10/22 in the belly of the fish
on prayer, the personal hermeneutic, postmodern religion and more...
Happy November!
Let’s start with more Mary Oliver, shall we? (I am reading Devotions and loving it.)
[...] Things! Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful fire! More room in your heart for love, for the trees! For the birds who own nothing–the reason they can fly.
It’s been a good month, all things considered. I am working on recognizing the things I have accomplished instead of focusing on the things I have yet to do. I realized in the past two weeks, I have an all-or-nothing mentality. For example, My Goodreads goal for the year was 45 books, and I am currently at 24. I have been feeling like a disgusting piece of shit for being behind on my goal instead of appreciating the fact that I read 24 books this year. And since I am not actively sabotaging myself and in fact doing the best I can given the myriad of changing circumstances in my life, I need to just relax. (Just relax 😂)
Anyway, we can do more therapizing later, here’s a snippet from a sermon about prayer. Ask and you shall receive. That should be the believer’s motto in life.
Your Personal Occam's Razor by Luke Burgis — A good (and should-be constant) reminder that we need to find our own hermeneutic for assessing what life throws at us.
Postmodern Religion Still Doesn't Make a Lick of Sense by Freddie deBoer — Pretty self-explanatory, no?
Recreational Dystopia by Thomas J Bevan — On consuming gratuitous violence, gore, and misery on screen.
Building the Goose Palace by Simon Sarris — He says something here that I loved.
It is interesting to me to have my son turn 2-years old as I build this. I don’t know how much he will remember, but he must assume that it is the most normal thing in the world, to break from work for a couple months and then use all your spare time to build something. Isn’t that how everything is built? For him it’s true. Nothing could be more typical than this.
He’s not just building a goose palace, he’s building a world for his family in which his kids get to have a totally unique conception of what is normal.