Carla told me as I spouted some of what I was learning from the Burkeman book that she suspected I don’t undertake things when I don’t think I’ll succeed at them. That’s something worth thinking about, perhaps.

My reflections on excerpts and quotations from Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mere Mortals (2021) by Oliver Burkeman:

I think before I dive in to actual quotations, I should say that the main effect of this book on me is to solidify something I should have know: You can’t do everything you want. You won’t do everything you want. The sooner you get over that, the sooner you can move forward boldly with whatever you want to do, whether that’s oriented toward accomplishment or relationships or something else. (All in love, of course.) I think this takeaway would make the author happy.

And the more individual sovereignty you achieve over your time, the lonelier you get (31).

Gah, I’ve sure noticed that.

If Hägglund were guaranteed an infinity of these summer vacations, there’d be nothing much to value about any one of them; it’s only the guarantee that he definitely won’t have an infinity of them that makes them worth valuing. Indeed, it’s slide only from this position of valuing what is finite because it’s finite, Hägglund argues, that one can truly care about the impact of a collective peril such as climate change, which is wreaking changes to his native country’s landscape. If our earthly existence were merely a preluded to an eternity in heaven, threats to that existence couldn’t matter in any ultimate sense (63).

The above strikes me as untrue—and it also misrepresents my Christian take on the weight of this life, although I can understand why he perceives the Christian view as this:

If you try to find time for your most valued activities by first dealing with all the other important demands on your time, in the hope that there’ll be some left over at the end, you’ll be disappointed (74).

“Pay yourself first” applies to time, too! But how do I distinguish “[my] most valued” from “other important”?

Their reason for treating distraction so seriously was straightforward…: what you pay attention to will define, for you, what reality is (91).

We must never forget that, especially when managing what we read and watch and listen to. People have all kinds of views on the way this world works—and it has to do with we pay attention to. With Fox News and MSNBC having been around now a while, that much is hopefully obvious. Also, that’s what I prefer not to watch TV, even fictional TV.

Can you have an experience you don’t experience? The finest meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant might as well be a plate of instant noodles if your mind is elsewhere; and a friendship to which you never actually give a moment’s thought is a friendship in name only (94).

I should share the above with Ethan.

So it’s not simply that our devices distract us from more important matters. It’s that they change how we’re defining “important matters” in the first place. In the words of the philosopher Harry Frankfurt, they sabotage our capacity to “want what we want to want” (96–97).

That is why I don’t read the news. In general, I don’t want anyone other than God, myself, my family, and my friends to indicate what is important to me. Knowing how to deal with national emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, of course, requires that I let the government itself tell me what’s important. I guess what I’m really saying is that I have no good reason to let journalists, who are neither experts nor friends, tell me what’s important.

Some Zen Buddhists hold that the entirety of human suffering can be boiled down to this effort to resist paying full attention to the way things are going, because we wish they were going differently (“This shouldn’t be happening!), or because we wish we felt more in control of the process (109).

What does that do to the problem of evil? :) Zen Buddhists certainly can’t object to theism on that basis.

It would have been one thing if the Natural Parents’ justifications for insisting on “baby-wearing,” or co-sleeping, or breastfeeding until age three had simply been that these were more satisfying ways for parents and babies to live. But their real motive, sometimes explicitly expressed, was that these were the best things to do to ensure a child’s future psychological health. (Again: no real evidence.) (130)

For the record, I was one of the “Natural Parents” whose justification was that it was more satisfying—and, I’ll add, easier that way. Also, I question his claim of “no real evidence,” but I suppose I don’t have any, so whatever.

Why…should vacations by the ocean, or meals with friends, or lazy mornings in bed need defending in terms of improved performance at work? “You keep hearing people arguing that more time off might be good for the economy,” fumed John de Graaf, an ebullient sevenths filmmaker and the driving force behind Take Back Your Time. “But why should we have to justify life in terms of the economy? It makes no sense!” (149)

That’s not a difficult rhetorical question to answer: We have to justify life in terms of the economy because making the argument to our employers, whose primary interest in our lives is, naturally, our contribution to the economy. The point holds, of course.

idleness aversion (149)

That’s a noun phrase that will requires some rumination.

Peck’s insight here—that if you’re willing to endure the discomfort of not knowing, a solution will often present itself—would be helpful enough if it were merely a piece of advice for fixing lawn mowers and cars. But his larger point is that it applies almost everywhere in life: to creative work and relationship troubles, politics and parenting (179).

That might be the most important thing for me to take away from this book.

Because what is a “problem,” really? The most generic definition is simply that it’s something that demands that you address yourself to it—and if life contained no such demands, there’d be no point in anything. Once you give up the unattainable goal of eradicating all your problems, it becomes possible to develop and appreciation for the fact that life just is a process of engaging with problem after problem, given each on the time it requires—that the presence of problems in your life, in other words, isn’t an impediment to a meaningful existence by the very substance of one (180–181).

