Things I Can’t Stop Thinking About
Lots of things to do while I’m away!
Welcome to Vacation Mode on Everything Is Crumbling!
This month, my family is traveling, so I’m taking a break from the lectionary and instead, hosting friends, sharing rabbit trails, and sending postcards from abroad. There is still a post each week!
If you missed the two guest posts, you can find Britt’s meditation on baptism and the cosmos here, and Mollie’s ode to composting spirituality here.
This week’s newsletter is dedicated to things I can’t stop thinking about: movies, books, Substack follows, and the occasional wishlist item.
I’ll be back in July with the lectionary and a case of jet lag.
Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss anything!
Something on My Wishlist:
I live in the suburbs, and our library, while excellent for kid selections, runs scarce on grown-up book variety. But every once in awhile, I’ll find a book from my niche of Christianity, and I wonder, “Who is ordering these? Who is checking this out?” So I would like to propose an opt-in matchmaking program at the local library for people who have checked out the same books.
For example, my library has books on Quakers and Howard Thurman and lots of South Asian cookbooks. I want to know the people who have also read these. I realize that this is kind of like a book club, but there’s nuance here! It would be nice to get an email that says, “This suburban person is also reading about liberation theology. Send a wave?”
Substack Follows I Just Can’t Quit:
Piloting Faith: A (Almost) Daily Meditation by Cameron Trimble. Just trust me.
The Patchwork Hearth by Mollie Donihe Wilkerson. Mollie is a professional textile artist with a Masters of Divinity, and she is a guest writer this month on Everything Is Crumbling.
Some Things Abuelita by Kat Armas. Kat Armas is a poet in prose form, and her takes on faith help me have faith.
Death and Birds by Chloe Hope. Every week, Chloe writes a stunning post on birds and death, and it’s never what you expect.
Unpunishable Woman by Ashanti Bentil-Dhue. I found Ashanti on TikTok and immediately followed. Every essay is so educational about feminism, misogyny, and selfhood.
Existential Shows and Movies I Reference Constantly:
Eternity on AppleTV: The commentary on the afterlife is fascinating in this movie. A woman dies and finds herself torn between the two husbands she had while alive. She can only choose one to spend eternity with—who will it be and how does she decide? The characters are shocked to find that the afterlife is just more of life—it’s not some grand reward or punishment or utopia. It’s more of the same, and also, it’s a chance to change course.
The Life of Chuck on Hulu: This movie is hard to describe. It’s apocalyptic, genre-bending, but it’s also charming and beautiful and funny. This is a very Everything Is Crumbling kind of movie, and it’s not a downer.
The Last Kingdom on Netflix: Listen, this show has a lot of gore. It’s a Viking show. However, the conversation between paganism and early Catholicism is a main character throughout the entire series, and I find the tension to be a dance more often than it is a struggle.
Midnight Mass on Netflix: It’s thriller/horror, but the least horror of Mike Flanagan’s productions. And the setting is a Catholic Church on an island much like Martha’s Vineyard—the conversations around church and eternity and spirituality are so, so good. It doesn’t get too gory until the final episode, but by then, you understand what’s going on in the narrative. The lesson here is that if we have to drain the lifeblood of a person in order to live forever, we turn into monsters and are slaves to our appetites.
Books that Have Stuck with Me So Far in 2026:
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
I posted about this book awhile back, and lots of people are talking about it and for good reason. You don’t have to love novels to love this book—it’s fast-moving and compelling, told from multiple points of views. It’s about the end of the world, it’s about love that sustains us.
Notable quote:
“‘Most of what I do with my days is repair things that are gonna break again soon. I just fix them and then when they break I fix them again. It’s like pushing shit up a hill.’
‘So why do you do it?’
‘Because someone has to, or everything just stays broken.’”
We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman.
I love Catherine Newman’s fiction. It’s funny and specific, and her way of describing life puts more magic into the world. This book is about two friends: one in hospice, the other caring for her. A chaplain shows up at the end and is amazing, but the characters who we spend the most time with are amazing, too. This book has it all: death, grief, friendship.
Notable quote:
“I squinch my eyes shut like a child, picture Edi’s face. Then I picture peeling pink hearts from a sheet of stickers, pressing them onto Edi’s cheeks. Is this what praying is? I honestly have no idea.”
This Week’s Things I Read and Loved:
Looking forward to reading KJ Ramsey’s new memoir after this interview with Sarah Bessey.
Everyone we meet is in God in drag (Happy Pride, babes!).