(A Very Merry) Quickly Commonplacing #5

Featuring: A book without a heroine, my favorite Advent song, and the books I got for Christmas

Merry Christmas to all! This holiday season has been a very full one for our family. It began with my newest nephew’s baptism over Thanksgiving weekend (entailing 22+ hours of total driving), it continued with a Polar Express Train Ride and a viewing of the Nutcracker Ballet, and it ended with a 5+ hour car ride on Christmas Day to attend a holiday party with my husband’s extended family. We last attended this party as newlyweds in 2018. There was something incredibly surreal about entering the same home with three kids in tow, realizing how much life, with all its joys and sorrows, had happened in the interim. I’m grateful that Christmastide will be a simpler season than Advent was, and I am very grateful that I entered Advent having meditated on leisure, worship, sloth, and busyness in this collaboration with the very wise Jessica Risma. And now, on to the next installment of Quickly Commonplacing!

Current Reads:

1. Reread: Vanity Fair By: William Makepeace Thackeray

   1. I’m in the early stages of this reread, inspired by my reading of Mr. Dickens and His Carol (which I had mixed feelings about). My favorite bits ended up being the scenes when other Victorian literary figures, like Thackeray, appeared; hence, Vanity Faire. Set during the Regency Era, the novel follows the fortunes of two school “friends,” Rebecca Sharp and Amelia Sedley, against the backdrop of the Napoleanic Wars. The novel was subtitled “A Novel Without a Hero,” and with the benefit of hindsight, I am really noticing the ways in which the novel lives up to its subtitle. Becky has grit and determination, but like Undine Spragg of Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country, her moral compass is malformed by poor parenting and societal pressures. And like Undine Spragg, her callous manipulation of the people around her is disturbing. Amelia, on the other hand, has a sweetness and belief in the goodness of others reminiscent of Austen’s Jane Bennett. However, she lacks Jane’s understanding and selflessness, remaining devoted to her shallow and selfish childhood sweetheart to her own detriment.

2. New Read: My God and My All By: Elizabeth Goudge

   1. I haven’t read any Goudge since a childhood encounter with The Little White Horse, and I am pleased to report that everyone who told me I should check out her writing was 100% correct. This biography of St. Francis is a gem, and one that was perfect to dip into during Advent. In the midst of spending and feasting, reading about St. Francis’ radical conformity to Christ’s life of poverty and suffering was convicting. I am not called to live the life of a Franciscan, but I am called to carry my cross with patience, serve the poor, and place all my trust in God no less than Francis was. I also found myself deeply touched by the love Francis shared with his spiritual sons and female friends. Finding in-person community can be difficult as a parent, particularly in our digitized world. Definitely something to pray and work for. Finally, I am retroactively deciding that my son, Leo, is named for Brother Leo in addition to his original namesake of Pope St. Leo the Great.

Recent Commonplace Quotes

1. “Though I knew that actually I had heard no voice, I could not dismiss the possibility that it had spoken and I had failed to hear it because of some deficiency in me or something wrong that I had done. My fearful uncertainty lasted for months…Finally I reasoned that in dealing with God you had better give him the benefit of the doubt. I had decided I had better accept the call that had not come, just in case it had come and I had missed it.” (Jayber Crow, By: Wendell Berry)

   1. My husband and I podcasted about this book and its author with the ladies at Reading Revisited, and I am so glad I finally read Jayber Crow for myself. This quote comes from a longer passage in which Jayber wrestles with the question of whether or not he is called to be a preacher. I can think of only a handful of other passages I’ve read, in all my life, that spoke so perfectly to my personal experience. Like Jayber, I wondered if I was called to ministry (in my case as a nun). And like Jayber, I struggled with intense anxiety surrounding my vocational discernment. I too worried constantly about “missing out” on what God was trying to tell me through some fault of my own. These discernment struggles left scars, and seeing my experience reflected so accurately in this beautiful novel was a reminder from God that He still wishes to redeem those wounds.

