Another Week Ends

1. Before we get into our normal weekender column business, two bits of fun news.

• The first five talks from the recent New York conference are now up on our Talkingbird podcast feed and here on the website. The rest of the the talks, including our breakouts, will drop soon. A huge thank you to the speakers, attendees, volunteers, hosts, live-streamers, and staff that made #MbirdNYC22 such a fantastic event! And if you feel moved to, we’d certainly appreciate any support you can give to help make future conferences happen.
• The Success & Failure Issue of The Mockingbird magazine — our 20th issue! — is now available for preorder. Can you believe we got Nick Mohammed — Ted Lasso’s Nate the Great! — for an interview? And Canadian folk music legend Bruce Cockburn? Read the intro to Issue 20 here and check out the table of contents here.

2. Ok, now on to our regularly scheduled programming… Nobody disputes that adulting is hard, but it turns out that the inventor of the word “adulting” has had it worse than most of us. Vanity Fair profiles Kelly Williams Brown, whose decade old book Adulting: How to Become a Grown-up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps was the source of every millennial’s least favorite gerund. It turns out life was unkind to Brown in future years, culminating in a two year struggle with broken bones, a broken marriage, friendship losses, a crushing mental illness, and self-harm. The result is a writer who is less keen to give out advice than she used to be.

I tried to be extremely clear in Adulting that I was writing it as a nonfunctional person who knew there were people out there who just did a good job on their laundry and had houses that weren’t chaos. I wanted to treat it like a reporting project and go find out how from them. But somehow, some people interpreted it as, “I am now a lifestyle expert,” which is the opposite of what I was. And it’s hard, because you can’t just constantly say, “No, I’m a grubby baby.” […]

I love giving people advice. That is one of my favorite things to do, when requested — I try to be extremely consensual about advice. What I didn’t like was people thinking that I had it all together. And then with any evidence that I had a misstep, or when there was something painful or unhappy in my life, or even just that my house was messy, they’re like, “Didn’t you write a book on this?” […] 

The question of resilience is a difficult one. It’s shortsighted and incorrect to think that suffering makes us better people. I think that we all have the opportunity to figure out what our narrative is. The more you can give yourself an understanding that is perhaps a little less painful than what actually happened, the better you’ll be able to get out of bed in the morning.

Let’s just skip over the irony that Brown’s experience is real adulting — that is, adulting is really just managing one disaster after the next. Instead, I appreciate the immense pressure she was to live up to her lofty reputation as a life guru. What a Monty Python moment to try and tell the world you have no answers, only to have the world double down on its insistence that you actually do have the answers!

3. A beautiful and bittersweet Mother’s Day reflection from Liz Michalski on Lithub. The writer and author of the novel Darling Girl reflects on the mythos of the boys who never grew up and the unexplored mother figures who provided a haven for their adventures:

It’s no surprise to learn that the original working title for Peter Pan was “The Boy Who Hated Mothers.”

If Peter Pan is about the grief of growing up, there’s a companion sorrow tucked away in one of Mrs. Darling’s boxes. It’s that of being a spectator, of watching your child age and being powerless to stop it. Of being their first love. Of their forgetting the joy and delight your very presence once inspired, while you are doomed to remember. I’ve often thought that love is what Peter carries off with him in the form of Mrs. Darling’s secret kiss at the end of the book. The love he needs and desperately wants, but is too proud to admit.

I think of this as my children embark on their own adventures, their trips out into the world, where I am neither invited nor wanted nor — if I’m honest with myself — necessary. They’re swooping through time, dipping into the places and friendships that will create the landscape of the rest of their lives, mysterious archipelagos from which I am barred, and can only hear about secondhand when they return to tell me about them.

By contrast, some days it feels as if my own awfully big adventure drew to a close when they grew up. I’m grateful to have time to myself at last, but I mourn their absence, keeping one ear eternally cocked toward their voices, however they choose to reach across the space that separates us—the random text, the occasional late-night video call. I’ve become the ballast to their flight, the reminder of where they’ve come from that allows them to fly ever higher. The one waiting, windows wide, for them to return and tell their stories.

