fare forward, voyagers
  • Wait, what's the question? /

    Annie Dillard: “We’ve been on earth all these years and we still don’t know for certain why birds sing… We have been as usual asking the wrong question… The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?”

  • Talking about faith

    A thesis: “When considering faith, it’s helpful to ask, ‘Is this right?’ or ‘Is this good?,’ as a way to discover ‘Is this true?'” (None of this is new; but it’s stuff I like to work out in writing.)

    Consider this analogy: When we think about entering into a relationship, say a marriage (but it could be a friendship or even, taking a job at a company), we don’t ask, “Is this step true?” We ask, “Could this step be good? Could this be right?"* And we only discover the answer after we’ve (1) committed to the relationship and (2) lived out that commitment over time. (See Leslie Newbigin’s reading of Michael Polyani for more.)

    This knowledge of the goodness or rightness of a relationship through lived experience would typically be seen as subjective knowledge. But, turning now to faith, let’s not discount experience. If a lot of other people, living over the course of centuries and in a range of families, countries, and cultures, also experience that the relationship with God is good and right, doesn’t that suggest the goodness or rightness are reliable, even if they’re known subjectively? (Is that one reason why Christians live their faith in community, in a “cloud of witnesses”?)*

    Moreover, even in a one-to-one relationship, such as a marriage, i.e., Megan’s and my marriage, I am pretty confident in knowing that our marriage is good, though it sounds weird(ish) to say, “Our marriage is true." And like a marriage, our experience of faith probably changes over time (and, one hopes, grows). It’s not static.

    Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” so truth is crucial. But, because the modern era tends to subject truth claims to the scientific method (or something like it), I think formulating faith in terms of what’s good and right is an important way we discover what’s true.

    • By “good” and “right,” I mean not only “good for me”, but also, “fit, apt, appropriate, etc.” for a purpose (which requires knowing the purpose), and also “imbued with an inherent goodness and rightness” that transcends my personal benefit and, even, the aptness for a purpose.

    • Of course, other faiths can make the same claim, so this isn’t a support for Christianity, per se; it’s just an argument for shared experience being some evidence of a possible truth.

  • Albert Brooks on Writer's Block

    Writing is solving one problem and then the next. It’s like building a house. Once you start, you have to finish… If you hired an architect and a year later you said, “What happened?” And he said, ‘I don’t know, I was blocked.’ You’d say, ‘What?!’

  • The Good of Counting

    BOSWELL. Sir Alexander Dick tells me, that he remembers having a thousand people in a year to dine at his house ...

    JOHNSON. That, Sir, is about three a day.

    BOSWELL. How your statement lessens the idea.

    JOHNSON. That, Sir, is the good of counting. It brings every thing to a certainty, which before floated in the mind indefinitely.

  • The Honest Broker /

    I’m sure many of you already follow Ted Gioia. But for those who don’t, he’s one of the country’s most perceptive cultural critics, as well as being the world’s preeminent jazz historian. Check him out. It’ll be well worth your time.

  • Things I Really Like: an Ongoing List /
    • Birdsong
    • Tottenham Hotspur Football Club
    • Archie
    • Tamales
    • Black licorice
    • Woodsmoke
    • Good Table Talk (more often, actually, Bar Talk)
    • a Ploughman's Lunch in a pub's garden
    • a 5:1 Martini, with a dash of orange bitters and 3 olives
    • Wind Chimes
    • Telephone calls with my out-of-town kids
    • Tacos with my in-town kid (and kid-in-law)
    • [Resident Taqueria](http://www.residenttaqueria.com/), Dallas [see immediately above
    • Heat
  • from The Great Good Place by Ray Oldenburg /
    ... the third place tavern combines drinking with conversation such that each improves the other. The talking/drinking synergism is basic to the pub, tavern, taverna, bistro, saloon, estaminet, osteria -- whatever it is called and wherever it is found... [J]ust as conversation is enhanced by the temperate use of alcohol, the artful and witty game of conversation moderates consumption of liquor. As Tibor Scitovsky remarked with respect to those who know how to use a public drinking facility, "a half-pint of beer is to talk as bed is to making love -- one can do without, but does better with.”
  • Not a bad mission statement /

    “We aim to humanize those who have been objectified.”
       – Jessie Kornberg, Director, Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles

  • Whatever Happens This Year /
    I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace.
    In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.
  • Third Places
    American suburbs provide an excess of privacy, but deny proximity to those places upon which a community life depends.

    Ray Oldenberg, The Great Good Place

  • For 2024

    Ten days in, my theme for 2024 is: “Be attentive”:

    • Pay attention to what I pay attention to, and jettison stuff that doesn’t pay back with value.
    • Improve focus on stuff that is valuable. (Takes practice!)
    • Be attentive and responsive (or least present) to others.

    (NB: They all take practice.)

  • from Symmetries & Asymmetries - W.H. Auden
    Could any tiger
Drink martinis, smoke cigars,
And last as we do?
  • Pitiable, foolish, and cruel, all at once

    Louis Menand: “[Sontag] forbade her son to look out the window when they rode in a train; he needed to read about a place if he wanted to understand it. She never looked out the window herself.”

