I didn’t’ think it would ever happen, but the daily blank page did not factor into any of my intellectual or spiritual calculations for almost a month as I tried hard to think of other things. Of course, I didn’t think about those other things either in the usual tight circle of driving kids around this gray, desultory town and running loads of laundry. My blogging fast, rather than freeing up my mind to greater and more interesting thoughts, only... Read more
Merry Christmas! In spite of being excessively tired, Matt rousted me out of my stupor to do a mid-lengthed podcast about all the Christmas festivities. We talk about our pets, our children (in that order), the food, what’s wrong with everything, and what we got for Christmas–all with a garnish of politics to keep it spicy. It’s pretty much what you would need to jolt yourself back into regular life, I think. Actually, I’m not sure, I’m too tired to... Read more
Good Morning. We’ve finally rousted ourselves to do a short podcast about why we haven’t podcasted, and complain about the various stresses of life, and how the solution “just be rich” is not actually a solution for the vast majority of people in the world, and about how trying to sell yourself as the product being sold doesn’t actually work when you deliberately try to do it. At least, I think that’s what we talked about. At the end, a... Read more
My review of Wholehearted Faith and What Is God Like? went up yesterday (somehow I missed it). Because of the “sensitive nature and global importance of the subject” it’s not paywalled so you can read it for free here. Hope you’ll take a look, but here’s a taste: “In any case,” writes Rachel Held Evans in the middle of her posthumously published work, Wholehearted Faith, “I wonder sometimes whether we’re playing at death and calling it life.”1 In characteristic and prescient candor,... Read more
Yesterday was a long time of driving people around town, as one does when all of the children are essentially adults who can’t drive–a bitter reality to face. Hopefully today they will all go around on the bus, and I will sit in a chair contemplating the snow, because yes, it is the first day of December and there is already snow on the ground here. So anyway, I can’t get my mind in gear which is fine because last... Read more
A dear and wonderful friend sent me an article about the most fantastical religious trend I think I’ve come across to date. In all my wandering around the cyber highways and byways of American religious culture, I have clicked on a lot of surprising beliefs and hashtags, but this one beats them all. To sum up, a nice young person styling herself as a spiritualist medium to Hollywood’s A-listers, and charging a mere $1,111 an hour for her services, has... Read more
It is cold and gray here in Bing, as befits the beginning of the Advent season. To celebrate, we’ve done an almost too long podcast (technical trouble this morning–better link to follow) recapping our Thanksgiving Dinner, our Advent Party, and what Matt has been calling “Christmas” which is that Kristin Kobes Du Mez played her theological hand that she does not, as no one at all is surprised to find, affirm orthodox Christian belief on the matter of sexuality and... Read more
It’s Thanksgiving Week and we have a lot to be thankful for–and probably you do too. The greatest gift that we’ve been given is the bright idea to fisk an hour-long podcast interview with K. du Mez by C4SO’s new Center for Peace and Justice. We get through the first five minutes of the interview because of course we do. With any luck, this will keep us going for the next several months. In this, the first part, we range... Read more
I was going to do Takes this morning, even though they have gone the way of all flesh, but then the very awesome podcast that I got to do with Hank Hanegraaff was posted yesterday, and, because it is a whole hour and a half long, I thought that perhaps that would be enough for today. It was so awesomely fun to do–like, I hadn’t put such a thing on a bucket list because it never occurred to me that... Read more
Every post has to have a picture, so here’s a nice one of my pets. I don’t have time to write this morning because, by the grace of God, I am getting to go In Person (!!!) to my local social security office to replace all the important things I lost by being completely foolish and absent-minded. I was able to go with one child on Monday–up three levels in the elevator, into a dark hallway to peer at a... Read more
Preventing Grace
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