In order:

1. Solitude
2. Forest
3. Malice
4. History
5. Portal
6. Shipwreck
7. Fortune
8. Sirenhead
9. Bird
10. Magician
11. Child
12. Vespers

Chug those piña coladas, or whatever you do to get those creative juices flowing.
See you soon!Posts will go up in the evening, and “Solitude” is a go for tomorrow! Can’t wait to see you!
—Laura
PS: If you like the promotional images, they were generated using Manus and edited using Inkscape.

(Welcome to my inaugural quarterlyish newsletter! I anticipate each of these to have three sections: First, a philosophical reflection about something on my mind, second, some chatting about books and things, and finally, “news”… Thanks for joining me! Oh, and if you aren’t familiar with the reference, the title is a shout-out to my favorite Polish psychologist, Kazimierz Dabrowski…)

Hello there! Oh, dear. I have been writing this post for two months now. It’s certainly time to do or die; to choose between publish or delete. Here goes nothing!

See, I have finally figured out why I have struggled for so long to just hit “publish,” and it’s this insight that I think I’d most like to pass along (along with some yapping about books and reminding the world that yes, I am a writer, and yes, I’ve got some new projects coming along…)

First, it’s confession time. In all of my decades of wandering the internet and scribbling in notebooks, this kind of communicating-- blogs, ‘stacks, social media in general-- has never come naturally to me. I’ve planned out and even written much for blogs and sites on a half a dozen different subjects, and I’ve always ended by immediately taking them down or just never putting them up in the first place. Social media accounts get nuked within hours. The notable exception to this is my contribution to the Substack my co-author, Lisa Rose, runs for our book Patterns for Life-- and if it weren’t for Lisa, I guarantee that wouldn’t have lasted, either.
Why, though? I used to try to justify my decisions by appealing to some sort of digital idealism, but I’ve been on the planet too long now to be that black and white. Like any tool, digital media is as good or evil as what we use it for. I know I definitely need periodic fasts from it in order to keep things in the right order, but it’s also true that I’ve made some great friends on the internet, and some of those friendships now go back almost two decades. The digital world reflects the complexity of its organic creators.

And here it is: I think “reflects” is a clue. For the digital world itself is not actually a complex, organic lifeform. It’s much more like the wall in Plato’s cave, and in this analogy, the sunny outdoors is the self that desires to be known.
Look for a minute at these clusters of synonyms: 
Screen, cover, shield, veil, curtain, protection, shroud.
Platform, stage, pulpit, rostrum, podium, dais.

On our screens, we interact via different social media platforms. We use these things as stages-- stages that act as curtains between the performing self and the true self. We stand at the podium of our chosen account and act out a series of postures that serve to protect the true self from the judgment of others, to offer up a curated self that can be affirmed by the eyes of many who seek the same affirmation about themselves.
This digital world is a screen on which we play-- often projecting and interacting not with other complex, organic human beings, but rather the ideas that these other people represent. These ideas, and the people who image them, find their roots in our selves, trotting out to play a part on the vast digital stage. Our physical screens are metaphorical screens, onto which we project the images that move deep within our unknown selves. Hence the constant temptation to the echo chamber.
It is very, very difficult to interact with Internet People as, well, as neighbors. On the stage, on the screen, the ideas come first. We lead with ideas, we communicate about ideas. But in the physical world, the relationships come first-- and often, we find that we have to take care with our ideas, lest they wound our relationships. Neither of these things is wrong per se, but the waters get very muddy when we mix the two, i.e. social media.
Eerily, on the internet stage, it is the ideas themselves, especially those things with roots deep in the psyche, that become the puppet masters. Other people, at their own marked out territories, act as puppets for our own minds to play with. To make matters worse, this generous description assumes that all of the players are generally honest and self-aware…
All these clues lead to something that both wants to be known, and yet avoids discovery. And that is this: I believe that all writers are writing about themselves, and that all readers are searching for a reflection of themselves in a piece of writing. I suspect that it’s almost never about the stories themselves, or the issues themselves, the opinions, the images, the ideas. It’s about a bunch of selves, standing in a crowded room, all asking the aether, “Who am I? Can you tell me?” It’s much too loud and crowded to have the kind of intimate conversation in which those questions might be explored.
Substack, I have figured out, is exceptionally good at creating the illusion of comradery or companionship among people who self-define as intellectuals or thinkers. But one thing I’ve learned from turning online comrades and companions into real friends is that there is a real crucible of transition that must take place. That transitional gauntlet involves both parties mutually understanding and acknowledging how they have projected themselves and their ideas on to one another.
Personally, when it comes to self-discovery and cultivating relationships, I’ve found that I have a profound need for privacy. Hence, no social media; hence, the desire to simply hit “delete”.

