Our Monterey oak is 10 years old — seems like it was a baby just yesterday.
In word and deed, in speech and action, then, we utter our Amen to God. If there is a conclusion to draw here, it is this. Christian wisdom consists in letting God be God, in hearing and consenting to God's great declaration in the gospel that the time is fulfilled, the end of the ages has come, and salvation, fulfillment, peace are established in our midst. Christian wisdom consists in lining ourselves up with that truth. In one sense there aren't any great depths to the Christian life — no mystical doctrines to learn, no tricks of the spiritual life to master, no experiences to cultivate. What there is instead is the quiet, daily business of setting our hearts on what God has done for us. We are to love what God is and what God has done; we are to direct our lives toward him as our goal, and to make him our supreme delight and joy. And we are to learn that in our praises and our daily living, our chief task is this: to echo in what we say and what we do that great Yes which God speaks in his Son, and to find in him none other than the way of life. To do that is to utter the Amen through him, and to begin to live to the glory of God.
I have some questions about an article claiming that religious persuasion should be deemed a human-rights violation.
My guitar hero Martin Simpson has posted a beautiful recording of an old English folk song, “The Recruited Collier” — also known as “Jenny’s Complaint” or “Jimmy’s Enlisted.” These folk songs often have obscure and convoluted histories.
What strikes me now is not that we were careless. It is that we were able, at the same time, to be sincere. To drink and mean it. To feel genuine warmth while knowing, somewhere else in the mind, that the world had already shifted. We inhabited two realities. And we chose, as people always do, to live inside the warmer one.
Nate Anderson (my former student!) on how Reddit is trying to force people onto its app, employing the same enshittifying strategy that Substack does. This is why I’m on micro.blog. Manton makes apps for our convenience but never tries to force us to use them.