Lisa asked me
She asked me just the other day
She said,
“Tim, tell me what bothers you.”
I said, “Huh, tell you what bothers me?
I don’t think a whole lot about what bothers me.
This is an experiment: Just record for five minutes whatever comes out of reflecting upon today. Today was a day when I was sick. A flu-like bug I probably caught from a Brannen at their Mimi’s house on Christmas Eve. I’m not sick very often. I don’t think I’ve been sick in a decade. (The upper back injury from the down-and-back chest press queue wasn’t sickness.) It was, as a result, a weird day, especially with Carla gone to visit her cousins to wish Kyle goodbye as he moves to Arizona. I finished Forgiveness: An Alternative Account and Watchmen. I cleared my sideboard drawer. I recorded a reply audio letter to Ruth, read about Josh’s surgery, and made a failed attempt to retrieve Éa Stratocaster from Mark Chaplin. I didn’t accomplish much. But that, I think was a gift, as any other member of my family will readily offer: In being slowed down by illness, I was required to take things easy. It would be no use to gear myself emotionally for an accomplishment-heavy day. Maybe I can take...
That’s a scan of a pen-and-watercolor cartoon she is sending to the captain of the sailboat she and her dad piloted this past summer from Bermuda to Connecticut.
When I’m deciding what to create next—and especially whether to write new music or spend time rehearsing music someone else has written—I can consider the cultivation of my own fruits of God’s spirit (peace and joy in particular) in addition to those of other people.
I’m pleased that this year’s listening added the following albums to my previous list of Christmas albums playable front to back both in the background or attentively:
Just re-listened to Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective (2009). I hesitate to recommend this wacked-out indietronica because like all the other Animaniac albums I’ve listened to, it’s easily heard as mere maelstrom of sophisticated-yet-juvenile, repetitive, acid-plus-coke freneticism. But on this one there’s just enough charm for me in the (still sophisticated-yet-juvenile, still repetitive) melodies, harmonies, syncopations, vocal timbres, and lyrics (often about family, which helps the charm) to overcome the hesitation.
Listen, Merriam-Webster: You descriptivists do good work. It’s important we have maps of the lay of our linguistic land as it lies. But don’t purport to explain to the world that prescriptivists are only interested in “‘correctness’ set forth in ‘rules’ that [we] imagine.” Just like poorly developed roads, a poorly designed language (as I concede every language is to some degree) sometimes leads to confusion, frustration, and hazards. To suggest prescriptivists are always wrong to do what they do is the equivalent of saying city planners are always wrong to do what they do.
Misdevelopment of the land has consequences. So it is with lexicons—especially when the words in question are of moral value. Consider “forgive.” If “forgive” is “actually used,” as you write, “by writers and speakers of the English language,” to include by definition reconciliation, forgetting, and anger abatement, which in some circles, although thankfully not quite in your dictionary, resentment being different...
Forgiveness: An Alternative Account, which Ruth and I both got excited about roughly simultaneously and thus co-purchased (co-purchasing books—what a fun idea! an interpersonal nano-library…),
“All a man’s ways are pure in his eyes, but the LORD takes the spirit’s measure” (Proverbs 16:2). The first part isn’t true of everyone all the time. But it’s probably true of everyone some to most of the time. And certainly very often true of me. Lord, help us to discern.
Just re-listened to A King and His Kindness (2021) by Caroline Cobb. My favorite nuthin’-but-Jesus album since Rich Mullins’ 1997 demo tapes. Definitely square and very devout, hence the kind of album my enjoyment of which will lose me cool points with just about everyone I can think of. But these are the kinds of songs that make you not give a damn about cool points.
Our culture’s current and very understandable hangups about the injustice of forgiveness can be resolved by defining it as threefold:
dismissal (of a wrong) as impetus to retaliation
dismissal as impetus to resentment
dismissal as impetus to alienation or reduction in standing
That list is not only a division, but also perhaps a progression: First, in very clear obedience to our Lord and to keep our communities and society from tearing themselves to shreds, we refuse to retaliate, despite our probably justifiable anger.
Second, and perhaps only as (a lot of) time passes but facilitated by both free ventilation and the wrongdoer’s repentance, we moderate our anger until it thoroughly dissipates. This part is an art, not a science: In the knowledge that we’re all quite capable of sin and likely blind to some of our own wrongdoing, we constantly tack toward total abatement of animosity and we refuse to cling to ill will; however, knowing that there are indeed things God hates, neither...
There are many kinds of love. The most extraordinary kind is the love God has for us—it’s eternal. And then there’s the love parents have for their kids—bigger than you can possibly imagine. There’s friend love, which can be magical, but it can also change over time. And then there’s married love. This kind of love is extraordinary, because it requires so much, and also gives more than you can imagine.
— Amy Low, to her kids • “New Eyes” (2024), an essay published in Comment
Publishing is not creation. I shall not spend the time I have reserved for creativity working on publishing to my binder, Ultimate Guitar, Substack, or my blog. Publishing is administrative work that belongs on my to-do list. It is not creativity or invention.
