This steadfast love

After Psalm 107 

What is this steadfast

love, for which we are

to give thanks? It is

a love of redemption,

redemption from trouble.

 

What is this redemption,

for which we are to give

thanks? It is a redemption

from trouble, from sin,

the sin we bring upon

ourselves and others.

 

Who are the redeemed?

They are the ones gathered

together from the lands,

gathered from the east

and the west, gathered

from the north and south.

 

They come from desert wastes.

They come from darkness

and from death. They come

from foolishness and sinful

ways.

 

Some went down to the sea

in ships, rescued from storm.

Some were oppressed.

Some were afflicted.

All were hungry.

All were thirsty.

 

Give thanks to the Lord.

 

Photograph by Josh Eckstein via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

The Mystical Prayer of the Early Christians – David Torkington at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

The Woman Who Saved Capitol Hill Baptist Church – Caleb Morrell at Crossway.

 

Mary and Eve – poem by Michael Stalcup at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Finding Christ in Isolation: A Sonnet for St. Julian of Norwich – Malcolm Guite.

 

How faith built the best of our nation (Britain) – book review by Esme Partridge at The Critic Magazine.

Saturday Good Reads - May 10, 2025

For a very long time, schools and education in the Deep South were always ranked near or at the bottom of test score rankings and literacy rates. Times have changed. Public schools in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama are now ranking higher than their counterparts in states like Oregon, Maryland, and Illinois. Tim Daly at The Free Press looks into why schools in politically red states are now outperforming those in politically blue states.  

Most fans of Charles Dickens know that the child worker scene in David Copperfield was based on the author’s own experience, although it was never known during his lifetime. But his troubled childhood had more effects than that one scene, writes Peter Conrad at Literary Hub, in an excerpt from his recent book Dickens the Enchanter: Inside the Explosive Imagination of the Great Storyteller.

 

At Real Clear History, Robert Curry describes how the three pillars of the American idea were forged and fused during the American Revolution. The three are unalienable rights, self-evident truths, and free market economics. Collectively, they’ve come to be known as “common sense realism.”

 

We’ve visited and thoroughly enjoyed what Anglotopia Magazine calls “a bit of Britain in the American Heartland.” The “bit” is St. Mary Aldermanbury Church, designed by Sir Christopher Wren and bombed during the German blitz of London in World War II. The church’s ruins were transported and rebuilt at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. The basement houses America’s National Churchill Museum, as is fitting for the college’s historical status as the site where Churchill gave the “Iron Curtain” speech.

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

One Frenchman and the American Revolution – Miguel Faria at Real Clear History.

 

The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780 by Rick Atkinson – book review by Alec Rogers at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

Discovered: First Maps of the American Revolution – Edwin Grosvenor at American Heritage.

 

Visiting Parker’s Revenge – Bert Dunkerly at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

The Global Dimension of the American Revolution – John Ferling at Anglotopia Magazine (podcast).

 

Writing and Literature

 

Len Deighton and the Spy Novel and A Personal Selection – Paul Vidich at CrimeReads.

 

The Age of Genre Bending, Blending, and Juxtaposing – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft. 

 

Book Cover Images: An Author’s Guide to Using Stock Photos – Jonathan Green at Kindlepreneur.

 

Life and Culture

 

5 Takeaways from Data on Teens, Social Media, and Mental Health – Chris Martin at FYI.

 

Keeping a Culture: A Review of Thoroughness and Charm – Chrstine Norvell at Front Porch Republic.

 

My Education Solution – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

 

A Pogrom is Brewing in Canada – Casey Babb at The Free Press.

 

Poetry

 

The Second World War had its poets, too – Jeremy Wikeley at Engelsberg’s Ideas. 

 

From “Songs of Innocence” by William Blake – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

“The Lesson of the Moth” by Don Marquis – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Israel

 

The Gaza Famine Myth – Michael Ames at The Free Press.

 

Faith

 

The Enduring City of God – Regis Martin at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Why I Have Faith in the Bible’s Authority – Rondall Reynoso at Faith on View.

 

She Forgot Our Names, But No Rock of Ages – A.W. Workman at Entrusted to the Dirt.

 

Living between D-Day and VE Day – Stephen Steele at Gentle Reformation.

 

Art

 

Tate Modern, the ‘cathedral to contemporary art,’ celebrates 25 years – Gareth Harris at The Art Newspaper.

