“For then will I transform peoples with a pure language for them all to call in the name of the LORD, to serve Him with single intent” (Zephaniah 3:9, Alters).
Lord, please transform Christians in this way. As it is, it seems we’re calling in the name of different lords to serve with various, opposing intents.
Just listened to: Traditional Techniques (2020) by Stephen Malkmus. My first Malkmus solo album listen. His lyrics are as weird as in the ’90s, but I had no idea he could make such pretty music. A very good late-night psych-folk stoner album. The effect is similar to hearing The Velvet Underground’s self-titled album. Also, I’m a sucker for 12-string guitar and playfulness with words.
Wait, is that a rule? We’re not allowed to have telepathic antecedents?
— Éa, in response to a gentle scold from Scott about a conversation he couldn’t follow
Today I am taking Focus up a notch: For 100% of day—morning, afternoon, evening, and night—I am allowing zero Messages and WhatsApp notifications to come through from anyone other than my immediate family, people with whom I have appointments in the next two days and, during the workday, my workmates. I am coupling this with a morning clearing and an evening clearing, rendering how I handle my instant messages more like how I handle my email. This experiment will last either forever or until I observe it’s unloving.
So folks will still get text replies from me twice a day. If that’s not fast enough and they need my attention more urgently, let them place a good, old-fashioned phone call. It’ll be like time travel back to 1993 (minus the coiled cords and dial tones)!
I hereby plead with governments, universities, and commercial real estate developers: If you’re going to erect a public clock, please make sure it keeps time. Otherwise, you’re just littering our built environment with noble-looking embarrassments whose only effect is to remind us that everything is broken and most of us don’t care.
The ideal birthday communication is neither the tired greeting card not the awkward phone call. The first is unremarkable; the second requires too much of the recipient. Instead, it’s a heartfelt voice message sent via text. 🎉
Saying “thank you for your patience” before the speaker knows his listener will give it is presumptuous. Better to say “I’m sorry.”
Sullivan said yesterday that every conversation with me feels like an argument. That’s the sort of comment that prompts change in me, I hope!
“She was half a girl and half a flower[.]”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, of the first titular character in “Rags Martin-Jones and the Pr-nce of W-les” (1924)
Do not talk about your hard feelings after 9 PM. Maybe not even after 8 PM.
Step one in any anti-racist agenda: Refuse to speak in terms of race. Skin color? Pigment? Melanin? Yes. But “‘[r]ace’ itself is just a restatement and retrenchment of the problem” (Ta-Nehisi Coates).
Air: the original social medium.
Communication is love. If I’m involved, at least, if there’s any ambiguity at all, it must be squashed. Love demands it. However, I think one person’s ambiguity that needs to be squashed is another person’s opportunity for the exercise of commonsense intuition.
Speaking harshly was one of Jesus’ love languages.
My new definition of love: to devote oneself to the good, wellbeing, or flourishing of and the enjoyment of relationship with.
Telling someone they “have been” something is more empowering a way of truth-telling than telling them they “are” something. It leaves the future open for change.
[overheard while Sullivan and Éa build a precarious fort]:
Éa: Sully, did you just swear!?
Sullivan: What!? No!
Éa: No really, Sully, did you say the S word?
Sullivan: No! Only Mom does that!
Carla reports that last night, out of the blue before bed, Éa said, “I think that Daddy’s mune to stuff.”
“You think he’s immune? To what?” replied Carla.
“No, the opposite of that. Mune.”
“I don’t think that’s a word.”
“Really? Well then what’s the opposite of ‘immune’?”
“Susceptible.”
“What?! That sounds like some sort of a….PORT a potty! …like ‘appropriate receptacle’! (lots of laughter by both parties)”
Oh my gosh. Jesus.
— Carla
“Emotional support feels terrible.”
— Carla
Scott: So, Sullivan what laws of physics do you know?
Sullivan: Newton’s laws of physics!
Éa: Nudists know all physics?
You know what Miss Leigh calls a picture? “Pitcher.” Picture. Pitcher. She’s a very complicated woman.
— Éa, on a quirk of her teacher’s pronunciation
Carla: Sullivan, you have to take a shower. I don’t want to hear any more whining about it. Get in there.
Sullivan [walking away into the bathroom]: Aw, maaan! Fuck. Fuck fuck.
Carla: Sullivan, what did you just say?
Sullivan: Haha! I didn’t want to say “shucks” so I disguised it by saying “puck”—or no wait: “fuck.” Yeah, that was it.
I remind myself how much richer a reading experience is when it is read aloud. I missed Ahab’s boat in Moby Dick; I’m not going to miss Licona’s resurrection train.
Could a fellow charismatic humor my perhaps fussy inner lexicographer? I’m looking for a definition of “enter in.”
I ask because I’m generally suspicious of phrases in Christian circles whose meaning would not be immediately apparent to outsiders. “Enter in” strikes me as an example of the clichéd, mystical argot that helps to maintain power structures and in-group, out-group distinction in an organization. The first way to neuter such a phrase’s abusive possibilities is to provide a clear definition for it.
As far as I can tell, among Bible translations the phrase is unique to King James, and it never occurs in the context we hear it now: Congregational singing. What’s more, it’s redundant—that is, drop the word “in” and the phrase would, at face value, mean the same thing. The problem with that, however, is that we often use “enter in” without prepositional object, and if the guy at the microphone were to say simply “Enter!” during singing time (pause for a moment to picture it), the mysticism of the directive would, I think, be even more apparent.
So, what are we saying when we say, “Enter in”?