Oct 17
I’ve had a few conversations recently about Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new book The Message. Coates is, of course, massively popular due to books like Between the World and Me, among others. He was a correspondent with The Atlantic and has garnered a large audience due to his writings on social and political issues, specifically on matters of racial injustice and white supremacy.
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My wife and I were recently out walking and passed by a woman wearing a buoyantly colourful T-shirt full of flowers and virtue that said, “Be kind” on it. I did my best to smile inoffensively at her as she walked by. I probably failed. Once she was out of earshot, I said to my wife, “What do you think shirts with messages like that actually accomplish? “Do you think people look at them and think, ‘Ah, yes, thank you for the reminder. I shall redouble my efforts to be a kinder person today’? Or do you think people resent the mini-moral lecture and mutter derision at them under their breath?” My wife may have rolled her eyes at me. Or muttered derision under her breath. Read more
The first headline that greeted me when I opened my laptop this morning was the news that NHL star Johnny Gaudreau and his brother Matthew had been killed by a (most likely) drunk driver while riding their bikes in New Jersey. The scene is heartbreaking to contemplate. Two brothers out for a late-summer bike ride, a few days ahead of their sister’s wedding. One can imagine a joyful family reunion full of laughter and kids and grand-kids and the anticipation of all the celebrations around the weekend nuptials. All shattered by a moment of madness. A young woman, widowed, two very young children who will almost certainly never remember a thing about their father. A family, gutted. It is all so very, very sad. Read more
Further to the crisis of meaning discussed in my previous post…
Not only are young adults (at least in the West) not making enough babies, they’re incredibly anxious. Over the course of at least the last decade or so, a mental health crisis has washed/is washing over younger generations. According to a recent survey, “38 percent of respondents aged 12 to 26 had received a formal diagnosis of anxiety or depression” (29 percent of young men, 45 percent of young women). Further, “even among those who have not received a diagnosis, about half say they often feel anxious; a quarter say they often feel depressed.” The young, clearly, are not well. Read more
There’s a book that’s been making the rounds lately. It’s called What Are Children For? On Ambivalence and Choice and is co-written by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman. I’ve encountered no fewer than five reviews or articles on it over the last three days. For many, at least in Western, wealthy, post-Christian countries, having children is by no means an obvious life path. Birth rates are plummeting to far below the replacement rate needed to sustain populations. Many young adults are simply deciding not to have kids. It’s thought to be either too expensive (hard to argue), immoral (climate change anxieties loom large here, as do reservations about how having children reinforces outdated gender norms, “reducing” women to mothers), or simply undesirable (kids can be a real drag). Read more
So, there’s this big scandal involving the Canadian women’s soccer team at the Olympics. Apparently, two Canadian staff members were caught attempting to use a drone to spy on the New Zealand team’s practice. This is obviously not a good look for Canada as the Paris Olympics begin. Canada is supposed to be squeaky clean and wholesome and peaceful and tolerant and inclusive and blah, blah, blah, all the other nice, good, neutral things that we have ever laboured to convey to the world around us. “Cheaters” doesn’t really fit the image we wish to project. Read more
There’s a young man on the train reading a book. The bare fact of this fascinates me. Who reads books anymore? Almost everyone else is either staring at their phones or talking (loudly and obliviously) into phones held face up in front of their mouths on speaker mode as seems to be the new bewildering norm. But there he sits, reading his book, like some kind of peculiar relic from a bygone age. I glance at the cover of the book. The Art of Living by Epictetus. Well. Not just any old book—which would have been remarkable enough—but a book of ancient philosophy and virtue? My mind is well and truly blown. I want to lean over and congratulate him or give him a hug or something. Read more
I saw a screenshot in the aftermath of the Trump assassination attempt on Sunday. Some academic somewhere saying something to the effect of, “So close!” The gleeful comments obligingly took their place below. Should have had better aim! Dammit, just an inch the other way. What a glorious day this could have been! Etc., etc. The screenshot was captured as a gotcha moment. Look at all these self-righteous “progressive” elites who claim to have the moral high ground, wallowing around in the mud of glorying in an attempted assassination. It was all so wearyingly predictable. And of course, if it had been Biden’s ear that was grazed, the same sad scenario would have been playing out in different corners of the internet that are emotionally invested in being perpetually aggrieved in other directions. We are, it has seemed to me for a very long time now, grossly and terrifyingly invested in who and how we hate. Read more
I’ve been thinking about moral “progress” a lot lately. The impetus for this has come from several sources. In Nick Cave’s latest edition of the Red Hand Files, he responds to a guy who’s wondering how to “move forward with joy” when one has “outgrown” the moral norms of one’s parents. Then there was a philosophical essay called “Moral Progress is Annoying,” which circled around the unremarkable insight that our “norm psychology” and knee-jerk reactions aren’t always reliable indicators of what is right or wrong. Read more
Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God (Isaiah 40:1)
