I’m aware this may sound silly to a public audience, but a very aspirational nickname for myself occurred to me today while in the DiamondBack second-floor kitchenette: T.S. Lovejoy. The “T” stands for “thankful” and “thoughtful.” I want to be T.S. Lovejoy. (I am motivated by words. How much more motivating will I find an epithet?)

“The Choice” by William Butler Yeats

The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story’s finished, what’s the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day’s vanity, the night’s remorse.

(h/t Graeme Wood)

Just listened to: Our Gilded Veins by Rory Macdonald conducting The Royal Scottish National Orchestra on Outhere Music / Linn (2024). Bracing, pictorial, alternately elegiac and cathartic Scottish and English classical music, all of it written within the last forty-five years, most of it this century. Hubert Culot has written a more detailed review on MusicWeb International that renders much further comment from me superfluous, but I should like to note that the flautist Katherine Bryan’s performance in the title piece qualifies her as an endurance athlete.

I’ve only ever heard linguistic relativity (the idea, called the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis when I was in school, that language influences worldview and cognition) discussed with an eye on perceivables, such as colors and “snow.” (This may be a function of my non-erudition.) I’m told the hypothesis is still merely a hypothesis and very much in dispute.

But if you apply the hypothesis as a lens to help understand our grasp of abstractions, such as what we talk about and think about in ethics, my study of forgiveness, the confusion surrounding it, and its supposed pitfalls suggests to me that a version of the hypothesis focused on definitions of words representing abstractions is indisputable: If you say forgiveness is required, it matters very much to your worldview and thinking—not to mention your moral performance—how you define forgiveness. Same with love.

Just re-listened to: Ratatat (2004) by Ratatat. Because laptops were instruments even back then—and instruments capable of contributing to the creation of bittersweet instrumental vibes, at that, albeit indietronica vibes best suited for, say, an indie Sega Genesis game in which the characters mostly wander city streets. I admit I’m often not entirely sure which sounds are the synths and which are the guitars. Anyway, this is an album my whole family can agree on. Good for close listening or for background music, but admittedly slightly better for the former.

Just listened to: I quit (2025) by HAIM. My bias in favor of bands with three or more lead vocalists has a sibling: A bias in favor of bands comprising siblings.

A biblical understanding of the work of the Cross of Christ starts with this: Jesus willingly went to His death to fulfill the Law and the Prophets. Everything good the Crucifixion accomplishes by itself—and there’s a lot—flows from that fact. However, if the Law and the Prophets make no sense to you, that’s OK (and join a big club): Taking a page from Acts, I’ll tell you that Jesus wasn’t just crucified—He was also resurrected, validating Him as “both lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36) and thereby warranting your followership even if the import of what came two or three days prior escapes you.

We are slaves of freedom ✏️ 🎤 🎵

If I didn’t time myself at work, I’d be apt to spend less than forty hours a week working for DiamondBack, not more. And that’s no sleight to DiamondBack, who are doing good things; instead, it’s an indication that I’m interested in everything and am easily distracted.

“It’s weird that we’d rather sit through another podcast episode about the loneliness epidemic than just call somebody unscheduled” (Aaron).

“All things are permitted for me, but not all things are of benefit. All things are permitted for me, but I will not be mastered by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12). And again: “All things are permitted, but not all things are of benefit. All things are permitted, but not all things build people up” (1 Corinthians 10:23).

After another morning waking up in the 4 o’clock hour and failing to fall back to sleep, I find myself freer than usual of my scruples. And I mean that as a good thing. Lord, let me not be mastered by anything except pure love for You and those around me. Not mastered by my own schedule, not mastered by my own scruples, not mastered by my own habits, not mastered by my own compulsions, not mastered by my own prior intentions, not mastered by my premade plans, not mastered by fear of embarrassment, not mastered by fear of overextension, not mastered by greed—none of these things, except insofar as they are coterminous with pure love for You and for those around me.

This...

The Cross tells us we are definitely guilty. It also tells us that if we repent, we are definitely forgiven. To take one and not the another, setting aside that the latter is a non sequitur without the former, is to cause ourselves to suffer from incurable shame (if we take only the former) or to cause others to suffer from our seared consciences (if we take only the latter).

The above is true, by the way, whether we accept the logic of vicarious sacrifice, as ancient Israelites did and as most present-day Christians do, or reject it, as Girardians do.

Just listened to: All The Difference (2024) by Skye Peterson, aka Phoebe Bridgers’ pseudonymous bid get on lists like this one and gain airplay on K-LOVE. 😉

In all seriousness, this is thoughtful, doubt-speckled, faithful journalmusic crafted by the Christian twentysomething daughter of Andrew and produced with tastefully anodyne charm by her brother, making for an incipient CCM dynasty I feel excited about. I even dared recommend it to my daughter.

Just listened to: two appealing recordings of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (1824), mostly while lollygagging in Spring Creek Park in the late evening, both upon David Hurwitz’s recommendation:

• Ferenc Fricsay conducting Berliner Philharmoniker on Deutsche Gramophone (1959), and
• Osmo Vänskä conducting the Minnesota Orchestra on BIS (2006).

