Ekstasis Curated, January
A collection of resources to help you survive winter
Welcome to the January edition of Ekstasis Curated. Something is afoot in 2025 in the Christian arts and culture scene. Dare we ask—is some kind of renewal on its way? Below, you’ll find our favorite resources from the month, thinking about this zeitgeist shift and more, bookended by a moment of ekstasis. — Carolyn Morris-Collier
The Bookshop: Hot off the shelf
✍🏽 Can Christians Write?
with Paul J. Pastor
This piece by Paul blew us away here at Ekstasis, especially because we’ve been thinking about this topic and are excited about what he calls a “miniature golden age of Christian literature” that seems to be emerging. Paul makes the vibrant claim that “Christian art is a living tradition” and provides a list of some of today’s most talented authors in this space. Don’t miss this electrifying forecast for the Christian art scene.
“There are books to be written. There are books to be read. Every one of us has a role to play in creating a vibrant ecosystem of Christian art that is able to preserve with joy the great work of the past, while adding new works, works of our time and place, to it.”
💥 2024 Books & Reading
with Haley Baumeister
Check out this stellar book list of 2024 reads to inspire your 2025 reading lineup. Haley’s Life Considered Substack is a weekly wellspring of thought-provoking resources on cultural ideas, peppered with paintings, poems (sometimes from Ekstasis), books, articles, music, and life hacks. With her master talent for curation, you won’t want to miss her annual reading list post.
💎 Window to the Soul: Fiction Books with Collin Hansen
on Gospel Bound
Take a walk through different genres and meditate on the power of fiction with Collin Hansen, editor, writer, recent biographer for Tim Keller, and life-long lover of history. Check out the list of his book recommendations.
Guest host Kendra Dahl asks Collin about his favorite genres to read, from historical to Scandinavian, Russian, and Southern fiction, and how each offers unique perspectives on humanity and culture.
The Cafe: Where faith mingles with contemporary culture
☕️ Wired for Jesus
with Isaac Wood
Isaac is one of our NextGen Fellows, and he begins his first CT piece by considering our modern addiction to caffeine. He then proceeds to walk us through a journey of coffee’s monastic origins, its chemical impact on our brain, and finally, to a theology of the body, spiritual discipline, and prayer. Enjoy the thought-provoking questions sprinkled throughout on our personal habits of consumption and a life with God.
We get out of bed and begin our days with, as John Mark Comer puts it, “the ancient Christian spiritual discipline of really good coffee.” Only after arming ourselves against drowsiness do we set about praying.
💔 It's not me, it's you - on breaking up with the internet
with Ruth Gaskovski
Most of us are in a situationship with the worldwide web. In this whimsical post, Ruth advocates for healthy boundaries and ways of detangling ourselves—like taking a “www” or a “weekend without wifi” or printing out articles to read them deeply with a pen in hand. Ruth encourages us to leave some things unknown and focus our attention on the life around us instead of constantly whipping out our phones to Google something.
I don’t believe we are made for the internet. Yes, we can all agree that it can be a useful tool. But its tentacles ceaselessly pull us in unless we draw clear lines and commit ourselves to keeping our minds liberated… The beginning of a new year brings along with it a fresh focus on where we want to direct our attention, our mental energy, and the time we are given.
🌀 Mysticism, Elon Musk and Wallace & Gromit
on Seen & Unseen Aloud
For articles read aloud, subscribe to this podcast, especially to hear Belle Tindall’s recent piece, The Year of the Mystics. Belle briefly introduces you to several Christian mystics—all remarkable and very different women—who are ‘close companions’ to many trying to bring back the ‘strange’ side of Christianity and see God afresh.
“…is there a place within the Christian story for people who are friends with mystery and oddness, who want the unexplainable and the ecstatic, who consider ‘strange’ and ‘spiritual’ to be two sides of the same coin?…Well, in short, yes. Completely and utterly. Yes to all of it.”
The Pub: Your watering hole for big ideas
📚 State of Christian literature
with Heidie Senseman
Hate to plug our own essay here… but the response to this piece has been immense and seemed to tap into a broader yearning. Heidi helps us think about the loving labor involved in Christian literature, a kind which doesn’t collapse into the extremes of cynicism or sappiness. Check out this engaging response titled The Christian Lit Renaissance? as well.
“Where are the literary Christian writers who aren’t overly cynical or overly sentimental? Where are the artful narratives born out of Christian belief? I wrote this question while sitting in the lobby of a conference center that was hosting thousands of faith-interested writers for a weekend-long arts festival.”
