It’s hard for me to believe it, but we’re almost at the end of 2021. At one time, I thought I would write these reading roundups more regularly. Alas, I had other priorities. Here’s a list of favorites, with occasional annotations.

• Eye of the Needle by Ken Follet
• Advent by Fleming Rutledge
• On the Road with Saint Augustine by James K.A. Smith
• Reckless graphic novels by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips — Some of the page-turning-est crime fiction I’ve ever read, in comic book form!
• C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy — I punted on these for years, but picked them up at the recommendation of a friend. I’d say it’s been foundational for me in recovering an “enchanted” sense of faith and life. Additionally, the sociological vision and machinations of the third book’s evilly banal organization, “N.I.C.E.”, are eerily prescient.
• Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen
• Paul and the Power of Grace by John Barclay
• Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen: Who Killed Jimmy Olsen by Matt Fraction — Probably the most you’ll ever laugh reading a Superman comic.
• The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
• Wonder Woman: Dead Earth by Daniel Warren Johnson
• Prayer in the Night by Tish Harrison Warren
• Hunting Magic Eels by Richard Beck — Another book that’s heavily influenced my appreciation for the mysterious/“enchanted” aspects of faith.
• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
• Uprooted by Gracy Olmstead
• Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose
• The Symposium by Plato — This was the first book our newly founded “great books” club read together. A bunch of philospher’s drunken reflections on Eros, what’s not to love?
• The Decadent Society by Ross Douthat
• Reliquary by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
• Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, translated by Stephen Mitchell — The second entry for our book club.
• Hounded by Kevin Hearne — This was a re-read. Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicles are great fun.
• Lectio Divina — Enzo Bianchi
• Beowulf translated by J.R.R. Tolkien — I had our book club read Maria Dahvana Headley’s translation of Beowulf for our third entry. Since I had devoured her translation late last year after receiving it for Christmas, I chose to read Tolkien’s translation on my own, and put it in conversation with Headley’s.
• Acedia and its Discontents by R.J. Snell
• Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
• Building the Benedict Option by Leah Libresco Sargeant
• The World Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry — A collection of Berry’s essays curated by Paul Kingsnorth.
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley — Our book club’s fourth entry. More of a page-turner than I expected.
• Piranesi by Susannah Clarke — Maybe my favorite book on this list? Captivating, entrancing, and original.
• Reading the Times by Jeffrey Bilbro — Made me want to never read the news again. Alas, I’m only human. That said, his thoughts on Kairos vs Chronos time got my wheels spinning. I hope to write something about that as it pertains to technology.
• Margin by Richard Swenson
• Magic: A History by Chris Gosden

An update

So, as I mentioned in this post, I tried a “digital detox” for about 30 days. Overall, I’d say it was a worthwhile experience, one with some surprising outcomes.

A bit of housekeeping regarding this space — I gained a newfound appreciation for simplicity during that time. In that spirit, I decided to import all of my “longform” blog posts here and moved the domain name for robertsapunarich.com to point to here, and retire my Github Pages site. So, if you’re subscribed to robertsapunarich.micro.blog, go ahead and update your subscription to the feed here (those of you who follow me in the Micro.blog app may have missed a post from the other day due to the domain name change).

Manton’s done a great job with Micro.blog, and its simplicity works for my purposes. I have an about page, and links to writing elsewhere. In a roundabout way, the clarification of values that came from the detox led to this decision — something I’ll discuss in a bit.

Why

I don’t use any social media at all. I don’t need to belabor the reasons why — others have already done that work better than I ever have.

Nonetheless, we are all victims of the global lobotomy to some degree, and I’m no exception. I think it’s reasonable to conclude that the machine has become so totalizing in its effects that its influence can be felt even if you don’t explicitly opt in to it. Less opaquely, I would argue that the feedback mechanisms of The Bird App, et. al., have in various ways shaped journalism, literature, language, and human behavior so that it’s optimized for consumption and engagement. The fact that I regularly hear the term “content” unreflectively deployed in everday conversation is but one example of what I’m talking about.

