Meg Greenfield once observed, Washington isn’t filled with the wild kids who stuck the cat in the dryer; it’s filled with the kind of kids who tattled on the kids who stuck the cat in the dryer.
Belief
A belief cannot be either proved or disproved. If you wish to believe that invisible flower spirits are causing your string beans to grow, there is no point in my trying to dissuade you, because these entities are invisible and immaterial. Something proposed as a truth can, however, be put to the test. In recent years, people have confused beliefs with truths. From this confusion have come ideologies and dogmas—the characteristic of a dogma being that it’s proposed as an absolute truth and cannot be disputed, and if you try disputing it, you’ll be burned as a heretic.
Margaret Atwood
NCAA Investigations
“Handing the N.C.A.A. an investigation is like throwing a Frisbee to an elderly dog. Maybe you get something back. Maybe the dog lies down and chews a big stick.” (Paul Shikany, the Bronx)
“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
-Bryan Stevenson
What if YOU’RE the asshole?
Maybe you are just like me and everyone else: part asshole, part angel. And you too have done and said things for which you are not proud, that you wish you could take back.
But maybe it’s time to Marie Kondo your resentments against yourself. You gotta take out the trash. Pretending it doesn’t smell only works for so long. Walk it to the curb, burn some incense, and move the f**k on.
You are a thousand times more than just the subtotal of your mistakes.
I hope that you have practiced enough self-honesty and compassion, accountability and forgiveness to tell a story about who you are that is bigger and more beautiful than the most shitty moment. I hope you can speak of your past self with compassion.
Nadia Bolz- Weber
Epistemic humility
“Name five things you got wrong”
in terms of honesty with oneself as well as the capacity to persuade others, there’s no substitute for principled and explicit fallibilism (the notion that knowledge might turn out to be false).
Brad East
ARE – Adverse Religious Experience
five adverse religious experiences (AREs) that often lead to trauma.
1. Fear of hell or eternal conscious torment
2. purity, virginity, and abstinence culture
3. altar calls, healings, and scary sermons
4. spanking and corporal punishment can lead persons into religiously abusive situations and toward spiritually abusive leaders
5. patriarchy and oppression.
https://scotmcknight.substack.com/p/religious-abuse-and-ares
via Scot McKnight
Everyone knows
a man killed 18 people and injured 13 others in Lewiston, Maine.
The killer was an Army reservist, and the military had determined that he should not have access to a weapon or ammunition. An Army colleague had alerted the local police, who contacted the family but did little else. His ex-wife knew: Their divorce decree stated that he had to keep all of his guns locked up. He was at least denied the purchase of a suppressor from a local gun shop based on his answer to a question on his background check. Kevin writes: “If anything is clear from the events preceding the bloodbath in Maine—in which everybody from the military to the police to friends and family and mental health authorities had good reason to intervene and the legal means to do so…
Dispatch Weeky
Feelings
Feelings are real—people do have them, I have observed—and they can certainly be plausible explanations for all kinds of behavior. But they are not excuses or justifications. If they were, men who murder their wives because they’re feeling cranky that day would never get convicted.
Margaret Atwood
DANG
…the longer many couples are married, the less accurate they are at reading each other. They lock in some early version of who their spouse is, and over the years, as the other person changes, that version stays fixed—and they know less and less about what’s actually going on in the other’s heart and mind.
William Ickles
Prophetic Friends
Prophecy is seeing and articulating reality from God’s perspective. Walter Brueggemann writes that prophecy “voices” God among humans. In Scripture, prophets recite the character of God as evidenced by his words and deeds, assess what’s going on for good or ill among God’s people, and reveal God’s purposes now and into eternity. Prophetic speech is often very bold.
Prophetic friends are there to see and reflect the quality of our character, and they expand our capacity for virtue. They share a vision of God leading us into a new calling and uniquely empower us to step into it. Prophetic friends show us “a world other than the visible, palpable world,” in Brueggemann’s words, which is the very root of hope. Prophetic friends keep us spiritually alive and kicking.
https://www.plough.com/en/topics/life/relationships/friends-mirrors-prophets
View from the front porch
Book recommendation:
I am currently reading and finding it to be personally relevant. Quotes below give a taste of Brooks’ thoughtful insights.
Who are you
…who you are becoming in corrosive times. Are you becoming more humane or less? Are you a person who obsesses over how unfairly you are treated, or are you a person who is primarily concerned by how you see and treat others? “Virtue is the attempt to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is,” Iris Murdoch wrote.
WHAT TO DO IN HARD TIMES
The most practical thing you can do, even in hard times, is to lead with curiosity, lead with respect, work hard to understand the people you might be taught to detest.
That means seeing people with generous eyes, offering trust to others before they trust you. That means adopting a certain posture toward the world. If you look at others with the eyes of fear and judgment, you will find flaws and menace; but if you look out with a respectful attitude, you’ll often find imperfect people enmeshed in uncertainty, doing the best they can.
David Brooks
STILL ON THE JOURNEY
George this blog is worth pasting in my journal. If only we could live all of this flawlessly. But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? In my experience this is what you’ve given me – “seeing people with generous eyes, offering trust” I’m so glad our lives collided