Scott Stilson

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I committed mass formicide in June. But only because they’d’ve conquered my house if I hadn’t.

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Oh, that? That’s just smooth jazz. Nothing to worry about.

— Sullivan, replying to an inquiry over his headset while playing Minecraft one night

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Scott: You can’t touch my face. I’m in quarantine.
Carla: Well, I can punch your face!

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[upon realizing that her formerly farsighted right eye is no longer farsighted]

Am I going to get a monocle!?

— Éa, happily

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Ooh, I know the website! It starts with ‘hit tips,’ ends with ‘dot com,’ and…something in the middle, but I forget.

— Éa

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It shall be unlawful for a person to solicit, accept, or receive a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or… [an] expressed or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State, or local election.

U.S. Code Title 52, section 30121, line a2. President Trump is in violation of that law. Additionally:

[N]o Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution. President Trump is in violation of that clause. So, he has broken statutory and constitutional law. Out with him!

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What I really want in this instance, as George MacDonald taught me, isn’t the forgiveness for the consequences of my sins (e.g., the wrath of God) but freedom from my actual sins. I’d like to become the father that doesn’t snap at his son. I don’t want an imputed purity. I actually want to be, myself, pure.

— Richard Beck

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Good working definition of joy from Richard Beck: “great delight regardless of external circumstance.”

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On the subject of the solo satisfaction of biological and psychological drives (e.g., eating, masturbating, sightseeing): As long as they are not harmful and they are undertaken with thanksgiving, they are done in love, and are thus good.

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“[A] Christian sexual ethic is a process of transforming eros into agape.”

– Richard Beck

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Shame and guilt can be healthy, life-giving emotions. There’s a reason we have them. Sure, shame and guilt can become toxic and debilitating. But let’s not think that there’s something unhealthy about feeling shame or guilt when you do something that violates your conscience. That’s called being a human being.

— Richard Beck

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“In distinctive contrast in the midst of the ancient world, the Jews will sacrifice animals to God, but never their children. And that’s a moral revolution in the history of the world” (Richard Beck, “On Genesis 22: Give the Story a Little Respect”).

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Love is hardly love if it is lazy.

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My reflections on excerpts from A Grief Observed (1961) by C. S. Lewis

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...

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“…[w]ith humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves…” (Paul). This is a crucial verse for me if I’m going to bear the fruit of love. It’s this regard of others as more important than myself that is going to turn up my inner hearth of love for others. Without that phrase, my love risks being too mechanical, too principled. If I can honestly regard others as more important than myself, I will fulfill the second Great Commandment.

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To love = to give a damn about (1) the good of and/or (2) the enjoyment of relationship with

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I’ll at least put the Irish places we visited in order, with the idea that maybe I’ll make a little route map later:

Dublin

Clare

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I just read that attraction is common in cross-sex friendships, especially in men. I write this because it helps me know whether I was an oddball in my younger days for being attracted to just about every girl or young woman with whom I was good friends.

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I like retelling the events of the day with the kids and Carla. It is enjoyable. Plus, it helps me remember later.

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“Given the issue is so fundamentally important to our view of who we are, a claim that our free will is illusory should be based on fairly direct evidence. Such evidence is not available.”

— Benjamin Libet, in a 1999 quotation I found via a current article in The Atlantic today that blows away the Goliath in the room of the question of the soul

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Inverted triangle diagram illustrating a progression of constraint upon local people governing themselves the way they want to

I don’t usually like what Katherine Watt writes. But this illustration is dynamite good.

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Carla: [Saint] Paul totally bonked. He was a-bonkin!
Scott: Paul wasn’t bonking.
Carla: C’mon. You know he was bonking!
Scott: You are the strangest Christian wife I could have acquired.

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Some notes from Prayer (2006) by Philip Yancey

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...

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“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.”

— Jonathan Aitken, as quoted by Philip Yancey in Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?

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“‘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