But I would also argue that distraction and self-justification are innate human desires that the Bay Area overlords are simply exploiting and cultivating, not creating. So, despite my preference for RSS and newsletters, they still act as means for me to pursue my inveterate need to sate those desires. For me, knowledge has always been something I used to define, or defend myself.

So it came about that sometime mid-August of this year, I found myself unable to focus, anxious, depressed, cranky, cynical, and bitter. I don’t remember the exact impetus, but I realized that I needed to change some things.

The detox

Cal Newport’s book helpfully outlines instructions for a digital detox, especially some strategies for those whose work requires they be chained to certain technologies. While he assumes readers are currently using social media, his advice is still applicable for those who don’t.

Basically, my rules were:

• Slack removed from the phone.
• All email accounts removed from the phone.
• Web browser disabled on my phone.
• No reading newsletters.
• No reading blogs.
• No checking micro.blog.
• No reading news. My wife would summarize the headlines for me in ten seconds.
• No web reading, really.
• Deleting all articles from pocket that weren’t work-learning related.
• Check work and personal email once a day.

Additionally, I used Freedom to create blocklists and all day sessions to create some friction. Since I’m a Firefox user, Impulse Blocker also augmented the friction nicely.

Excessive? Maybe, but so were my digital habits.

Findings

• The first week was difficult. The FOMO was real. But the second week of the detox, we went on vacation with some friends to Hatteras. I can honestly say that I did not miss the online world. Games, beach, reading, and just lounging around were sufficiently preoccupying.
• Most news, when discussed, felt increasingly irrelevant.
• The assumption that I need to be “plugged in” or “participating in ‘the discourse’” seemed increasingly silly.
• I sometimes found myself thinking of clever things to share, or thinking that something would make a good blog. I realized I had become habituated to living a performative life. Having been a regular user of the internet for the past 16-ish years, this was unsurprising.
• Once I left my phone at home when we went to church. At times I would instinctively reach for it, but I actually didn’t feel that disconnected. It felt very normal to be without it.

Outcomes

Let me be clear — I didn’t become hyperfocused, found a new company, or master the piano as time went on. If anything, I found myself becoming contented with limits. But, I would say the outcomes have been surprising and still beneficial.

• I decided that a smartphone is worth having. Mostly for maps and music, but also messaging friends and sending pictures. BUT…
• I can do without the browser. If someone sends me something to look at, I can look it up later. I don’t need to react then and there.
• Work Slack can stay — my company respects the lives of their employees, so it’s not much of an intrusion. But recreational Slacks provided too much distraction.
• I unsubscribed from blogs and newsletters with abandon. I don’t have a count of how many I dropped, but I’m confident that I deleted more than I kept. Particularly, I ditched most stuff that’s mostly concerned with politics/current events/The Discourse.
• I began to look at my stack of unread books in a different light. This one was interesting. I realized how I often would pick up a book because it seemed like something I should read or be knowledgeable about, rather than something that truly interested me. Charlottesville has a lot of little neighborhood libraries that’ll ensure these books get to good homes.
• I started playing guitar a lot more, and now I’m getting to play music in church, which I haven’t done for almost ten years.
• I realized how much of my identity I had tacitly wrapped up in writing, even if I didn’t write all that much. I’m an English major who pivoted into software. When I was in undergrad, I received accolades and awards, was invited to present at a conference, and was strongly encouraged to pursue a career in academia. It came naturally for me. And I long harbored a desire to work with words again. But I’m not what I produce, and for too long I’ve believed that I am. Consolidating my web presence here was a way of decisively removing any notion of a “professional” web presence. I know what I need to do to grow in the work I have right now, and it doesn’t involve a blog.

I’m unsure of what all the above means, and I don’t think that I’m immune to picking up old habits again. But, I’m thankful for the experience and the things I’ve learned from it. I highly recommend everyone do this. You might be surprised what you learn.

