Where to begin?

I made a New Year’s resolution to write more as a way of organizing my thoughts around some of the reading I’ve been doing (another resolution was to do more highlighting and underlining). I’m a bit picky about layout and design, so I expect the blog style will be tweaked during this early period until I’m generally satisfied.

What am I reading these days? I’m close to wrapping up Arnold Toynbee’s A Study of History. This was the approved abridgement, not the whole multi-volume set. Prior to Toynbee, I re-visited Spengler’s Decline of the West (again, abridged). These lead me to Romano Guardini’s The End of the Modern World, which I wanted to tackle after seeing it cited in Laudato Si.

The End of the Modern World lead me to Guardini’s masterpiece The Lord, and it is here that I lingered through Advent and Christmas. I expect I’ll finish it before Lent this year. There has been much to digest. On the one hand, it’s a book I wish I had discovered several years ago. On the other hand, it’s probably just as well I read it here and now, in this particular moment of life, exactly when I needed it most, and it is here that my meditations will begin.