Well, it’s pride month, which around here doesn’t mean much because those little flags are ubiquitous year around. “Love is Love” is our constant state. I like June–the green, so long gone, bursts forth, and the peonies finally bloom. I love them so much (love is love) that I even dream about them sometimes. But the whole idea of having “pride” as a morally good act is so bad that I generally also feel depressed, in spite of the riot... Read more
A long Jen Hatmaker FB post is making its way around the internet and so I toddled over to see how she is doing. Apart from advertising a wine delivery option, and those FabFitFun Boxes (my gosh, I so need to do an unboxing of the Bible video, if only I can figure out a working camera situation), she doesn’t seem to be doing great. There’s this post about anxiety for example. Anyway, there’s a reason her post from yesterday... Read more
A blessed and happy Memorial Day to you all. It is pretty rainy here, and chilly, and we aren’t done with our work, so we’ll probably have to move our feast, but in the meantime, we’ve done a podcast about whether doing things online and on zoom is a real substitute for doing things in person, and why you should go to live church if you can. I know, shocking! Matt says he likes zoom and the internet, and I... Read more
I’m over at Stand Firm today. Well, it’s Trinity Sunday. Let’s see what kind of heresy we can rustle up this morning, shall we? I’m the kind of Christian that accepts that God is more than able to use human language to communicate with me about what he is like, what we are like, and what anyone can do about it. But on Trinity Sunday, of course, I must languorously wander over to the side of Mystery, admitting that no matter... Read more
Oh look! It’s Friday. Isn’t that something. One Our street is still being torn up by very friendly people. They come and dig big trenches and then fill them up with dirt. And yesterday–though I don’t blame them as I’m sure they are only following dictates from on high–they chopped down one of the trees opposite my house. Well, not exactly chopped. They whacked at it with one of the huge machines they use for digging, sort of bashing the... Read more
I was reading a lot of LeaveLoud tweets and feeling very discouraged about the state of all things, and then happened upon this–a review of a book about fashion. It looked like it was going to be interesting, just the thing, in fact, to take my mind off of all the badness, but no, not really. Everything…everything is about power. It starts like this: On the subject of fashion, men have been quite the sly devils over the years. They’ve... Read more
A few weeks ago I ran across the term “platonic marriage,” about which I have more investigating to do, but today…today we have a real treat: It was May, and the snow had finally retreated from its grungy heaps on the streets of Minneapolis. I was 33, nearly 34—and I was ready to be a mom. I’d been ready for years. There was just one problem: I had a terrible track record with love. After one final attempt at a... Read more
Me reading the news this morning. There seems to be tumult all over the world this week. Besides the usual trouble in the Middle East, and the Midwest, and India, and everywhere, the EU is sanctioning Belarus for redirecting a flight to get their hands on a dissident blogger (I hope I have that right, the whole thing seems very complicated), and Mali had a coup d’etat yesterday. There isn’t a good time for a coup, I think, but this moment... Read more
It is a sultry, gray day here in Bing. The trucks outside our window have fallen silent for a few minutes, so we’ve done a goodly-ish lengthened podcast about what we’re reading. Matt is reading history, of course, and I’m reading Green Thoughts, still, and all the other books I’ve been meandering through. We talk about them anyway along with what’s wrong with everything. Hope it makes your Monday what it should be. I do, strangely enough, have a few... Read more
I’m over at Stand Firm this morning. Well, we’ve made it as far as Pentecost in this tumultuous year. I can barely type, having gotten into a tussle with a rose bush, yesterday, in my efforts to bring order and constraint to my garden—beating back the weeds and the pests and making the plants I want to be there grow up in the way they should go. As I mucked around in the dirt, I listened to this whole podcast, with... Read more
Preventing Grace
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