In Lent, Morning Prayer begins with “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us, but if we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” It’s the kind of verse that rolls off the tongue, that you can say without thinking about it too much. It’s an important verse to have wedged in your mind if you ever want... Read more
Actually, most of these links have nothing to do with Holy Week and so are Not Holy. And, there aren’t very many of them because, as usual, I was busy being a good person doing Important Work all week and Not Reading the Internet. Part of the important work was reading a hefty portion of Winnie the Pooh. First up, here is the very second Preventing Grace Podcast, this time, all about Holy Week and why it’s OK for Protestants... Read more
I’ve been struggling (remember, Christian word for failure) with rage this week, not over politics and the state of the world, not over some kind of global injustice, not even about the genocide of people around the world, but over our poor wretched Puppy, Posie. Poor Posie. First of all, we have humiliated him by giving him a froufrou name. Second of all, we have required him to transfer his loo affections to the great outdoors. Third, we haven’t allowed... Read more
It’s not Friday is it? I was kind of hoping it was, but, as I watched the puppy vomit up something unspeakable just now, I realized that indeed, no, it is not Friday. We have to get through Thursday And Friday. And then Saturday and Sunday of course. Time marches on like an ever rolling stream? Isn’t that a line in a song? What does that even mean? I have the problem of what Matt calls Time Compression. I make... Read more
This falls into the Life Going On category, that place where I shove the vagaries of life that, for whatever reason, I happen to be remarking upon. This political cycle, lasting, as it has, for what feels like a decade, is turning out to be part of the fabric of our ordinary lives. We do school, we go to church, we clean the house, we scream and rage about the puppy, we watch, read, and talk politics. It’s kind of... Read more
Ah, Daylight Savings, how you continue to ruin everything. I know it’ll be ok in the long run, but I am not having any success at laying aside the bitterness of my soul about having my life ruined right now. Outrage, really, is what I continue to feel. This morning especially I appear to be not alone. I’ve just taken a little meander through the Internet and everybody is so angry. Slate is angry about a bunch of stuff, I... Read more
I’m not really on the true cusp of cultural whatever it might be called. I didn’t know, for example, that Kim Kardashian (how come auto correct fills in that name so easily but always changes sin to win?) has put out some sort of, well, it has pages so I guess it is called A Book, called Selfish. It’s a collection of selfies, from what I can tell, and it’s only 13$ on Amazon. In other words, it’s not nice... Read more
I’m going to go ahead and be bitter, even though it’s the Lord’s Day. Want to know what time our Sundays start? Well, Matt gets up in the middle of the night to essentially memorize his sermon. I, being much lazier, wake up in the vicinity of five to flail around on the Internet. The children wake up between then and seven, one by one climbing into my bed to jostle and annoy me. Then, at 7am, I turn on... Read more
Having neglected to gather links for last Saturday, I rather outdid myself this week, going too far the other way. Someday I will achieve balance and sobriety, not swinging wildly back and forth between too much and too little, but today is not that day. Also, I suckered Matt into doing a little podcast with me. I hate being behind the times, and podcasts really seem to be The Thing right now. I know I am addicted to them. So... Read more
The time finally came, the walrus said, to rearrange the chore chart and make all the tasks more evenly distributed. One The deeply pressing question for me, over the last ten years, has always been, ‘how much can a child be expected to do?’ I have lived in mortal fear of being covered in children whom I thought could only sweep the floor, when in reality it turns out they could sweep the floor, mop the floor, pull up the... Read more
Preventing Grace
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