POSTCARD: Sunlilies, Face to Face, Future Writing

A few things to share

Hi, long-distance friends, close to my heart! I wanted to share a few things with you:

Sunlilies in America

Sunlilies is now available again for purchase in the US, I’m happy to say!

Paul Kingsnorth

called it, “A poetic, powerful, prophetic tract, Sunlilies is a gem I return to regularly. Wild, hopeful Christian dreaming for dark times: this is the way forward.”

Martin Shaw

called it “ecological, poetic, strange” (and the little book is still available in and near the UK from his own Cista Mystica Press, if that speaks more to your geography—but hurry up! As of this writing, only a shortstack of four copies are left in stock, gobbled up, so to speak, like proverbial hotcakes…)

And in his review,

Rod Dreher

likened its poetic, evocative biophilic power to that of “Abraham Heschell and sometimes Wendell Barry,” and in his, Charles Haywood warns us that the book is “a kind of holistic experience, probably best done sitting outside.”

(Also, would anybody who’s purchased a Cista Mystica edition, care to review it there? It needs reviews! Thank you!)

Estuary Northwest 2024: “Encountering Face to Face”

Oh man! Grail Country is hosting a 3-day conference in Olympia, Washington on the theme “Encountering Face to Face,” September 12, 13, and 14. It’s going to be challenging, beautiful, and amazing—and, having overheard some of the logistical chatter—it will also be delicious. Very delicious. And musical.

And just crazy in the best possible way, because look at the lineup of guest speakers—including, somehow, me—so if you’ve got three days and a few pieces of lettuce to spare, and the desire to engage in deep, openhearted conversation about deep things with wonderful and very interesting people among the grandeur of the Pacific Northwest, then please book a spot or two or three, and I’ll see you there!

Writing in the Future

I am planning on releasing the next major essay on Friday, July 12. This will be the eighth and last in the series, Nurturers of the Real, and I intend it to be a challenging retrospective on 2020, a powerful and unifying synthesis of the main insights of the previous essay, and a tantalizing preview of the next series, which will “Look closely at the lilies of the field, how they grow” for the Orthodox solarpunk utopias of tomorrow. Or whatever our native, heartfelt technological vision should, or could, be—we’ll just have to see. I have ideas.

This is an ambitious set of goals for one essay, and so I’m asking for a little more time than usual to finish it.

For those not familiar with the current series, or breezing through it fast enough, that a recap might be helpful, here’s how I see it:

#1: All Over the World the Faces of Living One Are Alike: This is about an orientation toward the Earth, and the living things of Earth, as our primary temple, and as the living icons within that temple.

#2: Messiah’s Circles: This is about the superiority of arranging ourselves in circles, rather than rectangles, if the goal is to include the whole universe in our worship, but without loss of the human face.

#3: Holy Sun, Holy Earth: Earth is real. Earth is deeply and intimately connected to God, not separate.

#4: Remembering the Forgotten Messianic Feast: This is about eating and drinking and saving the world, not leaving it. And it’s about the difference between caring for idols and caring for living people.

#5: Garage Punk Cave Liturgies: This essay is a rejection of the architectural technologies of divine kingship, as perfected by the Roman and then the Russians. And it points to the alternative, almost anarchic beauty of ruins.

#6: Higher Worlds, Future Worlds, Counterworlds, and Home: Reality is a gradient, and Orthodoxy is a beautiful counterworld moving up that gradient, however flawed.

#7: The Million-Petaled Flower of Being Here: Poetic vision is its own animal, and has its own way of seeking harmony with reality, which is, and must be, at odds with the logic of “religion.” Long live the poets, even if just trying to exist as poets within Orthodoxy is a Sisyphean task.

If you haven’t yet, please consider subscribing to Sabbath Empire and reading, or listening to, these essays (included with each is an easily printable PDF version, as well as recordings of me reading them in my own way, within a fitting soundscape):

Alternatively, or additionally, if you want to help keep thoughtful, poetic, challenging work like this flowing into the world, consider making a one-time donation, however small—every little bit helps, and is greatly appreciated:

Thank you so much!

-graham