For years, this column featured a weekly list called “Trevin’s Seven”—seven links to the most interesting articles I’d come across that week.
In 2021, when I revamped my twice-a-week email newsletter, Trevin’s Seven found a new home there as a regular Friday feature. It’s now available only to subscribers (it’s free to sign up!), but as the year draws to a close, I thought it fitting to bring it back here—just once.
Instead of my usual list of weekly finds, here are seven pieces from the past year that stayed with me—articles that informed, challenged, or delighted me long after I first read them.
1. The Not at All Secret History of Nicaea (Susannah Black Roberts)
This year marks 1,700 years since the Council of Nicaea, and this deeply researched, vividly written essay brings that pivotal moment in church history to life. It clears away centuries of confusion and conspiracy theories to show what really happened in AD 325: a global gathering of bishops standing firm for the apostolic faith against theological novelty and imperial pressure.
In a year that calls us to remember the Nicene Creed we still confess, this piece reminded me how the church’s courage at Nicaea safeguarded the truth that Jesus is “true God from true God.”
2. We Live like Royalty and Don’t Know It (Charles Mann)
This introduction to the “How the System Works” series in The New Atlantis hooked me from the first image: Jefferson’s ink freezing. Charles Mann then widens our frame to the invisible systems that let ordinary Americans live with comforts unimaginable to a president two centuries ago. With clear prose and moral clarity, it pairs gratitude with responsibility: the food, water, energy, and public-health “cathedrals” we inherited must be understood and stewarded for the common good.
The whole series is worth your attention, but this opening essay sets the table beautifully—showing how wonder can lead to wisdom, and wisdom to civic love.
3. Canada Is Killing Itself (Elaina Plott Calabro)
This is a long but worthwhile report from The Atlantic (30–45 minutes to read). Elaina Plott Calabro painstakingly—and with as much fairness as possible—paints a picture of the culture surrounding assisted suicide, gleaning perspectives from participants, “providers,” and opponents. Reading it made me nauseous.
Calabro traces the rapid expansion of euthanasia: at first limited to the sickest patients, who were already at the end of life, now broadened to anyone with serious medical conditions, with proposals to make the practice available to those with mental illness and even to minors. A few weeks after sharing this as part of Trevin’s Seven, I wrote more about this movement.
4. Augustine’s Confessions: A Simplified Reading (John C. Cavadini)
Here’s a masterful overview of Augustine’s Confessions—13 key points (plus a bonus)—by John C. Cavadini. It’s not short, but it’s immensely clear and rewarding. I plan to print it out as a companion for my next journey through Confessions, which, as is my custom, will be the first book I read in January.
5. In the Music Business, 80 Is the New 20 (Ted Gioia)
Not every link I share is as weighty as a long essay on theology or history. Here’s a short Substack I’ve returned to several times—Ted Gioia on how old songs now make up nearly 75 percent of all music streaming. Half the market is “deep catalog,” meaning songs more than five years old.
Gioia takes us from tribute bands to AI “resurrections” of dead artists, showing how the music world is stuck in rewind. It’s a quick, fascinating read (and a little haunting if you love discovering new music).
6. Chuck Colson’s Last Word (John Ehrett)
A fascinating look at Chuck Colson’s personal copy of James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World—a book Colson read and annotated shortly before his death. John Ehrett traces the spirited debate unfolding in Colson’s margins, where Colson pushes back against Hunter’s elite-centered theory of cultural change and defends the power of worldview formation from the ground up.
The article not only reopens a vital conversation about Christian engagement in what some describe as the “negative world” but also lets us see Colson’s mind at work.
7. The Light of ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ (Karl Ove Knausgaard)
This beautiful reflection on The Brothers Karamazov explores how Dostoevsky’s final novel—written after the death of his young son—wrestles with grief, faith, and the mystery of what it means to be human. The author captures the novel’s restless energy and its chorus of unforgettable voices, all circling the same haunting question: What are we living for?
Karl Ove Knausgaard won’t allow his own introduction to replace the novel, though, confident that his interpretation will “dissolve as soon as you open the book and begin to read it anew.” He continues, “This is what makes ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ a great novel. It is never at rest.”
If you would like my future articles sent to your email, as well as a curated list of books, podcasts, and helpful links I find online, enter your address.