The above does not strike me as true.

[Carl Jung’s] sole advice for walking such a path was to “quietly do the next and most necessary thing. So long as you think you don’t yet know what that is, you still have too much money to spend in useless speculation. But if you do with conviction the next and most necessary thing, you are always doing something meaningful and intended by fate” (227).

“Quietly do the next and most necessary thing.” Yes.

Focus on one big project at a time and see it to completion before moving on to what’s next ().

I’ve got to tell Ben and Brandon this.

My reflections on excerpts from Do We Need the New Testament?: Letting the Old Testament Speak for Itself (2015) by John Goldingay:

A novel summary of the Gospel in light of the Old Testament:

In a sense God did nothing new in Jesus. God was simply taking to its logical and ultimate extreme the activity in which he had been involved throughout the First Testament story.

[…]

One might almost say that God had to provoke humanity into its ultimate act of rebellion in order to have the opportunity to act in a way that refused to let this ultimate act of rebellion have the last word.

[…]

My argument is that the execution and the resurrection were indeed the logical end term of a stance that God had been taking through First Testament times, so that the First Testament story does give an entirely adequate account of who God is and of the basis for relating to God. Because of who God has always been, God was already able to be in relationship with his people, despite their rebellion. God has always been able and willing to carry their waywardness. And on the basis of that story, Israel has always been able to respond to God and to be in relationship with God. In this sense the gospel did not open up any new possibilities to people; those possibilities were always there.

In which Goldingay delivers big “ouch“ for the church that seems like it’s also a knock on God as a strategist:

God’s strategy was that his people would be the magnet that attracts people to him. Israel was not very good at being such a magnet, and the church continues to have this problem.

In which I hear, “Zing!”:

Once people know about eternal life, they often stop taking this life really seriously. The history of Christian attitudes provides evidence for this speculation. We need the New Testament to give us hope for resurrection life, but we need the First Testament to remind us of the importance of this life, and to give us hope for this life.

In a comment about our action in relation to God’s kingdom that echoes (by a period of days) something I was trying to get across to a friend in an email correspondence:

In none of the Gospels does Jesus tell his disciples to extend the kingdom, work for the kingdom, build up the kingdom, or further the kingdom.

To which I can only say wow:

Further, the First Testament is under no illusion about whether implementing the Torah has the potential to achieve God’s purpose for Israel’s life. There is no direct link between seeking to restrain injustice in society and the giving implementing of God’s reign. Implementing God’s reign is fortunately God’s business. We have noted that the New Testament does not talk about human beings furthering or spreading or building up or working for God’s reign. Human efforts to achieve social justice are not destined to be successful. “Our responsibility is not to save the world. We are not required to transform This Age.” The problem about human society is too deep. As human beings living in God’s world, our vocation is to do what we can to restrain disorder in society, in light of what the Scriptures tell us about God’s creation purpose, but not to be overly optimistic about what we can do to bring in the kingdom.

In connection with our life in the world, then, do we need the New Testament? From it we get a further articulation of God’s creation ideals. Jesus does not need to give us any new truths or to issue new divine expectations in this connection, though he does provide a fresh prophetic articulation of God’s truth and God’s expectations. More important is the fact that from his story we know how God’s self-giving came to a climax in him as he let himself be martyred. We learn how that self-giving issued in the promise of resurrection and eternal life that extends to the whole world. It is what Jesus did that crucially matters. We could not do without that.

Important for me to remember:

The person and activity of God’s Spirit are objective realities separate from any sense of them that we may have.

Here’s the bit about the recurring theme I found so remarkable:

The prophets characteristically announce an event that sounds as if it will be the ultimate fulfillment of God’s ultimate purpose, and it is characteristic of the New Testament to talk as if that fulfillment has happened. That perspective applies to [Joel 2:30-32]. These declarations look like a description fo cataclysmic events at the End, of the kind that are also described in a passage such as Luke 21. Acts 2 sees these declarations, too, as fulfilled at Pentecost, which reflects that fact that Pentecost is itself indeed a partial realization of the End.

Yet is is only a partial realization, as is also characteristic of the fulfillment of prophecy. When a prophet announces the End (with positive or native implications), we have noted that an end does come, but it turns out not to be the End. The indication that Pentecost was not the End is the way history continues to unfold, with further withdrawing of the Spirit as well as further outpourings. Given that two thousand more years have passed (three or four times as long as passed from Joel to Pentecost), it seems Pickwickian even to call Pentecost the beginning of the End, though theologically there is a basis for speaking in these terms. It is rather the most magnificent instance of a pattern that runs through the First Testament and continues to run through the church’s story, and it is part of the guarantee (as Paul emphasizes) that the End will come. It is also a basis of praying and hoping that we may see more instantiations of the pattern, if we do not see the end itself.