Wow, that was heavy. How about we abruptly switch gears and talk about why I named this thing, “dephilosophize me”?

First of all, here’s the quote from Poetics of Space that gave it to me:
“They have helped me to ‘dephilosophize,’ to shun the allures of culture and to place myself on the margin of convictions acquired through long philosophical inquiry on the subject of scientific thinking. Philosophy makes us ripen quickly, and crystallizes us in a state of maturity. How, then, without ‘dephilosophizing’ ourselves, may we hope to experience the shocks that being receives from new images, shocks which are always the phenomena of youthful being? When we are at an age to imagine, we cannot say how or why we imagine. Then, when we could say how we imagine, we cease to imagine. We should therefore dematurize ourselves.” - Gaston Bachelard

I fell in love with philosophy when I was still young enough to see it as play; only as I have aged have I seen how much it is used as a power to wield over others, and sought to reevaluate my relationship with it. I guess I’d say that I remain a philosopher in the tradition of Jostein Gaarder, and from such a mothership, I’m playing at exploring the universe phenomenologically, that is, in a way that notices the utter weirdness of conscious experience.

Ah, it sounds so fancy! But it is also true that I write books, and all the people who seem to know what they are doing on here say that if one wants to find potential readers, one must have some sort of Presence, preferably one that is able to reach out its tentacles periodically and remind people of its existence. I find I absolutely cannot think of this in terms of marketing. I have a severe allergy to advertising and promotion, and if I think about it too long, I am overcome by the compulsion to just give things away, or even pay people to take them. Unfortunately, I am not independently wealthy, or I probably would do just that (actually, that’s my lottery fantasy-- becoming the Broken Fridge Fairy, and just swooping in and magically replacing broken appliances for people who need them…).

Also, just for the record, I do actually really enjoy getting acquainted with people-- I’m a small-town girl at heart, and I like making connections that make the world feel more like a village (which, you know, in the grand scheme of things, with the size of the universe and all, it really kinda is).

I imagine that most of you who have found me on Substack know of me primarily through my latest published work, Patterns for Life: An Orthodox Reflection on Charlotte Mason Education. While I do love thinking and reading and talking about parenting and education, all of that philosophizing is more of a means to an end for me. I care about parenting intentionally and home education and Charlotte Mason and so on because these are all tools that help me cultivate the kinds of relationships I desire to have with the particular young souls in my care. My energies are focused on the children themselves as the ends, and the philosophies only secondarily as the means. I’ve never pretended to have all of the answers, which admittedly makes it difficult for me to keep churning out words on the subject-- I’m more likely to get lost in the weeds of a particular situation in conversation than hold forth on general best practices. Lisa and I wrote Patterns for Life because we wanted to fill a perceived gap in the home education sphere, that space that connects the practical aspects of Charlotte Mason education with a life lived liturgically in the Orthodox way. The book is less an instruction manual and much more in the spirit of, “Hey, this has helped us; maybe it will help you.”

But if you only know me through Patterns for Life, you might not know that I actually think of myself as primarily a writer of literary fiction. I already have two projects published by Ancient Faith, the children’s book Sasha and the Dragon and the novella The Lion and the Saint, plus I’ve been working for several years now on a series of magical realism novels. The biggest reason you aren’t reading them yet is that I am, after all, first and foremost a home educating mother of six, and I try to be very careful that my best attentions and energies go to them first. This means sloooooooow work. Lucky for me, that’s trending now!

Recently Reshelved
Because book people are nebby, and want to know what’s on each other’s shelves...

