When you used to store your family photos in physical albums, and then you were convinced to store them all on a hard drive, and then you were convinced by a large for-profit company to store them in the cloud for free, until the cloud became the only place your photos were stored, and the company decided to charge a monthly fee in order for you to continue to store all of your photos online, you have been had.
Many people are using large language models to write for them because they are acutely aware of their own deficiency in the art of rhetoric. But here is the rub: relying on these tools because you are already deficient in the art of rhetoric only makes you increasingly so.
Multiply this out on a societal scale, and the outlook becomes even more bleak. Imagine communities of people who already have trouble thinking and communicating clearly about things that matter choosing to outsource their thinking and communication to a tool that can’t think.
You don’t have to travel across the world
to be baptized in the Jordan River;
only through the space time continuum.
By the power of the Spirit of God
The still clear water of the modern font
Becomes the flow of that ancient river;
Cleansing you as it was itself once cleansed
by him who came after and yet before.
“This is my beloved,” the voice beckons,
Echoing from those first century shores,
The sun remains set
but we are both awake. You more anxious than me
To go outside.
It isn’t until I feel the chill of the air
That I realize You aren’t the only one
Who has been holding it all night.
“What’s the difference,” I ask
“Between this and a camping trip?
You know the kind
Where a shovel counts as outdoor plumbing
And you’re grateful for
The softness of a leaf?
First family hike of the new year, and our first with Bandit! McKinney Falls State Park - one of our favorite spots in the Austin area.
The second half of Nottingham Forest vs Man U was exhilarating: a Matt Turner give-away that led to an equalizer, a Matt Turner save that led to a successful counter attack, three bold one-touch strikes, and Nuno guiding Forest to their first victory over Man U in nearly three decades.
The altar rail is a microcosm
of a universe
held together by sacrament.
Imposed ashes speak
louder than the words. The priest says
“Remember thou art dust."
But in their eyes, and his, it sounds more like
“This year, or perhaps next,
I will commend your ashes, not these."
“The body of Christ”
is heard in ten thousand ways,
most of them unspoken.
The altar rails is the cosmos in micro.
2024 will mark the 40th anniversary of the Apple Macintosh. To properly mark the occasion, and in a nod to Steve Jobs—who never wanted our devices to become part of who we are—I am taking some intentional steps towards analoging my life.
I will do this in two primary ways, one aesthetic, and one ascetic. For the former, I will work towards making analog things more intellectually and physically attractive, when reasonable.
Merry Christmas from the newest member of our household! Happy to have a dog in the home again.
May He, who by His Incarnation gathered into one things earthly and heavenly, fill you with the fulness of inward peace and goodwill, and make you partakers of the Divine Nature; and the blessing of God almighty, + the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, be upon you and remain with you always. Amen.
Pleased to have Malcolm Guite as our Inaugural Honored Speaker at Coram Deo Academy Dallas!
Fables doing what fables do: remind us of something we need to hear, in a way that allows us to actually hear it.