Scott Stilson

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 07:13:43 -0400

The problem with ending your tour of Switzerland and eastern France with two meals out in Lyon is that you forget all the other nice meals out that came before them. Exquis !

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 13:20:00 -0400

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.

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 09:40:00 -0400

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.

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:03:00 -0400

I exhaust myself. I feel tired of pursuing this, that, and the other. I feel tired of always wanting to warm up my voice, read a book, watch a movie, listen to music, push forward on this or that goal. I just want to hang out.

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 19:41:29 -0400

Challenging art teaches you that lesson [that you are not yet what you could be]; great art insists on it. A great novel is, among other things, a document that is more human than human, that goes further than it has to in the effort to convey the human experience. A great, challenging novel knows things you don’t, says things that will not flatter you, and will not stop doing its work until it’s rearranged something in your chest. And who could stand that? We’ve spent years learning that discomfort is always, always a sign of harm. And so we took the only reasonable action a therapeutic civilization could take with an art form built on productive discomfort: we got rid of it. We replaced it with #content, which is art that has agreed as a condition of existence never to ask anything of you at all.

— Freddie deBoer • “A Plea for Art: Against the Tyranny of Our Poptimist Dystopia”

His partial etiology isn’t convincing, tempting though it may be because I share his animus for real coddling I do observe around me. Even the phenomenon for which he is attempting provide an etiology is questionable: There’s nothing new about people shying away from demanding art, whether the demand is moral, as he seems mostly to have in mind here, or cognitive, owing to formal obscurity.

But I could sing his partial definition of a great novel.

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 23:30:00 -0400

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.

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 18:02:00 -0400

Enough interiority! How shall I bless my daughter before we leave her in Europe? Write her a note.

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 06:45:40 -0400

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.

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:56:25 -0400

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.

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:45:44 -0400

“That vivid memory and the cool, vast touch of night wind awakened him. His soul came out of hiding” (Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed).

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 07:02:30 -0400

Some Christians who take a traditionalist line about same-sex erotic behavior are quick to supply extrabiblical context to their exegesis on other matters in the name of preserving biblical inerrancy (e.g., GotQuestions on the question of eating meat sacrificed to idols) or defending current practices that are prima facie at odds with biblical injunctions (e.g., Ben Witherington on women teaching men). Yet they demur about doing so in the name of extending the right hand of fellowship to actively bisexual, lesbian, and gay Christians, despite a ready supply of much less speculative (albeit not uncontested; see Gagnon, Wright, and Loader) extrabiblical context that may similarly qualify the New Testament clobber texts on the subject.

Sun, 12 Jul 2026 20:24:17 -0400

Béla Bartók is an imp.

I lack the vocabulary and leisure to write much about the cracklingly alive music of the great 20th-century Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, seven hours of whose greatest music can be found in this playlist. But what I can tell you is that he comes across to me as an intensely focused über-Puck, as ingenious as he is impish. He alternately grins maniacally and aches with grief as he employs chromaticism, weird harmonies, percussive pianism, asymmetric meters, novel bowings and pluckings (including one named after him), oddly located sforzandos and other displaced accents, and a dozen other tricks from his rather large bag to make all kinds of unexpected musical turns. He hides peasant tunes in music that pushes tonality just shy of its breaking point. He makes life fiendishly difficult for violinists and pianists.

To some, like my friend Travis, who has been a great sport to listen all the way through Bartók’s repertoire with me, all the above is in service to nothing more than making mischief on the human ear. To me, in its own, arch and difficult way, Bartók’s music captures the joy and sorrow of living.

Carla, the lovely, lateral thinker that she is, having heard some snippets, compares Bartók to free jazzmen. It’s an apt comparison—except that they’re improvising, and he wrote all his mischief down. I’m not sure which is more impressive.

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 06:45:24 -0400

I’m only sitting here entertaining myself by myself because everyone else is. O, the humanity!

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 14:34:02 -0400

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)!

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 21:37:50 -0400

I have attention surplus disorder.

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 21:07:26 -0400

Just finished reading (in one sitting): Miracles & Marvels: A Life-Long Love Affair with God (2024) by my neighbor Marie Hamilton. A brief, guileless, autobiographical and episodic account of thirty healings, improbable moments, timely pairings of prayer-and-answer, divine taps on the shoulder, audible voices, and assorted other remarkable happenings that have accompanied this creative, compassionate, award-winning salt of the earth do-gooder throughout her life. She and I have never met, but I think I’d like to go walk the quarter-mile over to her house, knock on her door, and tell her thanks.

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 21:36:04 -0400

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.

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 08:29:38 -0400

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.

Sun, 28 Jun 2026 16:31:12 -0400

“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“.

Sun, 28 Jun 2026 16:19:57 -0400

“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.)

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 20:47:16 -0400

Just re-listened to: Goes West (2019) by William Tyler. Poppy, lilting guitar Americana, like so many Alison Krauss tracks, but without the singing and with drums. In other words, hold music nonetheless capable under the right conditions—which apparently include doing the dishes alone on an unusually cool, overcast June evening—of eliciting tears.

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 09:52:30 -0400

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.

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 08:11:12 -0400

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.

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 11:01:49 -0400

You goad me.
But to what?
It’s easy picking
Easy sticking
When I have a calling. ✏️ 🎤 🎵

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 12:16:50 -0400

Theoretically, it’s not only possible to hold orthodox (or, if you prefer, traditional) theological views in one hand and progressive social and political views (to a point) in the other, but also, in an abstract, platonic, logical sense, more probable than not, all else being equal. That the combination appears rare in my experience of American reality must be the result of something external to The Book: Perhaps my limited vantage. Perhaps alogical sociohistorical pressures.

If the latter, I plead with faithmates: Break free. Think.