Scott Stilson

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I exist to serve.

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I feel a certain reorientation in my reading life these past two days, and it has to do with love. If I am to do everything in love, then I am to:

Also, when I switch to reading articles, I should be selective enough with my Instapaper queue that I find it easy to pay close attention to each article I do read and I get through it all in a timely manner. Basically a miniature version of the above rules.

With movies, it is easier:

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love noun 1 fondness and esteem that leads one to act toward the good of and the enjoyment of relationship with

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love verb 1 to esteem someone or something as to be gladly willing to donate of one’s self (e.g., attention, energy, time, material resources, money) for the their good 2 to esteem someone or something as to prioritize their needs

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“God loved us while we were yet monsters.”

— Richard Beck, riffing on Paul

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The Cross was for us, not for God. What glorious condescension!

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Twitter is a way to surround yourself with the most interesting people in the world—to the detriment of your engagement with the people around you.

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“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

— Maya Angelou

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When the apostles returned, they gave an account to Him of all that they had done. Taking them with Him, He withdrew by Himself to a city called Bethsaida. But the crowds were aware of this and followed Him; and welcoming them, He began speaking to them about the kingdom of God and curing those who had need of healing (Luke 9:10-11).

Sometimes—probably often—Jesus gave preference to the needs, desires, and priorities of others over His own.

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After an evening with Ben for the Roomful of Teeth concert at Schwab Auditorium, a lunchtime with Ernest yesterday, and a long campus walk with Mark last night, I reported to the Rookes that Carla says I abuse introverts. I hope it’s not true. Lord, may I be slow to speak.

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Baby, I need your lovin' Got to have all your lovin'

— The Four Tops

I woke up with these lines in my head yesterday morning. They were not accompanied by any assurance that they were from God. Perhaps I should stop noting the ones I’m not sure about, lest I give the impression that I’m suffering from severe confirmation bias.

Yet there is no reason to not make something good of this delivery from my subconscious mind: God wants all my loving. Actually, to be more precise, my first, most prophetic-sounding idea from this lyric was one of keeping my eyes fixed straight ahead, not frittering my attention on wasteful, lustful, unloving. It’s basically a reiteration of [1 Corinthians 16:14](1 Corinthians 16:14).

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We are ready to send Everett and Oak home. But we’re not. I’m sure these are the typical feelings of a foster parent. Life is going to be different. Quieter. This evening without them because they’re with Mommy and Daddy makes that sure. But as Everett would surely reciprocate, “I will miss you, Everett.” And I will miss you, Oak. We still have three weeks with them, so let’s make them count.

We asked Éa and Sullivan today whether they’d like to foster again. Sullivan said, “I’d like a year.” And Éa said, “Yeah, in like, five thousand weeks.”

A home is fuller if you’re stretched for the sake of relationships. Let us dig in to more people. Let us “love [our] enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return” (Luke 6:35). Then I will live without regret.

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love noun 1 Self-donation (e.g., of attention, energy, time, material resources, money) born of high regard for someone or something

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Janet’s example inspires me to conceive of a scheme in which we proactively pursue a relationship with next-door neighbors at all times. So, for example, the next time Dave’s birthday rolls around, we give him a gift.

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I am grateful for a possibly newfound ability to mourn, which I did with Carla tonight when she got a call from Carole saying that the doctors at Geisinger don’t expect Janet to live through the night. It felt good to cry. Faced with death, don’t attempt to console. Simply mourn alongside people. And then when they lose someone, as Janet’s family is about to, help a lot.

Alright, enough Scott-resolution and navel gazing. I am grateful for Janet. She brought gifts for our kids (and sometimes for us) almost every conceivable holiday. She joked a lot. She showed us the value of being friends with your neighbors.

That’s all I want to journal about tonight. Janet’s imminent death overshadows everything else.

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love noun 1 Self-donation (e.g., of attention, energy, time, material resources, money) for the good of another, ideally driven by affection, and if not that, then by principled regard for others as at least as important as oneself

When we say “I love you” to someone, we mean that we desire to love them as above.

