1. Since it’s a holiday weekend, let’s kick off with two entries about work from Comment Magazine, eh? The first is a sharp (but fair) critique by Case Thorp of the contemporary faith and work movement popularized in major metropolitan cities, serving the professional classes, and valorizing labor into vocation.
After fifteen years in the faith and work conversation, I still feel the gap in the movement’s ability to understand, educate, and serve blue-collar workers. We speak with confidence about vocation and cultural engagement, yet our focus keeps drifting back to the lives of professionals, leaders, and knowledge workers. Meanwhile, the daily labourer in the Home Depot parking lot, the maids cleaning homes, the teenager behind the fast-food counter, and the home health aide on a punishing schedule often hear our language as though it belongs to someone else’s life.
A theology of work that begins with self-actualization or specific doctrinal foundations sounds foreign in many work settings. For most, work begins before a good day is certain. In the early light of a parking lot, men stand near the edge of the asphalt, hands in pockets, scanning the slow turn of pickup trucks (or the hint of ICE on the horizon). Conversations are short, half in hope, half in caution. A truck pulls up, a window rolls down, a few words are exchanged, and a decision is made in seconds. Minds mull not on calling or fulfillment but on an arithmetic of necessity with rent, groceries, and medical bills. In this early morning setting, our abstract theological topics and frameworks evaporate quickly.
Thorp suggests that we’d do well to walk for a moment with Simone Weil, a French philosopher who willingly lived as a factory laborer, which many argued hastened her death. The essay introduces Weil’s concept of “affliction,” which differs from ordinary suffering. Affliction is suffering that penetrates identity itself, or as Weil puts it, “Affliction is an uprooting of life.”
Writing from a laptop and burning a candle called DETOX while I listen to Spoon and sip a breakfast smoothie — this is the heart of the piece for me. (Maybe there’s something for you here, too.)
The faith and work movement tends to process workplace difficulty through categories that carry a softness Weil would find suspicious. We speak of brokenness, and we mean it. Yet the word often functions as a general acknowledgement that things are not as they could be. We nod to the fall before we move quickly to redemption and restoration. In each case, the notion bends toward resolution. The arc runs from problem to purpose, from disruption to deeper meaning. Weil would not deny that such an arc exists. She would insist, with a bluntness born of her factory experience, that we arrive at it far too quickly. In doing so, we skip over the reality that defines work for billions of people. The woman who changes hotel beds for ten hours does not need us to tell her that her work is broken. She knows. What she may need is someone honest enough to say that her daily labour is genuinely afflictive: that the repetition, the invisibility, the physical toll, and the social contempt she absorbs press on the soul in ways our theology has not learned to name. […]
There is a temptation embedded in the very word “vocation” as we have come to use it. The temptation is to equate calling with fulfillment, to hear in the word a promise that faithful obedience will eventually resolve into a life that feels whole, purposeful, and aligned. We do not always say this explicitly. Yet we imply it in the arc of the stories we tell, in the testimonies we platform, and in the unspoken assumption that a rightly ordered vocation produces a recognizable sense of meaning for us. All along, we are the center of our work.
Weil’s counter to such self-centred narratives is the concept of decreation. “Decreation: to make something created pass into the uncreated,” she writes in Gravity and Grace. It is the painful and deliberate movement of stepping out of one’s own way so that reality, and ultimately God, can be seen without the distortion of self-interest. The self’s claims are diminished so that something truer can come into view. […]
We have a robust theology of redeemed agency and almost no theology of a relinquished agency. We know how to talk about the Christian who transforms her workplace. We do not know how to talk about the Christian whose workplace transforms her, not toward flourishing but toward a deeper dependence on God born of exhaustion and constraint.
I’m tempted to paste the whole article here because it’s so radical and refreshing. White-collar worker, there is relief for you here, too, not condemnation. Be relieved of the burden of asking, what is your work for? Be relieved of trying to romanticize your work. Weil invites us to focus on attention, a truthful presence to reality — surrender. The article is not a source of class-based guilt but an invitation to be honest about — and to see clearly — where work does not feel transformative and redeemed, “where the only available spiritual act is the discipline of remaining present and refusing to let the weight of necessity crush the capacity for love.”
2. Like Weil before her, young mother Rachel Roth Aldhizer encourages a labor of presence in a world of artificial intelligence. We’ve been talking for months about the restless unease many knowledge workers feel about AI’s imitation of what had been human work. Aldhizer suggests that this fear reveals how deeply modern people have confused thinking with being.
