“Crappy birthday to me.” It’s a line I’ve heard my mom say many times over the years, jokingly (but perhaps with a bit of real bitterness). And I now find myself saying it—as this email lands in your inbox, it is my birthday, and a pretty momentous one in terms of age (hint: it used to be viewed as over the hill, but nowadays I’m told I’m entering my prime). And on this birthday week I am living at that same mom’s house; my own home is experiencing furnace failure and a water main break.
Expensive repair quotes and inscrutable insurance claims are not how I dreamed of ringing in the big 4-0. But this tough stretch has reminded me of two things: how much worse many other people have it right now, and how fortunate I am to have the support of nearby friends and family. The timing is perfect for me to receive Isaac Villegas’s excellent new essay on mutual care and building a common life together.
Plus scroll down for more great new content. Kendall Vanderslice explores how the academy might better develop theologies of cooking, starting with “those whose cooking is shaped by necessity, not choice.” A book review by Rafia Amina Khader looks at the memoir of a boy-band-member-turned-imam. And even more below, like a delightful poem about a girl who sings odes to joy with the wrong words and tunes.
“I predict that academic theology will continue to show a greater interest in the topic of cooking. But I fear that it will be an interest in cooking abstracted from the actual people who have been responsible for cooking for most of human history.”
Taymullah Abdur-Rahman, or Imam Tay as he is affectionately known, demonstrates that friendship across religious difference can elicit personal and social transformation.
