I feel fed up with constantly writing about myself. I’m going to try to turn my ruminations toward other subjects. Since some of the most fascinating alternative subjects are the people around me, that may mean I post less here, as I may end up writing about things that are not mine to share.
Among the strongest of my natural strengths according to an assessment DiamondBack was kind enough to pay for a year or two ago is what they call “responsibility,” meaning “taking psychological ownership of what you say you will do.” Moreover, for better and for worse, “what I say I will do” includes the tasks I put on my to-do list, which at the time of this writing numbers 175 if I count just those tasks I could theoretically start on immediately.
This is a problem, because neither discretionary social engagements, nor spontaneous recreation, nor rest—all of which seem self-evident goods—make it onto my to-do list, nor should they, as putting them on there casts a pall over them that drains them of much of their benefit. As a result, I don’t do them often (especially the last two), and when I do, I feel torn.
I’ve written about this many times before. For example, in a private journal entry almost exactly a year ago, I wrote of “failing, once again, to navigate between the Scylla of total control and loneliness on the one side and the Charybdis of irresponsibility in the name of togetherness, joy, and spontaneity.” At the time, I counseled myself to face the fact of the non-programmability of it all and simply choose togetherness, joy, and spontaneity more often.
Looking back, that counsel may have worked a little. Yet I still don’t rest or recreate very often, and when presented with social plans, I still regularly have to overcome internal resistance in the name of getting things done. Wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the mind of this death?
The spirit of Jesus, I think, in a psychological move that geometrically resembles my hack against perfectionism: Embrace rest, spontaneous recreation, and (especially) the nurture of good social relationships as responsibilities. Not by adding them to the list—again, that doesn’t work—but by recognizing them as standing obligations that rightfully limit the jurisdiction of the list. “I have other sheep that are not of [the] fold” of my to-do list, “and I must bring them also.” There is no Charybdis; on the contrary, I must go with the flow.
Heck, Paul and the psalmists even command joy. I repeat: It is my biblical responsibility to feel joy.
“[Jimmy Stewart] may have been the least neurotic actor I’ve ever been around. He was almost too nice. No airs, never demanded special attention, seemed to always keep his insecurities to himself even when he was a kid in his twenties” (a stagehand who worked with Stewart in 1934, according to Scott Eyman in Hank & Jim).
“…least neurotic…always keeps his insecurities to himself…” This is part of why Jimmy Stewart is the closest thing I have to a hero. Not that I think you should keep your insecurities entirely to yourself; just that their airing is best kept to a very close circle. What’s the point in burdening everyone else?
I find Greg Boyd’s “theatrically prophetic indictment of xenophobic Israel” take on Jesus' interaction with the Syrophoenician/Canaanite woman so very winsome that I sometimes act it out myself, by myself—yes, I’m weird—and in acting it out both the interpretation and Jesus become to me even more winsome and smart, not to mention believable.
What prompts me to make note of it is a desire to avoid having to call the writer of Hebrews, Paul, the writer of 1 John, and the writer of 1 Peter all mistaken about the same rather basic christological claim of Jesus’ sinlessness. If scripture were otherwise silent on the matter of Jesus’ sinlessness, I’d be comfortable with a Jesus who had some moral learning to do. As it is, calling Jesus xenophobic, even if we partially excuse it by saying He was a product of His time and place, even if we’re able to nevertheless draw powerful inspiration toward acknowledging our own errors and pressing on toward boundless love, gives away more biblical authoritativeness than is necessary. It also runs counter to the xenophilic and philogynous witness of the rest of the gospels, including episodes that apparently took place before this one, especially Jesus spending private, soul-healing time with the Samaritan woman at the well.
I don’t think I defend the Bible’s authoritativeness because of some doctrine of scripture. I defend it because I hate to see a people saw off the moral and theological branch they’re sitting on.
Institutions, institutions! How I have denigrated you over the years. Yet I have not done so aright. What I ought to have loathed was institutions serving as mere vehicles of their leaders’ thirsts for power, wealth, or security, institutions whose missions are evil, and institutions nothing but sclerotic. Institutions capable of working toward good ends and led by people suspicious of their own power, such as DiamondBack Automotive Accessories, Inc. and University Baptist and Brethren Church, are obvious goods to me now.
