Catching my breath
Apologies for being so sparse on here the last few weeks, and some exciting bits of news!
The last few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind in the Englewood neighborhood of Indianapolis (or at least for this one person here). Work has been pretty routine, except for frequent trips to the local Benedictine monastery to help with the downsizing of their library (part of a larger downsizing of their facilities that they, like many longstanding monasteries, are undergoing). But I coach track and cross country at our neighborhood high school, and over the last couple of weeks we wrapped up our indoor season, with a bit of the fervor of trying to get our athletes to qualify for the state meet (none did this year).
And on the home front, we had a thoroughly AMAZING joint 50th birthday bash for Jeni (my wife) and me! We both hit the half-century mark in the first quarter of 2024… All three of our kids and our one daughter-in-law were are able to be here for the festivities, and the two college students were on spring break the week after the party, so we were delighted to have them home for awhile. Jeni is on spring break this week and next week, so with all the spring breaks there’s been so much I’d rather be doing than sitting and writing at my laptop!
It’s odd… Most of my work moved forward as normal during the last few weeks, but writing was the one thing that didn’t. I just couldn’t bring myself to sit still for awhile, to focus, and to write! Anyone else find themselves in similar situations where it is nearly impossible to write? Maybe this is a confession / realization of how deeply I too have been formed by our present culture that struggles to cultivate and maintain attention? (As we have been discussing here in my series on Johann Hari’s book Stolen Focus, a series that I intend to resume here next week.)
I wanted to highlight some exciting bits of news, which I will organize loosely into news for this Substack community and news related to The Englewood Review of Books.
Substack News
As I mentioned above, after a month+ hiatus, my series on Johann Hari’s book Stolen Focus (for all subscribers, free and paid) will resume next week, and should have about four more posts before it wraps up.
Also, I intend to post my monthly piece for paid subscribers later this week, in the series "How to Read Voraciously and Build a Personal Library Without Breaking the Bank." The focus of this newest post will be audiobooks, and the best thrifty strategies for acquiring and/reading them. So, if you’re an audiobook reader, keep your eyes open for that!
Also for paid subscribers…
We will be hosting our quarterly author conversation on Zoom on Wednesday April 17 at 8PM ET (5PM PT). The “guest” authors will be John Pattison and myself (hence the scare quotes!) doing a 10th anniversary reflection on our co-written book Slow Church. I can’t believe that it has been a decade since it’s release! The conversation will be facilitated by a guest host that is yet to be confirmed. And appropriately, we will leave ample time for conversation with participants who are able to join the live conversation! The conversation, however, will be recorded and made available for paid subscribers who aren’t able to join the live event. So, if you’re a paid subscriber, I hope you will be able to join us for this special conversation!
Also, we are exploring additional new perks for our paid subscribers, so stay tuned for announcements about that in the next month or two!
Englewood Review of Books News
If you are in the central Indiana area…
The ERB will be co-hosting an event this Saturday evening March 23 with The Table church and Gravity Commons featuring local author Jon DePue, who co-authored the new book Beyond Justification with Douglas Campbell of Duke Divinity School. The event will be held at Englewood Christian Church (57 N Rural St / Indianapolis) from 7-9pm this Saturday. You can register here (or at this point, feel free to just show up.) There’s no ticket charge, but we will be selling signed copies of the book and collecting donations to help with the cost of the event.
In other news that has been consuming a fair chunk of my time over the last couple of months, the ERB is diving back into book publishing this year (and also ebook publishing … and perhaps audiobooks too!) Our first title is a new and revised edition of my little book The Virtue of Dialogue: Conversation as a Hopeful Practice of Church Communities (a case study of our church’s practice of setting aside time each Sunday for conversation, which was originally published in 2010). This new edition is in its final edits now and should be available within a month. We’ll definitely alert you when it is available.
I’m super-excited that the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin University is back to an in-person event next month, after a pandemic-induced hiatus since 2018! The ERB has been an exhibitor at this Festival since 2010, and are delighted to be back again this year as an exhibitor! If you are planning to be there, please do drop by our booth and say hi! We recently published a Festival preview and pre-reading guide featuring some of our favorite writers who will be speaking there, so if you’re going (or even if you’re not) you might want to check that out!
And finally, we’re exactly in the middle of our March Theology Tourney!
Round 2 finished last night, and Round 3 has just started! Drop in for some theology-related fun, and cast your votes for the theology books from the last quarter century that you think will be most significant in the long run.
Thanks for your patience with my recent reticence here, and stay tuned as a more regular schedule of posting will resume very soon!
Congratulations on half century birthdays!! On a grammatical note: please correct the pronoun used after the preposition.
Love this life update. Happiest bdays, friends. Can't wait to see you (and hopefully Jeni!) at FFW