Cultural Christians in the Early Church

1 week ago | nadyawilliams.substack.com | Nadya Williams

Janus, the patron god of thresholds in Roman mythology, had two faces, one looking backwards and the other forwards. This reflects a general reality in life: every transition involves looking back and looking forward. It’s bittersweet—bitter because endings are always hard, and sweet because beginnings can be rather exciting, brimming with potential.

1 week ago | nadyawilliams.substack.com | Nadya Williams

There’s a popular ice breaker question: who is a historical individual with whom you’d like to have coffee/dinner/conversation? I have a short list, and somewhere close to the top of it is the Athenian historian Thucydides, who lived and wrote in the second half of the 5th century BC.

2 weeks ago | nadyawilliams.substack.com | Nadya Williams

End of April means graduation season is drawing nigh! I graduated high school in 1999, college in 2002, and PhD in 2008. This means that this graduation season marks 26 years since I graduated high school, 23 years since college, and 17 since I finished my PhD (but if I got the math wrong—well, my PhD is in Classics, so…). In fact, my oldest son will turn 20 later this year. Gulp. I do have a point to make here other than publicly admitting that I am officially getting old.

3 weeks ago | nadyawilliams.substack.com | Nadya Williams

Your name burns my lips like a Seraph’s kiss,If I forget you, Jerusalem, who are all gold. So wrote Naomi Shemer in her iconic Israeli song “Jerusalem of Gold.” Shemer originally composed this for the celebrations in honor of Israel’s nineteenth Day of Independence in May 1967. She selected Shuli Nathan to perform it first, and the recording of her performance with a simple guitar accompaniment still elicits goosebumps.

1 month ago | nadyawilliams.substack.com | Nadya Williams

I know, it’s Monday! I don’t usually send anything out on a Monday. But today I’m writing with a crowdsourcing reflection/request. A little over a year ago, I wrote an exhortation that we read beautiful books to children for Ecstatic, the weekend edition of Ekstasis magazine. My argument, in part, was:We sometimes forget this, living in our pressure-cooker industrial-paced world, but we all, as human beings, have been created to crave and love beauty.