In somewhat weird news, the American Dialect Society has chosen “because” as its word of the year. This is not, of course, a new word – but it took on different shades of meaning in 2013, the New York Times reports on its Arts blog: Ben Zimmer, chairman of the dialect society’s new words committee, explained that casual online usage had transformed “because.” “No longer does ‘because’ have to be followed by of or a full clause,” he said in... Read more
Happy new year! Or, maybe, not so happy. News sources around the world report that today is Blue Monday, supposedly the most depressing day of the year, for a variety of reasons. Though the original “scientific” report that established this as fact is widely considered pseudoscience by, well, scientists, turns out there may be some truth to the matter; our tweets from this day seem to be the saddest tweets of any day of the year. With that in mind, on this... Read more
An excerpt from “Christmas,” by George Herbert. The shepherds sing; and shall I silent be? My God, No hymn for thee? My soul’s a shepherd too: a flock it feeds Of thoughts, and words, and deeds. The pasture is thy word; the streams, thy grace Enriching all the place. Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers Out-sing the daylight hours. Then we sill chide the sun for letting night Take up his place and right: We will sing... Read more
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. You have multiplied the nation; you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil. For the yoke of his burden, and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the tramping... Read more
The final Sunday of Advent is the “love” candle, and that made me think about generosity – a fitting meditation as this week moves forward. Here is where I come back around to Advent. Because, let’s remember: generosity and love are intimately linked. It is impossible to be generous toward someone you do not love—and if you do not love them when you start being generous toward them, it’s almost impossible not to end feeling some love. The sacrifice implicit in generous behaviour teaches us to... Read more
At Christianity Today, they’re thinking about charitable Christmas giving and asking whether it really helps. This is an increasingly common Christmas present—to make a donation to a poor family in a developing country in the name of a loved one. Increasingly, organizations such as the Heifer Project, World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse, Kiva, and other charitable organizations send out gift catalogs and online promotions with a bounty of attractive Christmas gifts to choose from: a pig for a family in Nepal, a... Read more
Over at The High Calling, they’re talking about “the danger of securing our futures”: Chasing security in my career limits the use of the gifts I’ve been given. When I say yes to a narrow band of safe options, I disregard any promising alternatives and turn off the gifts that might be seen through those alternatives. Unwilling to take risks, I end up keeping the gifts to myself. That isn’t all. By keeping the gifts, I limit what others could... Read more
Charles Mathewes, a professor at UVA, recently wrote for Inside Higher Ed about vocation, calling, and work. His advice is specific to professors, but I think this is applicable far beyond that field! But ironically the difficulty everyone faces seems, to me at least, interestingly similar: we all face an inability to distinguish between different dimensions of an academic vocation, and we do so for the same reason that so many of us find this vocation, considered abstractly, so profoundly... Read more
Over at The Curator, Brett Beasley reflects on reading and resistance – on our text-soaked world and the difficulty of reading well: When billionaire hedge fund manager Steven Cohen came under scrutiny in an insider trading scandal this summer, his lawyers provided a novel defense: they claimed that although he received an email that contained the incriminating information he never actually read it. I laughed out loud when I heard that. And then I thought about my own inbox teeming... Read more
Yesterday was the third Sunday of Advent, when we light the “joy” candle – the pink one, traditionally. Here’s my reflection: Penitence is hard. It is hard to be reminded that we are fallible, imperfect, inclined to do evil. It’s even harder to adopt the attitude of humility and brokenness about those fallen states we are in. It’s difficult to be told that we are doing the right things for the wrong reasons, or to realize how selfishly we conduct... Read more
Mark D. Roberts
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In