The most beautiful, truly

The mid-week offering: art, books, essays & more

For those of you who are new to The Holy Labor, welcome! I’m delighted to have you here. Generally I publish twice a week: an essay on Saturday and a round-up of others’ “holy labor” on Wednesday. Books, articles, poetry, prayers, podcasts, artwork—anything I’m loving lately. 

Let us know what you enjoy from this gathering of good work. I hope you might share with a friend, too. Always free, thanks to the paid subscribers who make this work possible.

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1. One of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read on reckoning with Scripture’s miracles: “To approach the Creator of our unspeakably vast, wild, and elegant cosmos with anything other than deep epistemic humility strikes me as foolish…I think we’re on far more solid ground when we respond to miracles as our biblical ancestors did: with awe, silence, and wonder.” From Debie Thomas at The Christian Century.

2. I heard about Tamarin Norwood’s book through an exquisite conversation on The Mother Of It All Podcast, and ordered it all the way from the UK (free shipping from Blackwells). The Song of the Whole Wide World: On Grief, Motherhood and Poetry is hands down The Most Beautiful Book I have ever read on infant loss. Norwood’s prose sings like Claire Keegan’s, and everyone would be better for having read this beauty. (Available on e-book everywhere.)

3. “You are no longer alone. I love you with every light speck of my soul.” A striking essay from Robert Lee Williams: The Tech of Prison Parenting.

4. Last week I saw one of my favorite humans: the midwife who helped me birth two of my babies and the first one to feel the lump I found last year. Needless to say, we wept and laughed together all over again. To celebrate getting through that tricky milestone of an appointment, I swung by the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and bought myself this lovely Peace Bench print. May I commend to you the healing power of beauty: art has sustained me through cancer, and for $10 it’s cheaper than therapy!

5. Perhaps you, too, finally cleared off the table/counters of end-of-school clutter? To celebrate swapping school chaos for summer, we pulled out our copy of my friend Erica’s Living the Seasons, and the kids jumped right in. The easiest, most creative liturgical living book. Get 25% off with promo code FANUCCI15 here.

Another print at the MN Center for Book Arts: Challah Prayer. For the life of me, I don’t know why I passed this one up.

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