I had waaaaaaay too many tabs open in my brain that last quarter of 2024. As a result, I finished a mess of books I had been wandering through all year, and several of them really knocked it out of the park. Here are some favorites:

1. Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard. Lush and gorgeous philosophical (or rather, phenomenological) treatment of the way we relate to the spaces around us. This book inspired and convicted me on several levels: First of all, it made me even more aware of the power of the atmosphere of the home, and how much work I still have to do on this front in order to create the kinds of experiences in my home that I want to give to my family. It also drew my attention to elements of setting in writing, and coupled with reading Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows earlier in the year, had some profound effects of how I’m manipulating space and setting in my own writing.

2. Winters in the World by Eleanor Parker. Evocative and compelling journey through a year as seen through the eyes of Anglo-Saxon celebration and poetry. Parker’s writing is just phenomenal-- she writes literary prose with the erudition of a scholar, and in my ideal timeline, all academic writing would be so lucid. This is the kind of book that just utterly enriches society because it makes a somewhat esoteric subject completely accessible and absorbing. We native English speakers have much to gain by learning more about the history of our mother-tongue, and Parker’s book is a wonderful way to begin.

3. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. Everything I’d heard about this book is true. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking, poetic and even practical. I truly believe that no real intrapersonal growth can happen without constant awareness of both the imminence of death and the need to practice constant gratitude for every given moment. Books like this are bullshit solvents, you know? Life is short, it’s over very fast, and the powers that be are constantly striving to distract us from that fact with meaningless garbage. Absolutely nothing guarantees tomorrow.

4. The Perilous Order of Camelot Series by A.A. Attanasio. This one’s a reread for me, because it’s on my “take to a desert island” pile. My mom bought me The Dragon and the Unicorn one Christmas when I was in college-- probably because of the title alone-- and the first time I read it, I had to stop every few paragraphs to weep. Attanasio’s vision of the cosmos is just so large and full, it breaks my heart open every time. I see the whole world with better eyes because of these stories.

Bonus: STARWAVE. This is totally not a book, but it’s a recommendation nonetheless. I have always had a soft spot for action video games-- I loved that goofy Power Pad attachment on my NES, I had loads of fun whacking the air on the Wii and WiiU with my older kids, and when we upgraded to Switch, I made sure my daughter and I had a subscription to Just Dance. Then, one day my oldest son came to me with the desire to buy a VR headset. Anticipating my skepticism and possible objections, he led with, “Mom, you know you could play Beat Saber on it, right?”

Oh, my kids know me too well.

Anyway! STARWAVE is a new rhythm dance game, and it is a blast. The movement mechanics behind it are an absolute dream, and it encourages both large movements and expressive, freeform play. And it’s in space. With a catchy EDM soundtrack.
I know it’s fashionable among a certain subset of people to hate on video games in general and VR in particular, but I just can’t bring myself to jump on that bandwagon. STARWAVE is just so much fun, and it’s gotten me through the polar vortex and given me a jumpstart on my new year’s fitness resolutions.

On My Desk

Keep an eye out-- later this year, Basilian Media will be publishing my second children’s book, and it’s sure to become a seasonal favorite! Like my other works, the story peels back the curtain on the spiritual world and helps us all to remember that there’s so much more going on around us that we can see with our physical eyes. Designer Barbara Kavchok is working on the illustrations as we speak, and I can’t wait to share some sneak peeks!

Novel-wise, I’m knee-deep in a prequel story for my magical realism series. The idea for the story presented itself to me about five years ago, and has been marinating in the stew ever since them. At this point., it is bubbling up frantically from my subconcious and wants so badly to be written, it practically pours out of my fingertips every time I sit down.

Thanks for joining me for this first newsletter! Feel free to jump in the comments and say “hello”! Until next time—

In Christ,
Laura E. Wolfe

What are you afraid of?

By Laura E. Wolfe.
 
Let’s talk about fear.

A few years ago, I wrote a fairytale about fear called Sasha and the Dragon.  It was published as a children’s book, but I like to think that as with most fairytales, what it has to offer can be appreciated by all ages.  In the story, a little boy named Sasha is afraid of many things:  his Baba’s terminal illness, unkind neighbor kids, the loneliness of displacement and the threat of unfamiliar surroundings.  His fear continues to grow until it colors all aspects of his life.  Sound familiar?

