meat + fire + patience
Thanksgiving week reading:
- Finished The Man Who Was Thursday
- Started Shield the Joyous
- Started The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis
Oil and parts are not necessarily cheap, but it still remains a joy to pay the same to DIY an oil change on two vehicles—with full synthetic oil plus cabin, oil, and engine filters—for less than it costs to have someone else do the same for just one of your vehicles.
When I am able to sneak away for one night silent retreats, I often do so at a nearby Jesuit retreat center. A room was not available this week, so I took Bandit with me for one night of solo camping near Muenster, TX. It did not disappoint!
Audere est facare, indeed.
Are churches and schools trying to fully digitize their lives through over-reliance on a website, overuse of social media, and a felt need to embrace artificial intelligence at the same time that parents and parishioners are trying to wean themselves off these very things?
My latest favorite browser tool is Stay Free. In addition to outright blocking a myriad of domains to avoid distraction and doomscrolling, I also am a big fan of their Limits on the Go mode. Websites on this list will prompt you for a session-specific time limit each time you visit that site.
The Premier League instability at the top these past few matches is all fun and games until your team is responsible for Ipswich picking up their first PL win in over twenty years. At home. Come on (good grief), you Spurs!
In this bodies we will live; in these bodies we will die. Where you invest your love, you invest your life. Awake my soul. For you were made to meet your maker.
My goodness, do yourself a favor and watch the highlights of Real Madrid and Dortmund from today’s match.
The legendary Ray Hudson with the call. A poet of the beautiful game!
His legs are on fire, his heart is racing, but his head is in the refrigerator.
He knows where the goalposts are; he knows they ain’t movin’. He detonates this one with with extreme accuracy.
He moves in mysterious ways, as those old Irish lads used to sing.
While in New York on a family vacation we stopped by the Burke Library at Columbia to grab a quick picture with my Galatians book. Our youngest’s best question after we found it in the stacks: “Did you really think all of those words??”
St. Alphonsus on Uniformity with God's Will
I stumbled upon this brief text at church today, written by the 18th century Italian St. Alphonsus de Liguori. His distinction between conformity with God’s will and uniformity is helpfully described in the definitions below. And in the illustration that follows he excellently explains why it matters—what is to be gained through the pursuit of uniformity. Conformity is bending our will to the will of God. Uniformity is making one will of God’s will and ours, so that we will only what God wills; that God’s will alone is our will.
I am wrapping up an essay on three recent tech commercials that each typify a distinct approach to the role of technology: (1) technology as a tool, (2) technology as an Everything Machine, and (3) technology as a replacement for human activity. The commercials are from Instacart, Apple, and Google.
After a denial last spring by a count of 5 (against) to 1, the City Council has now unanimously approved our permit that will allow us to purchase a permanent home for our campus in the City of Richardson. Very grateful to our community for rallying support and showing up en masse!
Sermon: Humanity in Christ
A sermon on rest, interruptions, and what it means to be human. Mark 6 is the primary text. Proper 11, the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost 2024.
Sermon: Hungry for God (John 6)
By moving Jesus’s words about his body and blood out of the Last Supper and into the context of this chapter, what is John trying to reveal about humanity, and what is John trying to reveal about Jesus? A sermon for Proper 13 2024: the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost. The primary text is John 6:24-35. Transcript
The smile on Simone Biles' face at the end of her floor routine was the look of a woman who knows that she has run her race well, with all of its ups and downs. What an absolute joy to watch.
We finally started and finished a built-in bunk bed set for the kids and Bandit. This is the second time that Viv has drawn out an idea that I have mostly executed, with plenty of advice from friends and the internet along the way.
Finishing touches: glow in the dark stars on the ceiling.
Classical And Anglican Conversion Part 2: This world is enchanted.
Part 2: This world is enchanted. This is the second exploration of the various realizations that contributed to my conversion into the worlds of Anglicanism and classical education at (roughly) the same time.
Not all updates happen automatically, and computer attacks often occur because people or businesses are slow to adopt patches sent by software companies to fix vulnerabilities—in essence, failing to take the medicine the doctors prescribe. In this case, the medicine itself hurt the patients.
Kudos for a helpful tech explanation of the unique nature of the crash in this WSJ article about the CrowdStrike update.