The Geography of Stuck →

November 28, 2011

In which someone named Richard Florida opines that, “America can be divided into two distinct classes, the stuck and the mobile. The mobile possess the resources and the inclination to seek out and move to locations where they pursue economic opportunity. Too many Americans are stuck in places with limited resources and opportunities. This geography of the stuck and mobile is a key axis of cleavage in the United States.”

What about people who like where they live and are committed to those places? Are they “stuck”?

“ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Ghost, now and unto ages of ages. Amen.”

November 28, 2011

“
Advent seems to be about the shame of God, but this is nothing new. Long before the incarnation, God risked shame. He chose elderly Abraham and his barren wife—strangers and aliens, without country, without city, without seed—as the unlikely parents of His people. Yahweh became their God. Long before Jesus, God began to enter into flesh.

Whenever we commit to people and causes and projects, we place ourselves at the mercy of others. We put our reputations and names on the line. Will our chosen spouse be faithful? Will our children embarrass us? Will the others working on this project pull their weight? Will we risk everything, and lose? Will we be ashamed?

In His eternal humility, God puts His reputation on the line by allying with strangers, and Hebrews says “God is not ashamed to be called their God.” Abraham and Sarah trusted and died in faith, though they greeted the promise only from a great distance. They sought a heavenly city prepared by God, and God was vindicated in their trust.

And God is not ashamed to take flesh because in the flesh Jesus proves Himself a true Son of Abraham. Even when He faces the cross and grave, Jesus trusts His Father, and God is not ashamed to call Him Son.

We bear the name of the Triune God. The Spirit dwells in our flesh. God entrusts His Name and future to us, and calls us to be His covenant partners. Will we vindicate Him by the faith that overcomes the world? Or will He be ashamed to call us His people?
”

— Peter Leithart, in his exhortation to us yesterday. That third paragraph is, I think, the way the entire Old Testament should be read—particularly Judges and Kings: God puts his reputation on the line by giving his name to a fickle wretch like Israel, and not being ashamed of having done so. It’s also the way to look at church history (even American Presbyterianism!).

November 28, 2011

November 23, 2011

November 21, 2011

Brandon Sheard quarters a side of pork. This is via The Anatomy of Thrift.

“
Father George Zabelka was chaplain to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki squadrons that dropped the bomb, and administered the Eucharist to the Catholic pilot [who] dropped it. He later renounced his actions: “To fail to speak to the utter moral corruption of the mass destruction of civilians was to fail as a Christian and as a priest as I see it… . I was there, and I’ll tell you that the operational moral atmosphere in the church in relation to mass bombing of enemy civilians was totally indifferent, silent, and corrupt at best – at worst it was religiously supportive of these activities by blessing those who did them.”

The most tragic statement: “Catholics dropped the A-bomb on top of the largest and first Catholic city in Japan… . One would have thought that I would have suggested that as a minimal standard of Catholic morality, Catholics shouldn’t bomb Catholic children… . I walked through the ruins of Nagasaki right after the war and visited the place where once stood the Urakami Cathedral. I picked up a piece of the censer from the rubble. When I look at it today I pray God forgives us for how we have distorted Christ’s teaching.”
”

—

Peter Leithart, “Priests Dropping Bombs”.

In light of this and this, the modern American church is, when considered in relation to its support of our current batch of illegal foreign wars, identical to Father Zabelka.

November 18, 2011

November 11, 2011

November 20th. I can’t wait.

The man asked could God make a taco so terrible even He could not eat it. →

November 07, 2011

Cormac McCarthy, were he to review a Taco Bell on Yelp.

November 07, 2011

americandrink:

Plenty of you already know the ins and outs of making an Old Fashioned, but let’s start the week out with a baseline.

Who better to set this standard than Chris McMillian. McMillian is something of a legend. He’s a fourth-generation bartender who’s been making classic cocktails long before they were popular (again.) This video was shot at the Library Lounge in New Orleans but you’ll find him at at Bar Uncommon these days.

New Olreans Best Cocktails: The Old Fashioned (by keithmarszalek)

You might want to click through to see the rest of his videos.

October 24, 2011

“Beauty is cosmic order understood as gift.”

— Ken Myers quoting or paraphrasing David Schindler in the first of four electrifying lectures for the Edwards Institute’s conference on apologetics and the arts called The True and the Beautiful (listen to or download the lectures).

October 21, 2011

“And he’s the Person who came up with the platypus… and the emerald. And Hieronymus Bosch’s brain. He’s the thing behind the thing, and so don’t fear. You can love bizarre stuff and still be in his eye.”

— Aaron Belz, in a blog post quoting his own reply to an email my friend Stervenson sent him in January, 2011.

October 19, 2011

Bus Stop, Plainview, Texas, by Charles Henry. Discovered at American Elegy. — *Bus Stop*, Plainview, Texas, by Charles Henry. Discovered at American Elegy.

October 12, 2011

There’s nothing more beautiful than a shovel. →

October 12, 2011

Randy Fox interviews David Plowden at his American Elegy site.

Alan Jacobs on Steve Jobs' oft-quoted Stanford commencement address →

October 07, 2011

Alan Jacobs’ comments are good. I would add this: for all the talk of the world-changing (or, even, universe-denting) stuff Jobs did with Apple, what fundamentally matters is how the man was to the people closest to him. Was he available to his children? Did he pour himself out for his wife as he did for his company? Did he have love? Or was he sounding brass and clanging cymbal? Of course, being apart from the Son of the God who is love—as Jobs was—no one can have love. And by all accounts, he was hard to be around. Many stories about Jobs indicate that he was personally irascible, hot-tempered, and an awful person to be around—but that’s all okay, they hasten to add, because he was an inspiring visionary.
From all accounts, he was sounding brass and clanging cymbal, a man in tune with the future (whatever that means), but out-of-tune with the people who had to live with him.

“The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely, the saints the Church has produced and the art which has grown in her womb. Better witness is borne to the Lord by the splendor of holiness and art which have arisen in the community of believers than by the clever excuses which apologetics has come up with to justify the dark sides which, sadly, are so frequent in the Church’s human history. If the Church is to continue to transform and humanize the world, how can she dispense with beauty in her liturgies, that beauty which is so closely linked with love and with the radiance of the Resurrection? No, Christians must not be too easily satisfied. They must make their Church into a place where beauty — and truth — is at home. Without this the world will become the first circle of hell…. A theologian who does not love art, poetry, music and nature can be dangerous. Blindness and deafness toward the beautiful are not incidental: they necessarily are reflected in his theology.”

— Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (1985)

Ratzinger consistently astonishes me.

October 05, 2011