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 […]
Another Week Ends: Harvest Bells, Culpability Anxiety, Anti-Productivity Voices, Dad Lit, Celebrity Culture, Bonnie’s Lament, and RIP Schlesinger & Withers
1. I don’t know about you but while I enjoy its long-form profiles and cartoons, as a general rule I don’t look to The New Yorker for wisdom on churchgoing. But everything else is being turned on it’s head at the moment, so why not our reading proclivities? Cue the moving essay that Casey Cep […]
Another Week Ends: Werner Herzog, the Annunciation, Pandemic Dating, Hope, Loneliness, and Humor
1. I’ll get to articles on our coronavirus life soon enough, but first I wanted to feature this amazing NY Times interview with filmmaker Werner Herzog. It’s everything you don’t need right now and more: a wide-ranging, thoughtful, and disarmingly funny back-and-forth with perhaps the most interesting person in the world. And that story of […]
Another Week Ends: Behavior Modifications, a Developed Buffer, Performance Parenting, and a Marriage at the End of the World
“Man, I sure pity whoever has to do the weekender today,” I thought to myself earlier this week, only to check my calendar and see it was me! If we’re connecting the Christian message to everyday life, for just about everyone, everyday life has, er, gone viral. Here’s our roundup of the best of the […]
Another Week Ends: COVID-19, Alcoholics Anonymous, the Prodigal Tech Bro, [In]Authenticity, Michel Houellebecq, New Killers, and a Future We Cannot See
1. Obviously the most important article of the week is “Jerry from Cheer Mat-Talks You Through the Coronavirus Outbreak”: “Yes! Sanitize those hands, girl! … DO! NOT! LEAVE! THE! HOUSE! You got this!!” 2. In second place is David Brooks’ latest op-ed, which notes that pandemics kill compassion. Skimming through various plagues of yore, Brooks urges us […]
Another Week Ends: Coronapanic, Gamer Grind, Proxy Forgiveness, Hidden Lives, Disappointed Dowsing Rods, and #NoRegrets
1. Straight to the matters at hand, cue upcoming NYC Conference speaker Tara Isabella Burton hitting the nail on the head in a piece for RNS on “Fleeing coronavirus and finding our mortality.” Indeed, it’s hard not to see the current panic as tremendously revealing–and not in a good way. Then again, perhaps the timing […]
Another Week Ends: the Cross of Christ, Not Giving Advice, Temptation, Jean Vanier, Pixar’s Onward, the Dating Market, and Reclaiming Moral Language
1. As we enter into Lent, Fred Sanders has a wonderful reflection on the centrality of Jesus’ crucifixion, arguing “The Cross Changes Everything.” Whether from the Apostle Paul, Charles Wesley, or the Apostle’s Creed, the salvation wrought by Jesus at Calvary is a refrain worth repeating again and again. The centrality of the Cross changes […]
Another Week Ends: Anthropology Wars, Youth Anxiety, Type of Guy Theory, Fitness Scams, Nuclear Families, Age Rage, and Mirrors4sale
1. A brilliant essay in The American Interest by Tara Isabella Burton on What The Culture War Is Really About in which the upcoming NYC Conference speaker burrows underneath the acrimony that surrounds us and reveals a conflict over, well, anthropology. In her view, the divide in our culture isn’t between those with a high […]
Another Week Ends: Johnny Cash + Jesus, Fitbit Valentines, The French Dispatch, The Green Knight, Closeness-Communication Bias, Malcolm Gladwell, The Decadent Society, Forgiveness, and a Little Death on Sunday
1. Today’s devotional content comes courtesy of the New Yorker, where Casey Cep contributed a concise but heartening column about Johnny Cash and the gospel. “Gospel music changed Cash’s career,” she writes, “and the gospel of Jesus Christ changed his life.” This comes from a review of Richard Beck’s new book Trains, Jesus, and Murder: […]
Another Week Ends: Purity Spirals, Plague Theology, Talking Horses, New York Grace and the Golden Girls of Super Bowl XIV
1. Of all the ballyhooing over Super Bowl LIV’s halftime show, Jennifer Weiner wins for the hottest take on J.Lo and Shakira’s lustful celebration of Latina culture and girl power. While some of us were clutching our pearls over stripper poles and close up crotch shots, and others of us were perhaps too gleefully joining […]
Another Week Ends: Alien Religion, Side Hustles, Jesus the Jew, Glossier/Carhartt, Friendship, Mr. Peanut, Mid-Life Crises, and Demi Lovato,
1. The highlight of this past week for me comes from David Brooks’s deep dive into historical Jesus research. Much of who Jesus was is perfectly intelligible within his Jewish context: his miracles, his teachings, or his willful poverty. But Brooks, like Ernst Käsemann before him, still finds Jesus to be an entirely anomalous Jewish […]
Another Week Ends: Advanced Status Games, Insecure Globalists, Wavering Churchability, Cancer Chairs, Redwall Feasts, and Statism
1. First up this week, other than Ozzy Osbourne in 1987 (featured image), would have to be Agnes Callard’s magnificent piece for The Point, “Who Wants to Play the Status Game?” in which she unpacks the not-so-subtle status games we play with those whom we’ve just met. Meaning, when you’re introduced to someone at a […]
