The Facebook Timeline and the Disintegration of Memory

Last updated on: March 25, 2015 at 12:54 pm By Marc

The Jews said that idol-worshipers would become like their idols. Well, God save the Jews — we are becoming our computers. We memorize less — we “access” more. We “open files” on command, use them, and consign them to an oblivion from which they rarely arise. How heartbreakingly obvious this is in Internet “debates,” wherein combox-combatants look up their arguments as they argue, google logical fallacies as they accuse each other of them, gathering evidence as it becomes necessary. It’s... Read more

Oh, for a beautiful memory!

Last updated on: June 20, 2014 at 10:06 am By Marc

Somewhere at the tail-end of trying to memorize a poem… there lives the dearest freshness deep down things… …it strikes me that memory is not, contrary to popular description, “like storing information on a computer.” Computer-storage is like whatever memory is. Computers store, but do not memorize, for our memories do not sit discreetly as Microsoft Word files in the corner of some tidied desktop, waiting to be accessed. They leaps into our hearts. They invade our minds, unasked for.... Read more

Women Swiftly Running Out Of Things That Aren’t Sexy

Last updated on: June 17, 2014 at 5:11 pm By Marc

I expect the world to go about its regular denigration of women — I just wish members of the Church would stop helping them. Let’s start with the basics. Women, and I have this on strict authority, are people. As such, they are sexual beings — but not merely. The problem with our culture is its tendency to view women as merely sexual beings, a fact made painfully obvious by our nation’s general inability to see a breast as anything but... Read more

Notes Regarding Sin, to be Read Sharply and Mockingly to Myself in Times of Desolation

Last updated on: June 13, 2014 at 2:42 pm By Marc

“I cannot pray after so great a sin.” And are you too ill to see a doctor? Too thirsty to drink? Too dirty to take a shower? * It is better to risk being seen as a hypocrite by praying after sin than to risk growing cold in God’s arms by refusing to. * From the perspective of despair, sin is the end of prayer. From the perspective of hope, sin is the beginning. Christ stands on the side of... Read more

Facts, Facts, Facts!

Last updated on: June 11, 2014 at 12:38 pm By Marc

“You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.” – Charles Dickens, Hard Times That human beings long to fly tells us far more about humanity than the fact that they walk on two legs. That teenagers daydream about the anarchy of a “zombie apocalypse” is a greater insight into their essential disposition than the fact that they use Facebook. A man is best known, not by what he... Read more

The (Usually Ignored) Difference Between Sexual Identity and Sexual Event

Last updated on: May 27, 2014 at 5:40 pm By Marc

NSFW, or children, or anyone, really. Let’s just put this one in the grave, alright? Sexual identity cannot be based on the object of our sexual arousal. I know this is how we’ve been doing it: If you are aroused by members of the opposite sex, you’re a heterosexual, the same sex, homosexual, two sexes, bisexual, all sexes, pansexual, the intelligence, sapiosexual, and so on and on and on. But “how we’ve been doing it” has made us miserable, killed... Read more

The Difference Between a Hashtag and a Hail Mary

Last updated on: May 26, 2014 at 10:45 pm By Marc

We are more aware of evil than any generation before us. We receive news-stories of illnesses we’ve never heard of breaking out in countries whose names we cannot pronounce. We are updated — between cat-videos — with terrorist bombings, genocides, hurricanes, shootings, and rapes. We are daily informed of suffering we cannot relieve. Though the mode of the Internet tends to level tragedies into objects of interest — nestling images of the crucifixion of Christians in Syria alongside instagrammed nachos,... Read more

Why Christians Say “Encounter”

Last updated on: May 24, 2014 at 11:13 am By Marc

Christians have adopted the term “encounter” to describe a standard run-in with God. We inchworm our way through Scripture in high hopes of “encountering Christ in the Gospels.” We give alms (sometimes) and “encounter Jesus in the poor.” We run retreats, bible-studies, and prayer groups out of an earnest desire to “encounter” God’s love. I want to defend this verb so naturally pinned onto things Almighty. It has a firmness to it, not by some accidental linguistic trend, but because... Read more

The Real World

Last updated on: May 7, 2014 at 11:11 am By Marc

Human people are the creators of other-worlds, minor-league gods who daily exercises impossible powers without taking a moment to marvel. Our houses, for instance, are worlds. They do not conform to the geography of the universe. They impose their geography on us. Whatever notions of space we had “out there” are dropped on the welcome mat. Now “front” is dictated by the front door and “back” by the rear patio. Even if we are in an apartment at the top... Read more

How “Cis” Killed Gender Theory

Last updated on: May 4, 2014 at 11:56 am By Marc

Modern gender theory is dead, and we have killed it. Weep — we were really onto something. We wriggled out from a dichotomy of a “normal” sexual orientation (heterosexuality) and deviations from that norm (homosexuality and lesbianism, largely), to a world of “alternative lifestyles” (homosexuality and heterosexuality as equally valid “life choices”), to a world excited and exploding with the hundreds of labels we are growing fond and familiar with today (sapiosexual, omnisexual, pansexual, trigender, bigender — you know the... Read more