From Mary Harrington over at Unherd:

We’ve paid steeply to control this virus. The price has not just been in government borrowing but in the tattered warp and weft of our common life. Maybe the price has been worth paying: even under lockdown, a staggering 126,000 UK citizens died within 28 days of a Covid test over the last year. But the cost has been unfathomable as well, both individually and collectively — and it has not been evenly borne.

Over the past year, I ran more than a thousand miles. I counted my blessings with every step. Compared to many I have been lucky. I kept running as the hedgerows blossomed, greened, fruited and blew bare, and the world outside came increasingly to resemble a bleak and hallucinatory shadow-show. Even if everything else has seemed insubstantial, the paths under my feet stayed put: unchanged except by the seasons coming and going.

It’s easy to conclude that it’s all unreal, and to turn away. But the point is precisely that that out there is not a shadow-show: it’s an emerging new normal. It’s just difficult to see, because everything now, from our media to government lockdown policy, seems geared toward “just me” or “everything” — but nothing in between.

Who cares about local life, now our public conversation happens online, at colossal scale, in terms set by Chinese ambassadors and Ivy League social justice evangelists and massaged by algorithms? The answer has to be: us. We care. Even as it’s grown harder to see our life in common, we need it more than ever. The alternative is a future governed purely by Aella’s Law: an unjust, atomised, deeply inhuman place.

I’m hesitant to belabor this point, especially because I’ve already written about this. Additionally, I’ve become more hopeful about things on this side of the pond, with the accelerating output of vaccinations and whatnot. I’m also trying to think in more constructive terms generally — not just bitching about Things That Grind Robbie’s Gears. But, I think that Harrington’s warning about Aella’s Law bears hearing. I encourage you to read the entire piece.

I sometimes (often?) express antipathy toward media, corporate, and governmental institutions, and I worry that I sound like a raving anti-mask Q-anon enthusiast to my friends and family. But this last year has been boon for entities that parasitically thrive on crises. The pandemic gave our Bay Area overlords the opportunity to augment surveillance capitalism with the shock doctrine. When I hear politicians (whose campaigns often receive considerable financing from Silicon Valley) extol the virtues of draconian health and safety measures, the reality of “disaster capitalism” colors my perspective. Amazon, Zoom, and Netflix have all had a banner year.

Like I said, I’ve been feeling something like hope, maybe even optimism, lately. Spring is arriving here in Virginia, I just returned from a road trip through the deep south to Florida (the subject of another post), and I have my first Pfizer Nectar appointment scheduled. This optimism causes me to cringe a bit at Harrington’s use of that damnable phrase, “new normal”. As the risks of conviviality and embodiment continue to abate, I think people will be beating down the doors of bars, churches, and music venues; I’d even say they already are.

The remarkable thing about the attention economy is that in order to be free even while living in the midst of it, you simply need to be deliberate about where you direct your attention. As people are increasingly unhappy with the psychological regime of outrage and terror, they discover all they need to do is walk away. It doesn’t take much to remember that Doordash, YouTube, and livestreams are poor substitutes for the things they mediate.

Harrington says that we need to be the people who care about our local life. If the conversations I’ve had with friends and colleagues are any indication, many already do care. And this gives me hope.

The strange, new circumstances of 2020 entailed a number of strange, new behaviors — “social distancing”, wearing masks, working from home, “toobin” (for some). I think I uttered the phrase “public health” more in one month than I had in my entire life until March 2020. Suddenly, my blissfully unaware self was inundated with a string of strange, new directives, necessitating strange, new thoughts and behaviors.