British Stuff

Firefighters of the Blitz - Spitalfields Life.

 

More – Unorganized Hancock

 Painting: The Bible Reader, oil on canvas (circa 1895) by Jozef Israels (1824-1911). 

Self-control

After Genesis 39:6-12 

She saw, she desired,

he evaded, he refused,

to maintain his commitment

to God, to honor his position

with his master, to be true

to his own integrity. It would

cost him his freedom.

 

It doesn’t have to be only

the temptation of adultery;

any desire will suffice.

We cannot maintain

self-control on our own,

it’s that simple and

simply that. If not dultery,

then food, or acquisitiveness,

or greed, or position, 

or reputation, or anything

that is always there, ready

to be worshipped,

or self-worshipped.

 

Photograph by Jack Sharp via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Discovery – poem by Toyohiko Kagawa at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin). 

 

The Shepherd’s Voice – sermon by Mark Daniels.

 

Where Death Is No an Is – poem by Katie Manning at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

At the Lamb’s High Feast We Sing – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

St. Genevieve and 2,000 Sheep – poem by Megan Willome at Poetry for Life.

 

Poets and Poems: Alfred Nicol and "After the Carnival"

When you’re born and raised in New Orleans, you soon learn that one holiday frames and defines the city. The Mardi Gras season stretches for some three weeks before the final day of Shrove Tuesday. It’s filled with parades of floats with their masked revelers tossing beads and other trinkets to the crowds, marching bands, costumed balls, and (at night) the flambeaux carriers walking with the parades.  

My mother, also a native New Orleanian, always referred to Mardi Gras as “Carnival,” like its Brazilian counterpart.

 

Mardi Gras culminated on the Tuesday before Lent, with what seemed a series of endless parades beginning with the Krewe of Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club. It was followed by the parade of the Krewe of Rex, King of Carnival, and the “truck” parades of Crescent City and Elks. ending with the nighttime parade of the Krewe of Comus (now discontinued). The balls of Rex and Comus were held at Municipal Auditorium, and at midnight, the two courts would meet and officially end the Mardi Gras season.

 

After carnival came Lent. Tuesday was excess in all of its varied forms; Wednesday was restraint and ashes on the forehead. Experiencing Mardi Gras in New Orleans was like experiencing a cultural theology, moving from riotous sin to humble repentance.

 

Reading After the Carnival: Poems by Alfred Nicol is a Mardi Gras kind of experience, plumbing both the depths and the heights of human existence. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

 

A Review of Like: Poems by A.E. Stallings – Midge Goldberg at New Verse Review.

 

“George Crabbe,” poem by Edgar Arlington Robinson – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

John Thomas Smith’s Antiquities of Old London – Spitalfields Life.

 

Shakespeare’s Film Moir: Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” – Dwight Longenecker at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Poet Laura: Gardens and Grandpa – Sandra Fox Murphy at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Research Doesn't Stop with Publication

It was a year ago that the manuscript for my historical novel was attached to an email and sent to the publisher who requested it. I felt an incredible sense of relief. The thing was done. I could take a break from literally years of reading and research about the Civil War. Nine years of reading and research.  

I had started this even before I’d thought about writing a historical novel. I started reading about the Civil War because I was interested in it. It was only when I stumbled across an event called Grierson’s Raid, a Union cavalry raid in 1863 that the idea for a novel arose. The raid began at the border between Mississippi and Tennessee, swept down through the state, and eventually ended at Baton Rouge in Louisiana. It was designed as a diversion for Ulysses S Grant to quietly move his Union army across the Mississippi and attack Vicksburg from the east.

 

My ancestors had experienced that raid. They lived in the Brookhaven, Mississippi, area, one of sites that Grierson’s raiders had visited.

 

I researched everything I could about the raid and the broader war. Once I knew I would be writing a novel, my research intensified. By the time I sent the email to the publisher, I was close to exhausted, at least mentally.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW Blog. 

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Grand Review – Josh Frye at Emerging Civil War.

 

What If Collapse Has Already Happened? – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

 

Murders for May – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine.

 

Kazuo Ishiguro Reflects on Never Let Me Go Twenty Years Later – at Literary Hub.