4. Two reflections came forward this week from the New Atlantis exploring the powerlessness we all experience at the hands of social technologies. Alan Jacobs explores the chilling descriptive clarity of demonic oppression and possession to explain how technology exerts its power over us. This final paragraph from his essay sums up his argument well: what do we do with those moments when we feel out of control, especially when those moments are technologically induced?

Now, as it happens, I am myself a Christian, but I do not write here to issue an altar call, an invitation to be saved by Jesus. Rather, I merely wish you, dear reader, to consider the possibility that when a tweet provokes you to wrath, or an Instagram post makes you envious, or some online article sends you to another and yet another in an endless chain of what St. Augustine called curiositas — his favorite example is the gravitational pull on all passers-by of a dead body on the side of the road — you are dealing with powers greater than yours. Your small self and your puny will are overwhelmed by the Cosmic Rulers, the Principalities and Powers. They oppress or possess you, and they can neither be deflected nor, by the mere exercise of will, overcome. Any freedom from what torments us begins with a proper demonology. Later we may proceed to exorcism.

If there are demons working behind the scenes of social technologies, Andy Crouch names them mammon in his new book The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World. Brad East reviewed the book, which shares observations about the other-worldly power of social technologies that Jacobs also described. Neither writers are afraid to invoke demonology and powers and principalities to talk about big tech and its impact on the human spirit. But it’s East’s critique of Crouch that I’d like to highlight. Crouch’s primary solution to the technological demons is a network of households that join together to weather the tide of mammon (which sounds similar to the oft-suggested Benedict Option). East, however, is more than skeptical on this point. (H/t SC via Twitter).

First: Whom is this for? I don’t mean which community — religious, national, or other. I mean: Does this vision apply to any but the valiant few? The examples Crouch offers are of people one can’t help but deeply admire. But far from inspiring, they take the wind out of one’s sails. Must one be that virtuous, even entrepreneurial, to survive the perils of technopoly? If so, we are doomed. Salvation must be for normies, not heroes.

Or maybe I do mean which community, for the Christian lens of the book also raises a basic ambiguity. Is the life we’re looking for, the life of flourishing that Crouch compellingly elaborates, a life available to all persons, from every walk of life? Or is it principally a life found in, even made possible by, the Christian community? The ambiguity may be productive, but it is not resolved by the time one closes the book.

Next, the scale of Crouch’s vision does not match the scale of the problem. If his description of the challenge we face is accurate — and I believe it is — then it is difficult to see how a tiny network of tiny household-communities can possibly resist the power of that unholy marriage of Mammon and Digital […]

The technological forces bearing down on us are, like the pandemic, global, invisible, and highly contagious. Nothing short of a response equal in size and scope has any chance of making a difference. I freely admit: Perhaps such a response is impossible, either in principle or not without grave injustice. If so, we must indeed follow Paul and Benedict alike, hunkering down for the long defeat and hoping for generational transformation in the long run. That, however, is a seriously dispiriting thought.

I’m reminded of Jesus’s diagnosis of a stubborn demon that wouldn’t be exorcised by his disciples. “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.” (Mk 9:29). Though Jacobs and East are writing and reviewing in a nonpartisan publication, it seems to me that a gospel hope puts our technopoly fears into perspective. If we are going to view the matter as imbued with spiritual and demonological claims, we should seek answers that are equally as spiritual. That may seem impractical at first, but maybe that’s just what the demons want us to think.

6. In humor this week, a humbling questionnaire: “Are You the Most Royal King in All the Land, or Just Some Dude with TSA PreCheck?.” And a recent study published in the Beaverton looks promising: “New research shows the thing you’re doing to cope with your depression is the cause of your depression.” Who knew? Also: “Parents Support Son’s Dream Of Becoming NASCAR Driver By Putting Up 2.5-Mile Motor Speedway In Backyard.”

And finally, the New Yorker is here to help you by “Mastering the Art of Stress Eating.” Don’t sleep on the potato chip and Nutella combination!

