Copious Flowers
Newsletter (Digital)
Welcome. I’m Jesse Hake. My writing here is a modest affair, but David Bentley Hart has said that the title of this newsletter “may be among the best publication names on the platform.” This name is derived from the practice of keeping a medieval florilegium (or commonplace book) a habit praised by many, including Desiderius Erasmus, the author of Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style. My first posts under this name were on a public site that I maintained from June 2011 through January 2022. For a few years after that, I supported a team writing site with Jeremiah Carey and several others. In July 2023, I started this subscription newsletter. While this is no longer a florilegium, it still reflects the most basic threads in my private reading life (with plenty of passages quoted at length), and I desire to keep it oriented in line with this original intent. Source
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Recent Articles
Search ArticlesFinding and Finishing Our Shared Pasts within the Life of God: Transfigured Time in Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor
Saints Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor Two saints and church fathers who developed among the most profound accounts of time, eternity, and humanity’s unending participation in divine life were Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 to 395) and Maximus the Confessor (c. 580 to 662). There is good reason to think that both of them considered every moment within our current fallen experience of time to remain open to us in real ways for all the rest of eternity.
Interviewed on a Podcast with the Humanitas Institute: Jesse Hake on the Living Patterns of Reading, Naming, and Belonging
Such a delight to be interviewed by Christine Perrin for her podcast show Composed: Timeless Ways of Living with the Humanitas Institute. Here is her team’s description: What if the books we read aloud, the walks we take, and the names we learn for the world around us are not small extras, but central ways of forming a life?
Progress as Remembering: Our Human Call to Shared Lament
Adriaen van Ostade. Der Maler in seiner Werkstatt. Oil on oak. 1663. We all inhabit an age that has long prided itself on progress and yet has no concept of what progress really means or of how to seek and find it. The advancement that we love so much is real and good but also puffed up by flashy illusions that erase our consciousness of all that has vanished from human experience. Within fallen time, the capacity to remember our losses is the greatest guarantor of real progress.
Dark Gospel: Figure of Descent
A Second Book of Poetry from Christine Perrin I recently had the joy of attending a gathering to celebrate the release of a new book of poems by Christine Perrin that is available now (shipping on June 01, 2026 from Eighth Day Books).
Resurrection Bodies and Being Really Alive
Experiences with Jesus Christ and his resurrected body after his three days in the tomb carry far more meaning than our fallen and exiled world can fully contain. This meaning is not external to our world, however. Christ returns from the grave because Christ is the fullness of all that we are created to be. Even from within death itself, God cannot be anything but the giver of divine life.
Never Too Gentle: a Short Reflection on the Imitation of God's Beauty
Icon of Christ the Bridegroom Prayer—in the infinitesimal acquaintance that I have with it—is an extraordinarily gentle thing. God so tenderly touches the heart that is in agony and that can only just receive the most simple caress. This we find in the beauty of Jesus Christ who is the “Only Lover of Mankind” as we pray and sing while the light fades away each day to night.
Holiness vs. Rot: Their Ubiquity and Their Contrasts
Detail from 19th Century Russian Icon of the Prophet Elijah in the Desert, Egg tempera and gesso on wood panel, 28 1/4 x 22 3/4 inches. Saintliness is the most natural thing in the world. It is far more natural than the stench of rotting flesh. Both holiness and decay, however, are utterly ubiquitous in our world. Despite the fact that both are almost continually and universally present with us and relatively easy to identify, they are not equally visible.
Finding Our Lost Parents: Sitting with Adam Outside the Gates of Paradise
Creation of Eve. Marble relief by Lorenzo Maitani. Orvieto Cathedral, Italy. Amid today’s avalanche of alienation from each other and from our world, why worry about how to restore our lost relationship with our first parents? Well, I suspect that our sense of connectedness to each other and to our world correlates closely to our sense of fellowship with Adam and Eve. Entering into Lent of late, I recall a series of supplications that we all pray together with Adam sitting outside the gates of Eden.
Of Merpeople and Jinn: a Conversation with my Younger Brother
Jinn by Mehmed Siyah-Kalem from the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul My younger brother and I share a conversation here about our different experiences with folklore creatures as we met those who experience these some of these creatures in their everyday lives. These memories are from my childhood for my part and from my brother’s adulthood on his part.
More than MAGA for a Moment: a Short Trip into My Boyhood
A 2019 Italian carnival float from Viareggio depicting Donald Trump as a “God-Emperor” figure, wielding a giant sword adorned with Twitter’s blue birds and the Italian phrase “dazi vostri” meaning “your duties / taxes” but also a pun for “none of your business” (to phrase it politely). On my way to work just a couple of days ago, I spent some time contemplating the place that my beloved United States occupied within my heart as a boy.