2. “Undine was fiercely independent and yet passionately imitative. She wanted to surprise everyone by her dash and originality, but she could not help modeling herself on the last person she met, and the confusion of ideals thus produced caused her much perturbation when she had to choose between two courses.” (The Custom of the Country, By: Edith Wharton)

   1. If Undine Spragg existed in today’s world, she would 100% be an aspiring influencer. Undine’s dilemma feels very relevant in today’s social media driven world. Social media rewards both “originality” and “conformity,” the “hot take” and the “trending topic.” If, like Undine, we lack the moral, spiritual, or intellectual grounding on which to make decisions about when to conform to or when to buck societal pressures, we will also find ourselves ‘perturbed.’

Excellent Earworms:

1. Music: My favorite advent song by Matt Maher and my son’s favorite Christmas carol by The Irish Rovers

2. Podcasts

   1. A Christmas Carol on “The Rest Is History Podcast,” informative and seasonally appropriate

   2. Judi Dench on Seven Decades of Shakespeare: So much fun to listen to. I 100% want to get her book now

Substack Shares:

• I loved this theological reflection on Santa Claus, especially as my husband and I try to balance enchantment and truth with our now very aware and curious little ones.

Santa Claus as the Hypostasis of Christmas

• Christmastide is a time where we think about the greatest fairy story of all, the Incarnation of Christ. I loved this reflection on the Tolkien vs Martin approach to fantasy because it articulates better than I ever could what, exactly, I dislike about much of the modern fantasy hellscape.

Tolkien Gives George R. R. Martin the Smack Down or Why Happy Endings in Fantasy Are a Requirement

• Everything Dominika at Gathering Light writes is excellent. This piece put into words vague thoughts/intimations I had while reading one of my favorite books of 2024, Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.

Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" and the Theology of the Body

My Very Literary Christmas:

Instead of polling you guys about which Christmas movie is best (White Christmas), I thought I’d share the books I got for Christmas. Sound off if you’ve read any, and share your (non-spoiler) opinions of them.

1. Gaudy Night, By: Dorothy Sayers: So excited to add to my Lord Peter Wimsey collection and encounter the wonderful Harriet Vane once again.

2. One Poor Scruple, By: Josephine Ward: Inspired by Haley Stewart’s book, Women of the Catholic Imagination, I asked for this novel. I received a gorgeous edition from Catholic University Press, who is publishing a Catholic Women Writer’s series.

3. In the same series, I also asked for Give Them Stones, By: Mary Beckett. It will be coming out in January, and and my lovely sister already preordered it.

4. The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision, By: Erika Bachiochi: I am SO excited to dig into this, having heard a lot of good things about it from various substackers.

5. The Letters of Magdalen Montague, A Bloody Habit, and Wake of Malice, By: Eleanor Bourg Nicholson. Ever since Eleanor appeared on the Reading Revisited podcast I have been dying to get her books. My Dad got them for me and had them personalized by Eleanor herself! He said she was absolutely lovely and I will treasure my signed copies forever.

6. The Mass of the Early Christians and The Fathers of the Church, By Mike Aquilina: My wonderful husband got these for me because I’ve been talking about wanting to read more church fathers for a while now. I am really looking forward to reading texts foundational to my faith.

7. Beautiful Holiness: A Spiritual Journey with Blessed Conchita to the Heart of Jesus, By: Kathleen Beckman: I first learned about Blessed Conchita when I read one of her meditations in Magnificat. I fell in love with her almost immediately. It’s not always easy to find married saints in the church whose lives the average couple can emulate. Many married saints were canonized because they founded religious orders after their marriage, were martyred, were royal, or were celibate in their marriage. Others were married because of social/parental pressure rather than by choice. Blessed Conchita did found religious organizations after being widowed, but her mystical experiences began during the course of her married life, which was a loving and happy one. I’ve read her biography, with excerpts from her diary, and her collected letters. This latest book will hopefully offer me a more prayerful way to get to know Conchita, and through her, the heart of Christ.

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