  • not so funny anymore
    Mike Godwin:
         ... has the sheer absurdity of so many hyperbolic Nazi comparisons in popular culture made us less vigilant about the possible reemergence of actual fascism in the world? I think it shouldn’t — comparisons to Hitler or to Nazis need to take place when people are beginning to act like Hitler or like Nazis...
         We had the luxury of deriving humor from Hitler and Nazi comparisons when doing so was almost always hyperbole. It’s not a luxury we can afford anymore.
  • A thought
    Generally, the world says, "Work first, and benefits come after." (E.g., exercise, then fitness.) That's good, because, even for bad work, anticipating the reward eases the pain. But if you must pay after, that looming bill taints the enjoyment of the thing enjoyed. (Of course, taking joy in the work is best of all.)
  • You are what you eat
    David French: We’re misinformed not because the government is systematically lying or suppressing the truth. We’re misinformed because we like the misinformation we receive and are eager for more.... The market is very, very happy to provide us with all the misinformation we like. Algorithms recognize our preferences and serve up the next video or article that echoes or amplifies the themes of the first story we clicked.... It’s important to recognize that no person or movement is immune to the temptations of bespoke reality. We’re all vulnerable... That means following as many or more people who disagree with me as agree with me. That means reading the best and smartest people I can find who disagree with me. These practices help both challenge me and humanize my opponents.
  • A difficult question
    Jonah Goldberg: "If Hitler’s bunker was in a hospital in 1945, you can be sure we would have flattened it from the air (no doubt after dropping leaflets—just as Israel has). But Israel has not done that. Nor should it do anything of the sort. They sent troops in—carrying incubators by the way—to minimize collateral damage...
    [What's a real solution to] the very real problem of Hamas using Palestinian babies to protect their murderers and rapists?"
  • All In or All Out

    There is little excuse for pretending eloquence about the meaning of the Resurrection while holding reservations about whether the event really happened. The assertion that Jesus was raised from the dead cannot at the same time be theologically true and historically false.

    Andrew Christiansen, paraphrasing Carl Braaten - Covenant blog

  • Writers Who've Stuck with Me (or With Whom I've Stuck)
    an ongoing list
    P.G. Wodehouse • G.K. Chesterton • Dorothy L. Sayers • C.S. Lewis • Frederick Buechner • Kathleen Norris • Alan Jacobs • Terry Teachout • David French • Evelyn Underhill • Garrison Keillor, editor (for his Good Poems collections) • Naomi Shihab Nye • T.S. Eliot • Roger Scruton • John Donne • John Milton • Abraham Lincoln • Anthony Trollope • Jane Kenyon • John McPhee • David Brooks • Li-Young Lee • Tom Stoppard • Michael Chabon • Laurie Colwin • The author of the Johannine epistles • The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews • Witold Rybczynski • Angelo Pellegrini • Calvin Trillin (the "Tummy Trilogy" and beyond) • William Carlos Williams • Christopher Alexander, et al. (A Pattern Language) • Anne Lamott • Yuval Levin • Philip Yancey • Colum McCann • Hilary Mantel • William deBuys • Alex Harris, photographer • Victoria Goddard • Iris Murdoch • Virginia Woolf • Hampton Sides • Louis Menand • Sophocles • Charles Dickens • Jane Austen • Wendell Berrly • John Buchan • Dorianne Laux • Charles Portis • Annie Dillard 📘
  • maybe
    Is this how judgment day will be? "... something that would have been terror, but for the joy, and joy, but for the terror..." -- C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength
  • Carne
    "The way to battle abstraction in our time is to embrace the material, the incarnation of our lives, the fleshy, complicated, touchable realities right around us in our neighborhoods, churches, friends and families. And this enfleshed, incarnational part of ... life and work deserves some extra attention now, at least for a little while... " [Tish Harrison Warren, My Hope for American Discourse](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/06/opinion/saying-goodbye-social-media-prayer.html)

    (I am not oblivious to the fact that I'm sharing this advice via the very medium that's causing a lot of the need for this advice.)
  • Manly
    "As I get older, I find that I care more and more about being a good man and less and less about career stuff. I think a lot of it is just a product of age. But the fact that I’m the last survivor of the family I grew up in plays a significant part. When my mom passed away last October, the only guide for how I behaved was asking myself how my parents would want me to deal with it..." -- Jonah Goldberg, ["In Defense of Manly Tears," Aug 4, 2023](https://thedispatch.activehosted.com/index.php?action=social&chash=7fb8ceb3bd59c7956b1df66729296a4c.1661&nosocial=1) 💬
  • Concrete
    ... the presentation of our bodies is our spiritual act of worship. It is a significant Christian paradox. No worship is pleasing to God which is purely inward, abstract and mystical; it must express itself in concrete acts of service performed by our bodies. [John Stott
    Romans](https://www.ivpress.com/romans-jsbs) 💬
  • Teachout on Stoppard

    Two-and-half years after his death, I miss reading new essays (and reviews and blog posts and tweets) by Terry Teachout. Here’s a good piece about Tom Stoppard, whom I also will miss profoundly, someday. (He said, perhaps naively).

  • Two(+/-) for Three
    SCOTUS last week:
    (1) Affirmative action - yep.
    (2) Student loans - yep.
    (3) Refusing to sell services to folks you disagree with - nope.*
    A web-design service is just that -- a _service_; it's not an expressive act. You're a hired hand. If you offer services, you can't say, "but not for the gays." * update: nope-ish. For some fool reason, Colorado agreed to stipulate that the plaintiff was, in fact, engaging in personal expression in creating webpages for hire. I don't get why they agreed to that, but there it is. Makes the ruling less wrong. Maybe not right, but less wrong.

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