Yesterday a child asked me how many hours are in a year, and because school is technically over, instead of making her work out the math, I googled it. The answer is 8000 something—the exact number I am sure is not important because numbers are not very interesting to me. Then she asked how many hours you could expect to have in your life. By then I was bored with google so I clicked over to my calculator. If I’ve... Read more
It’s a bright, very chilly summer/autumn morning—the cold wind sweeping in and waking us from the stupor of a very long weekend. So we did a probably too long podcast about when summer actually begins, the conditions under which you should pray for the president, how Anglicans shouldn’t go to Lambeth, and what on earth is wrong with the Southern Baptists as they gear up for their important meeting. I, you will hear as you listen, am barely functional and... Read more
A week ago, or who even knows, Matt interrupted our evening studies by turning on that embarrassing Kenneth Copland video. You know the one. A polite but tenacious female reporter catches him as he’s climbing into a luxurious car and inquires of him about his—what’s the word—unchristian comment about how having to fly with ordinary people is like getting into a “tube with a bunch of demons.” If you haven’t seen it, it’s an appalling eleven minutes, and there are... Read more
The First Thing Today is Ascension Day, if you were anxiously waiting. I wrote this about it a couple of years ago. I was thinking about Star Wars, about which I know almost nothing, and so was probably needlessly insulting. And there’s a typo which I don’t really feel like trying to fix. And also I think I must have been feeling bitter. Other than that it’s great! Or something. The Second Thing I just need to mention that my... Read more
I’m going to take the opportunity of having written something somewhere else (see below), to not only link that here, but also to point out a number of podcasts and things I’ve listened to over the last couple of weeks that I’ve been meaning to link but keep forgetting about. Here is me making up my failures all in one day. So first of all, I have severely cut back on my podcast consumption because of trying to make it... Read more
Before the shocking headline yesterday about MLK, I had been wandering around all weekend enumerating to myself a strange and tragic predilection of being human. I thought about it a lot in the early days of #metoo, and at other times here and there, and it is strange that I happened to remember it right before this weekend’s news. What it is is the feverish and pitiable way in which a person might endure some great evil—to have been victimized,... Read more
A bright sunny happy Memorial Day to you all. We arose from the stupor of sleep to talk about Anglican Troubles (no video this week—sorry). It’s all there—theology, intrigue, politics, and lots of people being wrong on the internet. I’m sure it will carry you along through your week towards something. I don’t have very many links because I’m buried in work and stuff. But such as I have I give thee here. Here is another article about Aldi with... Read more
This is so good—and one of several reasons I’ve been trying to expunge from my cluttered box of idioms, “If I ever get hit by a bus.” In the space of one year I personally knew of three people who were so struck. There’s got to be a better offhanded way to refer to the worst, without actually having to contemplate it. And anyway, that book looks well worth reading. Of course the body and soul flinch reflexively, without the... Read more
Is it really Friday? One Didn’t mean to neglect the podcast on Monday. Going into the weekend there was plenty of time to do all the things that free up that auspicious moment when we prop up the phone and gather our wits. But on Saturday evening I labored away for several hours on a piece of writing and then closed my little device and went to bed…only to discover upon awaking on Sunday morning that I had not clicked... Read more
This is a long, needlessly political, a little bit rambling, at points incoherent, but nevertheless interesting piece. Apparently human beings—and seriously, if only there had been some way to know this for millenia, some kind of document or text that is centuries old that says this very thing and even gives an explanation for why it is, it is right on the tip of my mind…oh never mind—are not moved very much by intellect and reason and will look for... Read more
Preventing Grace
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