• ☕🍪 Last week, the Church remembered Hildegard of Bingen. As it did, I stumbled upon this TikTok from saintfluencer that suggested we have Hildegard to thank for Pumpkin Spice Lattes. And while it's true to that Hildgard dubbed the combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove the "Spices of Joy," this medieval cookie recipe, for Cookies of Joy, is probably more faithful to the saint.
  
  (As it happens some Cookies of Joy were served after Nicole Keller's organ recital at Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church on Sunday. Their Schoenstein organ, celebrating its 10th anniversary, is named Hildegard!)

• 😈 I really enjoyed reading Katabasis by R. F. Kuang. It's the fourth of her novels I've enjoyed lately. This one is about an academically motivated descent into hell by two gradate student magicians at the University of Cambridge. You can read more about Kuang in this recent profile in The New Yorker.
  
  

 

• 📖 The latest Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians includes a wonderful article about The Anglican Breviary by the Rev. Blake Sawicky. I acquired my own copy of the Breviary several years ago, but have been slow to use it. This article is exactly the kind of encouragement I needed to pick it back up again.
  
  

[The Anglican Breviary] invites us to conversion rather than consumption, to the slow project of growing up in God. As we consecrate the hours and days and seasons of our lives, we find that time itself, life itself, certainly our senses and our wits, have grown. So shall we enter the new life of grace more and more, practicing its art until what is mortal is swallowed up by life, and we know even as we have been fully known.