Finished reading: Managing Leadership Anxiety by Steve Cuss 📚
“We’re making forts for the ants.”
This Mockingbird interview with Aaron Zimmerman is brimming with wisdom (and grace!). Any aspiring minister would do well to take these words to heart.
currently listening: Thank God We Left the Garden by Jeffrey Martin
I don’t remember the last time an album captivated my imagination the way this one has. The songs are beautifully subdued; Martin’s voice takes center stage, accompanied only by acoustic (and occasionally classical) guitar. The lyrics are poetic, earnest, and existentially-charged. The title means precisely what you’d think it means, and it offers a thematic through line that binds the entire 11-track album together. In my judgment, Thank God We Left the Garden is a masterpiece.
Currently reading: Terrible Beauty: A Story of Calling, Breaking, and the Unmaking that Made Me by Bryan Halferty 📚
Oliver O’Donovan, on the challenges of actually reckoning with the end of World War II and its complicated legacy:
To remember the end of World War II with historical perspective is to remember the serious initiatives of international law it gave rise to, and to face the painful questions of what has become of them, and what is to become of them. Staged exercises in “remembering” beloved of the ceremonial classes – the journalists, the statesmen and the clergy – may serve only to help us forget the real point. I fear we shall hear a great deal of triumphant reflection on the decisions of 1939 when Britain and France declared war on Germany and (further West) 1941 when the U.S. entered the conflict, while that of August 6th 1945, with all the solemn control that it continues to exercise over our lives, may slip past unnoticed.
Currently reading: The Soul of Shame by Curt Thompson 📚
Currently reading: Managing Leadership Anxiety by Steve Cuss 📚
Linking this article (via @ablerism) for later reference: How churches use data and AI as engines of surveillance.
To my mind, Michael Sacasas has already provided the perfect rebuttal: Resist the temptation to confuse control for care.