An uncomfortable truth about the Holy Spirit is that we cannot control its coming and operation, as we cannot bring in or further or work for God’s reign. We can hurt or grieve the Holy Spirit and forfeit any right to the involvement of God’s spirit with us. But in ordinary human experience we cannot make another person fall in love with us or want to spend time with us, and neither can we take action that will ensure that God pours out his spirit on us. Our relationship with God is not contractual, so that we could fulfill the right conditions and it would have the desired results, as if our relationship with God resembled putting coins in a vending machine. It is a personal relationship, and such relationships involve freedom on both sides.

Isn’t the following what Deuteronomy actually says?:

It was the must that was the problem. There were circumstances in which Paul was happy to observe rules in the Torah, in connection with taking and keeping a vow or with circumcision. But the must implied that observing the rules in the Torah was the make-or-break factor in a relationship with God.

A curious take on the role of the Law that I’d like to look further into:

Elsewhere, Paul describes the Law as designed to increase transgression (Rom 5:20), perhaps in the sense that it designated as transgression offenses such as coveting that we might not otherwise have seen as sinful (e.g., Rom 4:15; 5:13; 7:7).

I love his refusal to disguise the Bible:

The Bible is not a lover letter to us from God; it does not focus on a personal relationship between God and the invidious. Nor does it focus on a challenge to work for peace and justice or on adherence to a body of doctrinal beliefs. Nor does it focus on faith itself: “The Gospel is not primary concerned with faith” but with “that upon which the faith reposes,” with the object of faith, “the kerygma that arouses faith.” It suggests a grand narrative about a project that God initiated and will bring to completion. Human communities and individuals gain their significance through being drawn into that project.

On the way the Scriptures use the Scriptures:

To put it more paradoxically, the hermeneutical guidance that the New Testament offers us is that we should not be looking to it for hermeneutical guidance, unless the guidance is an invitation to be imaginative in seeking to see how First Testament texts speak to our concerns.

Is this true? I think not, at least not exclusively. There’s a lot about the people talking.

The worship the Psalms commend and model is one that focuses on God.

This is a great spiritual strategy:

Intercession implies interposing between two parties so as to bring them together. It entails identifying with one party and representing it to another. For a prophet, intercessory prayer involved identifying with people and representing them before God, so that one speaks as “we” or “I,” not as “they” or “he” or “she.” I realized that the apparent absence of intercessory prayers from the Psalter might mean that actually the “I” and “we” psalms could be used as intercessions as well as supplications. Perhaps Israel used them that way; certainly we might do so. In praying protest psalms, one need not be praying for oneself. Specifically, in praying the prayers in the Psalms that speak out of oppression, affliction, persecution and tyranny, we pray not directly for ourselves but for people who experience oppression, affliction, persecution and tyranny, with whom we identify. We pray for God to put down tyrants and oppressors.

Not so fast:

Christians commonly justify their opposition to the use of such psalms by suggesting that these psalms are out of keeping with the New Testament, but it is not so. While the New Testament doesn’t quote Psalm 137, it does utilize imprecatory parts of Psalm 69 (e.g., Jn 2:17; Acts 1:20), which as a whole is more extensively imprecatory. Further, we noted in the introduction to this volume that Revelation 6:10 reports an imprecatory prayer on the part of the martyrs, who ask, “How long, Lord, holy and true, will you not judge and take redress for our blood from earth’s inhabitants?” God’s response is not to point out that such a prayer is inappropriate in light of Jesus’ exhortation to forgive enemies; it is to promise them that the time will soon come. Since it has not done so, perhaps this promise provides further reason for praying in imprecatory fashion, or further reason for us Westerners to avoid doing so if we allow for the possibility that we will be its victims.

A nice way of viewing the Bible:

“From a theological perspective, the Bible is the revelation of what God selected to be remembered and forgotten of God’s relationship to Israel and to the world” and of “God’s own character and configuration.”

What?!:

There is no basis in Scripture for the conviction that the narrative of history is moving toward the kingdom of God.

Again, something to think about:

Jesus did not reveal something new about God. What he did was embody God.

C’mon, preach it!:

I am not sure what would be the unfortunate result of interpretive programs that assume an autonomous Old Testament. Our actual problem is that of subsuming the First Testament under our understanding of what is Christian, so that this strategy enables us to sidestep parts of the First Testament that we want to avoid. By sleight of hand, aspects of what the First Testament says about God are filtered out in the name of christocentric interpretation. But the real problem is that we don’t like these aspects of the Scriptures. Christocentric interpretation makes it harder for the Scriptures to confront us when we need to be confronted. It is not the case that what was hidden in the Old is revealed in the New. Rather, there are many things revealed in the First Testament that the church has hidden by its interpretive strategy, obscuring the nature of scriptural faith.

