Favorite things 8.8.2020

We wait...not with tapping foot and huffy breath, but we wait with hands open, and hearts willing, to experience the truth of the gospel in our everyday lives. 

Father, may we hear your silence as kind company rather than as rejection. May we see our sorrow, our grief, and our difficulties as they are, without trying to extract meaning or closure before their time has come. May we give sadness room to breathe even as we wait for the joy to come.

—Emily P Freeman in The Next Right Thing Podcast Episode 62: Sit Down on the Inside

I was reading Steve Addison’s book... about the markers that create different Christian missionary movements throughout history. The first point is that great movements begin with white hot faith. And what I realized was that we were trying to do a missionary movement at a time when our people were deconstructing ttheir faiths, and their lives were being corroded by this digital capitalist, expressive individual culture. 

You can't just send people out into the world unformed, because the world has so much sway and pull and allure to it. First things first, we have to form people, we have to help people actually be with Jesus, be like Jesus, and then go out to do all the things that he was on about...[A pastor used to be able to assume that his people were generally engaging in spiritual disciplines.]... For now all of those assumptions are tuned on their head. For most people, reading the Bible is an uncommon experience. For a lot of young people, the Bible is more of an obstacle to faith rather me than an aid to faith, because of so many questions that our secular world has imported into how we read the Bible, whether it be about Old Testament violence, or sexuality, or the Bible as literature, or critical theory, the way critical theory has shaped the way we read the Bible. And now prayer, I think people just are so distracted. I honestly think that the iPhone is a greater threat to the gospel of Jesus in the West than secularism ever has been or ever will be. 

We are called to do the things that have always been done. --- MS or JMC on This Cultural Moment, I believe

Just saving this link...

This is a transcript of a talk by Tim Keller addressing corporate guilt and racism. He has some things to say that are very helpful and, I think, accessible to an average white Christian. 

A collection of hoarded quotes

Be joyful
Though you have considered all the facts.
--Wendell Berry

"Moral strength is defined by how we react in times of stress."
--Chidi, The Good Place, season 2, episode 7

"I don't say 'no' a lot, did I pronounce that right?"
--Janet, The Good Place, season 4, episode 8

"Turns out life isn't a puzzle that can just be solved one time and it's done. You wake up every day and you solve it again."
--Chidi, The Good Place, season 4, episode 9

"We're all going to be longing until we're face to face with Christ."
--Lore Wilbert on Christine Hoover's By Faith Podcast episode on Loneliness and Friendship

"My need for the Holy Spirit is greater than anyone else's need for me."
--Lore Wilbert, same place

"Things are pretty bad, Mister Rogers.
"It's not just that one bad thing has happened so much as that one bad thing has happened in the middle of so many other bad things, and now the whole world feels like chaos.
"Nobody is curious. Everybody is a know-it-all. Nobody is listening.
"People are shouting and afraid. The news, the computers, the televisions are all so loud."
--Rebecca K Reynolds in her blog post "Dear Mister Rogers"

"Calcified" as a descriptor of our political system, from the Art of Manliness Podcast episode 604

Favorites Round-Up

Insta-breaking has me needing to document all my favorites, and influential things of note lately:

This article where Rebecca K Reynolds looks at Trump’s style and influence. The line: “Trump sucker punched where he should have courted” spoke to my soul.

This episode of the Good Enough Podcast about how to have an integrated view of emotions, specifically anxiety. I cannot wait to get my eyeballs on Matt LaPine’s book in the Fall.

This quote from Molly Wood (emphasis mine) on Episode 222 of Make Me Smart, describing a woman in Florida speaking before her city council, "facebooking out loud. Like, she just spews a whole bunch of conspiracy theories all at once, like that 5G's going to kill you, Pizzagate, I mean it's remarkable. And what I couldn't shake from it is that it's like--I tried to tweet this with empathy, like, Don't assume this person is dumber than you. Assume that she lives in a completely different universe of information."

Also I just finished my Fiddle Leaf class and Zoom consultation with Emily at The Dossier Blog and I'm feeling so smart and ready to keep this poor plant alive!

Molly Wood Wisdom

April 24, 2020 of the Make Me Smart Podcast

Just a lengthy quote I transcribed from the words of Molly Wood that I found myself slapping the steering wheel to in agreement. (Obviously, since this is my transcript so the way I chose to convey her verbal emphases into text are my own interpretation.) I went ahead an highlighted the parts that made me exclaim affirmations. The darker the purple, the louder my agreement was.

