Greetings from Laity Lodge, my beloved place of refuge deep in the Hill Country of Texas. I am here to do some reading and thinking and writing and praying before returning home next week to begin preparations for a new term.
The last time I wrote to you, I was thinking about possible books to blog my way through, and solicited your recommendations. But then matters took a turn. I got some interesting feedback on my Two Cities series, and realized that I wasn’t really finished with that topic. One point that I hadn’t written about kept returning to my mind: that in the City of God Augustine often refers to Rome as the “second Babylon” and to Babylon as the “first Rome.” What does he mean by this? Should we conclude that in the Bible Babylon is the very image of the City of Man?
The more I thought about this the more intrigued I became, and I realized that I needed a new blog series on the topic. I’m calling it Encyclopedia Babylonica. Entries so far feature an introduction, a look at D. W. Griffith’s famous 1916 movie Intolerance, and a reflection on the book of Daniel. Future entries will consider Bob Marley, William Blake, Jacques Ellul, Damien Chazelle’s movie Babylon, and the German TV series Babylon Berlin.
I could of course turn this into an essay that someone would pay me (at least a few bucks) for — I could’ve done that with the Two Cities series also. But I hope you can see why I’m pursuing these ideas on my blog. On the blog I can speculate and associate and explore and connect. At some point I’ll explicitly link the Babylon series with the Two Cities series — and then somewhat further down the line I’m pretty sure all these reflections will connect to my Invitation and Repair project. I just couldn’t manage to forge all those connections in essays or books — the blog as a medium is uniquely well-suited for this open-ended way of thinking.
I believe doing this kind of thinking and writing is valuable, but it’s genuinely helpful to know that other people also think it valuable. So for those of you who are already supporting this work, I am most grateful. And if others could join in that support, that would be a great encouragement to me. What I do is weird: I’m not a culture-warrior or a pundit or an influencer; I’m just an inconstant follower of Jesus — one who, to borrow a phrase from Auden, “staggers onward rejoicing” — who also tries to understand the nature of this peculiar and not-always-unpleasant Babylon we live in. If you are similarly weird, welcome to our club!
Other news:
I am in the early stages of a big project: writing a book about the art of Terrence Malick.
I wrote a ridiculously long and complex essay on Thomas Pynchon as theologian — and, if Pynchon scares you, I also wrote a guide to reading him.
I wrote an essay on resistance and the arts — the kinds of resistance that help arts and artists to thrive — enabling resistances as opposed to disabling ones.
When I’m at Laity I always take pictures.
Stay as cool as you can — and let’s look for ways to help those who can’t escape the heat —