Hope > Recent Status Updates

Oh also don't forget G.K. Chesterton's What's Wrong with the World

Ugh this is SO good and pairs SO well with:
• Carlson's other fantastic book on similar topics, The American Way
• Wendell Berry's The Unsettling of America, as well as his fiction works
• Joel Salatin
• On fertility and the large family, Hannah's Children by C. R. Pakaluk

The first 140 pages are pretty immature—a lot of whining on the "experience" side (clearly she doesn't believe she's carrying an eternal soul but rather "just" a fetus—"parasite," "debacle," & other phrases expressing annoyance & inconvenience made me question why she decided to have a child in the first place) & a lot of condescension & poorly cited, even untrue, statements on the "science" side. Gets better though.

The opening was a little abrasive but if I've gained anything from pregnancy so far it's a greater sense of compassion & higher threshold for judgement. I simply never cared about my career that much & it was easy for me to ditch the career model for the trad family model. I'm stoked to be a wife, mother, and homemaker. I feel, more than anything, a deep sense of pity for those who feel torn by competing desires.

Fifth edition intro was really interesting — Bradley has had a substantial impact on birthing practice since his work began to spread in the sixties!

I know a lot of folks hate this book but I am finding the 5th edition helpful as a reference or some sort of baseline expectation even though I disagree and consciously violate quite a bit of it

Great counsel for miscarriage fears. Whether the baby is born healthy or not, I've created an eternal soul. I can't remember (audiobook woes) which interviewee talked about co-creating life with God, being a conduit for life, & making a human being who will exist forever. So easy to get granular about pregnancy statistics & medical stuff & forget the deeper reality of what's happening when a child is knit in the womb

Was debating whether this would be a good pregnancy read... Chapter 11 was hard to listen to, but a mercy as well

So far I have learned that all the screenings are mostly pointless if you have no intention to abort under any circumstances, so... Saved me some money

"Sometimes, we need to ask God to make ourselves proper vessels to receive the blessings"

Outstanding read so far. Need to add Promises I Can Keep to the TBR

The Idiot is the funniest short story I've ever read

Pairs beautifully with Allan Carlson's The American Way!

Why isn't this book more popular? Dickens hilarity but half or less in terms of length. This is great

Obligatory culture read, so far it's wobbly

Absolutely beautiful so far. Much easier to follow than I initially expected (in the past I haven't been one for Arthurian legend). The audiobook, read by the author, is truly the way to go! It would not have sounded nearly as authentic read aloud in my own voice.

Clarissa is (obviously) not a Christian but has a deep intuition about the basic Christian truth that love is death to the world and resurrection to the other. Reading that realization from the other side of the glass, as it were, made it all the more powerful—you can run from Christianity, but you can't outrun reality; so here you are again, back at the Cross. The Skeleton Woman is always chasing you, dawg