Out of Office for July

How I'll be spending the month and some links to other of my recent appearances.

Hello all!

My family is setting out for a National Parks trip this summer. We fly out from Atlanta early on Independence Day and land later that morning in my home state of California. Beginning from an Orange County suburb where my wife’s grandmother lives, we will do a massive loop, driving north on Pacific Coast Highway until it merges with the 101 and delivers us to the world-renowned Redwood Forest, continuing to Mt. Rainier in Washington, then curving southeast through Idaho to Wyoming’s Yellowstone and Grand Tetons, into Utah to Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park before pressing southward to Arizona to witness the incomprehensible majesty of the Grand Canyon. To say that we’re stoked is an understatement.

Images from Unsplash. Yellowstone by Iryna Marienko. Arches by Joseph Corl.

It wouldn’t be a trip to California—at least not for the Marshalls—without a visit to Disneyland and ample time to savor old friendships and relations.

My intention, God as my helper, is to log out. From everything. To be present. To read and think and laugh deeply, to see and hear and write clearly, to pray and journey and discover reverently. I find that, on the whole, my experience of social media is largely an energizing one. On the other hand, the psychic clutter that gathers can render thought fuzzy and insight dull, my interior life patinaed, insensitive. Even what is immediately in front of me loses its luster. July—which will also mark my 34th birthday while we are exploring Mt. Rainier, if all goes according to plan—will be a month of cleansing, of clarity, of cultivation.

I mentioned that I will continue to read and think deeply. As companions I will be taking

Matthew B. Crawford

’s books—Shop Class as Soulcraft, The World Beyond Your Head, and Why We Drive—with me, as well as The Frailest Things by

L. M. Sacasas

, Technopoly by Neil Postman, Power Failure by Albert Borgmann, and if I haven’t finished it by the time we leave, The Tacit Dimension by Michael Polanyi. I look forward to what precious stones are unearthed through thinking along with each of these authors and hope to have internalized them such that I can write for you with renewed vigor upon my return.

I feel that I have done a decent job of writing on more or less a weekly basis over the last few months, so when that drops off for some weeks, now you know why. In the interim, I offer to you some of my other recent appearances.

My long-time Twitter mutual

H.E. Negash

(find his Substack here) had me on his podcast, The Philosophy of Art and Science, to talk about…well, just about everything. We discussed manual labor, iconography, Apple’s “Crush” ad, the Monkey King archetype (Dragonball Z gets a shoutout), Anglicanism, the Archbishop of Canterbury, ora et labora, the recent class I hosted to teach some plumbing to a group of men from my church, and more.

The Blue Scholar

Another Twitter mutual, author and counselor Dr.

Dean Abbott

(find his Substack here), had me on his podcast for a similar—but not the same!—conversation. It was wide-ranging and yet there isn’t too much overlap with the previous. We discuss my vocational journey through plumbing and pastoring, my love for St. Basil the Great, and the smear on society that is the garbage disposal.

If listening to me chatter isn’t your cup of tea, then here is an essay of mine that was recently published at The North American Anglican, “Anglicanism: Apprenticeship to the Carpenter King”. From the introduction:

This essay will attempt to look at the work of Christian discipleship in the Anglican tradition of spiritual formation through the lens of apprenticeship to the carpenter king. It will take specific look at the Benedictine arrangement of the Anglican ascetical schema as the way in which Anglicanism succeeds, by providing a form of apprenticeship.

It’s a big boy, clocking in at about 7,300 words, and was written for my Spirituality class at Cranmer Theological House. One of my clergy suggested I submit it for publishing, and, happily, it was accepted! If Anglicanism is of no particular interest to you, you may still enjoy the way I view apprenticeship as an effective didactic model and the insight I offer into St. Benedict’s Rule. Perhaps it will be of help to you in your own Christian journey.

Read it at TNAA here.

Finally, if you haven’t had a chance to read some of my more recent newsletters, I will link them below. I put a good deal of thought and work into each, so I appreciate you taking the time to read, interact with, and share them.

1. Questioning Cloacina, a tastefully irreverent jaunt through the sewers of Rome, Paris, London, and Georgia

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2. A Nightmare Dressed Like a Daydream, my take on Apple’s “Crush” ad, what it implies about Apple’s worldview, and what this means for us

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And finally,

3. The Tower of Apple, a follow-up to the previous essay, delving into the Tower of Babel as a lens for further unpacking the implications of tools that are approaching or have reached what Illich calls the “second watershed”

That’s it for now, folks.

Have a wonderful July, feel free to forward and share all of the above widely, and thank you for giving me some of your time and attention.

Pax,
Nate