The latter is like in that episode Star Trek: The Next Generation where Data claims people say his violin playing is technically flawless but lacks soul. To describe the Vänskä exactly like that would be to overstate things—otherwise, I wouldn’t have liked the recording at all—but its primary appeals are its tightness of execution and the clarity and dynamic range of the recording itself. You’re basically hearing the sheet music in brilliant lucidity. With Beethoven, that’s not a bad thing.

The former is a volcanic ripsnorter of a performance whose only drawbacks are the audibility of recording hiss during the quiet parts and the inaudibility of the alto soloist admist her cohort.

My son just revived our old Tivoli Model CD and gave it to my daughter as a birthday present along with a pair of cheapo computer speakers. I’m doubly gratified: He used his skills to bless her, and she is now interested in my CD collection.

Just finished reading: Solito (2022) by Javier Zamora. I am dubious about most movie, music, and book recommendations from friends. Only book recommendations from Josh and, now, after reading this book, maybe book recommendations from Ruth, will I take without hesitation. (Although she did recommend The Night Watchman, which wasn’t for me.)

Solito is a thirtysomething Salvadoran immigrant’s memoir of his illegal migration to California at the age of 9. It’s a hard travelogue told in the historical present tense and in the voice of his 9-year-old self. It tempts me to go find and read a bunch of think pieces so I can tell myself I have an educated opinion about borders and immigration policy.

But no, I won’t concern myself with things to big for me, although I will say that the cats-and-mice act at the Mexican border just seems so very silly. I do hope multiple someones better positioned than me to make a difference in this arena read this book. And me, I’ll just recommend donating to...

If I were granted a do-over for the whole establish-a-household-and-rear-children thing, I’d equip my house with a corded landline and then bar cellphones from anywhere indoors other than the mudroom.

“Make young friends. The old ones keep dying.”

— Larry’s parents, as reported by septuagenarian Larry today in church, who is attending three funerals this week

Just finished watching “What’s in your bucket?,” a sermon given by Greg Davidson Laszakovits this past Sunday at University Baptist & Brethren Church, because I was out of town but want to drink from the same wells as fellow UBBCers when I’m away. Its point is simple: In light of James 2:14-20, your bucket list ought to contain goals of service.

I write about it neither because it was an amazing piece of oratory, although it was perfectly fine, nor because it changed my life. I’m not even necessarily recommending anybody else watch it, although it is only fifteen minutes long. Instead, I write about it because:

• of how well it jibes with a drumbeat I’ve been trying to sound since my period of religious doubt in 2015–2016 and how happy it makes me to hear this sort of thing from a pulpit: What God really wants from us is good fruits and the good works that lead to them. Moral performance, or at least earnest moral effort. Following Jesus is first a moral demand, not an affective...

friend:

Saw this. Did you find that Luke’s approach was different from other gospel writers?

self:

Yes, although this video makes a soteriological mountain out of a textual molehill. In Luke, the temple curtain is torn literally the verse immediately before Jesus is reported to breathe his last. Besides, elsewhere in Mark, repentance is quite explicitly tied to forgiveness in Mark: That’s how Mark starts.

As for Matthew, I agree that the connection is not as explicit. For instance, Matthew does elide the repentance condition for interpersonal forgiveness that Luke makes explicit. Nevertheless, the connection underpins the anti-beatitudes of chapter 11 as well as the the sign of Jonah pericope of chapter 12. And while it’s true that at the Last Supper, Luke does skip the “for forgiveness of sins” that Matthew has Jesus include in the words of invocation, Mark also omits the same! And it’s in Matthew where we twice read Jesus quoting Hosea’s word about God wanting...

Just listened to: a recording of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis in D major, Op. 123 (1824) by Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting the Concentus Musicus Wien on Sony Classical (2016), mostly while on a slow drive to and from the supermarket in Manahawkin, NJ for beach-house groceries, but partly later that evening while pacing the boardwalk to and from the 21st Street beach in Barnegat Light on our final full day at the Shore this week.

They say this piece is one of the pinnacles of sacred Western classical. They are right. It is spaciously majestic. It features two of my favorite modes (Dorian and Mixolydian). It’s not overweighted with Beethovian repetition, about which I have mixed feelings, usually depending on how I feel about the charm of the theme. (For example, the theme of the first movement of the Fifth Symphony? Unplesantly, incessantly intense. “Waldstein”’s first-movement theme. Pure charm.)

Plus, it’s anything but solemn. (Apparently, “solemn” in musical settings means “lengthy...

As I recall, on the basis of a misinterpretation of Romans 4:17b (“calleth those things which be not as though they were”), Charismatics have been trumpeting fake news as a disciplined, God-mandated spiritual practice for decades. This makes them unusually comfortable with and skilled at newspeak and doublethink—about current events and moral performance both—as well as prone to interpreting everything they claim and hear as being of heavenly import.

This helps me understand part of our current national political scene.

Kevin Max is apostate. Tait is a sexual predator. Toby, don’t fail now.

A way to actionably summarize part of my June 1 post: If it’s not for the sake of someone else, then do it in thanksgiving. If I stick that two-part rule for behavior, I’ll be doing everything in love.

Whoa. If we don’t listen to God, God doesn’t listen to us. Or so I’m taking from Zechariah 7:13-14.