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I want to list the commands of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament, plus the commands of the other New Testament writers.

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You’re daring me to find You by helping others (Matthew 25:31-46).

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I am grateful for the opportunity to help Janet in her time of need. But I want need not to be! Carla has visited a few times over the past several days because Janet has been loopy because of some medication she is one in connection with her perma-asthma that set in this winter like last. Apparently, MRIs at the hospital today may have revealed lymphoma.

I am grateful for the resilience and emotional maturity Éa displayed upon getting her ears pierced at Ikonic Ink downtown today. It hurt, but she displayed (and was multiply congratulated by onlookers for) stoicism while Miranda the “piercing artist” was doing her work. When it was done, she cried honest, quite-but-unashamed tears in Mommy’s arms. May all my children know what to do with their sadness and pain.

And may more families make family outings at tattoo and piercing parlors?

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Hanging out with people is the only way to save the poor in spirit. Do I remember the two wall-to-wall days I spent with Uncle Chris? What a joy, and it touched his soul. It’s the only way—at least, the only way conceivable for me—for people like him and César to make their way out of moral and circumstantial poverty. But what am I to do? If I were a single man, I think I’d keep my job at DiamondBack and take it with me as I went on medium-term mission trips to live with César in Callao and with anyone I met who was a pariah, and I would hang out with them.

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Carla has been peevish recently. But so have I. It’s a cycle. I realized one way to break the cycle is to drop my expectation that anyone, including my wife and kids, act perfectly lovingly all the time. I don’t, so why should I expect them to?

I’ll go further: When a demand is made of me or a disagreement voiced, let my first instinct be to satisfy the demand or come to accord quickly and happily. Obviously, I won’t be a pushover, but I will be a volunteer, a happy second-miler.

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As this first day of my sprint toward getting a minimum viable website up for Frank and PolyGreen America ends, I am reminded that hobbies are happiest when they are not only enjoyable, but also seen as a form of generosity. In the case of web-development-on-the-side-that-disturbs-my-schedule-equilibirum, the enjoyment is possible only when I view it as such.

So Lord, let me renew that vantage on this work—and all work, really.

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If, when I’m old, you were to ask me to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I predict I’d tell you it was I day I think—I hope—I turned a corner in my character. You see, since screening the finale of the second season of Gatiss & Moffatt’s Sherlock this past Saturday, entitled “The Reichenbach Fall” (and probably a good bit before then), I had been obsessing over the show: obsessing about its plot, obsessing about its characters, obsessing about its actors, and obsessing about its writers. I was obsessing about my decision to stop watching it because of my obsession.

I needed to be rescued from all this.

And it’s more than Sherlock: In recent months, I have spent far too much time and attention setting up operating systems, selecting an iPhone case, and other such minutiae. I prioritize trivialities. And it robs me of life (and steals from DiamondBack).

We have overcome perfectionism. We have overcome stoniness. We have overcome self-distraction at work. We have overcome religious doubt. (All of the above are still works in progress, but they are works well on their way with clear paths to completion.) Perhaps now we can take on obsessiveness and the resulting misprioritization.

Deliberation, yes: You do that about problems and decisions. Cogitation, yes: You do that about profundities. Obsession, no: You do that, by definition, with things you ought not to. And I know what it feels like.

If you’re going to obsess about anything, do it about giving yourself for the benefit of other people.

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If, when I’m old, you were to ask me to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I predict I’d tell you we had our 72-year-old next-door neighbor Janet Donald over for leftover Stilson rotini dinner, homemade quick bread, a thirteen-year-old shiraz Janet had donated to us a month prior for Carla’s birthday, and some after-dinner Dixit at the kids’ prompting, all while piano jazz played on Spotify and the thermostat was set to a balmy 67°F.

I told her I love having her over.

Did I say it because I love the feeling of moral pride it gives me to know I have my aged next-door neighbor over for dinner and counter her as a friend? In part, yes. But I also said it because I really do like her.

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“Now you together are the Messiah’s body” (1 Corinthians 12:27, KNT). In other words, I extrapolate, we are how Jesus acts on this earth.