This is to completely discount the idea that we can hold it up as an example to be spiritualized. Nope.:

the positive way the New Testament speaks in Acts 7:45 about Joshua’s taking the land and in Hebrews 11 about Israel conquering kingdoms, becoming faithful in battle and routing foreign armies suggests that it did not feel any of the unease about such First Testament narratives that is characteristic of modern Christians, as it does not feel any unease about the kind of praying that occurs in Psalm 137.24

In its entirety, worth the price of admission:

So do we need the New Testament? Or rather, what’s new about the New Testament? Christians commonly operate with the working hypothesis that Jesus brought a revelation from God that went significantly beyond the revelation in the First Testament. My thesis in this volume has been that the chief significance of Jesus does not lie in any new revelation that he brought. It lies in who he was, what he did and what happened to him, and what he will do. He did not reveal new truths about what it means to be God except the fact that God is more complicated than people would previously have thought (“three persons and one God”). He did not reveal new truths about what it means to be human but (like a prophet) brought into sharper focus some of the truths that people ought to have known.

Thus their reaction to him was not, “Wow, we never knew that.” It was more something along the lines of, “I wish you hadn’t reminded us of that,” and of, “What right have you got to be associating yourself with God so closely?” He did bring a concrete embodiment of who God had already told Israel that he was and had shown Israel that he was. In this sense Paul indeed implicitly thinks in terms of “a revelation which began with creation but which now has been brought into sharper focus in Christ.” Jesus provoked Jews and Gentiles to an ultimate rejection of God that God turned into the ultimate means whereby his relationship with his people could be affirmed, healed and restored. He also thus opened the way for the news about what he had done to be shared with the Gentile world as something that could bring it the same blessing, in keeping with God’s original intention. And he established his own authority to be the person who would ultimately judge the world as a whole.

In the course of telling his story and working out its implications, the New Testament does make some affirmations that supplement what people could know from the First Testament. One is the fact that Sheol is not the end for humanity. At the end, all humanity is going to be raised from death in order to enjoy resurrection life or to go to hell. Thus people in the First Testament “did not receive what was promised. God had planned something better for us, so that they would not be brought to completion without us” (Heb 11:39-40). Paul pushes the argument further in connection with affirming that all God’s people will be raised or will meet the Lord together (1 Thess 4:13-18). We do not go to heaven when we die; the entire people of God will reach completion together. Alongside this truth is the way the New Testament assumes the existence of Satan. While the First Testament presupposes the existence of an embodiment of resistance to God, the New Testament puts more emphasis on this motif.

It is appropriate that the truths about resurrection, hell and Satan should be associated with the story of Jesus’ dying and rising. It was Jesus’ dying and rising that made resurrection possible. It was these events that brought to a climax the conflict between God and the power that resists God. And it was these events that made hell necessary for people who turn their back on what God did in Jesus and insist on maintaining their resistant stance. Oddly, these truths were all part of Jewish thinking in Jesus’ day, so that even they are not new revelations that Jesus brings. It is almost as if the people of God knew they needed to affirm these beliefs even though they couldn’t quite know why or on what basis they might do so. It is Jesus who gives us reason to believe things that it would be nice to believe (at least some of them are nice to believe). He rescues us from just whistling in the dark and invites us to trust in him.

The Bible is a reference book—a reference book authorized by God through His people. That “reference” status contains not enough information for us to gauge the historicity of its narratives or the authority of its imperatives. It is authoritative, but that doesn’t make every apparently historical account or even divinely issued command in it so.

“You going to be here much longer?” He asked, and then turned rather red. She might suspect his reasons for asking.

“Another week,” she answered, and stared at him as if to lunge at his next remark when it left his lips.

– Warren & Bernice in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” (1920)

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald • “The Rich Boy” (1926)

This made me think of Donald Trump.

The house loomed up suddenly beside him, and his first thought was that it had assumed a strange unreality. There was nothing changed—only everything was changed. It was smaller and it seemed shabbier than before—there was no cloud of magic hovering over its roof and issuing from the windows of the upper floor. He rang the door-bell and an unfamiliar colored maid appeared. Miss Jonquil would be down in a moment. He wet his lips nervously and walked into the sitting-room—and the feeling of unreality increased. After all, he saw, this was only a room, and not the enchanted chamber where he had passed those poignant hours. He sat in a chair, amazed to find it a chair, realizing that his imagination had distorted and colored all these simple familiar things.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald • “‘The Sensible Thing’” (1924)

There it was on the bureau, the letter—in sacred ink, on blessed paper—all over the city, people, if they listened, could hear the beating of George O’Kelly’s heart. He read the commas, the blots, and the thumb-smudge on the margin—then he threw himself hopelessly upon his bed.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald • “‘The Sensible Thing’” (1924)

Binge-reading. That’s the only way to do it. The books I most easily remember are the ones I binge-read.