The pervasive seep of artificial intelligence into our daily interactions has caused an identity crisis, particularly among those who believe that what we think makes us who we are. If AI can beat us at parsing Latin, calculating mathematics, diagnosing rare diseases, or interpreting a text from our lover, perhaps it is indeed human. […]
And yet. The care I provide as a mother is not primarily an exercise of the mind but one of presence; my powers of thought come alongside. It would hardly be possible to care for someone from afar: one can think of another when away, but someone must literally change the diaper. […]
Those who substitute a facet of human ability for the whole miss the point. What makes us human is our ability to love.
What AI cannot do is be present alongside the sick, the dying, the needy, and the lonely. When it is there, it lurks, a farce. AI pantomimes the real, caricatures the soul, and offers a poor replacement for the care that women stake off as their own, claim as our birthright.
As a new mom juggling full-time work and caring for my children, I often feel guilty about the ways I’ve outsourced care. The work that I do when my kids are at school is “seen” — on screens, pages, at events, and in conversations with people far more influential than me. And yet the “unseen” care that I offer at home — diapers changed, baths drawn, and dinners cooked, may reveal the love of Christ in a more prismatic way because of my physical presence. Unoptimizable, costly, and very human, this reality is a grace.
3. So clearly, a tradwife I am not. This essay from the Atlantic reviews Caro Claire Burke’s book Yesteryear, the most talked-about novel of 2026. The story is narrated by a woman named Natalie Heller Mills, a Ballerina Farm facsimile who is pregnant with her sixth child at the beginning of the novel, and whose pixel-perfect online life as @YesteryearRanch is essentially all a lie.
A major theme in the book is the idea of nostalgia as emotional refuge. Critical as she is of the tradwife trend, Burke gives credence to the appeal of living this way, as it may be emotional before it is ideological. Burnt out on girl bossing, many women are drawn to this lifestyle, it seems, because they think it offers them a fighting chance at relief and coherence. As such, the review suggests that the novel is less about defending or condemning tradwifery than in exposing the internalized craziness of influencing. Performing for an audience means Natalie is not living authentic traditionalism but performing for pay.
Yesteryear doesn’t seem majorly invested in social critique. It’s telling a story first and foremost, throwing out clues and red herrings on the way to its ultimate reveal. I don’t want to spoil the book’s twists, but it’s fascinating how Burke likens the self-surveillant habits of an influencer to the principles of religion — if you grow up believing that God is always watching everything you do, then broadcasting your life online might simply mean performing for a different kind of audience. And yet, Natalie isn’t trying to spread her faith with her videos, the way that many tradwives and content creators seem to be. She’s grasping for power. She knows that the domestic realm is the one space that’s been ceded to women’s authority, and she’s aware that the internet has given her ways to expand her sprawling desire for control. “What did I want? An easy answer,” Natalie explains early in Yesteryear. “I wanted more of what I already had. I wanted the whole entire world to see itself through my eyes. A new level of influence.”
4. Also not tradwifey? Boozy #GirlDinners, as chronicled in the subreddit r/GirlDinnerDiaries, which consists of women posting a photo of their meal accompanied by a brief story about what’s happening in their lives. Alex Abad-Santos at Vox:
A large number of the posts are relationship-oriented: the various stages of dating (not, are, breaking up); sex and desire; problems and triumphs in marriages. And sometimes it’s just about eating chocolate cake for supper — okay, maybe it’s never just about chocolate cake.
The confessions are met with commiseration, helpful suggestions, supportive advice, or just compliments on the meal. The commentariat is generally as open as the OPs (original posters), speaking frankly about their own experiences. They chime in to offer perspective on the realities of long-term relationships, the very normal reaction of feeling insecure about someone’s extremely beautiful ex, the warning signs of abuse, how expensive it is to raise children, and the difference between setting a boundary and punishing a partner.
What makes GDD thrilling is that it is (or at least feels like) real secrets from real women. … While our collective social media fatigue is high, people are still naturally curious about other people’s lives. And while GDD fulfills that desire, it’s also just a robust and thriving community in its own right — one that can teach us something about the power of a good story, our own curiosities, and the connections we allow ourselves to make.
Sounds like these gals need a witness to hear their confession. Sounds like other gals want to relieve them with an absolution. Sounds like a longing to be known. Sounds like a special hideout for gals who are tired of performing. After all, the subreddit consists of women posting “unhinged meals,” “relationship spirals,” “late-night thoughts,” and “messy moments.”
5. Last night was the series finale and final broadcast of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The Atlantic reflected on the most surprising part of his Late Night run:
He had Joe Biden on during the coronavirus pandemic to discuss how to handle grief, and a conversation with Dua Lipa about Colbert’s Catholic faith seemed to come out of nowhere, light but never flippant. […]
The clips I revisit the most speak to his empathetic nature, which revealed itself more and more as The Late Show went on. Take his exchange with Keanu Reeves, in which he asked the actor, “What do you think happens when we die?” (as part of a rapid-fire series), and Reeves pondered and replied, “I know that the ones who love us will miss us.” This moment of sweet profundity would have felt more jarring on Letterman’s or O’Brien’s show, but Colbert expanded it as a recurring feature: an existential questionnaire to pose to other celebrity guests, searching for an insightful peek into their brain; it’s a much more tender version of a viral segment.
