“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.
“How Trees Can Help Us Find Equilibrium: When trees become metaphors of stability, life and promise” – Stephen W. Smith in The Potter’s Inn: “Lately, I’ve found myself curious about trees. I know it sounds weird as we face an attempted assassination, political rage, inflation and surging heat in the summer. But trees and living in the shelter of them have worked their own way into my soul. Perhaps, trees are gifts for us to offer a sanctuary—a lesson—a solace from the day to day stress we are navigating. This is why I think I’m drawn to trees more now, than at any other time in my life. Is anyone out there with me in this? Living in the Blue Ridge Mountains, there are plenty of trees to consider. Trees have always captured the attention of poets and writers and with my own interest, I’m reading what Joyce Kilmar, Hermann Hesse, Mary Oliver and the Psalmist have all collectively reflected on when they, too, focus on trees.”
“Tim Keller and Dallas Willard Still Speak” – Cathy Lynn Grossman in Publishers Weekly: “Zondervan is banking on the people who made pastor Timothy Keller and philosopher Dallas Willard bestselling Christian authors will reach for new titles created from their writings even after their deaths. The fourth devotional of prayers and short readings under Keller’s name, Forward in Love: A Year of Daily Readings from Timothy Keller, will be released in the U.S. in October. It was published last year by Keller’s U.K. publisher, edited in conjunction with his estate, Zondervan v-p and publisher Webster Younce told PW….The Dallas Willard title, The Scandal of the Kingdom: How the Parables of Jesus Revolutionize Life with God, also publishing in October, is all never-before-released material, edited under the direction of his daughter, Becky Heatley.”
“Understanding Czesław Miłosz” – Jill Peláez Baumgaertner in The Christian Century: “This illuminating study by novelist, historian, and critic Eva Hoffman is a literary biography of the Polish Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz. One of the greatest writers of our time, Miłosz captures in much of his writing the intensities of a violent century of war and the terrors of authoritarian regimes. A Catholic who helped to shelter Jews, he writes about the Holocaust, but he also writes about the loneliness and longing of exile, reaching back into memory of the particulars of his early life. ‘It is possible,’ he mused in his 1980 Nobel lecture, ‘that there is no other memory than the memory of wounds.’ Hoffman, who grew up in Kraków, knows well the life of exile. She emigrated to Canada and now teaches in London. This biography of Miłosz contains many of her own personal reminiscences. She knew Miłosz as only another Polish writer could know him, as she has known other Polish Nobel laureates. That makes this book, written from a fresh new angle, both distinctive and trustworthy. She summarizes Miłosz’s complexities this way: ‘From an obscure Lithuanian hamlet to San Francisco Bay, from historical past to the hypertechnological future, from the Bible to pop culture—Miłosz’s range was enormous, and his need to grasp it all came close to a kind of torment.'”
“All the World is Myth: Put the peace of the heart before everything” – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule: “I’m not here to write about Donald Trump, or about America. Instead, I want to try and write about something else that these pictures help conjur. I want to talk about the meat behind them. Because I don’t think it is politics we are dealing with here, or culture even. These things are the surface manifestation of the myths that writhe and turn beneath them. On the surface, sometimes, a fin breaks the water. Beneath, something huge is swimming. To put that another way: everything is myth. Look at what you are given here, in this picture. An American hero-slash-villain who is bloodied but unbowed. Now he will rise from the ground to save-slash-destroy us. Look: a lucky photographer has framed the moment in a way that resembles one of that nation’s best known images of liberation. Nobody needed to plan this. It is myth in action. What we call ‘politics’ is always a manifestation of what is happening in the depths, but in the depths move forces that are beyond us. Sometimes you see images that make this clear to you. But what do we do? everyone cries, what should we do? It is the oldest question. God’s son answered it with the first words he uttered when he began his work: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.“
“Artistic Humility in the Age of ‘Hot AI Jesus'” – Matthew J. Milliner in Christianity Today: “Why pray alone or with your family if you can pray with big-biceped celebrities on the Hallow app? Why limit yourself to reading or hearing the Gospels if you can have a Jesus with all the thrill and appeal of a bingeable Netflix series? Why cultivate the Ignatian prayer skill of active imagination when you can passively experience an immersive exhibit that brings a storm on the Sea of Galilee to life? Why be satisfied with an ordinary church when you can digitally tour Europe’s greatest cathedrals or listen to famous preachers comfortably at home? Or why settle for traditional depictions of Jesus or figures from the Bible and church history when images of what The Atlantic dubbed ‘hot AI Jesus’ and hot AI saints now proliferate online? These are but some of the questions posed by our digital era’s dizzying accelerations, and Christians best have an answer. Here, I’ll focus on the artificial intelligence renderings of Jesus and explore how the example of history’s greatest Christian artist, Michelangelo, can help us resist the enticements of artificial devotion.”
“Beloved priest Abbe Pierre was the conscience of France. Several women now accuse him of assault” – Barbara Turk and Nicole Winfield in APNews: “A legendary French priest and a lifelong advocate of the homeless has been accused of committing acts that would amount to “sexual assault or sexual harassment,” his foundation said Wednesday, in the latest instance of a Catholic spiritual leader facing allegations of abusing his power to harm women. Abbé Pierre, who died in 2007, was one of France’s most beloved public figures. The founder of the international Emmaus Community for the poor, Abbé Pierre had served as part of France’s conscience since the 1950s, when he persuaded Parliament to pass a law — still on the books — forbidding landlords to evict tenants during winter. Several women have accused the late priest of sexual assault or harassment between the end of the 1970s and 2005, his foundation said in a statement. It explained that it is making public the allegations of seven women, including one who was a minor at the time, after reviewing the report of an expert firm that specializes in violence prevention and was commissioned to listen to women’s testimonies and analyze them.”
Music: Audrey Assad, “I Shall Not Want,” from Fortunate Fall
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Matthew Erickson 
nice picture… must come from a skilled photographer… amazing.