If It Takes 42 Years to Get the Things I Need
Digest No. 24 - August 2025
This marks two full years of digests, and they continue to be some of my favorite pieces to write.
And remember, if you’re looking for the Commonplace section, a monthly post has been dedicated to the practice. You can check it out here: https://hadleyonfire.substack.com/t/commonplace-journal
In the Year of Our Lord Two-Thousand Twenty-Five, I took my forty-second turn on this globe we call Earth. I don’t give a lot of thought to birthdays and age, not on principle but rather out of a kind of forgetfulness. While in conversation with my oldest son about my age this month, however, we realized that this year I became the answer to life, the universe, and everything. It was a fun moment, and gave me great hope for the year ahead.
On Reading & Researching & Writing
Oh, how my reading selections have changed! Since moving back to Florida, I’ve had to retool how I approach reading, given that my daily schedule is a bit more regimented these days. Plus, given the courses I’m teaching, there’s a bit more direction needed in my personal reading (aside from just, “hey, I think I want to read that”).
To prepare for a discussion of Milton’s Paradise Lost, I did a quick re-read of Lewis’s Preface to Paradise Lost. It has been ten years since I last read it, but it occurred to me that so much of my thought on poetry and reading is bound up in the arguments Lewis makes. It was a very Eco-Vallet moment for me (except Lewis actually said the things I remembered). I’m also currently working my way through Lewis’s The Discarded Image, Wangerin’s Peace at the Last, and Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. So it is never a dull moment.
I’m wrapping up my project on reading pedagogies throughout the history of classical education, which has been most interesting. I hope to share some of that work here soon enough.
On Publishing & Traveling & Speaking
While it was not truly recent, my book review of
and ’s What Barfield Thought was published over the Summer. I had not realized it was out, but I thought I would link to it for those interested. You can access that issue of Christianity & Literature here. I highly recommend the book for anyone interested Barfield. It has proven a helpful asset for me.Otherwise, the month of August was a much-needed respite in the areas where I have been most active the past two years. To really get a handle on what I’m doing day-to-day, I welcomed fewer trips, less emphasis on getting my next piece “out there,” and the emphasis on speaking locally. I did give a convocation address last week, and I have a short talk on commonplacing later this week. But overall, the shift has been helpful.
I will add that my convocation address was a bit unorthodox (or maybe not? I don’t know how many other schools start the year). Instead of focusing on the potential of this upcoming year, I looked to the story of Joseph as an orienting point. Here’s a snippet:
I find it helpful to consider examples from the Bible when I try to wrap my mind around this idea of the story that God is telling through my life. Hebrews 11 offers a list of such stories, with complicated figures mixed in, ensuring that we aren’t merely looking at a list of Saints to whom we feel we’ll never compare. Samson is there, with all his faults. Abraham is there, despite his episodic weaknesses. And I have always found this to be an encouraging portion of the Scriptures. Yet, there is one section that perplexes me. Verse 22 tells us that “By faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel, and gave instructions concerning his bones.” Now, when I think of Joseph, I think of much more than this. I consider his mistreatment at the hands of brothers, of his dreams, his years in prison for a crime he did not commit, his rise to influence in Egypt, and his ultimate reconciliation with his family. In fact, the thing I think about the least when it comes to Joseph is the instructions he gave concerning his bones. But that is what the author of Hebrews zeroes in on.
I think the talk turned out as one of the better one’s I’ve given at these sorts of events. And I hope it was encouraging to the students.
Things will be a bit different in September, which is already getting full with trips and deadlines starting to loom large again. We’ll see how everything works out.
On Listening
I have no idea why, but I have been in a decidedly Toby Keith kind of mood for much of the month. This song is the first one I ever recall hearing, and it still rings in my ear from time to time.