Recent enthusiasms
Midsummer highlights + speaking/publishing updates
I promised that Quid Amo would be a place where I’d share some of my enthusiasms, some things I’m loving right now. Herewith a digest of some recent delights which, for me, is also an exercise in gratitude.
10. Two new albums: “I quit” by HAIM is at once poppy and dark, lyrical and naughty. And Bruce Springsteen’s “Tracks II: The Lost Albums” hooked me from the first song (but I’m a prime sucker for the Boss).
9. “My Mom Jayne,” a documentary by Mariska Hargitay about her mother, the blond bombshell Jayne Mansfield, who died tragically in a car crash when Mariska was just 3 years old. The story material is remarkable in itself—with twists and heart-rending turns. But the film is also the story of Hargitay, an actress, reassessing her relationship to her mother and her mother’s legacy, complicating our (and her) received picture of her mother and herself. I’ve been gushing about this to all our friends. A well-crafted artwork that is deeply humane.
8. I’ve been enjoyed reading some Substacks from a cadre of young theologians who are also thoughtful writers. It’s a little hard to describe what Tim Troutner, Jordan Wood, and Andrew Kuiper share in common—I’d say it is a certain kind of faithful audacity in their theologizing, animated by ancient theologians like Maximus the Confessor, in serious (and revisionist) conversation with Hegel and German idealism, aspiring toward a cosmic vision of creation’s union with God “who is all in all.” But rather than being a form of arcane metaphysical retreat into ethereal realms, they also exhibit a deep concern for contemporary justice with what I think I could call a leftist, even socialist (?) bent which (I’d argue) follows from the vision of divine/human solidarity expressed in their writings. They are just a few young voices who remind me I have a lot to learn.
7. Vera, or Faith, the latest novel from Gary Shteyngart, my favorite American satirist since his beguiling novel, Super Sad True Love Story. Like SSTLS, Vera is set in a sort “near” dystopia that is unsettling because it is completely plausible: a future that holds up a mirror to our present. As we’ve come to expect from Shteyngart, it is smart, wry, and insightful—while also being uproariously funny. And while there are cynical characters, there is a new tenderness in this novel that explores the anxieties of children and the hungers of/for familial love. I inhaled it in two days.
6. The “cocktail of summer” for me this year is the White Negroni. You’ll find a few different renditions; here’s what I’ve been making:
1 1/2 oz. Gin
3/4 oz. Suze [this is the secret sauce of this drink, the “Campari” of the White Negroni]
1 oz. Lillet Blanc (Dolin Blanc also works, but not Dolin dry vermouth]
Cin cin!
5. Tour de France: Unchained1 on Netflix. This is a serial documentary about the Tour de France—think of it as the cycling equivalent of “Drive to Survive” (a series about Formula 1). Even though I’ve been a huge F1 fan for a decade (maybe because of that), I think the Tour de France series is so much better. It’s partly because the “machines” at the center of this race are still (barely!) humans. But I also think the directors and editors of “Tour de France” find much more compelling narratives, episode-by-episode. It is not uncommon for an episode to bring me to tears.
4. Our gardens are a riot of color and life right now. They are the fruit of a dozen years of ongoing labor and care, envisioned and overseen by Deanna (I’m just a sous gardener). Deanna begins each morning, coffee in hand, surveying her kingdom (don’t ask her about the rabbits; her language turns un-lady-like). I get to look at them all day from my front office window. It is a special joy to see people walking on the sidewalk stop to gaze, sometimes touching and inhaling the scent of lavender, enjoying a gift Deanna has made for the world. It’s remarkable how many neighbors tell her, Thank you.
3. Last fall I picked up a mint edition of The Making of a Mind: Letters from a Soldier-Priest [1914-1919]. These are letters from a young Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, to his remarkable cousin Marguerite Teillard-Chambon [who wrote under the pen name “Claude Aragonnès”]. Teilhard de Chardin is, I believe, due for retrieval and reassessment—a stunning, adventurous thinker about cosmic reality. From the horrors of the trenches of World War I, in these letters we see the gestation and growth of his thought. The letters are also a wonderful testament to an enduring friendship that is tender and intellectually charged. In the hope-quenching circumstances of the Great War, Teilhard de Chardin enjoins his cousin to seek union with God:
“we humbly expose ourselves to the radiation of the infinite Being, ardently longing that he may penetrate us and transform us into himself.”
2. River SUP-ping. I’ve enjoyed stand-up paddle boarding for probably a decade now, including on the vast beauty of the Great Lakes. But this year I’ve been especially enjoying river paddle boarding on bucolic sections of the Grand River outside of town. On a recent evening I felt like I had the world to myself in the silence of the river—until I quietly paddled below a gleaming bald eagle perched on a branch waiting to fish. It was magical.
1. Our grandchildren. In 2025 I entered my “grandpa era” and I am gobsmacked and smitten. I feel like Aquinas at the end of his life, after that mystical vision: “I have seen things that make my writings like straw.” Becoming a grandparent is like finding, in the second half of a life, the reason you were born—a life’s work you can take up only because of the work you’ve put in in the first half.
Out & About: Updates
I’ll be speaking at the Duke Initiative in Theology & the Arts big festival/conference, “Visible & Invisible: Surprising Encounters in Theology and the Arts,” September 4-7, 2025 at Duke University in Durham, NC. Maybe I’ll see you there?
I’ve just finished the copyediting on my new book, Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark: Mysticism, Art, and the Path of Unknowing, forthcoming from Yale University Press (never too early to pre-order 😇). While this stage can be drudgery, I’m grateful for a fantastic experience with a masterful copy editor who at once “got” my voice and improved my prose. I’ve also gotten a first peek at interior design and I can’t wait for you to get to see it.
I’m starting to dream & scheme the book tour when the book launches on 3/24/26. We’re looking at stops in NYC, DC, Austin, Los Angeles, and of course Grand Rapids, and elsewhere TBD. If you or an organization you know might have ideas for a venue/host in these cities or elsewhere, please reach out and contact me here.
In the French original, the subtitle is better: “At the Heart of the Peloton.” I don’t know why the English version adopts this lame alternative.