Springtime Ramblings & Reflections

I'm delighted to return to this space… and to kick off summer book club in a couple of weeks!

Hello friends!

As many of you have probably guessed by now, I decided to take an unofficial hiatus from my writing here during the last month of the semester. My personal and academic life were just swamped with the tying-up-loose-ends/navigating-creepy-storage-units/crying-over-essays-about-Husserl sort of busyness that often rears its ugly head around that time of year. However, now that summer break has commenced, I am delighted to return to this space… and I am particularly excited to kick off summer book club in a couple of weeks! Considering the fact that this is my first post in many weeks, I was thinking that I could catch you all up on the little happenings of my life, in addition to my summer plans for A Balm in Gilead.

Teresa Kim Pecinovsky’s Mother God Book Signing

One of the most truly exciting moments in the past six months was learning that Rev. Teresa Kim Pecinovsky would be holding a book signing event for the children's book that she recently published… at a church near Wheaton!¹ Alayna, a consistently supportive and earnest roommate/best friend, came along with me, and it was the most beautiful use of our Friday night. The event itself was quiet (Alayna and I were probably two of five total adults) but it offered us a chance to ask Rev. Pecinovsky a lot of questions during the Q&A and book signing itself.

If you keep up with me on Instagram at all (or if you are a professor reading any/all of my undergraduate papers!) you are certainly aware of the degree to which the image of a mothering God has enriched my spiritual life. The concept of God as mother was first introduced to me through my beloved Julian of Norwich and ever since, this entire theology has had me in its grips.² So, when I started hearing about the upcoming feminist theology picture book of Rev. Pecinovsky, I immediately added it to my Goodreads, thinking to myself: this is the book that I needed when I was eight years old and always wondering whether God loved boys more than me, because wasn’t God a grey-haired old man in the sky? And if he wasn’t, then why were all the pastors in my church men? And if he wasn’t, then why were there only five girls in the Bible that we talk about, compared to the many, many men?

There were two little girls attending the book signing- one of them was calm and reserved, taking in everything around her with a million questions behind her eyes, and the other was dancing around while Pecinovsky read the book aloud. At some point, the second girl ran onto the stage and stood behind the pulpit, surveying all of the adults in the room with a cheerful, engaged expression. Meanwhile, later on in the book signing, the other little girl started quietly reading the book aloud with her mother as they sipped Capri Suns.

My copy of Pecinovsky’s latest release.

I’m obviously years older than these girls, and as an undergraduate, I’ve chosen to study two subjects deeply dominated by men: philosophy and theology. On any given day, I go into class and know that I can’t just sit down and speak and be assured that my words are always going to be accepted at face value. I have generations of women preceding me, from Simone Weil to Julian of Norwich, who have proven this to be true time and time again. When women speak, we are uninformed, emotional, demon-possessed, mentally ill, or Marxist (and sometimes, all of the above). So, watching these two young girls at the book signing- both of them engaged with the event in unique yet equally important ways- reminded me of something.

These little girls are the church, and shame on any individual or institution who tries to take that birthright away. The future of the church is in this, in all of this- in asking all of the wrong questions and finding only some of the right answers and being in relationship with every single person that the mainstream church conveniently pushes to the margins. It is found in praying through poetry and chrysanthemums and realizing that the whole differentiation between “Biblical justice” and “social justice” was really just pastors trying to keep the church politely contained inside a little, hateful white building.

And that is why I teared up as Pecinovsky read Mother God aloud in a quiet church on a rainy Friday night. And that is why my heart burst with profound gladness when I saw these two little girls at the event, both behind the pulpit and beside it. God is always going to be greater than our imagination, and I think that we know that He has been shrunk to fit our various likes and dislikes, loves and prejudices, when the “Gospel” is making little girls wonder whether or not boys are created in the image of God to a greater extent than they are.

And with that being said: please go read Mother God! I shy away from promising particular responses to my favorite books, but I really do think that it will change your life (and if you’re anything like me, it will definitely make you cry.)

The (Incredibly Impromptu) Wendell Berry Book Club

I am going to resist the urge to discuss Jayber Crow at length until I can devote an entire missive to it, but for now… I had a meeting with my advisor around February, and we got around to planning an incredibly spur-of-the-moment book club. I reached out to friends who I thought would be interested in participating through social media, and within a matter of days, a small group of bookish, beauty-hungry souls had agreed to meet for breakfast once a week to discuss one of Wendell Berry’s beloved installments set in the town of Port William, Kentucky.

