“The Weekend Wanderer” is a weekly curated selection of news, 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.

“Tim Keller Taught Me About Joy” – David Brooks in The New York Times: “Tim Keller was a recliner. Whenever a particular group of my friends would get together, discussing some personal, social or philosophical issue over Zoom during the past few years, you could see Tim just chilling and enjoying it, lounging back in his chair. The conversation would flow, and finally somebody would ask: ‘Tim, what do you think?’ He’d start slow, with that wry, friendly smile. He’d mention a relevant John Bunyan poem, then an observation Kierkegaard had made or a pattern the historian David Bebbington had noticed. Then Tim would synthesize it all into the four crucial points that pierced the clouds of confusion and brought you to a new layer of understanding. I used to think of it as the Keller Clarity Beam. He didn’t make these points in a didactic or professorial way. It was more like: Hey, you’re thirsty. I happen to have this glass of water. Want a sip? It was this skill that made Tim Keller, who died on Friday at 72, one of the most important theologians and greatest preachers of our time. American evangelicalism suffers from an intellectual inferiority complex that sometimes turns into straight anti-intellectualism. But Tim could draw on a vast array of intellectual sources to argue for the existence of God, to draw piercing psychological insights from the troubling parts of Scripture or to help people through moments of suffering. His voice was warm, his observations crystal clear. We all tried to act cool around Tim, but we knew we had a giant in our midst.”

“Waking Ancient Seeds: Why the Middle Ages matter” – Matthew Milliner in Comment: “The chemically fortified green buzz cuts that most North Americans inflict on our patches of purchased earth remain en vogue; but with apologies to my long-suffering neighbours, I’m thinking about giving my lawn mower (reader, it is me) a break. The results could be magnificent. At least that is what my area park district came to realize. ‘Unusual and rarely-seen plants are popping up from seeds that have been sleeping here in the soil for over a hundred years,’ claims a proud sign by a nearby path. ‘No longer mowing the turf around the bases of trees allows some long-slumbering native plants to emerge, grow and flourish once again. The reappearance of the historic plants is surprising even to local botanists.’ In short, up came red trillium, wood anemone, trout lily, Virginia bluebells, and Solomon’s seal—all because people did nothing at all. It might be likewise surprising for some to learn that an evangelical college in the same area is awash in ancient Christian practices. Icons deck the walls and incense fills the air. Vigils, Marian devotion, allegorical interpretation of Scripture, and sung Evensong services complement gifted preachers on the jumbotron. Candles compete with fluorescent lights, and the promise of pilgrimage lures some from the prospect of spring break on the beach. This is not the only way of being a Christian at Wheaton College (where I teach), but it certainly is a popular one, toward which many students gravitate especially as they near graduation. And as with our park district, the breakthrough came when we just stopped mowing.”

“Oldest most complete Hebrew Bible sells for $38m at auction” – David Gritten in BBC News: “The oldest most complete Hebrew Bible has been bought at Sotheby’s New York for $38.1m (£30.6m), becoming the most valuable manuscript sold at auction. The Codex Sassoon is thought to have been written about 1,100 years ago. It is the earliest surviving example of a single manuscript containing all 24 books of the Hebrew Bible with punctuation, vowels and accents. US lawyer and former ambassador Alfred Moses bought it for the ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, Israel. ‘The Hebrew Bible is the most influential in history and constitutes the bedrock of Western civilisation,’ Mr Moses said in a statement. ‘I rejoice in knowing that it belongs to the Jewish people. It was my mission, realising the historic significance of Codex Sassoon, to see it resides in a place with global access to all people.’ The winning bid exceeded the $30.8m paid by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in 1994 for the Codex Leicester, Leonardo da Vinci’s scientific notebook.”

“My Conversation with Eugene Peterson on the Arts” – W. David O. Taylor at The Rabbit Room: “Bono had already left the Peterson home on the afternoon of April 19, 2018, in order to fly back to British Columbia. He and his bandmates had been in the middle of rehearsals for the Songs of Innocence tour that was to begin just under a month later, on May 14, in Vancouver. I was sitting at the Peterson’s kitchen table, processing my interview with Bono and Eugene on the psalms. Phaedra, my wife, was with me. I noticed that the film crew had yet to put away their gear. I looked out the window to see that Eugene was sitting by himself on the deck, looking out over Flathead Lake and, beyond it, to the Mission Mountains that form part of the Rocky Mountains. I’d had a longstanding desire to ask Eugene his thoughts on the arts, but figured that I’d do it through letter correspondence. (He didn’t do email). But when I realized that everybody was idling, catching their breath, as it were, I took the opportunity to ask the crew if they wouldn’t mind recording an additional conversation with Eugene. They agreed to it and we decided to set it up on the steps that led onto dock, facing Hughes Bay. I began the interview by asking Eugene what novels he was currently reading. He told me that he and Jan, his wife, had just finished reading, out loud, as was their custom, Marilynne Robinson’s novel Home.’We’ve read all four of her novels now,’ he said. ‘It’s one in a sequence, and we just think she’s a marvelous writer and enjoy them.’ He also mentioned that he’d started a new novel by the Montanan writer, Ivan Doig.”

“The One Best Way Is a Trap” – L. M. Sacasas in The Convivial Society: “The 20th century French polymath, Jacques Ellul, wrote around 50 books, but he is best remembered for The Technological Society. And this fat book, stuffed with countless examples, basically conveys a single overarching idea: modern society is ordered by one master principle, which Ellul, in French, called la technique. The standard definition of technique from Ellul goes like this: ‘Technique is the totality of methods, rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.’ That may not be the most elegant or memorable formulation. Lately, I’ve been summing up Ellul’s technique by describing it as the relentless drive to optimize all human experience for efficiency. But Ellul also helped us out with another more felicitous phrasing. He referred to technique as the search for the ‘one best way.’ So, for example, in The Technological Society Ellul wrote, ‘This “one best way” becomes a dogma that applies to increasingly more aspects of life. This destroys choice. Nothing can compete with technique.’ There’s much that could be said about a society, or a life, ordered by the relentless drive to optimize everything. Just now I want to hone in on one particular consequence that I don’t think we’ve reckoned with adequately.”

“Bob Dylan on Vulnerability, the Meaning of Integrity, and Music as an Instrument of Truth” – Maria Popova in The Marginalian: “Self-knowledge might be the most difficult of life’s rewards — the hardest to earn and the hardest to bear. To know yourself is to know that you are not an unassailable fixity amid the entropic storm of the universe but a set of fragilities in constant flux. To know yourself is to know that you are not invulnerable. The honest encounter with that vulnerability is the wellspring of art: Every artist’s art is their coping mechanism for the extreme sensitivity to aliveness that we call beauty — the transcendent and terrifying capacity to be moved by the world, to let something outside us stir deeply something within us. All great art — and only honest art can be great — is therefore the work of vulnerability and all integrity the function of fidelity to one’s fragilities. That is what Bob Dylan (b. May 24, 1941) addresses with his penetrating poetics of insight in a 1977 conversation with Jonathan Cott — that uncommonly sensitive and erudite investigator of uncommon minds.”

Music: Bob Dylan, “When You Gonna Wake Up” (Live), from Trouble No More: The Bootleg Series, volume 13.