If the delay of the parousia ever becomes a problem again for me, I remind myself that N.T. Wright has written a solid article on the subject with one solution, Andrew Perriman has written a book with a different, more thoroughly preterist account of it, and Christopher Hays has written an entirely different book account of it.

The death of a spouse after a long and fulfilling marriage in quite a different thing. Perhaps I have never felt more closely the strength of God’s presence than I did during the months of my husband’s dying and after his death. It did not wipe away the grief. The death of a beloved is an amputation. But when two people marry, each one has to accept that one of them will die before the other (xii–xiii).

Such insightful and poetic words from Madeleine L’Engle. It is true: Either Carla or I will predecease the other, and that will feel like an amputation.

Reading A Grief Observed during my own grief made me understand that each experience of grief is unique (xiii).

I must remember that as I age and my friends’ spouses die.

Like Lewis, I, too, kept a journal, continuing a habit started when I was eight. It is all right to wallow in one’s journal; it is a way of getting rid of self-pity and self-indulgence and self-centeredness. What we work out in our journals we don’t take out on family and friends (xiv).

I appreciate her recognition that, as Carla has taught me, it is important to vent so that we don’t hurt those around us.

I am grateful, too, to Lewis for having the courage to yell, to doubt, to kick at God with angry violence. This is part of healthy grief not often encouraged. It is helpful indeed that C. S. Lewis, who has been such a successful apologist for Christianity, should have the courage to admit doubt about what he has so superbly proclaimed. It gives us permission to admit our own doubts, our own angers and anguishes, and to know that they are part of the soul’s growth (xvi).

Geez. Had I only known people were so comfortable with their own doubts about God and Jesus and the whole shebang when I was going through my throes of existential doubt!

And no one ever told me about the laziness of grief. Except at my job—where the machine seems to run on much as usual—I loathe the slightest effort. Not only writing but even reading a letter is too much. Even shaving. What does it matter now whether my cheek is rough or smooth? (5)

Warning! When Carla dies, still take your walks. Call people to hang out. Do your work. Unless you want to just die, too.

The act of living is different all through. Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything. (11)

Lewis is not outshone in poetry by his formidable foreword writer. I am certain Carla’s death will seem just like he describes. It will (dis)color everything.

But her voice is still vivid. The remembered voice—that can turn me at any moment into a whimpering child. (16)

Again, I suspect the same will be true of me when Carla dies.

‘Because she is in God’s hands.’ But if so, she was in God’s hands all the time, and I have seen what they did to her here. Do they suddenly become gentler to us the moment we are out of the body? And if so, why? (27)

The poor Calvinist!

Sometimes it is hard not to say, ‘God forgive God.’ Sometimes it is hard to say so much. But if our faith is true, He didn’t. He crucified Him. (28)

Wrong.

Come, what do we gain by evasions? We are under the harrow and can’t escape. Reality, looked at steadily, is unbearable. (28)

No, it’s not.

Doesn’t all the prima facie evidence suggest exactly the opposite [of God being good]? (29)

No.

Feelings, and feelings, and feelings. Let me try thinking instead. From the rational point of view, what new factor has H.’s death introduced into the problem of the universe? What grounds has it given me for doubting all that I believe? I knew already that these things, and worse, happened daily. I would have said that I had taken them into account. I had been warned—I had warned myself—not to reckon on worldly happiness. We were even promised sufferings. They were part of the programme. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accepted it. I’ve got nothing I haven’t bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not in imagination. Yes; but should it, for a sane man, make quite such a difference as this? No, And it wouldn’t for a man whose faith had been real faith and whose concern for other people’s sorrows had been real concern. The case is too plain. If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards (36–37).

Crucial, both for those who know they are doubting because of the problem of evil and for those who think they aren’t.

In which sense may it be a house of cards? Because the things I am believing are only a dream, our because I only dream that I believe them? (39)

That’s an important distinction of which I’d never thought.

They call Stephen the first martyr. Hadn’t Lazarus the rawer deal? (41)

An excellent one-liner. Ah, but it was Lazarus’ experience that brought us the Gospel according to “John”!

A sinful woman married to a sinful man; two of God’s patients, not yet cured. I know there are not only tears to be dried but stains to be scoured. The sword will be made brighter (42).

Who knew belief in purgatory existed among Protestants? Certainly not I. But now I do: Richard Beck, Jerry Walls, C.S. Lewis, Brad Jersak—heck, all the universalists, I suppose. Thinking of the afterlife makes so much more sense with a purgatorial hell.

