounding it; he saw his first duty as being to the integrity of his poetry, not to the mythology of a sacrificially heroic Poland. Yet, as Hoffman stresses, the poetry itself reveals his full awareness of ambivalent motives and the dangers of willed detachment. Was he nervous of ‘being overwhelmed by emotions from which no detachment was possible’? The lines (from 1945), ‘You swore never to touch/The deep wounds of your nation’ – indeed, the whole poem in which they occur – reveal both a concern not to cheapen such wounds by sacralising the agonies of others and a recognition of the unbearable character of the pain involved: ‘My pen is lighter/Than a hummingbird’s feather. This burden/Is too much for it to bear.’”
“Nick Cave: Loss, Yearning, Transcendence” – Krista Tippett interviews Nick Cave in On Being: “Here are some experiences to which Nick Cave gives voice and song: the ‘universal condition’ of yearning, and of loss; a ‘spirituality of rigor’; and the transcendent and moral dimensions of what music is about. This Australian musician, writer, and actor first made a name in the wild world of ’80s post-punk and later with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. He also underwent public struggles with addiction and rehab. Since the accidental death of his 15-year-old son Arthur in 2015, and a few years later, the death of his eldest child Jethro, he has entered yet another transfigured era, co-created an exquisite book called Faith, Hope and Carnage, and become a frank and eloquent interlocutor on grief. As a human and a songwriter, Nick Cave is an embodiment of a life examined and evolved. He sat with Krista in the On Being studio in Minneapolis, and the gorgeous conversation that followed is woven in this episode with his gorgeous music.”
“Christianity Today’s 2024 Book Awards” – From the Editors at Christianity Today: “Think of something big and important happening in the world—some cultural trend, political movement, or social craze. Chances are that someone, somewhere, has proposed giving it a distinctly ‘Christian’ or ‘biblical’ framing. Some of these efforts, aimed at glorifying God in all things, supply helpful correctives to secular errors. Others, smacking more of anxious attempts at hopping aboard a moving train, add little beyond a thin spiritual gloss. Thankfully, CT’s book of the year, Christopher Watkin’s Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture, belongs to the first category. Some might wince at the mention of critical theory, with its perceived reputation for nonsense jargon or radical politics. Critical theory comes in many flavors, of course, some guiltier than others of cramming messy human particulars into ideological straitjackets. But the late Tim Keller, in his foreword, suggests another view, observing that a good theory ‘make[s] visible the deep structures of a culture in order to expose and change them.'”
“Byzantine gold coin with ‘face of Jesus’ unearthed by metal detectorist in Norway” – Jennifer Nalewicki in Live Science: “A metal detectorist discovered a 1,000-year-old gold coin depicting Jesus Christ while exploring the mountains in Vestre Slidre, a municipality in southern Norway. Known as a ‘histamenon nomisma,’ this type of small coin was first introduced around A.D. 960. It shows Jesus holding a Bible on one side and the images of Basil II and Constantine VII, two brothers who both ruled the Byzantine Empire, on the other, according to a translated statement. The western half of the Roman Empire collapsed in 476, while the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman Empire, continued on for another millennium. Archaeologists think the coin was minted sometime between 977 and 1025, during the brothers’ reign, based on three dotted lines that circle the coin’s border — a design element commonly used during that time period. The artifact also contains two inscriptions. The first, written in Latin, reads, ‘Jesus Christ, King of those who reign,’ and the second, in Greek, says ‘Basil and Constantine, emperors of the Romans,’ according to the statement.”
Music: J.S. Bach, “Schwingt freudig euch empor,” Cantata BWV 36 / Part 1, John Eliot Gardiner, English Baroque Soloists, Monteverdi Choir
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Matthew Erickson 