What if composing a meaningful life begins not with finding the perfect routine, but with learning to love and practice the good things already in front of us? In this episode of Composed: Timeless Ways of Living, Christine Perrin talks with Rebecca Jekel about music shared across generations, the preparation that makes feasting possible, the rhythms of the Church, and the stories of women in Scripture. Their conversation explores how ordinary practices like singing, reading, cooking, hospitality, and gathering with others can become patterns of formation. Rebecca offers an encouraging vision for families who feel pressure to optimize every activity: what we genuinely love, faithfully practiced and generously shared, can become part of the inheritance we give our children.

Rebecca also reflects on Scripture as a story of preparation, fall, return, and fulfillment. Through Eve, Sarah, Miriam, Rahab, Ruth, Deborah, Photini, and Mary, she considers the courage, faith, hospitality, and perseverance woven through salvation history. For anyone longing for more structure or meaning in daily life, her invitation is refreshingly concrete: begin with small, learnable practices, especially the domestic arts, and allow their simple cycles of preparation and enjoyment to teach you how a life is composed. Nothing happens outside this rhythm in a family, in the life we make, and in the historic redemptive arc.

About the Guest
Rebecca Jekel is a mother and grandmother with interests in music, stories, and personality patterns. She lives in a quiet empty nest with her husband and works in home care providing people with companionship and help with activities of daily living. When not working, Rebecca reads, writes, sings, gathers with family and friends, and follows discussions on writing craft and personality theory. Rebecca most often finds beauty and perspective in the arts, the Church’s Liturgy and teachings, observing children and animals, and learning people’s stories one-on one.

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What if some of the most formative patterns in a life begin with simple obligations, reading the same book again, walking the dog each morning, showing up for students, or staying rooted in one place? Christine Perrin talks with teacher Grant Holbrook about the relationships and repeated practices that quietly shape a person over time. Their conversation moves through Augustine, the Psalms, friendship, beauty, teaching, and the connection between knowledge and love. Along the way, Grant considers why education is deeply relational, why older students need responsibilities to younger ones, and how good books can become lifelong companions. For parents and teachers wondering what habits truly help form a human being, this conversation offers a hopeful picture of a life shaped through attention, fidelity, and love.

Grant also shares practical patterns from his own life, including memorizing the Psalms while walking his dog, rereading great books under the helpful pressure of obligation, and taking time with former students who return, to walk, talk, and continue learning.

About the Guest
Grant Holbrook and his family live in Richmond, Virginia, where he is an upper school teacher at Veritas School. He spends most of his classroom time with the oldest students, teaching Rhetoric, Theology, and Biblical Hebrew to juniors and seniors. His graduate and doctoral work was in Old Testament, and his dissertation considered the poetry and ethics of the Hebrew acrostic Psalms. The works of Erik Varden, Bishop of Trondheim, and St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo propel much of his current reading and writing. The Holbrooks are members of Church Hill Presbyterian, atop the oldest and loveliest neighborhood in the city.

Guest Links
Chastity as the Power to Love: A Discussion as Parents and Teachers

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What if the books you read at sixteen, the habits you formed in a classroom, or the things you learned simply because they were beautiful were never meant to “pay off” only in a career? Christine Perrin talks with historian Elspeth Currie about education as lifelong formation, and about the ways learning can shape motherhood, family culture, work, and our capacity for attention and enjoyment. Drawing on Currie’s research into educated women in Renaissance England, they explore why learning matters even when its effects cannot be measured, how good books and thoughtful teachers shape us over time, and why practices like reading aloud, Sabbath rest, community, and celebration can keep us from simply drifting through family life. It is a conversation that recognizes the good work that might already be unfolding in ordinary life.

About the Guest

Elspeth Currie is a PhD candidate in history at Boston College, where she studies women and Latin in Renaissance England. She holds a BA in History and Classical Studies from Gordon College and a MSt in Women’s Studies from the University of Oxford. Prior to her doctorate, she taught Latin and history in a classical Christian school. She is the author and translator of To Marvel More: Holy Attention in the Incarnation Poems of Martha Marchina, a Christmas devotional on the Latin poetry of a seventeenth-century Italian woman. Elspeth and her family make their home on Boston’s North Shore.

Guest Links

Elspeth Currie at Boston College | https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/schools/morrissey/departments/history/people/graduate-students/elspeth-currie.html

To Marvel More | https://a.co/d/0c9g6eJq

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