Welcome to Three Things.
This is our main monthly issue of three items to help you engage with God, neighbour and culture.
Simple Acts of Sanity (or, How to be Weird in Public, and in Private)
Peco and Ruth Gaskovski on sowing seeds of anachronism
Almost ten years ago, this newsletter’s Instigator (Andy) and Curator (Phillip) met at a Christian residential study centre, called L’Abri, where we were both working. L’Abri was a shelter where the pace of modern life slowed down by degrees. Visitors often described it as a place where they began to feel more fully human, before lamenting their inevitable return to “the real world.” We encouraged people not to idealise L’Abri, but to take some of what they saw there and implement it in their own lives — to rehumanize a dehumanizing world, if only a little bit.
Over at
, Peco and Ruth Gaskovski are doing something similar. They’ve gone beyond complaining about the world moving too fast and simply started opting out of some of the standardised experiences of modern life by peppering their lives with anachronistic actions.They call this “sowing seeds of anachronism” — and the point is not to be twee or attention-getting. As they write:
When we opt out of the standardized experience boxes of modern life, when we choose an anachronistic action instead, we are choosing to make an effort of the mind and body. Doing hard things builds the musculature of our humanity. Real things exercise what we are. Unreal things atrophy us.
Anachronistic action does something else, too. It connects the past to the present and our visions of the future. The stability of a society isn’t just lateral, reaching across the physical space of lands and cities, but vertical, reaching through time for its rich resources of wisdom. We can’t take all of the past with us, and we shouldn’t—not all of it was good. But the ideas of the past, at least, were tested slowly, and refined carefully, across generations and peoples. History winnows its wheat with many hands.
The Gaskovski’s then offer a crowd-sourced catalogue of “Simple Acts of Sanity” for readers to try out. Here are the categories, with a sampling of acts:
Technology use (reducing, altering, removing, replacing) — Use message apps on computer instead of smart phone to set boundaries, keep a whiteboard calendar, send letters to family and friends to share news and say hello instead of Facebook etc.
Self-sufficient, Minimalist Practices — Bake bread, carpool or take transit when possible, mend or alter clothes by hand, walk to appointments if possible.
Embodied & Mental Practices — Always carry a journal with you, print out recipes and put them in a binder, read physical books, sing long songs from memory.
Children and Family — Allow your children ample free time to pursue their own interests, have a birthday party at home with a simple cake and friends to play with, leave children to find ways to amuse themselves without adult direction and without screens, take a long walk to talk things out.
Spiritual and Relational Practices — Learn to sing Gregorian chant, light a candle each morning and at meal times, fast, greet the day outside every morning when waking without looking at clocks, thermostats, phone, etc.
Read Sowing Anachronism: How to be Weird in Public, and Private and Simple Acts of Sanity: A Seed Catalogue over at
. For more from Peco Gaskovski, check out his science-fiction novel Exogenesis.America’s Authority Problem
Bradford Littlejohn on a crisis that afflicts all sides
The United States of America has always had an authority problem, but 2020 was the year authority well and truly died. We saw it on both sides of the political spectrum, writes Brad Littlejohn:
When it came to Covid-19, Americans on the right typically saw pandemic restrictions as draconian lockdowns — forms of lawless oppression and fundamental injustices against the American way of life. Americans on the left, meanwhile, were more likely to fume against what they saw as either government weakness in the face of the crisis or a lack of political will — especially in the Trump White House and among red-state governors — to take the difficult steps necessary to protect the public in a time of grave danger.
When Black Lives Matter protests rocked American cities over the summer of 2020, the roles reversed. The left reacted with rage and indignation at any attempt by the guardians of public order to show their teeth in the face of violence; the agents of law enforcement were seen, like the agents of public health, as perpetrators of lawless oppression. At the same time, the right fulminated against the weakness and lack of will the authorities displayed. "Why aren't they doing more?" they demanded as vandals ransacked stores and burned buildings to the ground — just as the left had fumed about the response to Covid-19. Today, a large majority of Americans cannot recognize an act of political authority as such; they perceive it as either brazen oppression or craven abdication.
We got here, writes Littlejohn, by conflating the authority wielded by experts with the authority granted to politicians. Experts know their stuff and it’s good to listen, but their judgments are always revisable. Our political leaders, on the other hand, must make binding decisions amidst uncertainty. When political authority bows to expert authority, decisions are constantly revised and public trust is lost.
Restoring America’s trust in political authority will not happen quickly. The best place to start, suggests Littlejohn, is on the small scale:
If we struggle to discern true political authority within the sphere of politics, then let us call on religious leaders, school principals, coaches, and businessmen to model it in their own local contexts — and let us cut them some slack when they inevitably fail.
Read In Search of Authority over at National Affairs.
Give Up on Purity. Try Chastity.
Rachel Joy Welcher on the deep and broad virtue of chastity
For an entire generation of evangelical Christians, the phrase sexual purity is enough to send chills down the spine. Not primarily because the youth group talks were unbearably awkward (which they were), but because the message of sexual purity as an endlessly rewarding “sprint of self-control” until marriage were frequently so overstated as to be deceptive.
Virginity, writes Rachel Joy Welcher, was the hallmark of purity:
It was a temporary state, like holding in a sneeze. If you could just get through your young adult years a virgin, then you could get married and proceed to have all-the-sex. There was never an acknowledgement that some of us might end up single for the rest of our lives, or that we might never find ourselves attracted to the opposite gender, or to anyone at all. What did chastity mean for those who were sexually abused as children? For those still unmarried at twenty-three? And what did it mean for those of us divorced by twenty-nine?
The Christian tradition holds out a different, broader virtue for our formation: not purity, but chastity. And chastity is about far more than virginity. As Welcher writes,
It turns out that chastity isn’t a sprint of self-control; it’s a marathon of spiritual endurance. And the commitment we make is not to our future selves as some kind of insurance guaranteeing relational health, wealth, and happiness, but a lifelong vow to God himself; that we will love him with “all our heart, soul, mind, and strength,” (Mark 12:30) including our sexuality.
Unlike purity, which is an impossible state to achieve outside of Christ’s work on our behalf, chastity is the human pursuit of love and self-denial. According to Thomas Aquinas, it is the act of “curbing” ungodly desires and practicing “moderation,” and it is not something we ever fully achieve on this side of heaven. Therefore it is something the Christian must pursue until their dying breath.
Read Chastity as Worship over at Mere Orthodoxy. For more from Rachel Joy Welcher, check out her book Talking Back to Purity Culture: Rediscovering Faithful Christian Sexuality or a podcast interview here.
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