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A Drawer Full of Knives: Modern Poetry in April
Dear Friend, Welcome back for SEASON SEVEN of the Contemplative Reading Project. It’s so nice to see you again! In February and March, we were engaged in a special read-along project of Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way. These discussions were led on Instagram and Zoom, both formally and informally, and I hope all involved enjoyed the…
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Our 2025 Book Titles and Schedule #theCRPblog
Dear Friend, Last week, I put up a poll on Instagram asking if folks would prefer to know all the titles for the whole year or receive a slow trickle of titles closer to each month. The response was unanimous: you want to know the full schedule now! Fortunately, I planned well ahead, this time,…
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What Would You Ask If You Had Just One Question?
Dear Friend, Friendship. Freedom. The quest for knowledge. These are the primary themes in this very short section of seven chapters, in which the priestess returns to ask a third question, another vague “woman” speaks up for the third time (on pain), and a general “man” asks about self-knowledge. And that’s the question that stands…
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The Morning Song and Silence
Dear Friend, As I write this response, it’s a quiet Saturday morning, early before everyone wakes. As I sit by myself listening to Sufjan Stevens’s Seven Swans spinning on the turntable, I realize this early quiet is my favorite time of day. And it’s perfect for contemplation. It’s times like these that let me see…
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Tender Seeds, Joyful Harvest
Dear Friend, How often do you avoid reading a book because you know you’re going to enjoy it? I guess that sounds like a strange thing to do, but I’ve caught myself doing it a number of times. It’s probably some kind of appeal to delayed gratification. Maybe a better question is, how often are…
Contemplative Reading Project 