Before we get going, time for our semi-annual update-and-appeal video: Click here to take us up on the invitation. And as always, THANK YOU! 1. Not sure how I missed this first one. Tim Kreider penned “A Pandemic Commencement” for Medium a few weeks ago and one paragraph in particular warrants embroidery (on a very […]
Another Week Ends: Sad Americans, Orphan Attachment, Fear of Failure, Wack-a-Mole Preaching, and the Greatest Weapon of the State
1. Any time the Resurrection breaks into the New York Times, it’s generally a thing to celebrate. But when Esau McCaulley offers the Resurrection as the balm for the trauma and rage of our times, it’s more than a celebration — it’s proclamation, which is even rarer. I’m tempted to share the whole op-ed, but […]
Another Week Ends: Hospital Housekeepers, the Resurrection, Systemic Racism, “Amazing Grace,” David Hume, and Ramy’s Performance of Religion (and Ours)
1. We’ll begin this weekend’s round-up with a truly lovely story of grace. Reported by Daniel Burke at CNN, it’s about a hospital housekeeper, Rosaura Quinteros, whose job was to mop floors, pull trash, and clean surfaces in the rooms of COVID-19 patients. In one particular room, the patient’s last rites had been administered; via […]
Another Week Ends: Martin Luther on COVID-19, Tara Isabella Burton, Christ and Calamity, Generational Sin, and Faithful Doubt
1. Mere Orthodoxy has published an excerpt from an excellent book, Christ and Calamity: Grace and Gratitude in the Darkest Valley, by Harold Senkbeil. I’ve noted some highlights below and if you like what you read, the e-book is free this month: Just what does it mean to deny yourself and take up your cross? […]
Another Week Ends: Productivity Hawks, the Useless God, Goodnight Zoom, Picky Eating, Wine Moms, Political Warfare, and George Floyd
1. This week’s first article might give you déjà vu — it’s just the newest in an ever fattening file on the cult of productivity. With the force of an altogether wilder God, this pandemic has slammed the idol of work. For Vox, Sam Blum interviews a series of people who have found unexpected liberation […]
Another Week Ends: Downward Ascents, Prayerology, Endless Dishes, Middle Earth SSRIs, and the Church of QAnon
Slightly truncated weekender today, as we’ve been up to our ears prepping our big Spring newsletter/appeal, which just went to the post office. Needless to say, we need your help more than ever (and hope you’ve appreciated our stepped-up efforts during these past few months!). If you’d like to receive a copy of the letter, […]
Another Week Ends: Social Scolding, Middle School Compassion, Pivoting Foodies, Coronavirus Calvin Ball, and an Ethical Relationship With Your Past Self
1. Every public thinker’s new past-time during quarantine has been hypothesizing the demise of certain cultural institutions. My newsfeed is full of these articles: “The Coming Commercial Real-Estate Apocalypse,” “The End of University Education As We Know It,” “No More Handshaking,” and the like. Of all the ones I’ve come across, the one that strikes […]
Another Week Ends: The Odd Gospel, Esther Perel, William Blake, Alan Jacobs, Henry David Thoreau, and the Coronavirus Prayer
1. Currently the most talked-about man in the world, aside from Anthony Fauci I suppose, might be Job — that long-sufferer from the land of “Uz” — because now, in this pandemic, aren’t we all Job? Fearing God, turning away from evil, rising early in the morning and making burnt-offerings on behalf of our children. […]
Another Week Ends: Kierkegaard, Resurrection Sufferings, Pandemic Deadly Sins, Strategic Inefficiency, Cathartic Humor, and our Groundhog Days
1. Over at Marginalia Thomas Millay reviews what looks to be a fantastic book on Søren Kierkegaard, by Sylvia Walsh. She provocatively contends that Kierkegaard believed humans were incapable of actually becoming virtuous. The virtues, for him, are the means to measure failure. The Christian life is not the progressive accumulation of successes, but continual […]
Another Week Ends: Productive Epiphanies, Withers’ Stutter, Emotion Police, Parking Lot Worship, Parental Distress, Swedish Covers and Corona Commercials
1. Nothing like a global pandemic to expose the limitations of the cult of productivity, eh? At least, that seems to be one of the more universally agreed upon lessons to emerge thus far from our corona-ordeal. Hardly a day has gone by without some fresh high profile confession about the psycho-spiritual burden of not […]
Another Week Ends: Christ the Physician, Lincoln’s Grace, Music for Hope, Personal Annihilation, and Night of the Living Karens
Alleluia! Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death that he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So goes the Pascha Nostrum, an old hymn that Christians have sung for centuries. The liturgical […]
Another Week Ends: Auden’s Advice, Hospital Chaplains, Good Friday, John Prine, Dorothy Day, the Pope, George Saunders, and Weird Al
1. Today many of us are looking for clarity amidst the fraying strands of daily life: plague, family, politics, Good Friday, Easter, time—which has always passed bizarrely but especially now, in the isolation of self-quarantine. A resoundingly helpful story, in light of all this, comes from writer Jay Parini, who reflects on a brief encounter […]
