Soccer is an icon of virtue ethics, and as such it is a form of leisure that points us to what it means to be a moral creature.
Remarks: An introduction to our Rhetoric Capstone Student Presentations
I am encouraged by many things this evening, but I would like to name two of them. First, I am encouraged to know that this is a place where students are trained to think deeply, slowly, and theologically about things that matter a great deal. Juniors, your presence here this evening and your work this year is a testament to the many ways you are growing in wisdom and virtue. Well done.
If It Be Your Will by Leonard Cohen is sung from the perspective of Jesus from his arrest and trial through the harrowing of hell, right?
Good Friday
All this he did for you.In a cold, dark, room somewhere abroad a small group of naked, tired, hungry, and defeated captives are huddled in the corner. They’ve lost count of the hours, days, weeks, and years since they've experienced anything close to a normal life. One night, in the middle of a monsoon, an explosion sends a wooden door, now shattered to pieces, across the room. Light floods the room in the form of half a dozen headlamps.
Maundy Thursday
Learning from Jesus “on the night in which he was betrayed.”In first-century Galatia, a small but powerful group of teachers insisted that anyone who wanted to become a Christian must show that they are truly Christian through some outward sign. A very specific outward sign, in fact: circumcision. After dismantling this argument throughout his letter to the Galatians, St. Paul proposes his own outward sign of the Christian faith. In what has since been dubbed the “Fruit of the Spirit,” he lists several outward signs (fruit) of a life indwelled by the Spirit.
Because of our sophisticated watches and our ability to schedule our days down to the minute with the push of a button, it is easy for us to misunderstand what time is and how it actually works.
Not all weeks are created equal. And this is no ordinary week.
Holy Week
This is no ordinary week.A quick note before this edition of the newsletter: Holy Week culminates in a final service on Saturday Evening: The Easter Vigil. If you happen to be in the Dallas area this Easter, come see us at Church of the Incarnation for what I find to be the most moving of all services of the Christian Year. I will be teaching a History & Traditions class at 7pm ahead of the service, which begins at 8pm.
To all those who love soccer, and to those who don’t but love someone who does.
The dedication page of Laurent Dubois’ The Language of the Game
On Leisure and Work (Josef Pieper)
One of Josef Pieper’s central claims in his 1948 Leisure: The Basis of Culture is this: we place too much value on hard work, and as a result our happiness, productivity, art, and ability to flourish as a human society is suffering. Here are just a few nuggets from the book: The inmost significance of the exaggerated value which is set upon hard work appears to be this: man seems to mistrust everything that is effortless; he can only enjoy, with a good conscience, what he has acquired with toil and trouble; he refuses to have anything as a gift.
St. Joseph, March 19 (Usually)
St. Joseph is a model of quiet, often thankless work that paves the way for Jesus to be known and loved. The Feast of St. Joseph is usually celebrated on March 19th. When specific Feasts fall on a Sunday, their observance is usually transferred to the following weekday. This is because every Sunday is a Feast of our Lord’s Resurrection—and in that sense—the celebration of Jesus’ Resurrection is not shared with any other celebration.
What was before him appeared no longer a creature of corrupted will. It was corruption itself, to which will was only attached as an instrument. Ages ago it had been a person, but the ruins of personality now survived in it only as weapons at the disposal of a furious self-exiled negation.
Perelandra, C.S. Lewis, Chapter 12, during Ransom’s fight with the Unman.
GPT-4 scores well on a variety of common academic benchmarks, but I am most intrigued—though not surprised—by where it falls comparatively short:
AP Language and Composition (Rhetoric) and AP Literature and Composition.
These are the most humane benchmarks it has encountered.
A view from the Supporters Section after a late first-half equalizer this weekend. An early birthday + father’s day gift of FC Dallas season tickets being put to good use! FCD went on to beat LA Galaxy 3-1.
Lessons from Nicodemus this Lent: The problem with humanity is not a lack of information. You and I are not one New York Times opinion piece away from a changed life. Our first, second, and final step towards abundant life is to recognize, embrace, and (eventually) enjoy our dependence on God.
Lent as an Exercise in Dependence
Becoming more human in an age of informationIn 1948, Claude Shannon published a paper on the Theory of Information and Communication that set the stage for an understanding of Information as data - bits of sound that are capable of being transmitted in an orderly fashion across great distances. Eventually this work led to the creation of what we call the internet and the dawning of the Information Age. Today, we know more than we ever have, and we can share that knowledge with just about anybody anywhere at any time.
The eve of Ash Wednesday 2023 is a good time to remember that fasting is an exercise that leads to strength, not weakness.
Lent: Effort and Grace in Action
One of my favorite bits of dialogue in Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring presents us with an age-old debate about spiritual disciplines in general, and the Christian season of Lent in particular. Before embarking on their Journey to Mordor, Elrond—the Lord of Rivendale—shares a final message with the Company that is to join Frodo on his quest. Frodo himself is bound to complete the journey, while the members of the Company are “free companions” that may “come back, or turn aside into other paths, as chance allows.
The final chapters of Esther provide us with a reminder of why we have a liturgical calendar in the first place, and a framework for approaching these seasons of subsequent fasting and feasting.
Read more from my latest essay for Covenant.
A rediscovery of Moral Beauty?
Paul Vitz once said that in our age we will recover—or rather rediscover—many traditional beliefs and practices, and that we will do so primarily through science and the intellect. Perhaps this is in that vein? Dacher Keltner’s (UC Berkeley) forthcoming book Awe describes a study that sought to understand various ways people arrive at an experience of “being in the presence of something vast and mysterious that transcends your current understanding of the world.
But the Turing test cuts both ways. You can’t tell if a machine has gotten smarter or if you’ve just lowered your own standards of intelligence to such a degree that the machine seems smart. If you can have a conversation with a simulated person presented by an AI program, can you tell how far you’ve let your sense of personhood degrade in order to make the illusion work for you?
Jaron Lanier, in a book published in 2011.