What do people mean when they say, ‘I am not afraid of God because I know He is good’? Have they never been to a dentist? 43

I love it when Lewis zings.

You can’t, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately; anyway, you can’t get the best out of it. ‘Now! Let’s have a real good talk’ reduces everyone to silence. ‘I must get a good sleep tonight’ ushers in hours of wakefulness. Delicious drinks are wasted on a really ravenous thirst. Is it similarly the very intensity of the longing that draws the iron curtain, that makes us feel we are staring into a vacuum when think about our dead? (45)

I remember those October laps around the Holiday Inn in Orlando.

For a good wife contains so many persons in herself. What was H. not to me? She was my daughter and my mother, my pupil and my teacher, my subject and my sovereign; and always, holding all these in solution, my trusty comrade, friend, shipmate, fellow-soldier. My mistress, but at the same time all that any man friend (and I have good ones) has ever been to me. :perhaps more. (47–48)

This is how I view Carla, and I told her so.

Getting over it so soon? But the words are ambiguous. To say the patient is getting over it after an operation for appendicitis in one thing; after he’s had his leg off is quite another. After that operation either the wounded stump heals or the man dies. If it heals, the fierce, continuous pain will stop. Presently he’ll get back his strength and be able to stump about on his wooden leg. He has ‘got over it.’ But he will probably have recurrent pains in the stump all his life, and perhaps pretty bad ones; and he will always be a one-legged man. There will be hardly any moment when he forgets it. Bathing, dressing, sitting down and getting up again, even lying in bed, will all be different. His whole way of life will be changed. All sorts of pleasures and activities that he once took for granted will have to be simply written off. Duties too. At present I am learning to get about on crutches. Perhaps I shall presently be given a wooden leg. But I shall never be a biped again. (52-53)

My, but does his man has a knack for finding the right metaphors to explain his thoughts! L’Engle and Lewis agree: Losing a spouse to death is an amputation.

The notes have been about myself, and about H., and about God. In that order. The order and the proportions exactly what they ought not have been. And I see that I have nowhere fallen into that mode of thinking about either which we call praising them. Yet that would have been best for me. (62)

God, You equipped me to not repeat Lewis’ mistake here. Thank You.

An incurable abstract intellect

Excuse me, Mr. Lewis. Did you call me?

To me, however, their danger is more obvious. Images of the Holy easily become holy images—sacrosanct. My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? (66)

Sure seems like it.

And now that I come to think of it, there’s no practical problem before me at all. I know the two great commandments, and I’d better get on with them. (69–70)

Amen, preach it, Brother.

To make an organism which is also a spirit; to make that terrible oxymoron, a ‘spiritual animal.’ To take a poor primate, a beast with never-endings all over it, a creature with a stomach that wants to be filled, a breeding animal that wants its mate, and say, ‘Now get on with it. Become a god’ (72)

Indeed. Thanks a bundle, God. No really, I mean it: It’s absurd and exactly what I want at the same time.

My overall takeaway: It scares me a little that I have read this and Dementia in the same year. Carla may very well predecease me, and I appear to be attempting to get ready for that contingency.

The main way to be ready: Remember to continue to live after she dies! But remember to grieve ferociously in order to do that!

On the interconnectedness of everyone and everything:

I live in a web of dependence, at the center of which is God in whom all things hold together (34).

That’s a good way to explain to myself how it is I can be grateful to God for everything that is good, including existence itself.

On prayer as worship:

Prayer is a declaration of dependence upon God (35).

An idea from my girlfriend my freshman year of high school returns: Making requests of God is a form of worship. It has proven one of those stick-with-you, life-shaping ideas. Thanks, Katie.

On emotion being teachable and malleable:

But consider what Rabbi Abraham Heschel said to the members of his synagogue who complained that the words of the liturgy did not express what they felt. He told them that it was not that the liturgy should express what they feel, but that they should learn to feel what the liturgy expressed.

My super-culture insists that emotions just happen and should not be repressed or feared. I agree with the overall message, thanks in no small part to Carla and to Milan and Kay Yerkovich, who wrote How We Love. But I don’t hear much from anyone about directing and changing emotion. Incidentally, I also don’t hear much about directing and changing libido. But these things are subject to the will. The tricks to success in bending one’s emotions and libido are to no hate the feelings when they come, acknowledge weakness, expect failure, eschew shame, and never give up. It reminds me of something I read by Melinda Selmys about the Catholic line on chastity being impossible. She argued that its impossibility doesn’t entail its uselessness. Rather, it serves as a well of gravity, as fuel for an aspirational more asymptote. As long as we avoid legalism, we are the better for the impossible ideal. Life in God is aspirational. I should note that the thing Heschel as quoted by Ben Patterson as quoted by Yancey is trying to say here is it is good to learn unpleasant emotions from the Psalms.