🤖 The Anti-Social Century
with Derek Thompson
Over at The Atlantic, Derek carries out a thorough autopsy of our fragmented and individualistic times, kicking it off with the rising trend of solo dining in restaurants. A Christian reading this article can’t help but have a nagging feeling that we possess something pressing to offer this age—the warmth, connection, and hospitality of church communities.
“But from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, the frequency of hosting friends for parties, games, dinners, and so on declined by 45 percent, according to data that Robert Putnam gathered. In the 20 years after Bowling Alone was published, the average amount of time that Americans spent hosting or attending social events declined another 32 percent.”
🐉 Myth Became Fact
with Ross Byrd
When a Christian goes on the top podcast in the world to discuss apologetics, it can’t help but spark a cultural conversation across the internet, as seen with Wesley Huff’s interview on the Joe Rogan Experience—a show boasting over 14.5 million Spotify followers. Over at the Patient Kingdom, Ross dissects this 3-hour long interview, ultimately taking sides with C.S. Lewis on an important philosophical argument.
“Lewis then suggests that, just as myth is the partial solution to the problem of knowing, Christ, in his incarnation, is the ultimate solution to the problem of myth, the means by which the truest imagined story becomes actual, real-life fact.”
The Sanctuary: Church chat with a side of wonder
🕯️To Have a Mind of Winter
with The Clayjar Review
Dear Caroline Liberatore, Danielle Page, and Alexandra O’Sullivan, thank you for the work you’re doing at The Clayjar Review. The care and attentiveness you give to each season helps us face them with courage—especially your winter poetry collection, the Thrill of Hope. Enjoy this bit from one poem titled Subzero Sabbath in the Midwest.
“I hear it again, the invitation fully formed
as I inhale the choking, startling morning air:
a call to prayer, a glissade of the sun’s tender
pink discovering everything again. Caressing.
Illuminating. Casting out darkness, and fear.”
🗺️ The surprising truth about the West’s Christian revival
with Justin Brierley
Justin has had his finger on the cultural pulse for a while, sensing an unexpected openness to conversations about faith and Christianity in the broader culture. He continues to gather data pointing to this exciting social trend, begging the important question—is the church ready to creatively welcome and open its doors for such a moment?
“Big-picture transitions tend to emerge over decades. But what can’t be denied is that something is happening. Many Christian leaders have noticed something happening in their churches and in the wider culture. There has been a change in the atmosphere. It has become easier to have conversations about faith.”
👑 Epiphany / 10 things for 2025
with Elizabeth Wainwright
Inhabit the possibility of the new year with Elizabeth—someone whose writing is like music to me. In the church calendar, we find ourselves located in the season of Epiphany. Come close and hear her reflections on what this season means, 10 ways she plans to move through 2025, and a closing blessing from poet John O’Donohue. Follow along with her writing, and don’t miss her recent piece on hope during a time of ‘loveless politics’.
“Perhaps instead of a new self, we could do with the space, quiet, time, and capacity to find our old self; the selves that have always been there waiting for us to find them. Not newness, but trueness. Not newness, but depth.”
A few more quick links for you:
📝 Does Teaching Literature and Writing Have a Future?
with Phil Christman at Plough Magazine🪐 How to Read Simone Weil,
Part 3: The Existentialist / Deborah Casewell📍Getting Found with Martin Shaw
❄️ Medieval Girl Winter with Amelia Buzzard
❌ Why Some College Students Aren't Reading Books
with Karen Swallow Prior✨ The Magic of Language with The Narnian
🦚 The Peacock’s Tail: Art, Suffering, and Creativity in Flannery O’Connor with Jeff Reimer at Comment Magazine
🎨 A Liturgy for Beginning an Artistic Work
with W. David O. Taylor at the Rabbit Room
Do you have any resources you recommend—like the podcasts that were at the top of your Spotify Wrapped or the Substacks you’re currently hooked on? Please share. We’re eager to hear!
A Moment of Ekstasis 💫
Pause, breath, and take this in. Ekstasis was born out of a desire to help us be brought outside of ourselves in an experience of awe, wonder, and worship.
"In winter, the earth remembers its hidden life; a silence deepens that is not emptiness but preparation." — Rowan Williams
Thank you so much for the kind words 🙏🏻 We are honored to be included in this beautiful collection 🥹
So grateful to be listed among such great writers — thank you!!