It should, because that’s what fear does.  It spirals and feeds on itself, and left unchecked, becomes an organizing principle.  There are biological reasons for this:  When the limbic system is activated by a stress response, the prefrontal cortex doesn’t function at its normal capacity.  Since that’s the part of the brain that’s responsible for executive functions like emotional control, memory, planning and prioritizing, it’s easy to see why fear is such a destabilizing experience.  Fear reduces our ability to think clearly and live purposefully.  In the story, Sasha’s fears permeate his life until they manifest as an actual dragon. 

The dragons that are threatening us today include not just pestilence, but also economic fears, political fears, fears of the unknown and uncontrollable, and fears about how the world around us is changing.  It would be easy to behave like unbelievers and let the dragons wreak their havoc on our hearts.  But that would be to forget that what Satan intends for us as evil, God wills for us as good.  This is how Sasha finds his courage, because he turns to Christ in prayer even in the midst of his misery.  Even though the dragon is too big for him to bear, he trusts that God already knows the way.  After all, He is the Way.

When we refuse to let fear be in control, when we humbly set aside our own desires for the world and the future, we can acknowledge the reality that was true all along:  God is in control, and always has been.  Sparrows don’t fall from the sky and hairs don’t fall from our heads without His knowledge.  In my story, God is shown to be ultimately in charge when St. Michael intervenes and slays the dragon.  But more importantly than the death of the dragon itself is that the way that Sasha sees and interacts with the world changes.  Instead of being overcome, Sasha is able to rejoice in the beauty and light around him, to pay his spiritual gifts forward to his Baba, who receives with joy, and even to reach out to the neighbor kids, who don’t know what to do with his spirituality. 

The neighbor kids never will understand, you know.  Even and especially when we act in faith, they will think we’re a little loopy at best, dangerously crazy at worst.  The culture we create will be dismissed, misunderstood, and outright derided.  This is especially evident in our attitude towards death.  The world is absolutely terrified of it, to the point where it cannot tolerate acknowledgement of it or even discussion of it.  And so our civil authorities often resort to hysteria or sentimentalism, unable to bear the burden of the inevitability of mortality.  No one must die, no one must get sick, no one must suffer. 

But Christians?  We’re different.  We say our prayers, light our candles, burn some incense, chant the Psalms.  In the nation of Georgia, they doused the streets with holy water.  We tend the sick and the dying, even if it puts us at risk as it did for Fr. Nicola Yanney a hundred years ago.  And then we do something even crazier:  We accept that sickness and death happen and acknowledge in humility that God grants us the profound gift of giving meaning to our suffering.  Like Righteous Job of old, or St. Nicephorus the Leper in recent history—like all of the martyrs, really—we release the power of sickness and death from their holds over us.  We laugh at their impotence, because they are already defeated.   Christ is risen and death is overthrown.

Baba doesn’t speak any words in my story, but her actions speak loudly enough.  When Sasha offers her a feather from St. Michael’s wing, she responds to Sasha with love, gladness and gratitude.  Even though Sasha was afraid of his Baba’s illness, Baba never was.  She suffers the end of her life with warmth and joy, and she sees with the eyes of faith.  Baba understands what we all too easily forget—that remembrance of death is not a morbid neurosis, but a wonderful gift of maturity.

The novel coronavirus has not changed that fact that you and I do not know the hour of our deaths, nor what sufferings still lie in store for us on the rest of our lives’ journeys.  God willing, I pray for many years, but the truth is that today might be the last day of my life—whether  due to illness, accident, or something unforeseeable—and I will do well to remember that and act accordingly.

In a sense, nothing external changes for Sasha in the story.  Baba is still dying, his neighbors are still mean, and the city is still loud.  But something important has changed, and that is that Sasha has relinquished his desire to control and manage the world around him, leaving that formidable task to heaven, and he has directed his will towards changing what he has some power over:  developing his connection with Christ.  The only control we’re supposed to acquire is self-control, and God knows how impossible that task can seem at times.