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A friend recently passed along a dialogue between Richard Dawkins, perhaps the world’s most famous atheist (at least at the moment) and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, perhaps the world’ most famous former atheist and Christian convert (at least at the moment). I’ve written about her story a bit here and here. The interview provides a fascinating window into some of the dynamics that appear when someone “leaves the team.” Hirsi Ali was an enthusiastic supporter of the New Atheism back in the early part of the twenty-first century, but for a variety of reasons, from the political to the intensely personal, recently defected and joined “Team Christian.” Dawkins does his (cringily awkward, at times) best to be supportive of Hirsi Ali as a friend but remains utterly incredulous that she could have turned to such “nonsense.” Read more
Is it morally permissible to be happy in our world? This is a question that I encounter in some variation or other with some frequency. Sometimes it is young adults bemoaning the “state of the world” they’re inheriting (climate change, high cost of housing, bleak employment prospects, depressing dating scene, etc.) and vowing never to bring a child into such a terrible world (I often tell these young adults that they might profit from reading a bit more history). Sometimes it’s activists who look around and see only racism or economic inequality or all the structural barriers preventing this or that marginalized group from flourishing. Sometimes it is people faced with a crushing decision or living in the immediate aftermath of terrible loss. Sometimes it’s people who are depressed, addicted, or anxious. Sometimes it’s people who are simply worn out by life. Read more
“Did you hear about that speech that the player from some football team gave? I don’t know his name, the quarterback, maybe? The team was called the Chiefs or something.” So began a conversation over dinner with my daughter the other day. She was of course referring to the by now (in)famous commencement address given by Kansas City Chiefs placekicker (not quarterback) Harrison Butker at Benedictine College in Atchison, KS. My daughter has never watched an NFL football game in her life. But she knew about this football player’s speech (and she had a few opinions). Which I found interesting. Read more
Sunday morning, 10:17 am. I scan my digital wristband across the sensor of the locker assigned to me by a beaming Nordic Spa staff member. I have a Sunday off, so my wife and I have made the short trek to the Rocky Mountains for a bit of time away. I examine my surroundings. The locker room is immaculate. There are private showers, complimentary bathroom amenities, unlimited towels, earnest staff members everywhere, all eager to help me relax, restore, refocus, reclaim, rejuvenate, re-everything. Before heading out for a day of “hydrotherapy” (which will include exotic steam cabins with names like “Alchemist” and “Eucalyptus,” Finnish saunas, “reflection pools” (as in, “pools in which to reflect” not “pools that you can see your reflection in”), and “exfoliation cabins,” I am exhorted to leave my phone in the locker. Read more
On Sunday morning, a few of us were going through some last-minute details in preparation for the service. Among these, was the addition of a slide to be projected during the sermon. The person who had requested the slide had it ready to go on a USB drive and was going to deliver it to the people responsible for making sure such things happen. I couldn’t help but notice that the USB drive had the logo of a certain political party on it. I made some offhand comment about it. This led to a bit of harmless political banter. “Better not use that drive when so-and-so is running the tech,” one person said with a wink. “Yeah, but other-so-and-so would love it” said someone else. And so and so forth. It was a light moment of brevity before worship, perhaps even an unwitting acknowledgement that even though we don’t all see things the same way politically, we can still come together in worship. Read more
I have fairly regular conversations with people who want nothing to do with Jesus or Christianity due to the sins—real or imagined—of the church. Patriarchy, racism, sexism, capitalism, exclusivism, colonialism, sycophantism, homophobia… These and many more are vigorously laid at the doorstep of the church. How could I associate myself with such a religion? And the less obvious but implicit corollary: How can you? Read more
In a recent conversation, someone remarked that one of the insights they had gained over time, through all the ups and downs and ins and outs and trials and tribulations, was that “everything is sacred” in this life. I nodded appreciatively, even though the irritating critic that lives in my head had already begun accumulating a list of things—war, poverty, gun violence, systemic evil, mosquitoes, TikTok—that I would not want to put in that category. The sentiment that we are trying to express when we say something like “everything is sacred” is surely worthy of affirmation. It is a recognition that there is something special or important or even holy about the world that can be discovered anywhere. Read more
I had never heard of Threads before I opened my computer this morning and read an article about it in The New York Times. Evidently, Threads is (or was designed to be) an un-Twitter, er, I mean an un-X or… Whatever. It was to be a “safe space” from the evils of Elon Musk and the festering cesspit of rancour and ignorance and misinformation and disinformation and tribalistic stupidity that he had let loose in the world. Because obviously Twitter was such a peaceful playground of mutuality and rational benevolence before Musk sent it straight to hell. Read more
What kind of selves do we need to be to live in harmony with others?
I came across this question in a recent interview with Yale theologian Miroslav Volf. The context for the question was the endlessly discussed and analyzed “polarization” that defines our cultural moment. But the question extends far beyond the culture wars or the toxicity of social media or the relentless politicizing of everyday life. It’s the kind of question we should always be asking, I think. And yet so few of us give even a passing thought to the “kinds of selves” we are becoming through the habits and disciplines (or not) that we are daily cultivating. Read more
 | Elizabeth on Joy on the Line |
| Elizabeth on Give Praise |
 | Wes on Joy on the Line |
 | inquisitivelypinkcd4… on Give Praise |
| inquisitivelypinkcd4… on Joy on the Line |
Rumblings 