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
I preached a meditation on hope in the New Testament to help the folks of University Baptist & Brethren Church ring in the first Sunday of Advent. (Here’s video evidence.)
“Roman Catholic” is an oxymoron.
There is a very fine line between abstruseness and nonsense. And neither writer nor reader can distinguish for sure.
Just re-listened to Electric Warrior by T. Rex (1971). I know it’s only rock ’n roll. But I like it.
If your hope for heaven holds that nothing you do here matters, then to hell with it.
Heaven is not a judgement-free zone.
Just re-listened to A Home and a Hunger (2017) by Caroline Cobb. Very devout singer-songwriter Bible stuff that sounds like a fledging, lady Andrew Peterson. Gabe Scott’s tasteful CCM production, including bouzouki, banjo, lapsteel, dulcimer, and dobro, helps make that comparison. More Bibley than Peterson. Highlights: “There Is a Mountain,” “All Is Vanity (Ecclesiastes),” “Emmanuel (Every Promise Yes in Him),” and “Only the Sick Need a Physician.” Two of the other numbers cry out for a full-on gospel music treatment. I’m glad talented lyricists are still writing very Christian (instead of merely theistic) songs for the church and getting good production value.
Here are the correct answers for “What are the best performances of Ravel’s Boléro on disc?”
In case Spotify goes out of business by the time you’re reading this, here’s a text-only list of the same, sequenced least best (but still quite good) to best:
One of the reasons—maybe the main reason—I find the built environment in Europe more charming that in the U.S. is the relative lack of billboards and overhead power lines.
I realized the other week that I didn’t own a copy of a recording of Rhapsody in Blue. That felt un-American, so I went shopping. I listened to the following eleven renditions in search of one to buy:
Kitchen towels are much more effective at soaking up water if, instead of constantly moving them around, you let them rest. My attention is a kitchen towel.
I don’t feel at work the stress I feel at home, where stress accompanies not only the drive to get things done, but even the desire for recreation!
Why the difference? I’m not certain. But my surmises are several:
Might I import those circumstances into my non-DiamondBack life? Yes. And in :
I tend to hold in tension my intentions with your own ✏️ 🎤 🎵
I make lists. Here’s one: “Scriptural snippets that may indicate everyone makes it to The Party.”
Here’s my latest working definition: “forgive”
“Hold fast to reproof, don’t let go. Keep it, for it is your life” (Proverbs 4:13, Alters). Lord, may I cherish correction.
Just re-listened to Saxophone Colossus by Sonny Rollins. Classic and therefore at this point entirely unsurprising tenor sax-led hard bop that maintains its faculty to please. It might have been better titled Saxophone Colossus with Drum Titan.
I do what I can
I can what I do ✏️ 🎤 🎵
(h/t Carla)
Carla: Oof, Sully’s YouTube video made me nauseated. Is that a thing? Can a YouTube video make you nauseated?
Scott: Carla, anything can make you nauseated.
Crosby, Stills, and gnashing of teeth
Wanna keep the young away
It’s not that I don’t wanna fight no more,
It’s just that I had a bad day. ✏️ 🎤 🎵
One step closer to nowhere ✏️ 🎤 🎵
I don’t feel sad like I did in 2016. I just feel angry and perplexed that the majority of American voters selected a unabashed narcissist, mythomaniac, sexual predator, and otherwise very well-established heel as their leader.
L’État, c’est lui ?
Forgiveness is dismissal, as of a debt or a sin. There are two kinds of forgiveness:
Let’s take the protagonist of Secret Sunshine as our illustration. [spoiler alert] She can dismiss her son’s killer’s sin as reason for anger or rumination as soon as her anger and rumination is spent. She should try to reach the end of her anger and rumination, although these things do often take time. This is the sense in which love keeps no record of wrongs. This is the sense in which we say forgiveness frees us.
She ought not, however, dismiss her son’s killer’s sin as reason for distancing herself from her son’s killer or for wishing her son’s killer to be incarcerated until such time as that killer has made amends, requested forgiveness, and otherwise shown ample evidence of complete repentance. If she forgives him before those preconditions are met, then she is foolish and shortsighted, risking his further harm to...
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