One last thought for you.  Fairytales can be dark, and mine is no exception.  There are some in our contemporary culture who think that such things are not for children, who believe that children’s imaginations must be sheltered from any image that could be interpreted as frightening or ugly.  Yes, the dragon in my story is scary, and I certainly wouldn’t force an unwilling child to read a story that scandalizes him.  More importantly, the evil is defeated—St. Michael shatters the dragon.  That is the point.  We would be wise to remember that more frightening to a child than a picture in a storybook is an adult that is panicking and afraid.  An imagination fed on fairytales is able to stand up with Sasha, with the good miller’s daughter and the unlikely hero, even with Sarah in the Labyrinth and cry out to the dragons and David-Bowie-goblin-kings, “You have no power over me!”

Despite the efforts of evil to make us think otherwise, the world around us is still beautiful no matter what happens, and a Paschal spring is blooming in America.  Like Sasha after he sees the angel, all we need to do is open our spiritual eyes and everything around us changes.  The kingdom of heaven is God’s freely given gift to us—appreciating it and giving thanks for it is not a mockery of suffering, it is an affirmation of meaning.

Depicting Evil in Christian Art

March 28, 2019 · Laura E. Wolfe

Hang around a coffee shop with a group of Christian subcreators, and eventually you’ll run into a conversation wrestling with this question: How can I depict good and evil in my work without actually making something evil?  The converse of this question is, of course, how can I depict evil without minimizing its reality?

If you err too far to one side, your work revolts by its ugliness; if you err too far to the other, your work disgusts with its saccharine sweetness.  To make matters more complicated, tolerance for ugliness or sentimentality varies as widely as do the individually created souls who encounter the work.  So what’s an artist or writer to do?  I don’t claim to have the definitive answer to these questions, but I will offer a few thoughts on the subject.

First of all, I’m a believer in radical honesty.  Only by being honest with ourselves about ourselves can we begin the fight against the father of lies.  What this means for art is that honest artists will have much difference experiences and familiarities with particular evils, and that will necessarily effect their portrayal in art.  I think that because of this, some artists are called to create messier worlds than others.

To illustrate this, let’s have a look at two Christian authors whose work I particularly enjoy:  Dean Koontz and Elizabeth Goudge.  Of the two, Goudge is the more explicitly Christian in her books, though if you know what you’re looking at, Koontz isn’t exactly hiding his light under a bushel.  Goudge’s works consist largely of internal conflict against the sinful self, and whenever evil is necessary to the story line, it is more often than not insinuated.  This is in stark contrast to Koontz’s work on Christian sainthood, the Odd Thomas series, where the ugliness and horror of evil and sin are depicted in oftentimes excruciating detail.

It would be easy to dismiss the depiction of sin in Koontz’s work as gratuitous, except that it serves the very useful purpose of smacking us out of a sense of scrupulosity.  If you only ever engaged with Goudge, you could be forgiven for developing a very optimistic view about the human soul, and you would probably be scandalized by the run-of-the-mill evil we see every day in the checkout line at the grocery store, let alone the truly terrible stuff that’s right in front of us but usually hidden by the veneer of public respectability.

Despite its ugliness, it’s important not to get queasy about sin.  How terrible, humiliating, and soul-destroying would it be to go to a medical doctor and have him or her recoil in disgust at our infection?  When I worked in healthcare, one of the saddest things I ever heard was someone relating how they couldn’t deal with their mother’s end-of-life care because it was just “too gross”.  When we react in the same way to the sins of those around us, or the evils that they suffer, especially if we have no personal experience to foster empathy, we’re really taking part in the same kind of humiliating dynamic.  Think for a moment about the parable of the Good Samaritan.  A man lying beaten and bloody at the side of the road is going to be difficult to deal with.  The violence done to him would be horrifying and probably physically revolting.  When I imagine that Samaritan, I see him struggling to carry that wounded man — the blood and filth from his wounds soiling the Samaritan’s clean robes; his shoulder wet with the man’s tears and mucus.  There’s no flinching at the ugliness of sin there — just the Samaritan doing what needed to be done to drag the broken man to safety.

The dangers inherent in enjoying work like Koontz’s are obvious.  We don’t ever want to get to a point where we are unaffected, or God forbid, entertained by sin and evil.  But it’s easy to ignore that works like Goudge’s have their own spiritual dangers.  We must beware of letting sentimentality offer us a false sense of safety.  In a sense, even the most well-intentioned work can be a source for sin.

