Lord, let my first response to the prospect of a novel social engagement no longer be, “Aw, man. That’ll impinge on my capacity to discharge my current responsibilities well.” The fact is, half of what I’m calling “my current responsibilities” are no such thing: They are instead scruples, habits, things I probably read at some point somewhere were good for me, parts of my misguidedly constant quest for constancy.
And most of the other half can probably wait.
It shouldn’t be that novel social engagements feel like detractions from these non-social responsibilities and “responsibilities.” From now on, let my first response to the prospect of a novel social engagement be, “Ooh. I’d love to do that.” And let the only energy preservation check be, “Can I do so without irresponsibly detracting from my other social engagements?”
Self care is a necessary evil, and for me, at least, it’s not as necessary or as frequently necessary as you think. More important are self differentiation, authentic self expression, and engagement of self with the world and with the God who made it.
I’m good at loving people by accomplishing and as a form of accomplishment. And I’m good at loving people by paying attention to them when called on or when prearranged. But there are other modes of loving people. I don’t know what they are. But I want to discover them.
Or is it REdiscover them? The above observation of myself is true, but it’s true in part because of the interaction of my psyche and social acceleration, I’m sure of it.
How long can I continue to fellowship with a people who see the Bible as a lesser claimant to the knowledge of God than themselves? NB: I’m not speaking only of the many good people of University Baptist & Brethren Church of whom this is true, although I admit it was they who prompted this entry. No, people in so-called conservative circles are just as likely to dismiss or be ignorant of the scriptures and the God to whom the scriptures point. And their dismissals seem to me more often further afield of the point than those of the so-called progressives.
“Be yourself,” they say. “Stop trying to be someone else.” But what if who you are is wicked? But then again, who am I to judge myself? In any case, it seems to me the danger with “do the next right thing” is that “there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12, 16:25). If I went with “do the next right thing” unchecked, I’d be lonely, because I’d always choose things I can control. “Do the next right thing” must be defined. And its definition is this: “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” and “love your neighbor as yourself.”
C’mon, Enneagram 8! Use your drive for power and control on your own thinking—namely, correct yourself when you are wringing your hands in the face of circumstances you can’t control or people who are speaking or acting in ways you don’t expect. It’s just a variation of the partially reformed perfectionist’s hack: I am not exhibiting self-control if I cannot...
In recent years, Jesus’ frequent use of the future tense in the causal clauses of the Beatitudes (among a few other, subtler evidences) has inclined me to think of them not as a set of timeless aphorisms (e.g., if-this-then-that precepts or visions of human flourishing), but instead more as an historical announcement in direct relation to Jesus’ advent—a sibling to Jesus’ claim in Luke 4:16-21 to being Himself the messianic fulfillment of Isaiah 61:1-2, and a cousin to the Songs of Mary, Zechariah, and Simeon slightly earlier in Luke.
Hence, when I’m translating or paraphrasing Matthew 5:3-11, I’m now given to rendering μακάριος, traditionally translated “blessed,” as “fortunate,” “lucky,” or most colloquially, “in for a treat” instead and to making explicit the Jesus-specific, redemptive-historical subtext I sense. Like this:
[Now that I, Jesus, am here,] the poor in spirit are in for a treat, because the kingdom of heaven is theirs.
Those who mourn are fortunate, because now they’ll...
My taste in music is an extension of Dad’s, rooted as it is in pre-1980s rockism and in melody-forward (but not treacly) Western classical music circa 1800–1950. I’m more than okay with that. I feel happy about it, in fact. It gives him and me a relational bridge, a line I have frankly underexploited. It also feels nice to know that a part of me I enjoy comes from somewhere. Is it weird to be thankful for your own taste in music?
For whatever it’s worth, here’s a six-hour playlist of Tchaikovsky recordings I’d love to hear again, harvested from a listening project with Travis. Among the pieces in it that I haven’t yet writtenabout are:
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 (1870/1880)
Heifetz sure brings the fire, but it’s Julia Fischer—at twenty-two years old—who brings the truest spirit to this happiest of Tchaikovsky’s major works.
Opera is generally not for me. Eugene Onegin one is no exception. But “Kuda, kuda vï udalilis,” Lensky’s famous pre-duel aria, sung here by Sergei Lemeshev, who made the role of Lensky his stock-in-trade, is the exception to the no exception.
The Year 1812, Solemn Overture, Op. 49 (1880)
Antal Doráti, Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, and Mercury Records re-recorded 1812 Overture four years after being the first to release a recording of the piece featuring the sound of actual cannon fire and church bells—because to Doráti,...
During my recent week in downtown Seattle, I watched many scooter riders flout the law by zooming down sidewalks despite the presence of pedestrians—and then heed the law by stopping at pedestrian traffic signals even when no automobile traffic was in sight. Go figure. Might makes right, I guess—and pedestrians frequently lose.
Lord, may everything I do today be done out of a deep-seated, automatic regard for You and those around me as important, desiring Your joy and their prosperity.
Here’s hoping that somehow that blatty first movement is a grower, because—the other movements! Second: Typically pretty Tchaikovsky (my daughter said was “very nice”) lent operatic, Italianate gravitas by Pappano and his Roman band. Third: Five minutes of charming, sometimes Looney Tunes pizzicato that remains grounded by its serious interpretation. Finale: I laughed out loud euphorically at this vigorous street party.
In a concordant, resolute response to Damon Krukowski’s brief “Revisiting the Pyramid of Inequality that is Streaming Music,” I remind myself that if I want humanity to keep recording music that isn’t of mass appeal—and I do—then assuming I have the means, I must buy records from the recorders and not merely rent them from the tech fiefs.
Just listened to: a bunch of recordings of Tchaikovsky’s familiar symphonic poem Romeo and Juliet (1870/1880) as my inaugural part of a co-listening project with Travis. Of those, I enjoyed all of the following:
Bernstein conducts NYPO as if Tchaikovsky had written the piece as the score to a 1950s movie.
Muti conducts Philharmonia and Fischer conducts Budapest as if the composer had written the piece as the score to a 21st-century movie (which is weird in Muti’s case because he made the record in 1977).
Abbado conducts Berlin as if Tchaikovsky had written the piece as the score of real-life, magical fairy tale.
Doráti conducts LSO as if Tchaikovsky had written the piece so that Rite-of-Spring-era Stravinsky could conduct it (or eat it for breakfast).
Pappano conducts Santa Cecilia as if Tchaikovsky had written the piece as an opera.
Again, all are worth hearing, but I enjoy the Abbado third-best, the Doráti second-best—because it’s just so different and exciting and snarly—and the Pappano the mostest. Because let’s face it: Romeo and Juliet is squarely the sort of story out of which operas are born. The hi-fi recording helps here, too, of course.)