Dear Crew,
I pray your 2024 has been off to a blessed and promising start!
You may have noticed that things have been quiet here at The Broken Binnacle since the new year began. Our reticence has neither been due to forgetfulness or laziness, nor was there mutiny onboard. We have instead been hatching a new plan for 2024 and we decided to give ourselves the month of January to work out the details of this experiment.
As such, we are excited to announce that going forward we will now be sharing a subject theme ahead of each month — any post that we publish will be relevant, in varying degrees, to the monthly theme in which it is published. As fun as the whack-a-mole, guessing-game approach to posting articles was, we believe this new model will cultivate deeper chemistry and engagement between us writers and our articles, and, more importantly, that it will be more satisfying and engaging for you as our audience.
Monthly Theme for February
Without further ado then, our theme for February 2024 is (drum roll, please)…mythology!
To give you a taste of what’s to come for each month, we will also share a selection of short readings with each monthly theme announcement that will be relevant to our specific topics. Of course we do not expect you to read all or any of these resources, but, if you do, we hope that they will serve you as supplementary reading during (or after) each month.
Our reading resources for the month of February are as follows:
Theorizing About Myth (Robert A. Segal), pages 77-80
Are the Gospels Mythical? (René Girard)
The Rune Poem, Havamal (Anonymous, Norse mythology), stanzas 139-165
We are excited to begin “shipping out” again this coming month and we hope you find the new content intellectually provocative, edifying, and inspiring.
Please pray for all of us at The Broken Binnacle, that this new year will be one of continual growth, grace, and success. All of you are in my own prayers.
Your sincerely,
James O’Reilly
Excited for this!