Giving artists the freedom to create works that might be outside of someone’s comfort range can be for us an act of trust in God’s providence.  God’s hidden hand is working salvation everywhere — and it is His prerogative to connect the souls of whomever He chooses.  For that reason, I think it’s important to keep an open mind about the wide variety of depictions of good and evil in Christian art.  Different works will resonate with different people at different points in their lives, for many different reasons.  It is the spirit of discernment that allows us to look at a work and acknowledge that although it may not be for us at a particular moment, that doesn’t preclude the work from being immensely meaningful for someone else.

I suppose it comes down to prayer and watchfulness, doesn’t it?  Whenever I encounter a work of art or literature, I have to be mindful of my own interior responses to that work, and turn away if it causes me to sin, locating the evil in my own heart rather than in the work of art itself.

The same is true for being a writer, and artist — a subcreator of Christian art.  If in the course of writing, my work takes me to a dark place, it does not preclude the Holy Spirit from using that work in ways I will never be able to anticipate.  Locating my own creative activity firmly in the framework of prayer makes it an exercise of faith in God’s ability to use even broken vessels for His glory.

I suppose then, that my answer to the question is simply to pray, and let God handle the rest.
 

Humans of Ancient Faith: Laura E. Wolfe

July 7, 2021 · Melinda Johnson

Humans of Ancient Faith is a series of mini-interviews designed to introduce you to the many wonderful human beings who make this ministry possible. We asked the same 5 questions in each interview, and let the interviewee choose a sixth question. Today’s guest is author Laura E. Wolfe.
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If you were named for your defining characteristic, what word or phrase would be your name?
The Outlier.  Or as Moana’s Gramma put it, “I’m the village crazy lady.  That’s my job.”

What is your earliest specifically Orthodox memory?
After I read Russka by Edward Rutherford, my newly-chrismated cousin took me to the early morning English liturgy at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Bethlehem, PA.  My whole body remembers that experience— and I knew right away that the Lord was in that place.

What’s your favorite story about your patron saint?
We don’t know much about St. Laura of Cordoba, who is a pre-schism saint from Spain, except that she was boiled in oil.  I can’t even say that without shuddering.  My experience of praying with her is that she is both quiet and courageous, and she radiates a sense of spiritual stamina.

What’s the title of a conference Ancient Faith has not yet hosted that you would absolutely attend?
“Spiritual Warfare for an Enchanted World”— Suppose it doesn’t need to be re-enchanted, because it was never disenchanted.  Now suppose that I mean that statement literally and not metaphorically.  Sounds like an exciting conference, no?

What’s a book or movie that you’d highly recommend? What did you like about it?
I love to recommend books to people!  But I think you need to know someone first, in order to make a good connection.  There’s a picture book called Larky Mavis, by Brock Cole, that I think does a good job of capturing what being around a holy fool might feel like — uncomfortable and exciting.  I’m also lately a big fan of The Ethics of Beauty, by Dr. Timothy Patitsas, because it’s both very deep and very accessible.

What are you working on?
Writing-wise, I have several irons in the fire.  I’m in the middle of writing a book with a friend about being an Orthodox homeschooling family that uses the Charlotte Mason philosophy, and I’m also putting the finishing touches on a couple of different fiction manuscripts.  But it’s also summer, so that means I’m pulling a lot of weeds out of my garden and observing my mer-children in their native habitat.

About Laura E. Wolfe
Laura E. Wolfe is the author of the beloved picture book Sasha and the Dragon (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2017) and the novella The Lion and the Saint. A wide-eyed nature lover her entire life, Laura has a Bachelor of Science degree in biology with a minor in philosophy, and she still thinks the best place to read a good novel is halfway up a tree. She and her family are members of St. Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church in Emmaus, Pennsylvania.

About Melinda Johnson
Melinda Johnson is an Orthodox Christian, wife, mama, writer, and the author of Letters to Saint Lydia (AFP 2010) and the Sam and Saucer books (AFP), among others. Melinda has a Master’s in English Literature because she loved taking literature classes so much she couldn’t stop doing it. When she is not seeing “heaven in a wildflower,” Melinda enjoys writing for children, walking and talking, and baking bread.