My buddy Ricardo recommended to me “Montana” by Slow Pulp (from their debut album, Moveys). Easy to get lost in.
A pet peeve of mine: When a junior scholar—say, a PhD student—writes a hyper-critical and dismissive review of a seasoned, well-respected scholar’s book. Now, in saying this, I don’t mean to suggest that established scholars are above criticism. Far from it! In getting to the place they now occupy, they’ve surely received more criticism than any of us mere mortals ever will. What irks me specifically is when this imagined junior scholar writes with a dismissive tone, giving off the distinct impression to readers that they could’ve produced a much better volume. There’s a certain decorum at work here (or lacking, I suppose). If you’re wanting to write a critical review of N. T. Wright’s latest book, that’s fine. But, if you treat Wright’s work as something easily dispensed with—his arguments easily demolished by your superior intellect—you reveal yourself to be an unserious person. Don’t be that person. So, if you’re going to review a book by, say, Oliver O’Donovan, or Matthew Levering, or Katherine Sonderegger, please don’t write it in such a way that readers are left thinking you believe you deserve their post more than they do. It’s not a good look.
It is hard to have patience with people who say, ‘There is no death’ or ‘Death doesn’t matter.’ There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn’t matter. I look up at the night sky. Is anything more certain than that in all those vast times and spaces, if I were allowed to search them, I should nowhere find her face, her voice, her touch? She died. She is dead. Is the word so difficult to learn?
Currently reading: Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis 📚
Alan Jacobs, with what begins as a balanced take on Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s conversion to Christianity, but which blossoms into a more general meditation on how we all begin the life of faith with mixed motives:
My view is that everyone has to start somewhere — she’s very forthright about being a newcomer to all this — and what matters is not where you start but where you end up. One person may seek a bulwark against relativism; another may long for architectural or linguistic or musical beauty; another may crave community. Christian life is a house with many entrances. I became a Christian because I fell head-over-heels for a Christian girl who wouldn’t date me otherwise, so how could I judge anyone else’s reasons for converting? As Rebecca West said, “There’s no such thing as an unmixed motive”; and God, as I understand things, is not the judge but the transformer of motives. It’s a how-it-started, how-it’s-going thing, but often in a good way. Or so my experience suggests.
Lily and Bella got me NBA trading cards for my birthday. This one of Scary Terry (Rozier) is my favorite.
