Miscellany: Human Dignity, Whales, Bach, and More
Plus, the Werewolf in the Dark campaign is live.
Welcome to Three Things.
We’re a monthly digest of three things to help you engage with God, neighbor, and culture. But this is our monthly Miscellany where we (Andy and Phillip) tell you what we’ve been reading, thinking about and working on.
The Johnstons are excited about going on holiday to the Lake District with friends soon. But ask N (age 5) and L (age 2) what their favourite place is and they will simply say The Hall. And by that they mean the musty old church building rented by the church Phillip works for. On rainy afternoons (there are many) when the hall is unoccupied, Philip takes them to the Hall for an hour to run riot through the empty building, playing monster and hide and seek. Now, whenever Phillip goes to The Hall simply to get some work done, the girls, assuming daddy plays hide and seek all day, ask to come along.
Reading: Phillip has been camped out in the earlier chapters of Genesis. It’s been useful to take things slow and to focus on a single idea or concept each week in preaching. For instance, rather than flying through the creation of humankind in the image of God in 1:26-28, he’s focusing on three aspects of the image. The first is dignity, so he’s picked up Charles Camosy’s book Losing Our Dignity: How Secularised Medicine is Undermining Fundamental Human Equality. Through multiple case studies, Camosy shows how the status of personhood in the modern world is increasingly reserved for individuals who are autonomous, self-aware, productive, and rational (podcast interview here). This rejection of equal dignity, rooted in Genesis, returns us to the pre-Christian ethic of the strong deciding the moral and legal status of the weak. Genesis really is revolutionary stuff.
Listening: Though he’s never prommed in any sense, Phillip would love to join to the queue to hear The Aurora Orchestra play Beethoven’s Ninth from memory in August. What a feat! Hearing the piece by surprise on the radio the other day reminded him of that summer in the early noughties where Solti’s Ninth was the only thing he listened to on the minivan CD player. Also, the oboist Albrecht Mayer recently released an album titled Bach Generations where he plays the work of not one but four members of the Bach family. It’s not just for nerds, however. Mayer’s playing reminds Phillip of why he wanted to play the oboe as a kid. If this is what you could eventually get out of it, who wouldn’t?!
Before Andy was the lowly Instigator of Three Things Newsletter, he was a game designer. In the winter of 2019, Andy sold a game called Werewolf in the Dark to a game company. He tends to make games that involve lying, alliance-breaking, and being socially sneaky (but all in good, mutually edifying fun) and most of Andy’s games require a lot of people to play. That was all well and good in the winter of 2019, however, you may recall that spring 2020 had a little thing called COVID-19 in store. To say the least, it was not the best time to release a new game that involved a bunch of people bumping into each other in the dark.
But now the time has come and the crowdfunding campaign for Werewolf in the Dark is upon us. If you’re new to this whole “social-deduction, party game” business, here is a review of the game.
Reading: Andy’s children have brought some new gems into his reading life: Investigators (They’re alligators. They are investigators. They wear vests. Hilarity ensues) and the Lightfall series (fans of Narnia will enjoy these action-packed graphic novels).
Andy was recently asked by two friends to list resources for people who are just getting into poetry and want to read more. His answer was:
The Rabbit Room poetry Substack (new and beloved poems emailed to you almost every day)
The Poetry For All podcast by Abram van Engen and Joanne Diaz
The Poetry Unbound podcast by Pádraig Ó Tuama.
Listening: Andy recently heard a sermon on how Solomon’s wisdom was also evident in his knowledge of the natural world. People came to Solomon from all over the world to hear about “animals and birds, reptiles and fish.” (1 Kings 4: 29-34) And it reminded him of a wonderful book called The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea. Phillip Hoare isn’t Solomon, but reading this book sure felt like soaking up someone who had studied the Lord’s world […and I dedicate this pun to Phillip Johnston] in depth.
New from Pattern Bible (studies on the biblical theme of water):
New from The Darkling Psalter (Andy’s poetry and Psalm project):