Of course, the strange, new thing was a little understood, highly contagious virus that was spreading rapidly. Our governments were thoroughly unprepared for it. The United States, historically seen as an economic, diplomatic, and military leader, found itself less equipped to handle the disaster than a Texas grocery store chain. In a scramble to maintain the stability of our health care system, we forced ourselves minimize embodiment. The bodies and breath of others, those essential, irreducible aspects of their humanity, became “transmission vectors” to avoid. Hugging and singing suddenly entailed considerable risk. Of course, covering the lower half of our faces and leaving six feet of space between each other were ways of acknowledging and honoring our embodiment. By striving to protect one another in this way for a time, we recognized that life is bound up in our bodies.

Nonetheless, I think that many people have come to realize that such a way of living and relating is fundamentally undesirable and unsustainable. Most people I talk with, even those who adjusted quite well at the start of the pandemic, are eager to get vaccinated and once again embrace a grandparent, work in an office, go to a basketball game, or listen to live music. What was often called the “new normal” has proven to be deeply abnormal, a recognition I’ve heard echoed by many people. But there are also subtle and not-so-subtle advocates for the normalization of our new habits. I don’t think theirs is the dominant preference; it seems to be a view espoused by the very online, the future-oriented, for whom human life is more experiment than experience.

A commercial I recently saw for Amazon Web Services, the cloud infrastructure platform provided by Amazon, illustrates such an attitude. It was narrated by a young girl. We see her waving to and thanking a Doordash delivery-woman as she drops off some food on her family’s porch. We see her father riding a Peloton, followed by her submitting school assignments on Blackboard, watching a movie on a projector in the backyard, and chatting with elderly relatives on Zoom. “Well, things are different these days, but we’re figuring it out”, she says. She tells us that her dad’s made some new workout buddies, and that, while doing school online, she’s “learning a lot”. The ad closes with text telling the viewer that AWS is how Zoom, Doordash, Peloton, etc. keep us all “connected”.

I saw this ad while visiting in-laws in rural Texas. I can only speculate as to why this ad was on cable television, whose audience is unlikely to have any direct use for AWS’s offerings. Neither can I imagine that anyone who actually would use AWS infrastructure to host a digital product would be swayed either way by this commercial. I don’t think cute ads play much of a role in enterprise software decision-making. The ad’s very existence only makes sense as a propaganda piece — it isn’t selling a service, but a worldview. “Food, health, learning, human interaction — whatever your need, we make possible its fulfillment”, the ad implies. “Everything is okay because of us”. Never mind that the family in the ad lives in a spacious suburban home, replete with devices. Never mind that the masked Doordash driver “smiling with her eyes” probably cannot make a living wage. Never mind the lost work, the closure of locally owned business, the economic devastation of communities, the well-documented shortcomings in education for the most vulnerable. The frightening dissonance between the experiences of our society’s technocratically-minded professional class and those most acutely afflicted by the pandemic’s effects is on full display.

This economic, political, and cultural disconnect existed well before a virus jumped from a bat to a pangolin to a human. But the alienation and fear that were already embedded in people’s psyches were exacerbated as we had to turn away from one another and toward the black mirrors in our hands and homes. I don’t think it requires much imagination to see how such compounding circumstances could make a large number of people vulnerable to believing and internalizing a set of delusions — delusions that, in turn, compel their believers to do something like invading the seat of American democracy in the hopes of overturning a presidential election.

Countless thinkpieces explore the whys and hows of such an event. “It’s the evangelicals”. “It’s the Democratic party’s betrayal of the working class”. “It’s the president’s rhetoric”. “It’s cowardly Republican politicians who want to be reelected”. “It’s disinformation and radicalization on social media platform XYZ”. I think all of these theses are correct to some degree. But I think that the last one points to a latent malaise that exacerbated the others.

The winners in our current economic and technological order have an incentive to perpetuate the conditions that make the events of January 6th possible. To shift away from the physical toward the virtual is to shift away from one reality to another. These virtual realities enrich their maintainers though engagement; the veracity of the realities that users are engaging with is irrelevant. Their business models necessitate the perpetuation of falsehood, since falsehood has proved effective in maintaining engagement.

