What is Heart Before the Course?

It is…

God's breath in man returning to his birth, / The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage…”

-George Herbert, Prayer (I)

“…after a long and sterile tension that ends in despair, when one no longer expects anything, that from outside —marvelous surprise—comes the gift.”

-Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

“…calling again to mind / the grace of circumstance, / Sabbath economy in which all thought is song / all labor is a dance. / the world is made at rest, / in ease of gravity.”

-Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir

Heart Before the Course is the ongoing, online writing project of Abbey von Gohren to explore the weight we feel in living and moving and having our being in this world, while perhaps being made for (also) other worlds. Who are we as humans? What matters most? How do we put things in the right order, be it our lives or our loves? What are the practices that are most likely to form us into something we know in our bones is good and right?

What happens if I join your email list?

It is impossible to fully predict what might happen if you start asking these questions with other human beings. Let’s find out together!

Practically speaking, every new edition of the newsletter goes directly to your email inbox. At this point, you can expect one or two emails a month.

Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and website.

To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.