I have been captivated by Berry’s poetry and essays for years now (and highly recommend the documentary linked above) but had never quite settled down with one of his novels until this April. And goodness, friends, I’m so very glad that I did- it is one of those novels that is food for your soul, that you don’t realize how much you have been starving for until it touches you directly. It was a joy to chat about Wendell Berry’s fictional (although it feels very real) world with dear friends over eggs and black coffee and muffins. I am going to save my more extensive response to this novel- which includes one of the most on-the-nose critiques of the church that I have ever read- for another newsletter, but for now I must share with you all one of my very favorite passages from Jayber Crow:

“As I have read the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one. He seems to have come to carry religion out of the temples into the fields and sheep pastures, onto the roadsides and the banks of the rivers, into the houses of sinners and publicans, into the town and the wilderness, toward the membership of all that is here. Well, you can read and see what you think.”³

A Recent Fixation with Acai Bowls

Yes, I am from Southern California. And yes, Southern California is very much known for the whole sunshine/ripe green avocados/waves crashing on the shore/acai bowls in the summertime sort of thing. I had just never really understood the hype until I distanced myself from California in the pursuit of higher education… and now, I must say, I am deeply and utterly obsessed with the delicious combination of acai, strawberries, chia seeds, honey, and granola.

As you can see, I’m enjoying a completely perfect acai bowl.

I celebrated being halfway finished with my bachelor’s degree in philosophy and theology by chatting with my mom on the phone, taking a long walk on a perfectly sunny Midwest day, and eating an acai bowl in the local park. And now, no matter how much I complained about endless essays on German Idealism and atonement theories, you all know that I am absolutely going to be spending this summer reading as many books on my Goodreads “Want to Read” list as I can…

Summer 2022 Book Club

And that brings me to the final topic of this newsletter! I was incredibly glad to have received so much input regarding A Balm in Gilead’s first summer book club, and it is truly a shame that we simply cannot read all of your wonderful suggestions. I had mentioned several months ago that I was considering choosing the work of a female medieval mystic or mystical thinker, and sure enough, that is where I have ultimately landed.

Friends, we are going to be reading:

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by the incomparable Annie Dillard!

Dillard has been a favorite of mine since I read Holy the Firm earlier this year, and I have been most profoundly touched by her approach to theodicy and embodied, interfaith spirituality. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek has been on my booklist for years, and I’m excited to be reading it for the very first time with all of you! It was published in 1974 and chronicles a year that Dillard spent in Virginia’s Roanoke Valley. As you can imagine, her various writings and ponderings extend far beyond descriptions of the natural world, and I think that this is bound to offer us an altogether refreshing and important perspective on faith, suffering, and beauty.

An early cover of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Before I sign off for the week, I’d like to address some basic housekeeping regarding summer book club: most importantly, it is my sincere wish that whoever wishes to participate is able to. I recommend checking out your local library’s offerings, as well as audiobooks (such as those available on Libby) before immediately hitting Amazon. Local independent bookstores are also a good place to start. However, if you are really wishing to participate and still struggling to procure a copy as the start of book club nears, please send me a DM via Instagram @julialouisemorrow or an email at julialouisemorrow@gmail.com and I will ensure that you can participate!

Right now, I’m hoping to begin reading during the final week of May. I am planning on covering around one to two chapters each week, 1) so that we can really take our time honing in on specific images, references, and themes, and 2) so that our book club can last the duration of the summer! The last thing that I want is for the completion of this book to become a source of stress each week. Also, I think it is worth mentioning that while I would love active participation through Substack comments/Instagram DMs/etc. (it is truly not my goal in this newsletter to be talking at anyone! I love hearing the brilliant and funny and creative and wise things you all have to say!), it is completely fine if you want to remain on the quiet side as you read along. I have done my fair share of both in spaces such as these, and I think that there is a time and place for each.

---

Well, friends, I think that is all the updates that I have for now! I hope that your week is all things lovely; I strongly encourage you to eat a lot of acai bowls, and if you’re a fellow student, enjoy the break from constant studying/essay-ing/academia in general! Oh, and if you would like to share, please tell me what you are most looking forward to about the summer!

Warmly,

Julia

1. Teresa Kim Pecinovsky, Mother God, illustrated by Khoa Le (Minneapolis: Beaming Books, 2022).

2. Juliana of Norwich, God is Our Mother, in "Revelations of Divine Love," trans. Focolari Movement, https://www.vatican.va/spirit/documents/spirit_20010807_giuliana-norwich_en.html.

3. Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2001).