The list of safe topics to bring up at a dinner party is, as we all know, shrinking. It used to be just politics and religion that were outlawed from “polite society.” But then everything became political — and politics itself became an object of widespread religious faith (#seculosity) — and to get along, you […]
Another Week Ends: Comparisonitis, Funk Apostles, Boring Adults, Coffee Wars, Religious Radicalization, and the Ageless Persistence of Vision
“It’s not quite reality. It’s like a totally filtered reality. It’s like you can pretend everything’s not quite the way it is.” – Joshua Leonard 1. Envy: according to Moya Sarner at The Guardian this deadly sin is more present in our everyday lives than ever before, thanks to social media. More than a mere […]
The Pagan Priests of Mockingbird
Here’s one of the lists from this most recent issue of our magazine, The Deja Vu Issue, which should have arrived at your house by now. If not, well, you can remedy that now… One well-worn slogan that we’ve consistently enjoyed putting to the test is that “all truth is God’s truth.” Come to find […]
Another Week Ends: Aretha Franklin, Robot Lovers, Instagram Repetitions, Submarine Parents, Forever 37, and Forgiving Spouses
1. This weekender would have been done so much sooner had I not gotten completely entranced by Aretha Franklin YouTube videos, which I’ll smatter throughout this post. While the Queen of Soul has a litany of songs you have heard for decades, there are so many live performances (and so many stories) (and so many […]
"Mother and Child": Calling BS on the Expectations of "Silent Night"
I used to love how the carol “Silent Night” captured my image of the season: peaceful, expectant, hopeful. Then I became an adult, and a parent, and Christmastime became anything but serene. I found myself singing words like “all is calm, all is bright” while looking around at other faces, wondering, “Does anyone else believe […]
Mockingbird Asks Polly: Our Interview with Heather Havrilesky
Another sneak peek into the Mental Health Issue, folks. Order up! They’re going going going… We first came across the name “Heather Havrilesky” back in 2011, when The New York Times Magazine published a column under her name comparing two television shows set in high school, Friday Night Lights and Glee. She noted how the […]
How to Be a Person in a World of Divorce Delusions
I first ran across the name “Heather Havrilesky” back in 2011, when The New York Times Magazine published a column of hers comparing the tv shows Friday Night Lights and Glee. What she wrote knocked me flat, and formed the basis of one of our first posts to go (relatively) viral. Here was someone musing […]
Another Week Ends: Smashed Pottery, Broken People, the Laws of Beauty, Celebrity Workaholics, Moral Licensing, and Watermelon Zombies
First, if you haven’t seen our latest newsletter, check it out here–some very exciting things in store for the year ahead! And click here to listen to this week’s episode of The Mockingcast (“The Ecumenical Apocalypse”), featuring an interview with writer/scholar Liel Liebowitz. 1. Let’s start off with this lovely piece from The Wall Street Journal: There […]
Subjective Sovereignty and the Need for an Objective Gospel
Had the whole David and Goliath showdown happened in the age of Twitter, David may not have won. Here’s how it could have gone down today: Goliath, after voicing his threats for weeks to the nation of Israel, finally finds his less-than-worthy opponent strut to the battlefield, slingshot in hand, nothing but his ruddy good […]
Another Week Ends: Sue Klebold, Religiosity, Asperger's, Babylon Bees, and Holy Week Personality Types
Click here to listen to the accompanying episode of The Mockingcast. 1. Heather Havrilesky comments on A Mother’s Reckoning, the new memoir by Sue Klebold (mother of Dylan, one of the Columbine shooterS), and naturally, she has some beautiful insights into the nature of our fascination with this woman’s story. On the one hand, Havrilesky […]
The Very Definition of Romance (10 Years In)
The bad news is, we have to wait until July before we can hold Heather Havrileksy’s How to Be a Person in the World in our sweaty hands. The good news is, the Ask Polly columnist wrote an article for The Cut this week about “What Romance Really Means After 10 Years of Marriage”, which […]
The God of Tidying Up Hates Me
Buried in a recent installment of Another Week Ends, CJ mentioned the book by sociologist Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Faith: Why the World Is More Religious than Ever. The subtitle pretty much says it all. The Wall Street Journal, in its review, summarized Stark’s principal finding this way: For the champions of the secularization thesis [i.e. […]