Welcome to The Square Inch, a Friday newsletter on Christianity, culture, and all of the many-varied “square inches” of God’s domain. This is a paid subscription feature with a preview before the paywall, so please consider subscribing to enjoy this weekly missive along with a frequent Pipe & Dram feature of little monologues/conversations in my study, and Wednesday’s “The Quarter Inch,” a quick(er) commentary on current events.
Dear Friends,
I apologize for my absence in your inbox over this past week. I have been hard at work on a pressing writing project that has taken up almost all of my mental space. If writing was equivalent to a little workshop, I’ve been cutting, sawing, and sanding sentences, picking up words, turning them over and over in my fingers, rejecting some and accepting others that are just right. It is doubly challenging when the topic is incredibly complicated. Did you know that top professional chess players can burn as many calories in a single classical game as athletes in other sports do theirs? It is true. You can actually lose weight by thinking hard and solving complications. I’ve lost a little weight this week.
I’ll save sharing the topic with you for another time. Suffice it to say, I have not been paying too much attention to whatever is going on in the outside world. And that is perfectly okay. I ran across this gem from philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer the other day:
Life is short, indeed, and Dr. Schopenhauer is almost convincing me to delete that X or Twitter App thingamabob. I feel like I need it. I get a lot of instant current event updates and links to interesting articles and so forth from that source (including that lovely aphorism pictured above), but I am wondering if I would really miss it if it was gone? I doubt it.
So what have I been up to when not staring at a book or the word processing screen? Enjoying the weather, for one. This has been the most spectacular May in recent memory. All of the trees seem to have spontaneously burst into bloom at the exact same moment, and the air has a certain Spring quality to it. The breeze on my back deck is cool and lilac-scented. Last night a surprise thunderstorm just popped up out of nowhere and Bailey took many pictures.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Square Inch to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.