On distractions and desires in prayer:

Distractions [in prayer] are nearly always your real wants breaking in on your prayer for edifying but bogus wants. If you are distracted, trace your distraction back to the real desires it comes from and pray about these. When you are praying for what you really want you will not be distracted.

Twentieth-century Dominican priest, theologian, and philosopher Herbert McCabe wrote that. It jibes well with the “Q: What should I do? A: Do what you want!” mantra that God gave me two decades ago. I should try it. These days, it’s distractions from planning changes to my strength training workouts. What is the real desire there about which I can pray? A long life of good health that makes for a long, wide potential for good deeds as I age.

On conceptual copouts born of the conflict between exegesis and experience:

“Come near to God and he will come near to you,” wrote James, in words that sound formulaic. James does not put a time parameter on the second clause, however.

But I jest. Yes, Yancey’s gloss could be taken as a copout. But I take it as helpful truth.

From British convert Jonathan Aitken:

Trusting in God does not, except in illusory religion, mean that he will ensure that none of the things you are afraid of will ever happen to you. On the contrary, it means that whatever you fear is quite likely to happen, but that with God’s help it will in the end turn out to be nothing to be afraid of.

Again, pap to satiate the naive among us when first confronted with reasons for doubting God’s goodness? Sure. But also good, solid truth.

On psychosomatic healing being no threat in my book:

“It doesn’t diminish my respect for God’s power in the slightest to realize that God primarily works through the mind to summon up resources of healing in a person’s body. The word psychosomatic carries no derogatory connotations for me. It derives from two Greek words, psyche and soma, which mean simply mind (or soul) and body. The cure of such diseases demonstrates the incredible power of the mind to affect the rest of the body…Those who pray for the sick and suffering should first praise God for the remarkable agents of healing designed into the body, and then ask that God’s special grace give the suffering person the ability to use those resources to their fullest advantage. I have seen remarkable instances of physical healing accomplished in this way. The prayers of fellow Christians can offer real, tangible help by setting into motion the intrinsic powers of healing in a person controlled by God. This approach does not contradict natural laws; rather, it fully employs the design features built into the human body” (254)

That’s Dr. Paul Brand. I find piquant novelty in his approach to thanking God for what’s already natural in the human body and for seeing that natural stuff as the stuff of healing. Yancey goes on to report that Brand eventually came around to believing in the utterly miraculous as well, but the man still holds that most healing is psychosomatic. For the longest time, I thought healing being psychosomatic took away from healings as evidence for God. But I suppose it doesn’t have to.

On the limits of healing prayer:

In terms of physical health, you could say that the power of prayer has limits: no prayer will reverse the aging process, banish death, or eliminate the need for nourishment (256).

Several other quotations I don’t have time to comment on:

I have come to see the very selectiveness of biblical miracles as a sign of God’s personhood (258)

I never make a list of what to pray for. I pray instantly, as soon as something comes to mind, and I trust God to bring it to mind (315)

I know not which is most profitable to me, health or sickness, wealth or poverty, nor anything else in the world (324).

“‘Come near to God and he will come near to you,’ wrote James, in words that sound formulaic. James does not put a time parameter on the second clause, however.”

— Philip Yancey

I don’t enjoy fiction as much because I don’t spend hours at a time with it like I do movies! This calls for a change.

It appears that middle-class U.S. friendships are not generally expected to bear the weight of deep and diffuse obligations to care. More like pleasure crafts than lift rafts, they are not built to brave the really rough waters—and [dementia is] rough, corrosive, bitter waters indeed. Dementia seems to act as a very powerful solvent on many kinds of social ties. I doubt that many friendships survive its onset.

— Janelle Taylor, “On Recognition, Caring & Dementia,” as quoted by John Swinton in Dementia: Living in the Memories of God

There is no doubt that it can be difficult to be with someone you know who has forgotten who you are and, indeed, who they are. At times it takes a leap of faith to remember them as the person that you know. But no matter what, your friends remain your friends, don’t they? The ease with which people with dementia can be unfriended raises a dark question: What is it that we actually love in those we claim to love?

— John Swinton, Dementia (105)

What did I get out of Swinton?

• Time is not money. It is the gift of God. Live in the moment and assign value to the present. Be with people.
• Visit the sick, especially demented folks.
• Dementia sucks.
• Hospitality among strangers is an important concept to bring to bear on all relationships, especially those with demented folks.
• We are all contingent, embodied people.
• Hanging out and friendship can change the world.
• God remembers us in the present even when we forget who we are.
• [edit June 9, 2023] Our windows into the conscious experience of folks suffering from dementia are quite foggy, so we can’t assume to know what they’re thinking and feeling. Even if someone’s dementia is so far progressed that they can’t even talk or move, their inner life might still be quite rich. And even if they’re expressively tetchy, they might be hating that on the inside and unable to express as much. Don’t assume. Always with interact with tenderness and patience and love. One of the main things they need is plenty of good company.