Just re-watched: Little Miss Sunshine (2006) at an open-air screening at Kocherpark in Bern. Darkly comic, peak indie-pop roadtrip quirkfest with a gooey caramel center. If only togetherness and courage rose this easily out of deep family dysfunction in real life. These characters are only pretending to be losers. Still, there’s enough nutrition in this R-rated, live-action cousin to Pixar to inspire, say, a merely mildly dysfunctional family to keep calm and pop the clutch.
Enough interiority! How shall I bless my daughter before we leave her in Europe? Write her a note.
Just finished reading: The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin.
Anarchy rules, maybe.
I think I ought to start steering clear of politically charged, interplanetary sci-fi. (I’m thinking here of how I couldn’t finish Dune.) The subgenre just doesn’t seem to do anything for me. It could be that I’m just not into politics, i.e., all activities concerning questions of who is in charge of what and how those people make the rules.
But there were certain quotations I found beautiful or thought-provoking:
- “That vivid memory and the cool, vast touch of night wind awakened him. His soul came out of hiding” (narrator of Shevek).
- “Variety doesn’t come with just moving around. I was all over Anarres, young. Drove and loaded in every Division. Must have known a hundred girls in different towns. It got boring. I came back here, and I do this run every three decades year in year out through this same desert where you can’t tell one sandhill from the next and it’s all the same for three thousand kilos whichever way you look, and go home to the same partner—and I never been bored once. It isn’t changing around from place to place that keeps you lively. It’s getting time on your side. Working with it, not against it” (train driver to Shevek, emphasis mine).
- “In sophisticated Abbenay there was more sense of the tension between the principle of non ownership and the impulse to self-adornment, and there a ring or pin was the limit of good taste. But elsewhere the deep connection between the aesthetic and the acquisitive was simply not worried about; people bedecked themselves unabashedly” (narrator about Sadik viewing a necklace; emphasis mine).
And I think the Holy Spirit or my subconscious mind is speaking: This is the fourth book out of the last fifteen I’ve read that at least touches on the simultaneous importance of self differentiation and a commitment to connection, community, and the common good, the others being Proverbs of Ashes, I and Thou, and A Failure of Nerve. I expected the Buber and the Friedman books to talk about this; I did not expect the Brock & Parker or this Le Guin book to do so. Here is Le Guin’s narrator describing the relevant realization on the part of her protagonist:
Shevek had learned something about his own will these last four years. In its frustration, he had learned strength. No social or ethical imperative equaled it. Not even hunger could repress it. The less he had, the more absolute became his need to be.
He recognized that need, in Odonian terms, as his “cellular function,” the analogic term for the individual’s individuality, the work he can do best, and therefore his best contribution to society. A healthy society would let him exercise that optimum function freely in the coordination of all such functions, finding its adaptability and strength. That was the central idea of Odo’s Analogy. That the Odonian society on Anarres had fallen short of the ideal did not, in his eyes, lessen his responsibility to it; just the contrary. With the myth of the State out of the way, the real mutuality of reciprocity of society and individual became clear. Sacrifice might be demanded of the individual, but never compromise: for though only the society could give security and stability, only the individual, the person, had the power of moral choice—the power of change, the essential function of life. The Odonian society was conceived as a permanent revolution, and revolution begins in the thinking mind.
[…]
He was therefore certain, by now, that his radical and unqualified will to create was, in Odonian terms, its own justification. His sense of primary responsibility towards his work did not cut him off from his fellows, from his society, as he had thought. It engaged him with them absolutely.
me:
It just registered with me that the shirt I just bought left off the God part. I confess I feel a little disappointed about that.
friend:
I did notice that. And then I noticed that I actually like that. And then I spent some time pondering—feeling some shame for being negatively associated with bad theology/“Christians" and if it was more accessible to people reading it that might discount the text if they knew it was a Bible verse, but might open the door for conversation if they compliment the shirt, and if that was just my excuse/out for being hesitant to wear a “God” shirt these days.
me:
Good thoughts. The Micah 6:8 commands are intrinsically good with or without direct reference to God, so in that sense, it’s still a great shirt. Yet it does seem unnecessarily diffident. I think I’ve noticed a tendency in progressive Christian circles to leave overt God talk to the conservatives. And I think this is counterproductive. It creates a unwanted positive feedback loop: If the only Christians talking openly about Christ, the Bible, and God are racist homophobes and jingoistic conservatives, then the world won’t be able to help but reach the conclusion that Christians are racist homophobes and jingoistic conservatives. And the more the world thinks that, the more progressives will feel embarrassed to talk openly about Christ, the Bible, and God.
