My Sunday List
July 27, 2025 || The thirtieth weekend of 2025 || A waxing crescent moon in Virgo– Your feeling of safety is now related to order and clarity || The weather in Nashville: High 95 degrees, Low 76
Words
“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”—Immanuel Kant
“This self-centeredness leads in several unfortunate directions. It leads to selfishness, the desire to use other people as means to get things for yourself. It also leads to pride, the desire to see yourself as superior to everybody else. It leads to a capacity to ignore and rationalize your own imperfections and inflate your virtues. As we go through life, most of us are constantly comparing and constantly finding ourselves slightly better than other people—more virtuous, with better judgment, with better taste. We’re constantly seeking recognition, and painfully sensitive to any snub or insult to the status we believe we have earned for ourselves.” —David Brooks, The Road to Character
Music
No record in particular, I like pretty much anything Rachel sings. Just high quality, soulful singing and playing. And writing.
And I’m leaving this here in case anyone missed it last week.
SAINT SEVEN—Scout LISTEN HERE
Artists make art. Regardless of the state of the world, regardless of their lack of time and resources, and regardless of any maladies of the spirit or heart, they’ll find a way to twist the detritus of experience into some sort of form and share it. Sometimes it’s in real time, sometimes it comes well after, and sometimes it comes as a bellwether, but however it comes, the process is as fundamental as breathing.
Saint Seven is Kenny Greenberg and Allison Moorer. A veteran partnership, and a ripe representation of a soul bond that goes beyond timelines, these songs are a celebration of making for the sake of making because making, for Saint Seven, is being.
Joy
Little altars every where
Willie
The way you do anything is the way you do everything.
Favorite passage lately
I haven’t been able to get this off my mind since I read it. I keep it marked so I can go back to it and read it again and again. I love an ecstatic nature passage.
“Here there is nothing but splendor. You have lit a fire beneath me and made me feel, if for an instant, that I am equal to the gauntlet thrown down by these woods. For how, indeed, to capture this? Gone the slow and cautious gilding of the birches, the faint yellowing of the sugar maples, this inching into autumn: no, now the forest plunges headlong into it. Yesterday it was the hornbeam, today the chestnut—I’d hate to see her tailor’s bills. There are times I’m sitting in my glen (our glen), before my river (our river), and I am certain that the low beech who drops her branch across my vision has changed her hue over the course of minutes. That the high maple behind me blushes more deeply, that the little rim of fire had spread a little further around the scalloped feathers of that oak. Ha! I want to shout at them. I saw you. It is like a game I used to play with O when she was very little, when she would slink from hiding place to hiding place, moving very slowly, as if this meant I wouldn’t see. But I do see. There is a way-faring tree who greeted me this morning clothed in crimson, and yet, as the day went on, revealed a distinct purpling. I caught my breath when I first saw it happen: one leaf and then, above, a second, and then, at once, the rest. Began the morning cursing at the limits of my cinnabar, only to discover that what I needed was a deeper blue.”—Daniel Mason, North Woods
If we could all be so enraptured.
What I’m writing
Still working on that bio I mentioned last week. I hope to finish it in the next few days—my deadline is near. I’m working on a few different programs at work. I’m the host of Poets & Prophets now, here’s a link to one I did with the excellent Natalie Hemby back in May. I hosted Dennis Morgan yesterday, and I have one more to do this fall, the date of which hasn’t been decided so it hasn’t yet been announced so I can’t tell y’all who its with yet. Suffice to say, I will as soon as I can.
Gratitude
I’m feeling especially grateful today.
I mentioned above that I’m the host of Poets & Prophets, one of the great series’s we do at the Museum, and yesterday I got to host Dennis Morgan, a major hit songwriter since the late 1970s. He and Kye Fleming wrote tons of hits for Barbara Mandrell, Sylvia, Ronnie Milsap, Steve Wariner—they were a factory in the vein of 1650 Broadway. Dennis has had success with other writers as well—he wrote “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)” for Aretha Franklin and George Michael with UK songwriter Simon Climie, as well as “My Heart Can’t Tell You No” by Rod Stewart.
I guess my point is, what a privilege it is to get to study these master songwriters—to get to know their body of work as a professional in the entertainment industry instead of just as a fan. It puts a different spin on it for me, but at the end of the day, a fan is all I am. I’m grateful for that too—I pray I never lose my ability to get excited about music.
Desires
Order. I enjoy life the most when things are well organized. I know the dangers of seeking perfection, and I know I get hung up on details (hello it’s my job to do that), but when everything has a place, everything can be in its place, and that’s a good feeling, however fleeting. I have learned to try not to chase order as I know it’s a losing battle, especially with an autistic fifteen-year-old in the house. I’ve worked myself to death trying to keep things straight and it’s a Sisyphean task. Yet I continue to dream of an uncluttered space. A place with clean corners and no spider webs stuck in between the storm windows and the almost 100-year-old wavy glass windows on the west side of the house. You can’t have everything. As my old friend Adam Landry once said, “It can’t be laid back if it’s uptight.”
I still maintain it’s good to keep things neat.
Flow. And I guess what I mean by that is dancing with the reality I choose. Juggling wisely at a pace that feels comfortable. I would prefer the order I seek to be a natural result of a thousand little acts of self-discipline.
Prayer
Let me be good. Let me remember to talk to you and hear what you have to say to me. Let me value your divine knowing over anything and everything else, over anyone and everyone’s opinion. Let me be choosy about the counsel I seek. Let me be loyal, kind, and compassionate to my friends and family. Let me use good judgment and strength of character in every moment. Let me never forget that each breath is a gift from you, from this universe, from the miracle that is this moment of perfect combustion. Let me be strong in my faith. Let me receive inspiration. Most of all, let me love and be loved.
Intention for the week to come
May I be the best version of myself at every opportunity.
May I be patient. May I be kind.
May I have self-awareness.
May I clear clutter from my life.
May I welcome change.
May I love unconditionally.
May I slow down my emotions and keep them at arms length. They are clues—not answers, not truth.
Something I’m thinking about
Surviving the last third of summer.
Life always feels a bit like a slog by the end of July. It’s so hot, I’m offended. Everything is thirsty and dry even with the rain we’ve been getting almost every day lately. I’ve long thought we should adopt the European custom of taking the month of August off. Decamping to a breezy place that doesn’t run on a grid or a timeline. Alas, I fear that is not to be just yet or maybe ever. So I wonder how to make the month of August a little less painful for us non-euros? Maybe I’ll compile a list of tips. And please send yours my way.
Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. — Buddha
DO NOT EVER LET THE BASTARDS GET YOU DOWN.
Wishes
That we all receive the love we deserve.
That we all find comfort and peace.
That we all find time for the things that soothe us.
That you will forward this to one person you think might like it.
Have a wonderful, peaceful, joyous week. And thank you for supporting my work here at The Autotelic.
Peace. Love.
Allison
There are first edition copies of I Dream He Talks to Me and Blood in the shop. I will sign each copy that is ordered. If you would like it personalized, please send an email with your order number and the name you would like on the signature page to allisonmoorercontact@gmail.com.
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Ms. Moorer, thank you for such open, honest writing. I am not a great reader of fiction, but a friend recommended North Woods by Daniel Mason. Still basking in the wonder.
There's a joke among philosophers that German students learn English because it's easier to read Kant in translation.
I might be interviewing James McMurtry. (His dad was at Stanford with my strongest writing influence, Peter Beagle.)