Molly: I am going to go into fraught waters...I was listening to how Catherine Rampell talk about how we would all be handling this so much better if we knew that there was a plan, if we had some managed expectations about how things should last. And so, [the item I bring for discussion today] is kind of best summed up by this LA Times column that calls for opening. And actually it's interesting because this seems to be in the zeitgeist today, calls for starting a nuanced conversation about what comes next. With respect to not necessarily re-opening, in fact I loved that the LA Times opinion piece said, 'We need to start revising our shut-down rules.' Like, we need to start having a nuanced--

Kai: That's good. That's good. That's good, cuz I'm--yep. I'm so sick and tired of this whole 're-opening' thing.

Molly: And, unfortunately, and, I mean, to the detriment of every freaking one of us, the conversation about how we do this has become politicized. Which like, I told our shared boss, Deb Clark, today that my goal on this show in order to stay smart is to try to 'walk on by the stupid.' So that's what I'm going to attempt to do today. The fact that that conversation has gotten politicized is dangerous to all of us. However, we should start to have a nuanced conversation about how we revise our approach to shut-down with the knowledge that we can't do it forever. It's not good for the economy to do it forever. And, and I think this is like, ugh, I've been thinking about this a lot because of our conversations about valuing human life: one thing we may have lost sight of in our conversation is that flattening the curve was never about nobody getting sick. Like, we have a virus, loose in the world, that there's no herd immunity to, and no vaccine for. And that situation is going to last a long time. And people are going to get sick. In fact the goal, all along, was to make sure that people got sick in a manageable way. And that now, we have to face the reality that we're going to have to baby-step into more of us getting sick. And that we're going to kind of have to, because short-term, herd immunity is our only defense. And that the problem with the stupid at this point is that to even have that conversation has gotten so crazy fraught. Like as soon as you say it, then it's like you're a genocidal maniac, or a crazy protester, and if you don't say it, then you're just ignoring the reality on the ground, which is that people cannot keep doing this. And, that frankly, and this is like, there was a Boston Globe piece from earlier this month that said if we keep, like, locked down to this extent, that then the second wave will be even stronger and faster. So, uh-huh.

Kai: ...What did you make of Catherine's thing on the show this afternoon about how we, media and also politicians-- but you have to discount them because, come on-- need to do a better job making people understand what's at stake here?

Molly: Yeah, I mean, at every level, the media needs to pull out of its death spiral with the president and start doing some better work, which I hope is what we do right now. Which is like, listen, we're not doing anybody any favors, if we report on the 'sides' as opposed to the reality. The reality is look, a lot of people are going to get sick across the world. A lot of people have to get sick, right, like that's just the reality. And it is going to take us a very long time. And if you want the real talk, and that's kind of weirdly what I was thinking when I put these in here, is like, you know what pour yourself a drink, it's time for the real poop, because this is going to last a long time...Like you know, we're going to have to creep forward, and then we're going to have to pull back, and then we're going to have to creep forward. And we're taking about years of this. And so anybody who is telling you otherwise, or turning it into a fight to try to distract you, is doing you a disservice...


Then Kai shares the make me smile from The New Yorker:

“Personally, I worry that, with everyone wearing masks, readers won’t be able to tell who in the cartoon is speaking.”
Kai: It's meta on so many levels.

Tears

 

@lorewilbert

@audreyassad

I'm a hoarder at heart. I think if I can just amass and organize all the ideas, I can make sense of life. I can see the irrationality of this. I am creating clutter. I can never synthesize sense. But I'm still going to keep this log of what is influencing me, what is speaking to me. 

Every verse of this song speaks to my soul, and brought tears to these long-dry eyes. It's easy to look down ones nose at this (at least for me), because it's all so impractical, and we need to be realistic, and maybe we're also afraid of disappointment. But this is what has been turning over and over in my mind this week.

Back to blogging

I re-discovered this blog recently.

Reading the previous entries makes me often puzzle at my past perspectives. It's amazing how much can change in a few years...theologically, vocationally, relationally. I guess it's encouraging that change and growth are taking place.

I'm still over here trying to make sense of the world.

And probably what I think I have figured out this year will seem juvenile in another ten. Maybe I should be hoping for that, in fact.

But I am working on trading the dizzying, internal swirling thoughts for articulated ideas. I'm journaling more instead of just trying to detach from emotions. I'm sharing bookish thoughts on Instagram instead of just closing the book and moving on to the next thing. I think that understanding oneself is the first step to understanding the world. I experience the world as myself. Every observation I have of the world is going to come through my unique lens and I want to be more aware of how that happens.

So, I'm going to start blogging again. I'm anticipating a shamelessly self-focused arena for sharing what's on my mind. It seems everyone wants to be an influencer these days. My goal is not to have other people visit and appreciate my words. My goal is to better understand what is influencing me already, and hopefully shape that for the better.