It is precisely a re-coupling of God language with virtue and justice language that we ought to be bringing.
friend
So true. And exactly my little introspective mind circular thought process.
I’m only sitting here entertaining myself by myself because everyone else is. O, the humanity!
It never occurred to me how head-turningly paradoxical this command from Galatians is: “Become slaves to one another” (5:13). The very nature of a slave relationship is that the power is unipolar. How can slavery be mutual? (There’s certainly an antisocial, obsessional, probably erotic way of interpreting this that describes a possible meaning, but—hopefully obviously—neither desirably nor plausibly.) Paul here pushes semantic boundaries to rhetorically amplify Great Commandment no. 2. It’s a dangerous amplification: If only some people in a group heed it, then you’ve got a cult. But man, if everybody has bought in and there’s that kind of earned trust in a group, what a great way of thinking about it.
And talk about destabilizing institutional slavery! Masters commanded to be slaves of their slaves! Mm mmm. You probably didn’t hear too many American slaveholders quoting that translation of Galatians. Most translations soften things by saying “serve one another,” which I suppose a slaveholder could say he was doing by providing, say, shelter and food for his slaves. But they probably didn’t quote any translation of Ephesians 5:21 (“Subject yourselves to one another in the fear of Christ”). No idea how they would’ve gotten out of that one. Yes, the next chapter of Ephesians does have instructions for slaves to be obedient to their masters—but then it says, “Masters, do the same things to them” (emphasis mine)!
Charlie, Carla, and I bumped into the sons of Bryant & Lynelle Martin and Hector & Lois Troyer at the sheep farm swimming hole this evening. They were enjoying the diving board they had tapconned into the concrete pylon on the east bank probably sometime in the spring. Charming, conversationally able boys, all seven or so of them.
Charlie and I agreed on our amble down the sheep driveway home that there’s something about their old-fashioned Anabaptist culture that we find appealing. I’d even call it alluring. Alluring in the way I’ve always imagined a fully Christian culture would be: creative, down-to-earth, obviously committed to one another yet very openhearted to outsiders, playful, and dedicated to the common good and to the will of Jesus as if the two are nearly coterminous. I suppose I could write that last part about many Christian groups. But these folks appear to do it with such abundant industry and sense of play that it elicits in me something close to envy.
Just finished reading: Paul and the Power of Grace (2020) by John M. G. Barclay. A 70% reduction for laymen of Barclay’s well-received, paradigm-establishing academic doorstop Paul and the Gift (2015), which through a brief survey of the anthropology of gifts followed by close examinations of Paul’s letters to the Galatians and Romans establishes “grace” (charis) as the linchpin of Paul’s entire theological and ethical program and demarcates what is so amazing about it from what is not, thereby providing important correctives to Wright’s rendition of the New Perspective on Paul and to Paul Within Judaism, establishing a firm theological foundation for building churches/societies on mutuality and without regard to preexisting markers of social capital, and, most excitingly to me, resolving centuries-old Protestant soteriological conundrums.
“Love your neighbor as yourself.” I’ve always taken this to mean something like “regard and act toward those around you as if they and their good are as important to you as you and your good.” We can call that an equivalential reading. It’s probably a valid way to take it. But a passing remark in John Barclay’s Paul and the Power of Grace (that I’m having some difficulty re-finding so as to quote) has me thinking of another subtly but importantly different way of parsing it: “Regard and act toward those around you as if they and their good are you and your good.” We can call this a constitutive or even identificatory reading. I like it.
[edit, 7/8/26] Here’s the Barclay quote:
Love, then, does not mean self-sacrifice in the sense of negating oneself for the sake of others and expecting nothing back. The scriptural citation—“You should love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18, cited in Galatians 5:14)—could be understood in a number of ways, but it seems to include, not exclude, the self in the good that one shares with another in love (perhaps: “You should love your neighbor as if he/she were integral to yourself”). In other words, the self is not given away in love, but given into a relationship with others, a relationship in which all parties flourish“.
“Justice is patriotic,” intoned Bonnie Kline Smeltzer from the pulpit at University Baptist and Brethren Church today. I was this close to shouting “Amen!” I totally shoulda.
(It helped that she was wearing a one-of-a-kind, red-white-and-blue Free Subu button she had handmade last week. Appropriation of Old Glory for the sake of something good and having nothing to do with government authority or selling something is something I go in for.)
My basic problem with spontaneity—generating my own and fielding that of others—is one of greed: I learned early on that the only way to get done all the things one wants to get done is to fully regiment one’s time. I got no time for whim!