I think repairing these virtual realities is impossible. Their viability as a product for their true customers (advertisers) requires them to double-down on the same features that cause profound psychological harm to their users. If we cannot fix virtual realities, then we must walk away from them altogether. We must return to one another in the real world, from “cyberspace” to “meatspace”, from abstractions to bodies.

The return to embodiment enabled by vaccinations will not fix all our societal ills, but it is a necessary condition. John Inazu, recognizing the necessity of embodiment to defeat “information viruses”, writes,

This pandemic season has forced on many of us the painful absence of face-to-face relationships. When we are once again free to pursue these embodied relationships, we might discover that they also represent our best antidote to the information virus: other human beings who force us to confront complexity rather than caricature, and who challenge us to maintain friends, not just followers. But antidotes, like vaccines, don’t always come easily. They take work, risk, and perseverance.

Work, risk, and perseverance are, of course, the very necessities that the purveyors of technologically mediated ease want to nullify. Why talk with waitstaff and wait for a meal when it can be brought to you? Why go to a smelly gym or risk the discomfort of the elements when you can ride an exercise bike in the comfort of your own home? Why crowd into a theater and bump elbows with strangers when a personally optimized algorithm suggests viewing options to you from the comfort of your couch?

The pandemic allowed those fortunate enough to afford it the opportunity to eliminate considerable friction from their lives. But in order to recover our communities and ourselves, more friction may be the very thing we need. We learn patience as we wait on food, await our turn for the squat rack, and try to find a seat in the theater. When we go to a restaurant, we are slightly less removed from the hands that prepared our food. We can observe and mimic the form of another when working out in a gym or class in a way that we can’t while watching a workout video. And we share collective laughter and tears when we watch a movie in a theater.

Friction is not a guarantor of virtue, but neither is ease. Friction can break us out of our solipsism and myopia; it opens us to otherness and expands our horizons. It both disenchants us of our illusions and re-enchants the world with the mystery of the unfamiliar. For many, this pandemic has exacerbated the friction of existence to a nigh intolerable degree — the healthcare workers facing death daily, the already disadvantaged students regressing in their learning, the small business owners who have lost their livelihoods, and those who have lost loved ones or their very lives to this disease. But for the rest of us who haven’t experienced such loss, it afforded us the opportunity to mitigate a lot of friction.

Such frictionless-ness has hidden costs. When the complexity of things is abstracted away, it doesn’t cease to exist; it is simply placed out of sight. As we eliminate friction from our lives, we replace it with illusion. And collective illusions, about our own righteousness, about the wickedness of others, about our lack of responsibility for ourselves and our communities, have brought us here. As the risk of this new virus is mitigated, we need to embrace friction and embodiment again. Drink a cup of coffee with a neighbor. See a movie. Meet a stranger and shake their hand. Hug a grandparent. Sing songs in church. Smell the sweat of another. Wait in a line. And while you wait, try not to check your phone.

Happy New Year! It feels like it was both so recently and so long ago that I wrote up my list of favorite reads from the first half of 2020. Going forward, I think I’ll write one of these entries quarterly, if only for the fact that it’s easier to summon thoughts about something I read three months ago, rather than six.

S.A. Cosby, Blacktop Wasteland —— When I wrote the previous “favorite reads” list, I was in the middle of reading this southern noir and so badly wanted to include it. This novel has all the elements of a page-turning crime thriller while also grappling with themes of race, class, and family. Cosby’s a Virginia native, and his home state also provides the setting for the novel. It was the perfect book for my first full summer living in my new home state.

Jacques Philippe, Interior Freedom —— This short book also made it onto my list of suggested reading for new and recovering Christians. It’s a brief but profound guide on communing with God, and understanding how the love of God frees us from the falsehoods we believe about ourselves.

Zadie Smith, Intimations —— A collection of short essays/meditations written during the spring of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced everyone to drop what they were doing.

John Scalzi, The Last Emperox —— A stellar conclusion to Scalzi’s Interdependency trilogy.