 

Murder and the Imagination – Andrew Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and "The Mother of All Words"

As I began reading The Mother of All Words, the new poetry collection by Kelly Belmonte, an image of my childhood began to emerge. The image was the neighborhood where I grew up in suburban New Orleans. It has originally been something akin to swamp; our corner house still had two swamp cypress trees. And across the street were the woods stretching several blocks. As kids, we called it the “Little Woods,” to differentiate it from the wooded area on the other side of the drainage canal. That was the “Big Woods,” four to five times larger, which had what seemed like acres of blackberry bushes scattered among the trees and brush. 

Living near woods as a child was sheer magic. My childhood wasn’t especially notable or exceptional, but we had the woods, with its trails, its hiding places, its space so deep you could lose sight of the nearby houses. You could imagine anything and imagine yourself to be anything. And adults were nowhere to be found.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Things Worth Remembering: ‘Be What You Are’ – Joseph Massey at The Free Press.

 

A new Wendell Berry novel in October.

 

Golden-Cheeked Warbler – poem by Megan Willome at Every Day Poems.

 

“Corinna’s Going A-Maying,” poem by Robert Herrick – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

10 Ways to Help Your Favorite Introverted Author - T.S. Poetry.

"Reviving the Heart of Leadership" by James Decker

If there is one experience virtually all Americans share, it’s the experience of the health care industry. We know it primarily from the receiving end of the industry’s services – doctors, nurses, lab technicians, EMT professionals, and perhaps the payments and billing departments, medical insurance companies, and urgent care offices. What we don’t have much direct experience with is how this industry gets managed and administered at the company and hospital levels – the people who run the medical care systems. 

Dr. James Decker just might change that. Decker retired in 2023 and chief executive officer of MEDIC Regional Blood Center in Knoxville, Tennessee. His career includes executive positions at the Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center, Sumner Regional Health Center, and Gateway Health System, all in Tennessee, and the Baptist Health System of East Tennessee. And he’s written a memoir of his almost 50 years in medical administration, Reviving the Heart of Leadership: Empowering Healthcare Executives to Lead with Compassion.

 

He tells a great story. And he knows something is wrong with America’s healthcare system, looking from and at the inside. Few people are better placed than Decker has been to see what’s been happening. Medical system executives have had to face difficult if not impossible decisions in managing cost, insurance provider, and government demands, not to mention patients and their families who must navigate what looks like an impenetrable bureaucracy of medical care and medical insurance.

 

Decker describes how he became interested in hospital administration in graduate school. He had B.S. and M.S. degrees in microbiology from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and an M.S. degree in Hospital and Health Administration from the University of Alabama in Birmingham. He later added an MBA degree from the University of Tennessee and a Doctor of Health Administration from the Medical University of South Carolina. (Five degrees, and, somehow, he and his wife still managed to rear a family.)

 

James L. Decker

He describes an industry in almost constant upheaval and re-invention over the course of his own career. Pressures to expand services and add new technologies have faced their own pressures of cost containment. Caught in the middle has been the people who comprise the industry. Decker not only writes with compassion, but also advocates for compassion, from administrators, hospital board members, and all the people who makes the healthcare industry work. He owns up to his own failures and describes how he worked to do better. Especially effective is his use of both professional and personal stories, including how his last position, as CEO of a regional blood supply center, during which he had to lead through the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Decker’s received many recognitions and awards during his career. He was named Alumnus of the Year by the University of Alabama-Birmingham, a Healthcare Hero by the Knoxville Business Journal, and Distinguished Alumnus of the Year by the Medical University of South Carolina. He also received the Meritorious Service Award from the Tennessee Hospital Association. He’s a Life Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) and past ACHE Regent for Tennessee. Decker also holds faculty appointments at the University of Tennessee and South College. He lives with his family in Tennessee.

 

Reviving the Heart of Leadership is likely aimed at health care industry executives, but it’s also a valuable resource for people who work in hospitals, doctors, and even patients and consumers. To see how the industry has changed over the past half-century helps in understanding where it is today. And, Decker might add, where it can be better.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Why the Odyssey Matters – Andy Owen at The Critic Magazine.

 

The Devious Deceiver: Chaplain Fr. Joseph Bixio, S.J. – Rev. Robert Miller at Emerging Civil War.

 

We are letting schools poison our children – Hadley Freeman at The Times of London.

 

The second birth of JMW Turner – Michael Prodger at The New Statesman.

 

“Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.