Though it made me a little weepy, Paul McCartney subbing for Pope Leo was alright with me.
6. Let the laughs begin?
You cook spaghetti and meatballs for your family, which they have enjoyed at least two hundred times in the past. What is the statistical probability that all of your kids will inexplicably say this is the most disgusting meal ever and refuse to eat it?
ANSWER: 100 percent.
Expectation: I have the irrational urge to affirm my vitality by taking dangerous risks, like jumping out of a plane.
Reality: I have the irrational urge to affirm my vitality by taking dangerous risks, like going to the doctor for the first time in a decade, even though I don’t have health insurance.
“Realistic High-School-Yearbook Inscriptions”
Abby! I can’t believe we did it! Four years went by like that! Will you promise to keep in touch?! Let’s see each other once or twice this summer and then not again for about fifteen years, when we’re both staying at a serviceable two-star resort that’s just fine with allowing small children fighting a horrible stomach bug to play in the pool. —❤️Missy
7. We’ll end with an article that made me a little uneasy at first because it reeked of discipline, but I think there may be some unexpected comfort to be found in it, too. At Pentecost, for Christianity Today, Peter Coelho suggests that contemporary Christians have become uncomfortable with one of the Holy Spirit’s primary biblical functions: prohibition.
The Holy Spirit’s arrival was made manifest by the disciples’ sudden proclamation of the gospel in foreign tongues, and Pentecost often — and rightly — includes an emphasis on how God in the Spirit says yes: to the nations, to women and men, to young and old alike (Acts 2:17; Gal. 3:28).
Less celebrated is when the Spirit says no. But no can be a life-giving word just as much as yes — some denials save us from things that distract or destroy — and this, too, is a theme in scriptural teaching on the Spirit.
The Bible and Christian tradition sing of the Spirit’s expansive work. At Pentecost, Peter quotes Joel 2:28–32, fulfilled as the Spirit is poured out on all flesh (Acts 2:17). Christians have long cited passages such as Genesis 1 and Psalm 104 to understand the Spirit’s presence and activity in all of creation, and there’s a triumphant feel here, as the Spirit guides a frustrated world toward God’s good ends (Rom. 8:20–21). There’s also a note of humility for the church, a recognition that we are not the sum of an omnipotent God’s work in the world. The Holy Spirit gives life to all and is working among all, even those who do not know him (Acts 17:25–28). […]
The prevailing direction of the Spirit’s work in Scripture is positive and expansive, but there is unmistakably a negative and limiting dimension of the Spirit’s activity. […]
Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt, a German Lutheran theologian of the 19th century commonly identified as a precursor of Pentecostalism, emphasized “negative experiences” of the Holy Spirit. He became convinced that much of the work of the Spirit is not about Christian triumph but about our weakness, sorrow, and even anxiety. It is in these negative experiences, Blumhardt thought, that believers learn to rely on the grace of Jesus.
In a world as bleak as ours, we’re right to cling to the Spirit as our comforter, encourager, and source of strength, but the Spirit is so much more than therapeutic. Prohibitions — closed doors, thwarted ambitions, breakups, and job losses — are not punishments but can be the very source of our freedom. There is good news — sometimes creepingly slow to reveal itself — even in God’s NOs. And redemption can arrive even through what feels like death.
Strays
- Three cheers for C. J. Green, former editor in chief of The Mockingbird and colleague extraordinaire, whose new novel Record Lows received high praise from People (yes, P-E-O-P-L-E) magazine! Asked about the characters he said, “I find that people rarely do what’s in their best interest, and this was the great mystery I set out to investigate … I was thinking about the motivations we hide from ourselves and the emotions beneath our emotions.”
- A mystical encounter twelve years ago led Scott Vincent Borba, a founder of E.L.F. Beauty, on a journey that will culminate this week, when he is ordained as a Roman Catholic priest.
- James K. A. Smith asks, “What If the Solution To Dis-information Is Not More Knowledge?”
- “You might not be as good of a friend as you think you are. Most people say friendship is important to them, but often act in ways that contradict that sentiment.”
- Paul Simon talks to God. At the Royal Albert Hall, the 84-year-old plays around in the netherworld between this life and the next.
- “Everlane, Shein, and the Limits of the Ethical Consumer. What happens if a sustainable-clothing brand sells to a fast-fashion giant?”
