You can listen to “Fights in Good Faith,” my weekly radio program, streaming today at 5pm ET and tomorrow (Sun) at 1pm. The episode is now available to download and stream. In the past week, I’ve watched the entire BBC Hollow Crown cycle (Richard II, Henry IV pt 1, Henry IV pt 2, and Henry V), the Folger Theatre production of Mary Stuart, and not watched House of Cards, so this week’s episode is themed around stories of power and legitimacy. Every week, I put up a “Radio Readings”... Read more
— 1 — Did you know that Earth has a second moon? Because I sure as heck did not (I’m in the lucky 10,000!). Apparently, the astronomical body 3753 Cruithne is also in orbit around the Earth, but its orbit is bizarrely convoluted — to the point where it takes 800 years for it to make a full, wobbly circuit. io9 has all the details. — 2 — And if you’re trying to learn other, unknown-to-you, sometimes terrifyingly interlooped ideas, Existential Comics has... Read more
When Ellery Weil guest posted yesterday on The Last 5 Years and the demanding kind of support that Jamie offers Cathy, I realized that Jaime could have benefited from internalizing a meme I’ve seen floating around on tumblr. Golbats for Equality spun up a quote from Nidoqueen into this image: In the musical, Jaime doesn’t know how to coexist with Cathy’s misery and exhaustion. He does try to help, in good faith, but I think Ellery is right that Jaime needs to feel like his... Read more
This is a guest post by Ellery Weil on The Last 5 Years. I’ve included a video clip of a “Story of Shmuel” performance, but it’s not the one Ellery is discussing. The Last Five Years is a story of love lost, or maybe love that was never really there. But more than that, it’s a story about the different shapes “support” can take, depending on the person who needs it, and how easy it is for people’s attempts to support... Read more
You can listen to “Fights in Good Faith,” my weekly radio program, streaming today at 5pm ET and tomorrow (Sun) at 1pm. The audio is now available to stream and download. This week’s program is about the Effective Altruism movement ways to resolve tensions between its recommendations and the Christian aim of charity. I gave a talk on this topic earlier this week as a guest of the Yale Effective Altruists. Every week, I put up a “Radio Readings” post, so you can... Read more
Last call to sign up for my book updates email list if you want to be eligible to win an early review of Arriving at Amen, my book on prayer. I’ll be sending this month’s email (where you can enter my lottery) this afternoon. — 1 — While reading an article about why cocktails have wound up being so expensive at tony bars, I ran into what was meant to be one of the sillier examples — an Old Fashioned served inside... Read more
When I hosted a party to watch The Last 5 Years, one of my guests tried to play diagnose-the-heresy with the two leads and claimed that they were both Pelagians, seeing happiness/success/virtue as simply a result of their own efforts. I disagreed for several reasons, the most important being that I think Pelagians think that a good life is harder to achieve than either Jamie or Cathy does, and that Pelagians see their own weakness as the primary obstacle to their salvation,... Read more
Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent — the season of preparation for Easter. The whole church fasts from meat on Fridays, during this season, and individual Catholics usually make personal commitments to give something up or take something on as a discipline this season. In Lent and in any other time, I sometimes like to review what suggestion other people make to me that I most frequently ignore, and, thus, this Lent seems like a good time for... Read more
The Last 5 Years tells the story of Jamie and Cathy’s relationship, from the moment they meet, through when they marry, to the moment, five years after they relationship began, their marriage ends. The musical is a series of sung monologues–Jamie and Cathy each telling the story of their relationship in alternating songs, that cover the relationship’s arc from opposite directions: Jamie from beginning to end, Cathy from end to beginning. Thus, Cathy’s first song is set the morning that... Read more
In 2015, I’m reading and blogging through Ronald Knox’s collection of sermons on Christian exemplars, Captive Flames: On Selected Saints and Christian Heroes. Every Monday, I’ll be writing about the next portrait in the book, so you’re welcome to peruse them all and/or read along. In this week’s chapter, Ronald Knox is describing St. Gregory the Great, and roots his sermon in an anecdote of St. Gregory punning on the name of an English captive, Angles, explaining that his true heritage was more Angels... Read more
Unequally Yoked
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