Another Saturday, another look at what has been lighting me up and lighting my way this week.
After a week off because of my company, it was lovely to regroup with my mini book club about Wilkie Au and Noreen Cannon Au’s The Discerning Heart (2006). I also enjoyed reading on to this week’s chapter, which was all about images of God. The premise, taken from the parable of the talents is that we experience the God we imagine: If our image of God is cruel and stingy, we’re likely to experience a cruel and stingy God, whereas if our image of God is generous and loving, we’re far more likely to experience God’s grace and love (see Matthew 18). I had this incredible urge as I was reading to draw a picture of my dominant images of God, and it was interesting to see what surfaced. (Don’t worry; it was placed safely inside a mandorla, a symbol our iconographic traditions use show that what’s inside represents a spiritual truth and not sensible fact!)
And if this theme of images of God feels familiar to you this week, yes, it was convenient timing that I read this just as I was writing up posts on archetypes in Christianity and my concluding post to my series The Christian Shadow! One of the most fun things about the bookish life is how reading begets reading. Book A leads you to Book B which leads you to Book C, and so on. This has been on full display this week: The Discerning Heart made me remember the value I’ve found in Ignatian spirituality (see here, here, and here, for examples), which led me to pick up James Martin’s The Jesuit’s Guide to (Almost) Everything (2010), which referred to Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen (1991), which caused me to pick up St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s Story of a Soul (pub. 1922), which as in turn caused me to pick up Martin’s My Life with the Saints (2006). Despite having planned on my Lenten series this year being dedicated to the Lives of the Saints for a few months already, I can’t say I had a reading binge of books by or about monastics on my 2025 bingo card! That said, this reading and my other preparation for this upcoming series has absolutely been lighting me up — so inspiring to think intentionally about the lives of people who have manifested Christ so strongly! It’s been nice, though, having spiritual reading a big part of my life again. In an ideal world, I’d have one spiritual or theological work on the go at all times, but it’s been pretty grim the past few years, as nothing has really captured my soul’s attention. (I think the past three years now, my top spiritual read of the year was actually fiction!)
In terms of fiction reading, the highlight was a new release, Alice Franklin’s Life Hacks for a Little Alien (2025), which offered a fascinating window into what it’s like growing up neurodivergent. Now that we’re two months into the year, I feel I can safely say it’s been a strange reading year so far. I’ve kept up with my general pace from the past couple years, but it has felt a lot harder. I’ve always been a bit of a mood reader, but this has really grown to monstrous proportions this year and it’s been really hard to find books that are working for me (and practically impossible to pick up books that aren’t). Hopefully that will resolve itself as the year goes on — it’s not nice feeling like I’m barely keeping my head above the waters of a giant reading slump! But for now at least, it’s nice that mood reading is keeping me going.
Sadly the week’s new albums didn’t hit for me that hard, with the possible exception of Gabriela Bee’s STORIES. For the most part, I listened to some favourites from the year so far. It’s early yet, but so far, 2025 is a much mellower year for new music than 2024 was. (And that’s to be expected; 2024 was a banner year!)
Those are a few of the things that have been keeping me going and brightening up my way this week. So what’s lighting you up?
Matthew Root 