milk and honey

"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.)

"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) 💬

"so much depends upon a green chair beside the brick wall ... "
WCW kind of morning. 📷

0.5 oz gin (Tanqueray)
1.0 mezcal (Del Maguey Vida)
0.5 dry vermouth (Dolin)
0.5 (or less) Cocchi Americano

I don’t know what to call it. And it’s a weird mix of 2 vermouths and 2 spirits. But… it’s really tasty!

Archie’s binky. 🐶📷

Per my true love (via Robt. Venturi), "Less is a bore." Archie (and I) like it!

🐶 📷

📷

... 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) 💬

God can make good use of all that happens. But the loss is real. [C.S. Lewis
Perelandra](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/100924.Perelandra) 💬

Spurs v. Hammers: Lots of fun in the West Ham box (plus, great game by Fabianski); lots of terror in our own (esp. set pieces). But, to return to point 1: "lots of fun" has been in very short supply lately, and this was a nice change. ⚽

Enjoying Rufus Wainwright's Folkocracy -- especially, Peggy Seeger's "Heading for Home," sung by Rufus and John Legend 🎵

Jon Flaming (Am. 1962-), Peggy Sue BBQ, Dallas

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).

David French on where to look for threats to Christ's kingdom: [www.nytimes.com/2023/07/0...](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/09/opinion/christian-right.html)

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.

And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Trite, perhaps. But true. Often, the “tried and true” is trite. But, so what? The truth is the point.