David Mitchel is a small-town lawyer who has represented clients in a broad spectrum of causes, ranging from foster care to business transactions to property disputes to the defense of criminal charges to federal habeas corpus and Civil Rights actions. His passion for literature and story, which he caught first from Tolkien, informs all of this work—which requires patient, careful adjudication of competing stories and creativity to help clients and courts write the rest of the story justly and wisely. David was born and raised near Baltimore, Maryland, went to law school at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, and now lives in central Virginia with his wife Libby and their two young daughters.
The Vocation of Remembering: Wendell Berry’s How It Went
“ . . . together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.” (Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings II. 8.)
Of the things most books have in common, I delight especially in dedications. Whether formal, obligatory, funny, or profound, they can reveal much of an author’s temper and, specifically, the spirit in which a book was composed. Wendell Berry’s dedication to his latest collection of Port William stories, How it Went, is as fine an example of this as I have seen.
Read More ›Signs and Songs: A Review of The Corner Room’s Remember and Proclaim
Early in C. S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair, when Aslan gives Jill Pole the quest of rescuing Prince Rilian of Narnia, he also gives Jill four signs by which she might fulfill the quest. Before sending her to Narnia, though, Aslan warns Jill.
Read More ›Of Pangolins, Noomy-Shoomy-Oomy to Rememberoo, and the Rhetoric of Common Grace: Slugs & Bugs’ Modern Kid
“Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.”—St. Mark 10:15
Read More ›The Slugs & Bugs Show: A Review
One of the great words of the New Testament, to which Jesus himself gave the greatest importance when he used it in instituting the Eucharist, is anamnesis, remembrance. Christ’s institution placed at the center of our lives a gift and a discipline. The discipline is recalling a Person from the back of our minds into the focus our mind’s eye. The gift is that the Person we recall is Christ himself.
Read More ›Albums That Shaped Us: Jubilant
A man plucks a simple line on an upright bass. After two bars a muted trumpet and a fragile acoustic guitar add soft harmony, and a singer moans sotto voce. Then the trumpet pauses, and the bassist and guitarist start a meandering pianissimo jazz progression in 12/8 time, to which the singer rasps a simple plea: “Fix me, Jesus.” As the bass and guitar accompaniment ascend, the singer’s voice ascends likewise, into a raspy falsetto, repeating the plea with heightened urgency: “Fix me, Jesus.” Through a verse and another pass through the refrain the singer repeats the plea several times, softly, the very softness not muting but expressing the ardor: the singer must enter the plea “Fix me, Jesus,” but will not presume to sing it in full voice—not, at least, until Jesus has begun to fix and strengthen him.
“Beauty is never necessary”: Alexander Schmemann’s For the Life of the World
“The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens,” wrote Chesterton, contrasting that poetical sanity with the craziness of the logician “who seeks to get the heavens into his head.” The poet gets a good view; the logician gets a splitting headache. Read More ›
Baseball: The Perfect Game
Last season Washington Nationals star Bryce Harper posted an astonishing stat line: four plate appearances, zero at-bats, four walks, four runs, one RBI. Before Harper last year, no one had posted that Read More ›
A Lenten Sermon: Break Forth Like the Dawn
Several years ago I heard, for the first time, the Easter homily (c. A.D. 400) of St. John Chrysostom. It was unlike any sermon I have ever heard. It had no seminar-room smell at all; St. Chrysostom didn’t Read More ›
At Advent’s End: A Christmastide Exhortation
In high December, you don’t usually have to look far to find someone who isn’t looking forward to Christmastide — someone whose solitude will serve as a special reminder of Read More ›
Thanksgiving and Desire, Ordinary Time and Advent, and C. S. Lewis Week
I have always thought it a happy coincidence that in my country Thanksgiving Day occurs the fourth Thursday in November. That same Thursday happens usually to be the last Thursday in Read More ›
Lent Against a Million Faustian Bargains
A few weeks ago the Rabbit Room editor sent out a message to his writers soliciting posts on various subjects. Two of the subjects—Lent and politics—caught my attention, because there’s a Read More ›
Epiphanytide, and a proposal concerning your day job
Once upon a time, many long years ago and in a land far, far away, a group of astrologers observed a stellar anomaly. Read More ›