FWIW: amateur comes from the Latin (via French) amatorem: lover.
An amateur does a thing primarily for the love of that thing.
More than a few friends have slowly become fans of The Beautiful Game by way of two things:
(1) My own peer pressure / love for the game
(2) My introduction of @ayjay’s review of The Language of the Game
Or put another way: what we need most in moments of conflict are the humanities, and what we are offered instead is a dangerous parody.
My latest essay for The Living Church.
Two Football Notes
With more Americans playing in top flight European leagues than ever, and performing especially well in the Premier League, it is hard to not let USMNT World Cup anticipation and expectations grow every weekend. Sure, it could all be a set up for an extremely disappointing winter. But it could also be the preface to a thrilling run deep into the knockout rounds. The Premier League is off to a fascinating start.
Rich Mullins was the greatest of the 90s era evangelical musicians. (If you know the era, you know the era…)
I often find myself thinking through lines still engrained in my head from songs like this one.
After the year-long run streak finished in March, I fell off the bandwagon for a couple of months. Picking it back up by trying to run every street in my neighborhood (Heights Park) and then city (Richardson). Progress map after a few runs this week.
There are 82 years between these two: my daughter (2) and my grandmother (89), both hiking Red Rocks on our annual two week vacation.
My article on social media and virtue that recommends M.b as a viable alternative to Big Social was published today by The Living Church.
Our ancestors sharing what they saw when they checked in on our “progress”:
They have dwellings, but they often pay people to destroy them because they are outdated. And then they pay those same people to put them back together in a style that will soon be outdated.
There are a few pivotal moments recorded in the Gospels that give us a glimpse into Jesus’ life after the resurrection.
But this Sunday’s Gospel is different: it is an Easter-themed flashback to before the Passion that helps us make sense of both the full and the empty tomb.
Began reading these two books today; one for professional and the other for personal reasons. I suspect both will have an impact in both realms.
Glory, glory, Tottenham Hotspur!
On End of Year Academic Awards Ceremonies
An excerpt from my opening remarks at our Rhetoric School Awards Ceremony. The most important things in life cannot be captured on a certificate. When my wife gave birth to our children, she was not handed a certificate. (Oddly enough, each of them were!) When a man dies at the age of 93 having lived a life of faithfulness to his wife and family, he does not win an award. The reward of these two examples of faithfulness is not any sort of certificate or recognition, but rather the thing itself.
I am not sure we are going to “Redefine” education with QR codes…
Wendell Berry’s poem Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front is all the more impressive/beautiful/haunting for having been first published in 1973.
Wrapping up a draft for my next Covenant piece that tries to answer the question Is there an alternative to Big Social that doesn’t shrink our souls?
My three suggestd alternatives three years after I quit Big Social: the text thread, the newsletter, and Micro.blog.
Scrapped idea for another day
A scrapped idea for this year’s Easter Vigil sermon that I think would be interesting to pursue eventually: I think you can find many, if not all, of Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief in the various reactions to the news of the Resurrection of Jesus found throughout the Gospels. That is as far as I got before moving in a different direction, but hope to come back to it some time.
A One Year Run Streak
Today I completed a 365 day run streak. I have run at least one mile per day for the past year. To mark the occasion, below are some initial reflections, interesting stats from the past year, plus a thought about what comes next. Initial Reflections You can do just about anything once a day. Most days it was inconvenient to fit in a run. Some days it was nearly impossible.
On the Lower Slopes of Worship
We are all beginners in the liturgy, really. All of us—from the first-time visitor who finds himself pain helplessly through the Prayer Book wondering what is happening, to the aged priest who has known it all by heart for half a century—are only on the lower slopes of worship. If the great seraphim themselves cover their faces in the presence of the Divine Majesty, who of us will claim to be experts at the act of approaching the Throne with offerings of adoration and praise.
'Man is what he eats.’ With this statement the German materialist philosopher Feuerbach thought he had put an end to all ‘idealistic’ speculations about human nature. In fact, however, he was expressing, without knowing it, the most religious idea of man.
For the Life of the World, Alexander Schmemann. The opening sentences of a book I will never tire of rereading.