Alan Jacobs, Breaking Bread with the Dead —— I really admire Jacobs, and enjoy almost anything he writes. This book, a guide to developing a tranquil mind through encountering the past, was no exception. Look for a forthcoming piece over at Mockingbird, putting Jacobs’ book in conversation with Esau McCaulley’s Reading While Black, which is also featured on this list.

Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips, Pulp —— Another graphic novel(la) from Brubaker and Phillips, this one about an aging pulp writer in America during the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. I really like this straight-to-hardcover approach they’re taking, publishing entire stories at once. It allows creators to experiment with stories that don’t lend themselves to the serialized format that’s the current standard for comics.

Bob Dylan, Chronicles Vol. 1 —— Bob Dylan’s memoirs were really interesting to me. They provided such an intimate portrait of Manhattan’s Greenwich Village in the 50s and 60s, and made a legendary place and the people associated with it feel very approachable, even mundane.

Christopher L. Heuertz, The Sacred Enneagram —— Jenoa and I took an Enneagram test during premarital counseling a few years ago. I was initially skeptical of the whole thing, but over the years have found its descriptions of motivations and behaviors to be pretty reliable. Heurtz’s book helped me deepen my understanding of the Enneagram as a tool for better understanding people.

Esau McCaulley, Reading While Black —— Also on my list of suggested reading for new and recovering Christians, McCaulley’s book is easily one of my top favorites from all of 2020. McCaulley introduces readers to “Black ecclesial interpretation” of scripture, a little-understood and often neglected hermeneutical tradition. Although a scholar himself, McCaulley’s book is primarily written for laypeople, and he draws heavily on his own experiences struggling with both scripture and the injustices that acutely afflict African Americans. As I mentioned earlier, I recently wrote something putting McCaulley’s book in conversation with Alan Jacobs’ Breaking Bread with the Dead, so be on the lookout for that.

Matthew Crawford, Why We Drive —— This book radically changed my thoughts on self-driving cars, and driving in general. A medley of philosophy, memoir, and journalism, Crawford’s book grapples with and calls on readers to resist the increasing bureaucratic administration and streamlining of our lives by both corporations and government. A really original, thought-provoking, and surprisingly fun piece of political writing that does not adhere to any of our current partisan pieties.

Marilynne Robinson, Jack —— Jack is the most recent entry in Marilynne Robinson’s series of books that began with Gilead. The novel’s protagonist is an enigma to himself, and forces the reader to reflect on matters of free will and spiritual determinism (predestination!) in a way that, in the end, summons us to both sober self-assessment and compassion. I really enjoyed learning this character’s backstory, and the novel deepened my appreciation for Robinson as a writer.

Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park —— I needed a really potent distraction during the month of November, so a book about dinosaurs hunting humans on account of scientific hubris fit the bill. I had read this probably ten years ago, but enjoyed it this time even more than I remembered. The book differs from the movie in some significant ways, enough that it will feel fresh even if you’ve just watched Spielberg’s adaptation.

John Bellairs, The Letter, The Witch, and The Ring —— Although it’s the third book in a series and I hadn’t read the first two, Bellairs’ novel for young readers was still great fun. Road trips, old houses, magic, and coming of age.

Michael Jecks, The Last Templar —— A medieval murder mystery set in an English village in the early 14th century that deals with the trial and extermination of the Knights Templar.

trans. J.R.R. Tolkien, Sir Gawain & the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo —— I read Sir Gawain for an English lit class in college, and remember enjoying it. After talking about it with some friends recently, I decided to re-read it for Christmas, this time with Tolkien’s translation. It was a pleasure to read, as were the other poems, “Pearl” and “Sir Orfeo”.