“Canapé” is just a fancy French term for “I can’t be bothered with utensils.” And when it comes to stress eating you’ll want to dispense with formalities such as silverware and plates, and opt for something more practical, like using your palm as a serving bowl. […]

Plunge a finger into a jar of Nutella and then transfer it directly into your mouth. Some Nutella will naturally dribble down your chin; reserve this. It will taste even better the next day.

While using one hand to dip into the Nutella, use the other to flip through today’s paper. Continue until you find yourself boiling with anger but unable to articulate any intelligent thoughts besides “Argh!” and “Ugh!”

For a sweet and savory treat, dip some potato chips into the Nutella. If you accidentally drop chips down the front of your shirt, don’t worry. Just pluck those gooey chips from your cleavage and pop them right back into your mouth. Yum!

7. The post-pandemic autopsies are just beginning, and whether they are premature or even old hat at this point, this one over at ABC Religion on hope is refreshing:

I understand hope to be a disciplined persistence that allows us to admit our vulnerability while pressing forward nonetheless. We cannot be sure that our loves will endure, that our projects will succeed, or that we stand on the side of justice and truth. It is tempting to ignore these difficulties, but hope enables us instead to face them. Between false confidence and paralysing despair, hope endures without assurance.

As we have repeatedly seen, it’s no good to pretend that things are better than they are — such bluster is bound to shatter when faced with the complexity of lived experience. At some level, we all know that we’re vulnerable, which is why hope is such a powerful force. In my view, we need hope’s bold humility to honestly acknowledge the challenges we face while mustering the imagination to address them. […]

Because COVID-19 has been an exhausting ordeal, simply to carry on living well has required all of us, in one way or another, to draw on hope’s resilience. At the same time, through hope we can face suffering and uncertainty without being crushed by them.  […]

Rather than simply returning to the normal we knew before, hope would have us lean into the uncertainty of our situation. The ruptures caused by the pandemic have been painful, but they have also shown that the future is more open than it often seems. If COVID-19 can change the world so suddenly, this suggests that things can also change for the better all in a flash.

8. Celebrating #Maythe4thBeWithYou, the new trailer for Disney’s Obi-Wan miniseries dropped this week, and it begs a question for fandom court. At what point did the prequel-era Star Wars films transition from a panned cash grab to beloved nostalgia? I guess I’m just confused at the fickleness of fandom. Ewan McGregor was fine in the prequel trilogy, but I didn’t ever think I’d see more from that piece of the galaxy far far away. It’s not that I’m not invested — I’ve written enough about Star Wars for the site before to prove my mettle. But does this mean, in 20 years, the generally loathed Disney trilogy will gain a beloved status? Will we be giving Daisey Ridley and John Boyega extra prestige storylines and apologizing to Kelly Marie Tran and Rain Johnson for all the hate? What good is a principled stand in fandom if it’s just going to be reversed by nostalgia and irony two decades later? Anyway, the new series looks fun.

9. As we approach Mother’s Day this weekend, a huge word of thanks to all the moms who have shared on the blog these years about their faith and raising little ones. A few links for our mom readers (and those who love them) to close out the week:

• Sarah Condon begs churches to skip anything Mother’s Day related. “I show up at church to give my sin and sorrow to Jesus. Please do not make church about me. I’m no good at saving people.”
• Carrie Willard recalls the existential crisis of having children that would reflect her own struggles and brokenness. “It was a want bordering on a need. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to feeling a calling. And yet, I was torn. How could I make another one of me?”
• Stephanie Phillips talks to her sons class about autism: “Just as addiction changes a body’s chemistry (so do pregnancy and childbirth and parenting, by the way, when done wholeheartedly), grace alters the minutiae of my being down to microscopic levels.”

Strays:

• World War I broke a founding neuroscientist’s spirit so bad, he dedicated the rest of his life to studying ants. “I Have to Admit, I Have a Very Low Opinion of Human Beings.”
• The new Arcade Fire album is out today, and their first release from it, “Unconditional I,” is a theological groove of parenting, mental illness, love, regret, and joy.
• It’s definitely trailer season for all the summer hits we are expecting. Speaking of prequels and fandom fickleness: House of Dragons anyone? But frankly Dan Radcliffe’s voice does not sound like Weird Al and that’s got me worried for that biopic.