Absolutely did not mean to fall off line the last few days. Was intending to wake up bright and early on Monday morning and do the usual podcast, even with links, but instead I slept, and slept, and then sat around in a stupid stupor. And then yesterday was very much the same, in spite of the long list of little projects I thought I would quickly accomplish before the real “rest” of a month off begins. The great tragedy... Read more
I couldn’t help, scrolling through this morning’s lessons, but circle back to that Atlantic article of a week ago, the one that begins with the vivid description of a man slumped over in an airplane, “It’s not true that no one needs you anymore.” These words came from an elderly woman sitting behind me on a late-night flight from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. The plane was dark and quiet. A man I assumed to be her husband murmured almost... Read more
As an act of supreme marital kindness, I am indulging my husband’s particular obsession and giving him this space to respond to the statement released yesterday about the forthcoming episcopal consecration of the Rev. Canon Dr. Unigbe in the church of Nigeria. You’re Welcome. ***************************************************** Late Friday night, June 16th, a bishop of the Church of Nigeria called to ask me to write up formal charges against the Reverend Canon Dr. Augustine Unuigbe who has been elected suffragan bishop in... Read more
I am trying to finish that thing I’ve been working on forever and really need to get cracking early this morning, which I guess must be providence (it doesn’t feel like providence) because Matt wanted me to put this up plast week and I forgot. So here it is—the sermon I transcribed. This is an example of Prosperity preaching. If you want to listen, here is the facebook live service. The sermon begins around the 23:44 mark. And here is Matt’s... Read more
I might have, instead of doing the laundry or something, gone down the rabbit hole of this website, the one we mentioned in the podcast yesterday. There’s not too much there, beyond extensive advertisements for the book, and this curious assessment of ancient and modern history. As far as I can make out, the person behind the idea that the cure to all our problems is a Return to Order feels that the brightest and best moment in human history... Read more
It’s a gray and sultry Monday morning and so we got up to complain on our podcast about how Christians are so weird, but also so are all kinds of other people. We castigate the Christians who are boycotting Good Omens, and the Atheists who make every plot-line into a Disney nightmare. I feel like we make some very relevant points. Here is the article about the Good Omens boycott. Here is the group that’s boycotting them. Here is the... Read more
‘We have religion,’ the old saying goes, ‘you have magic.’ Or superstition, if you prefer. We are pure in our religious devotion, high-minded, spiritual, adjusting the self into the proper worshipful posture towards the Divine whatchamacallit. You are just trying to manipulate whatever means you can to get something to make you feel better. No one says this anymore. It wouldn’t be very nice. No one looks at another culture and judges their religious or whatever kind of expression as... Read more
I’m about to run out the door into the day, but this was a long and pretty interesting read. You’re going to “peak” professionally a lot sooner than you think, and fall into decline, and then die. What are you going to do about it? Be miserable? The author was headed in that direction and then paused to reconsider. Really, it’s very good, and also depressing, but good. My first thought was to wonder about the professional lives of women.... Read more
This is pretty great. If you were thinking about writing a highbrow literary review of some book or other, just do whatever it says, especially this, In a profile about a corporate executive in the news, it is always a good idea to mingle a classical prototype with a contemporary idiom, e.g., “Like Augustus Caesar, he is at peace with his tradeoffs,” the “he” in this sentence being Mark Zuckerberg. On the whole much much better than this, which is... Read more
Well, it’s raining, and some person on twitter posted this spectacularly novel advice, hashtag Tuesday thoughts: Without rain nothing grows, learn to embrace the storms of your life. Oh, well, when you say it like that, nothing could be more obvious. I’ll guess I’ll just go do that. I wonder, though. Say you are some unmoored genZ youngster with a cellphone glued to your hand (I don’t really know anyone like this, almost everyone I know is able to put... Read more
Preventing Grace
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