But I say to myself (as I’ve said before): I need to let go. It’s “do everything in love,” not “do everything you want or feel obligated to do.” The latter is impossible anyway.
Thankfully, the former is not.
May the scales of how I spend the leisure that’ll temporarily open up during Éa’s upcoming absence and then permanently open up in 2028 tip heavily toward doing good over enjoying good—and in forms that are highly altruistic, that make sense only in light of discipleship to Jesus and hope for resurrection, thus putting flesh on those propositions I call Christianity.
“Simply put, we long for Judgment Day because Judgment Day is good news.”
— Richard Beck, in harmony with the second half of my “I look forward to seeing You” sermon, which is itself a knowing echo of the third chapter of Dale Allison’s winsome, thoughtful Night Comes, entitled “Judgment and Partiality,” where he writes, “We’re not coherent when we applaud justice and jeer judgment.”
The key to being interpersonally curious is this: “In humility of mind, regard others as more important than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3).
Enjoying the company of other people is the best stress relief.
Following Jesus should mean not only that you should do things in a Jesusy way, but also that you should do Jesusy things.
With strength training on a two-week hold that ends Friday, listening to new music an activity for which I’ve recently developed a disorienting aversion, and sleeping continuing to include at least three wakeups every night, life feels more improvvy now. These circumstances are mildly destabilizing. I feel like I’m wobbling.
But as of last night, these circumstances are also invigorating. The fact is, if I’m capable of RDLing nearly 380 lb after five hours of sleep, I’m capable of being my joyfully intense self in the whole of life regardless of how much sleep I’ve gotten, regardless of whether there’s a plan for the day, regardless whether I feel “on top of things.”
I’m finally beginning to grasp what some work colleagues probably meant last year or the year before when they said that I need to learn to “lead through ambiguity”: It means that historically, I always want to preplan and then follow the plan, that I never want to make decisions on the fly about how to spend my time—and that as a result, I’m inflexible, overly conservative, and prone to spend too much time engineering my time.
That feels like it is changing. And despite the disorientation, I’m finding that it’s actually kind of fun to have to make decisions on the fly.
I’ll likely still press for clarity and plans, especially for things like prayer and exercise, anchors of time and health which are so easily cast off, but clarity does not I always have to have a written plan, nor that I ought not stop everything in the absence of a plan just so I can make one.
Let me be like Abraham and just go.
Just finished reading: Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling (2025; originally 2013) by Edgar & Peter Schein. Like so many business books, this would’ve made, to borrow an idea from Carla, a much better pamphlet—a virtuous pamphlet, to be clear—than it does a book. But then, you can’t sell a pamphlet for $24.95. Still, spending a few hours hearing the phrase “humble inquiry” repeated hundreds of times can’t have been bad for me, master of the overconfident statement.
Just rewatched (with Sully, who hadn’t seen it yet): The Shawshank Redemption (1994), written and directed by Frank Darabont and based on a short story by Stephen King. Excellent, chockablock with virtue (moral, thespian, and filmic) and vice (mostly moral), yet misses being a must-see because it crawls through a river of shit and comes out clean. Darabont directing is like Rubin producing: Unambiguous, transparent, safe. Like Capra with cusswords.
[edit, 3/25/26]:
Today, the part of this movie that gets me most is the following lines from Brooks’ letter:
I can’t believe how fast things move on the outside. I saw an automobile once when I was a kid, but now they’re everywhere. The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry.
Rage, rage against the dying of The Life. Or rage against The Machine. Or something like that.
Love has a speed. It’s a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice it or not, at three miles per hour. It is the speed we walk and therefore the speed the love of God walks (Kosuke Koyama, Three Mile an Hour God).
If I am to “follow the impulses of [my] heart and the desires of [my] eyes, yet know that God will bring [me] to judgment for all these things” (Ecclesiastes 11:9), how am I to distinguish the impulses and desires that God will judge favorably from those that He will frown upon? If a way already “seems right to [me]” (Proverbs 14:12/16:25), how am I to determine whether it’s the kind whose “end” is “death”? How am I supposed to tell a righteous “desire of my heart” from an unrighteous “desire of the flesh” or “desire of the eyes”?
One rule of thumb is to ask myself, in keeping with my working definition of love, the following question: “To whose importance am I responding?” If the honest answer is “my own,” then I am loving myself, and unless I am a doormat in need of some assertiveness training (which I myself am most verily not), then there’s my clear signpost: WAY OF DEATH.