trans. Maria Dahvana Headley, Beowulf —— The last book I read on 2020, finishing it on New Year’s Eve, might also have been my favorite. Dahvana’s feminist translation humanizes the characters of Beowulf. Her translation employs contemporary idiom, slang, and profanity in a weird alchemy that almost seems to unite the psyches of the poem’s readers and subjects. My friend Kendall wrote up some great thoughts on Headley’s translation that you should check out if you’re not already convinced to pick it up.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve read a number of books that have helped me re-learn about certain aspects of faith that may have been unhelpfully shaped by the evangelical subculture in which I spent a number of my formative years. My own experience seems to parallel that of many of my peers, some of whom would call themselves “ex-vangelical”. That experience has even become a publishing/media trend of its own, with a fixation on “deconstructing” one’s faith and reconstructing it as something new. While I resonate with the desire to move away from the harmful aspects of evangelicalism, I think ex-vangelicalism can result in an unhelpfully negative framing of the problem, focusing on what one no longer believes. Additionally, the “reconstruction” that follows sometimes seems to be more about accommodating one’s faith to modern cultural and intellectual sensibilities, rather than revisiting and recommitting to what is essentially true about God, life, the cosmos, etc.

I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I do think that the Christian story is substantially true, and that it provides a way of understanding the world that can handle the frustrations that vex modern people, particularly in the West (the growth of Christianity and its various expressions among non-Western societies is worth mentioning, but beyond the scope of what I want to address here). I believe that the claim “Jesus is Lord” is binding on all people and at the same time radically inclusive, but the most prominent voices in public discourse around religion seem inimical to such a thought, regardless of the perspective the come from. Thus, I thought it would be helpful to compile an annotated list of resources that have benefitted me in relearning about Christian theology and experience that isn’t so profoundly distorted by the forms of white American evangelicalism that myself and many of my friends were raised with. I see many people struggling to maintain their faith while feeling that their only choice is between either fundamentalism or embracing the culturally acceptable spirit of the age. I hope that the resources in this list show that there is a better way that will help people feel a greater connection with the deeper magic that the gospel proclaims.

I plan to update this list periodically, and will try to keep it thematically organized as best I can.

A note about pronouns - while I don’t believe that God is gendered, and that scripture is full of masculine and feminine language and imagery for God, I use the masculine singular pronoun when referring to God, mostly because that’s what I’m accustomed to.

Devotional

I think that struggling through one’s faith must be done in the heart as well as the mind. A friend working through his own doubt once suggested that, when reading through a vexing passage of scripture, you should pray through it. Obviously, prayer is difficult, but those struggles are a way of understanding God’s compassion; he can and does absorb those doubts and fears into himself. In my own life, I’ve found the practice of Hesychasm, reciting the “Jesus prayer”, to be invaluable. And, when even that is too difficult, I find great comfort in the promise that God’s Spirit still prays for me when I cannot. Here are a few things I’ve found that speak to the heart, and are helpful for learning about what Richard Foster calls the “with-God life”. These are also probably the most accessible items on this list.

Interior Freedom - Jacques Philippe - This short book is probably one of my favorites. Philippe, a French monk, shows us we can commune with God by reminding us of how God meets us exactly where we are at.

Being Christian - Rowan Williams - Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, explores the very basic components of the Christian life - baptism, scripture, the Eucharist, and prayer. I recommend this to any new Christian. I especially found the chapter on reading the Bible helpful; Williams shows how the Bible can still be formative and authoritative for the Christian without holding to the biblicism (i.e. belief in “inerrancy”) that is widespread in Evangelicalism.

Here and Now - Henri Nouwen - A series of short reflections on how the spiritual intersects every aspect of our lives.

Falling into Grace - John Newton - A book about spiritual growth that counterintuitively shows how God forms his character in us through weakness and relinquishment, rather than strength and accomplishment.

The Ragamuffin Gospel - Brennan Manning - A classic that’s probably well-known in evangelical circles, but whose message is rarely heeded. Manning unrelentingly reminds us of how God’s grace is for those who know their own need for it.

Scripture/Theology

Most of these books tend to be fairly meaty, and I worry about accessibility. That said, those who are struggling with questions on an intellectual level will probably benefit from the robust and faithful theological reflection to be found in these pages. Their rewards are worth the effort.

