Paging Phil Christman! These guys will do most of the heavy lifting for you, Phil. They’re clear-eyed and fearless.
St. Basil the Great:
“I am wronging no one,” you say, “I am merely holding on to what is mine.” What is yours? Who gave it to you so that you could bring it into life with you? Why, you are like a man who pinches a seat at the theater at the expense of latecomers, claiming ownership of what was for common use. That’s what the rich are like; having seized what belongs to all they claim it as their own on the basis of having got there first. Whereas if everyone took for himself enough to meet his immediate needs and released the rest for those in need of it, there would be no rich and no poor.
St. Ambrose of Milan:
It is not from your own property that you give to the poor. Rather, you make return from what is theirs. For what has been given as common for the use of all, you have appropriated to yourself alone. The earth belongs to all, not to the rich. Therefore you are paying a debt, not bestowing a gift.
I'm very grateful for Stephen J. Schuler’s review of my biography of Paradise Lost over at FPR.
A fascinating and deeply encouraging post by @dancohen on how his library is connecting chatbot inquiries to library resources:
This output encourages the student — or the faculty member or the general public — to consult the texts themselves, which popular chatbots eschew during spasms of summarization. Instead, through our software we want to foreground the expressive works of human beings — the articles, books, documents, and works of art, rather than the AI’s digests of these objects.
Updated a post in response to a fierce correction from Phil Christman.
Re: my post from earlier today, my friend Jono Linebaugh sent me this picture of a sign he came across in his travels. This one has the added virtue of theological acuity.
An old theory of mine: Online, big work gets smaller, while smaller work stays the same or gets bigger.
Different from/than/to — honestly, I’ve reached the point where they all sound wrong to me.
Very pleased and slightly disoriented at the prospect of hearing Rowan preach in my little parish church. Worlds colliding!
Yesterday’s post: Should Christians be leftists? Today’s post: Should Christians be anarchists?
Finished reading: Why Christians Should Be Leftists by Phil Christman — and I wrote a long rambly post about it here 📚
For those of you who aren’t on micro.blog … you should really consider it! It’s a great service, and its fearless leader, Manton Reece, is one of the truly Good Guys of the Internet. A while back I wrote about some of the hidden features here, and then about what I call the three paths of the service. And it has only improved since I wrote those posts. You can adapt it to so many different use cases: for instance, it’s a great way to keep a reading journal and an equally great way to make a photo blog. Please do explore it if you haven’t.
As Iistened to Ezra Klein’s interview with Brian Eno I felt that Ezra was doing 75% of the talking. He wasn’t, but he did talk way too much, especially when you consider that his guest is one of the most interesting people on the planet. I kept wanting the Ezra Klein Show Minus Ezra Klein, like Garfield Minus Garfield.
The wisdom of Bertie Wooster — whose intellectual acumen has finally been justly acknowledged.
I remember a couple of years ago at Laity Lodge hearing Claire work out this lovely song — so good to hear it in its completed version.
