CJ Green is a staff editor at Mockingbird. His favorite books are for ages 7-12.
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On Being the Center of the Universe: A Reminder for the Narcissist in Me
Without giving anything away, NBC’s The Good Place (returning September 27) features six major characters, one of which is Tahani al-Jamil: a tall, gorgeous philanthropist with a sophisticated English accent. In the afterlife, Tahani wears only the finest clothes and throws extravagant parties for her recently deceased community of do-gooders. She also finds a way […]
Another Week Ends: Cognitive Bias, Christian Impurity, Authoritarian Safetyism, Evil Nuns, Self-Care, and the Gentle Whisper of the Divine
1. The theme that binds today’s links seems to be cognitive bias: the way our brains maneuver away from rational thinking, particularly under duress or in highly pressurized situations. Much of the pop-coverage of this topic, post-2016 (and there has been quite a bit), has been political: seeking to answer how anyone could be so […]
Another Week Ends: Summertime Blues, Aspirational Suffering, Sacrilegious Dumplings, Eternal Stakes, and Average Grades
1. This week let’s start with a beautiful, seasonal reflection from B.D. McClay at Commonweal. Relentless summer heat inspires this moving commentary on the tension between absence and presence, eternity and finitude, the ever-presence of God and man’s inability to comprehend that presence. It’s called “Summer Blues: Anticipating Eternity”: What would it be like if […]
The Future of Our Children: Doom, Gloom, and Love at the End of the World
This week Roy Scranton wrote a stirring op-ed for the New York Times called “Raising My Child in a Doomed World.” Frankly it’s not a headline you would have seen before 2016. Now, this rhetoric is everywhere. Fictional dystopias are no longer phantasms of who we could become, of where we might go, but of […]
Sleeping the Pain Away: A Young Woman Takes a Chill Pill in “My Year of Rest and Relaxation”
When asked about her favorite holiday, writer Ottessa Moshfegh says, “I don’t know if I’ve ever been on holiday…?” And then laughs. On the one hand, I suppose she could be speaking literally. But I take the above response as an invitation: Do human beings ever really relax? After all, we never catch a break […]
Another Week Ends: Death Cafés, Eighth Grade, Basement Revolver, Sterile Style, Church Planting, and the Meekness of God
1. Lots to consider from this week’s first link: “The Positive Death Movement Comes to Life,” by John Leland for the Times (ht SZ). All told, this article is partly amazing, partly ridiculous. First, the amazing. “Death is having a moment,” the subtitle says. This is good news in the context of modernity’s widespread denial […]
The Only Available Candidates for Holy Matrimony
Well, it’s wedding season here in Charlottesville, VA, which is as good a time as any to share some marital non-advice from the late priest-chef-writer Robert Farrar Capon. The following excerpt is taken from his seminal work, originally published in the 60s, Bed & Board: Plain Talk About Marriage (ht AM). A man and a woman […]
A Great Insight
I imagine it’s a common experience: Whether in Bible studies, or from the pulpit, or in one-on-one “discipling” relationships, Christian ministers often feel pressured to come up with something genius, something that will knock the spiritual socks off whoever it is they’re ministering to. If you say just the right thing, maybe you can save […]
Another Week Ends: The Capacity for Every Crime, the Unimportance of Being Cool, Violence Ad Infinitum, Defiled Lunch Meat, the Dallas Street Choir, and the Essential Anthropology of Philip Roth
1. Lots of good reading material for this Memorial Day weekend! Our first article—a ripe one 😉 by philosopher Crispin Sartwell, for the New York Times—defends the concept of original sin, from a secular standpoint. And while the era of extreme division and gun violence might seem the perfect stage for the original sin renaissance, […]
Another Week Ends: The Craigslist Confessional, Ethical Beauty, Luck, Reincarnation, Realistic Wedding Vows, and Divided Times in the Body of Christ
1. This weekend’s opener: stories from the Craigslist Confessional. Several years ago, on a whim, a woman named Helena Bala posted an ad online, offering anyone who needed it the service of a non-judgmental listening ear. Crazy, huh? “Woke up the next morning…inbox was flooded.” The video is a testament to the power of listening—just […]
“The Confession of St. Jim-Ralph: Our Patron of Falling Short, Who Became a Prayer,” by Denis Johnson
The Confession of St. Jim-Ralph BY DENIS JOHNSON OUR PATRON OF FALLING SHORT, WHO BECAME A PRAYER I used to sneak into the movies without paying. I watched the stories but I failed to see the dark. I went to college and drank everything they gave me, and I never paid for any of that water on which I drifted as […]
A Visit to Another World: Modern Fiction and Life After Death – A Conference Breakout Preview
Christians have long puzzled over whether literary fiction is of any use to the remnant of believers in the world. Of course, most of the Western canon is essentially Christian; you can’t get anywhere in a lit course without some basic familiarity with the Bible. But many of today’s stories seem postmodern, remaining thematically ambiguous and unresolved. Even so, stories remain one of our surest avenues for (something like) transcendence.
Good fiction describes the reality of everyday life—describes, in the words of Flannery O’Conner, “what is.” But for many Christians this seems too earthly a goal. Where have the symbolic references to Calvary gone? How long do we wait for this character’s redemption? Good stories are not always innocent or sentimental, nor necessarily redemptive. O’Connor, a Catholic herself, seemed just fine with this: “We lost our innocence in the Fall,” she writes plainly, “and our return to it is through the Redemption which was brought about by Christ’s death and by our slow participation in it. Sentimentality is a skipping of this process in its concrete reality and an early arrival at a mock state of innocence, which strongly suggests its opposite.” Oof!
During this breakout session, we’ll spend some time looking at the work of 3 contemporary writers—Denis Johnson, George Saunders, and Ottessa Moshfegh—who I haven’t been able to get out of my head this year. Their stories relate, sometimes brutally, sometimes humorously, “what is.” These writers are not Christians (actually one of them is), but they nevertheless “reinforce our sense of the supernatural by grounding it in concrete, observable reality” (O’Connor). These stories poke fun at the absurdity of our everyday reality and illuminate our desperate need for a life after life. My hope is that their words will help us put some fresh “skin on the bones” of the Christian message (in the words of John Zahl). It should be fun and maybe a little weird! Hope to see ya there.