God still speaks today as he spoke to our forefathers in days gone by, before there were either spiritual directors or methods of direction. The spiritual life was then a matter of immediate communication with God.…All they knew was that each moment brought its appointed task, faithfully to be accomplished. This was enough for the spiritually minded of those days. All their attention was focused on the present, minute by minute, like the hand of a clock that marks the minutes of each hour covering the distance along which it has to travel. Constantly prompted by divine impulsion, they found themselves imperceptibly turns toward the next task that God had ready for them at each hour of the day.

— Jean-Pierre de Caussade, as quoted by John Swinton in Dementia (256)

This excerpt floored me because it sounds just like how Carla does things. And it strikes me as right. It’s how I want to walk through life.

One of the things that can serve as a guideline to discerning God’s leading: Do I feel hurried? It’s probably not God’s way. Do I feel obsessed with something about the world, like finding an Airbnb to stay in for on our way trip to Florida or finding good, vegan walking shoes again? It’s probably not God’s way. I might have to do that thing, but I don’t have to do it in that way. It’s not being in the present.

Swinton has rearranged how I approach time: It’s a gift that I have received, all my time. Freely I have received, freely I shall give, waste, live my time with others.

I appear to have inadvertently discarded most of my skimpy annotations from Fleming Rutledge’s The Crucifixion under the false understanding that there was no limit to the size of the notes field on Goodreads. Ah, well.

All I’m left with at the moment is the following Barth quotation:

What took place on the Cross of Golgotha is the last word of an old history and the first word of a new (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV).

This dovetails nicely with the idea that has matured in me in recent months and about which I taught at church a few weeks ago: The primary thrust of Jesus’ earthly mission was to fulfill both sides of the Levitical & Deuteronomic covenant with Israel.

Beyond the above quotation, the thing I am most impressed with about Rutledge’s points is her insistence that impunity is a very unjust thing.

Before I enter my brief list of annotations of Fleming Rutledge’s The Crucifixion, I wish to register a comment about my future book selections: If a book is heavy, as The Crucifixion at over six hundred pages was, and it’s a vehicle for an idea—especially if it is a survey of ideas about a single topic, such as the Crucifixion or night as experienced in early modern Europe like At Day’s Close—think twice.

He picked one and broke it in two. The flesh was dryish and bread-like, something of the same kind as a banana. It turned out to be good to eat. It did not give the orgiastic and almost alarming pleasure of the gourds, but rather the specific pleasure of plain food—the delight of munching and being nourished, a “Sober certainty of waking bliss.” A man, or at least a man like Ransom, felt he ought to say grace over it; and so he present did. The gourds would have required rather an oratorio or a mystical meditation.”

— C.S. Lewis • Perelandra

I laughed out loud at the last line.

“Do you feel quite happy out it?” said I, for a sort of horror was beginning once more to creep over me.

“If you mean, Does my reason accept the view that he will (accidents apart) deliver me safe on the surface of Perelandra?—the answer is Yes,” said Ransom. “If you mean, Do my nerves and my imagination respond to this view?—I’m afraid the answer is No. One can believe in anesthetics and yet feel in a panic when they actually put the mask over your face. I think I feel as a man who believes in the future life when he is taken out to face a firing party. Perhaps it’s good practice.”

— C.S. Lewis • Perelandra

“Perhaps the experience had been so complete that repetition would be a vulgarity—like asking to hear the same symphony twice in a day.”

— C.S. Lewis • Perelandra •

[edit, 1/23/26: Clearly, this sentiment predates the advent of music streaming services. In the past year I have heard the same symphony twice in one day on multiple days. And I didn’t even need to ask.]

“Sleep came like a fruit which falls into the hand almost before you have touched the stem.”

— C.S. Lewis • Perelandra

My marginalia from Out of the Silent Planet (1938) by C.S. Lewis

…was the fact that we had only one kind of hnau: they thought this must have far-reaching effects in the narrowing of sympathies and even of thought.

“Your thought must be at the mercy of your blood,” said the old sorn. “For you cannot compare it with thought that floats on a different blood.”

That was C.S. Lewis preaching on the virtues of diversity well before any around here was doing it.

“Be silent,” said the voice of Oyarsa. “You, thick one, have told me nothing of yourself, so I will tell it to you. In your own world you have attained great wisdom concerning bodies, and by this you have been able to make a ship that can cross the heaven; but in all other things you have the mind of an animal.”

It sometimes seems parts of our society are in the same state as Weston. And it sometimes seems I am, too. May I be fully alive in thought and morals and healthy relationships.