Dear friends,
We’ve been sitting around the Christmas tree with family, talking and laughing and playing cards. Here, in the space this day offers in the frenzy of the holiday season, I hope you find time to breathe, rest, and be still.
Thank you for all your support for this Substack, in the last year and over the past several years. I am always humbled and blessed by your thoughtful emails, your generous gifts to my family and me, and all your incredible book, recipe, and article recommendations. You’ve made this tiny space on the internet into a delightful and hospitable community, and I can’t thank you enough.
A quote for you, from Saint Athanasius’s On the Incarnation:
“For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God comes into our realm, although he was not formerly distant. For no part of creation is left void of him; while abiding with his own Father, he has filled all things in every place. But now he comes, condescending towards us in his love for human beings and his manifestation.”
Merry Christmas!
essays for you
Ross Douthat’s meditations on Advent in The New York Times.
Merry Christmas. I’m so grateful to Ragan Sutterfield for leading me to you.