The Roundup
Reflections, reviews, and recommendations
Welcome to the Roundup, a periodical collection of reflections, reviews, and recommendations from the team at Perishable Goods.
The Touch of Dirt by Steven Carter
I was never one of those little boys who loved to jump in the mud. I didn’t like getting dirty. I wanted to stay clean. Looking back, I wonder if I didn’t like it because I didn’t see a reason for it. If I was going to be covered in mud, at least have it be contributing towards some goal. Now, though, I at least see one good reason to jump in the mud – a simple reminder that I am flesh and bone. In an increasingly technocratic age, especially if one lives a more pristine lifestyle away from real animals or rural trappings, it may be easy to see mud and dirt – earthy messiness – as hindrances of sanitation instead of daily, subtle reminders that we are creatures – and stewards – living in nature. I am an online history instructor, but also a farmer. As I prepared for class one morning last year, I remember hearing my uncle getting up to brew some coffee before heading out to meet the day. What were the tasks at-hand? Well, weeding tomatoes, hoeing sweet corn, and packing tomatoes for the farmers’ market were among them. I remember feeling this sense of disappointment that I couldn’t meet the day like that, but had to wait until class was over instead. After class, I usually made my way outside as quickly as I could to go get my hands dirty with whatever the project was. To plunge my hands into the cool dirt made me feel grounded in reality, almost as if I had been sort of a digital resident instead of a real person of flesh and bone. To touch the earth felt not only like an outworking of a certain kind of freedom but an alleviation of a sense of disembodiment, for there is perhaps nothing more real than the very soil of the earth—it’s where our first father came from after all. It may be a simple thing, but when we are surrounded by so many virtual perks and distractions, we may be tempted to forget the goods we’ve been given that are physical—goods that have been there all along and that may be right in front of us. There are some things that should never be “sanitized.” We need dirt. Sometimes it might be good to jump in the mud and get a little dirty.
Steven Carter is the newest Perishable Goods contributor. Steven is a history instructor and assistant manager at his family’s third-generation farm in Minnesota. His topical interests include the importance of place, limits, and practices.
The remainder of this newsletter is a little cornucopia of all the things we’ve been reading, watching, and listening to recently. Enjoy!
Articles
Christina J. Lambert in Front Porch Republic on “Learning about Food and Proper Nouns”
In her illuminating article on the importance of food and fellowship, Lambert challenges us to love our neighbor—not the abstract neighbor—but our literal neighbor who lives near us and has a name of their own. Lambert’s piece is particularly edifying as we contemplate the simple, yet deeply meaningful practice of gathering around a table and sharing a meal with our family, friends, and neighbors:
“Food is something tangible and essential to everyday life, but it’s also connected to something beyond the material. It has the potential to create environments and experiences that bring people together emotionally and spiritually.”
“I don’t think I’m just teaching basic levels of critical thinking and inquiry; I think I am responsible for shaping hearts and minds to love what is good. I don’t think I’m introducing my students to ways of writing about the topic of food; I think I’m responsible for connecting them to the land, bringing back family dinners across the nation, and raising a generation of cooks who meditate upon the beauty of onions.”
Ethan Mannon in Front Porch Republic on “Heating with Wood as a Habit of Mind”
Mannon explains the practical advantages of heating with a wood stove while making a compelling argument for the value of forming habits of mind that are fostered through physical labor:
“I enjoy certain utilitarian advantages by heating with wood, but I also prefer the habits of mind—attention, connection, succession, frugality—that my woodpile’s growth and contraction inspires.”
Book Reviews
The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery by Ross Douthat
I read—okay, listened to—this book in one day. A friend recommended it to me after a conversation about suffering and grief. It’s one of the few books in the past year that I couldn’t put down.
The Deep Places is more than just a moving memoir about Douthat’s struggle against lyme disease—it’s a lesson in how even modern life must contend with our mortal limits. Douthat and his wife dream to escape the bustle of Washington, D.C. and return to his childhood home in Connecticut. Just when that dream is about to materialize, Douthat’s life descends into darkness. After a trip to their new house, he notices a strange mark on his neck. Within weeks he begins to experience strange symptoms. Months later he is finally able to give them a name: lyme disease.
As his body is overtaken by the disease, Douthat is confronted with the limits of his body and his existing faith. He cannot focus like he used to; he cannot perform simple tasks without pain or fatigue; he cannot play with his children. He struggles to cling to faith in the darkness. Gradually (and without much help from the industrial medical complex) he learns how best to fight the disease in his body and slowly recovers his health.
Douthat’s memoir of suffering is a much needed story for our day. His struggle for survival and faith is a reminder that modern life—even with all its comfort and convenience—is fragile enough to be turned upside down by something as small and seemingly insignificant as a tick. Whatever your suffering, Douthat’s story encourages us that even when the modern illusions of control and invincibility are stripped away and we are left in the dark, God can still be found.
—Jared
Films, Podcasts, etc.
Our Friend—director, Gabriella Cowperthwaite (2019)
I watched this film with my husband a couple months ago and I’ve been wanting to write something about it ever since—maybe I’ll develop my thoughts in a longer piece sometime soon. Adapted from Matthew Teague’s 2015 essay “The Friend,” Our Friend is a picture of what marriage, singleness, and friendship look like in the face of a terminal cancer diagnosis. And while cancer is the occasion for the story, the film is about much more than this. It’s about a man who neglects his family for the sake of personal glory until his wife’s illness calls him home to be the father and husband he’s meant to be. It’s about an aimless, single man who finally finds his greater purpose by serving his friends in their time of greatest need. It’s about two men who discover their vocations in the midst of suffering and learn how to lay their lives down for a friend.
One of the things I found most startling was how truly the film depicts the physical and emotional weight of caring for a dying body. I haven’t seen any other film depict the complexity of hospice work in all its frustration, exhaustion, pain, embarrassment—and glory. To tend to another’s body on the cusp of death—to wash, dress, feed, soothe, support it—to meet its last needs, to see that it’s taken care of before it goes into the ground, not knowing if she’ll be there the next time you walk into the room—this is work that testifies to the body’s worth and the need for resurrection.
Our Friend does not look away from the sorrow of our mortal limits. At the same time, however, it affirms that these limits can bear beauty, calling us to greater love, sacrifice, and thanksgiving for one another.
—Lara
Last week, the Good Faith podcast featured an interview with one of our favorite writers, Andy Crouch (author of The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World). Andy offers a helpful perspective of how to think about the rise of popular AI tools (like ChatGPT), noting how the entertainment and simulation of “boring robots” cannot substitute for real life experience and relationships.
New Finds & Upcoming Events
At the Greystone Theological Institute’s annual Winter Feast last weekend, Jared had the chance to meet the Maine-based hand-tool woodworker and Greystone Associate Fellow, Joshua Klein. Klein is editor-in-chief for Mortise & Tenon, a magazine devoted to hand-tool woodworking. Klein will be helping lead Greystone’s Mechanical Arts Program, which you can think of as a Robert-Capon-meets-Matthew-Crawford-meets-seminary kind of program where students experience the grain of reality (quite literally) through tradeskills and craftsmanship.
Speaking of Matthew Crawford, he’ll be giving the annual First Things Lecture in Washington, DC on Tuesday, March 7 on “Antihumanism and the Post-Political Condition.” You can register here. (And if you’re in town, let Jared know!)
Poetry Selection
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
Such high quality content, thank you!!