A clean conscience goes a long way.

“Orange Crush” (1988) sounds like R.E.M. had been listening to a lot of U2.

“A person who’s not open to answers doesn’t really have questions” (Samuel James, “Letter to a Deconstructing Christian”).

“The greatest delicacies taste of nothing when one dines alone.”

— Hanshiro Tsugumo in Harakiri (1962), written by Shinobu Hashimoto

Communication is love. If I’m involved, at least, if there’s any ambiguity at all, it must be squashed. Love demands it. However, I think one person’s ambiguity that needs to be squashed is another person’s opportunity for the exercise of commonsense intuition.

The one thing I’ll say about The Magnificent Seven (2016): I cried a little—touched and pleased—that the three heroes who remained alive at the end of the film were the black man, the Latino, and the Native American. That’s a good change.

While reading the Cheerios box, Sullivan stops and says, “Mom, what’s cancer?” Carla replies that it’s a sickness that kills a lot of people and that Cheerios is trying to raise money to help fund research to find a cure. In turn, Sullivan says, “Yeah, because pink doesn’t really work, right?” Confused, Carla asks, “What?” Sullivan replies slyly as if telling her something that only a few select people know, “Liiiike, people wear those pink shoes and gloves…but it doesn’t really cure their cancer.”

Methinks 1 Corinthians 11:17 tempers a mindless application of Hebrews 10:25. is.gd/1cor1117heb1025

Love itself is the prime spiritual discipline. All others, including Bible study and prayer, are good only insofar as they serve to empower, amplify, or inform love.

Pianists don’t cultivate their skill and musicianship by reading books on the history of piano music or by talking with composers, as enriching and obliquely helpful as that might be. They improve by playing piano.

Similarly, the way you get better and more consistent at loving is by trying to love.

Carla: Except for Sully. He’s from Venus.
Sullivan: Are you saying beautiful and normally portrayed to non-school groups as naked?

Speaking harshly was one of Jesus’ love languages.

I do confess my having daydreamed today about fronting a U2 and Britpop cover band with college friends Aaron G., Jason, Aaron R., and Adam R., with Josh A. joining for acoustic numbers.

Ironically, and with apologies to Josh, it was late U2 (“Red Flag Day”) that first inspired the daydream. Also, friend of friend Chris F. was there, too, but I wasn’t sure how to fit in so many guitarists.

For Christmas, can I have socks? Like, thirty socks. And wrap them all in cash.

— Sullivan

Become love plankton.

Lord, be more than a topic.

I somehow sneezed up my shorts!

— Sullivan

Oh, that’s just dirt from earlier.

— Éa, coughing

Scott: What needs to happen for a bill to become law?
Éa: Oh, I know! The bill needs to sing a song! 🎵

Things I learned today:

• Orientation towards accomplishment and order is going to be hard to mix back into orientation toward people and whim.
• Local democracy is a lot of fun when it involves something you care about.
• Carla is clever and thoughtful.
• Buying presents for nephews and nieces is way fun (at least when you know what to give them).
• I’m eager to be done with the HRIS selection at work.

Things I learned yesterday:

• It is inadvisable to begin working out at 9 PM. Choose sleep over exercise every time.
• Graeme hates the Beatles.
• My “metanoiac” theory of the atonement, which I attempted to explain to Mark Troyer, has legs and probably ought to be written out.
• Wearing masks all day at work feels tiresome.
• The Christmas party at work has been canceled.

Carla’s comment about the killer “taking away [the] power“ of our main character in Secret Sunshine is illuminating for how things may have shifted since the days of Jesus: It used to be that the Pharisees could lord unforgiven-ness over people as a means of power, hence the importance of Jesus forgiving sins and—gasp!—authorizing scruffy Galileans, et al to do the same. But now, we’ve taken the requirement to forgive and turned it into an instrument for the maintenance of power. Ugh!

I’m living my life against the grain my heart. I’m hoping this realization is God answering my prayer that I do only what I see Him doing, that that’s all I want to do.

Overall, I’m spending too much time at my “helm,” that is, my computer workstation, thinking that the key to well-lived life resides somewhere in Remember the Milk, and not enough time resting and relating.

In my crosshairs as I turn toward changing my life are:

• counting beans (i.e., doing the monthly accounting),
• exercising on days when I climb, and
• time in my office in front of my computer doing things other than DiamondBack work.

Along those lines, here is what I propose:

1. I spend no more than one hour attempting to accomplish private, at-my-workstation tasks. I set a timer to facilitate keeping to that limit.
2. For exercise, I think all that I’m going to try for now is to (1) do my RDLs and perhaps squats at Climb Nittany when I have the opportunity and (2) be willing to shorten the routine on those same days.
3. Carla and I do the monthly accounting together.

“With” is the still the word of the week.

Carla told me as I spouted some of what I was learning from the Burkeman book that she suspected I don’t undertake things when I don’t think I’ll succeed at them. That’s something worth thinking about, perhaps.

My reflections on excerpts and quotations from Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mere Mortals (2021) by Oliver Burkeman:

I think before I dive in to actual quotations, I should say that the main effect of this book on me is to solidify something I should have know: You can’t do everything you want. You won’t do everything you want. The sooner you get over that, the sooner you can move forward boldly with whatever you want to do, whether that’s oriented toward accomplishment or relationships or something else. (All in love, of course.) I think this takeaway would make the author happy.

And the more individual sovereignty you achieve over your time, the lonelier you get (31).

Gah, I’ve sure noticed that.

If Hägglund were guaranteed an infinity of these summer vacations, there’d be nothing much to value about any one of them; it’s only the guarantee that he definitely won’t have an infinity of them that makes them worth valuing. Indeed, it’s slide only from this position of...