Theology for a Troubled Believer - Diogenes Allen - Allen gives an introduction to Christian theology from the perspective of a philosopher who is also deeply familiar with the biblical texts. He moves through the narrative of scripture and addresses theological topics by connecting them to the questions that Christians experience in everyday life. A couple of things I love about this book: 1) He suggests that the Exodus story should be our framing narrative for understanding God in the Old Testament, and shows how that understanding informs everything from creation to the prophets. 2) He has a deeply apocalyptic understanding of the New Testament, and primarily understands the atonement as God’s rescue of humanity from the powers of darkness, sin, and death.

The Crucifixion - Fleming Rutledge - This tome is arguably the most important Christian book of the 21st century thus far. Rutledge provides a sweeping survey of all of the atonement motifs in the New Testament, and shows how, when taken together, the gospel story provides a profound answer to the suffering and wickedness that vex humanity.

The Bible in a Disenchanted Age - R. W. L. Moberly - I highly recommend Moberly’s book for those who are wondering how we can still trust the Bible as authoritative for faith and life while still also acknowledging the findings of critical scholarship. If you’re wondering how to understand the Bible outside of a fundamentalist worldview, this is valuable reading.

Reading While Black - Esau McCaulley - Esau McCaulley, a black Anglican theologian, shows how a faithful interpretation of scripture affirms the importance of justice for Christians. McCaulley shows how slaveholder religion and the racial injustice it perpetuated is in fact a bastardization of true, biblical Christianity. Although written primarily to encourage black Christians, it nourished my soul and I highly recommend it to white Christians as well, particularly those living in America.

Life with God - Richard Foster - This could also go in the “devotional” section. Foster shows how we can read scripture in a way that is spiritually transformative. At the same time, he reads the Bible in such a way that doesn’t necessitate holding to biblical inerrancy, although without addressing the issue as such. Rather, he embraces difference and tension within the canon. It’s a good practical outworking of the ideas in Moberly’s book, despite being written years before.

Law & Gospel - Mockingbird - A good primer on the distinction between law and gospel in theology. It’s short, almost more of a booklet, but provides a good argument for a grace-centered understanding of Christian theology.

The Experience of God - David Bentley Hart - A cogent argument for the existence of God that addresses popular misconceptions of who/what God is. Although Hart is an Eastern Orthodox Christian himself, he pulls from a number of humanity’s faith traditions. His intended audience isn’t so much Christians as non-religious readers.

That All Shall Be Saved - David Bentley Hart - I was ambivalent about including this one here, mostly because Hart already has a book on this list, and because this book has stirred up more than a little controversy. Belief in universal salvation for all humanity feels challenging and audacious, especially for those who remember the whole debacle around Rob Bell’s Love Wins a number of years ago. Unlike Bell’s book though, Hart offers a forceful philosophical and biblical argument for universal salvation. I think his acerbic tone comes across as off-putting at times, but for those who grew up in churches where the damnation of most people was spoken of with absolute certainty, Hart’s book feels like a refreshing counterpoint. He also gets bonus points for his interesting interpretation of the book of Revelation as a political satire.

Listening and Watching

Queen of the Sciences podcast - Sarah Hinlicky Wilson and her father, Paul R. Hinlicky, are both theologians who make theology accessible to everyone with down-to-earth language and a good dose of humor and lighthearted earnestness. If you don’t have the bandwidth for much reading, I recommend listening to this podcast. Any episode is great, but some highlights are episodes about the wrath of God, being white and Christian, the resurrection, the book of Leviticus, medieval theologian Anselm, and triple(!) predestination.

Lectures with Sarah Coakley podcast - If you want to learn about prayer and theology, Sarah Coakley’s lectures for her church’s Sunday school are a great place to start. She’s also written a number of books that come highly recommended about theology, sexuality, and church history, but sadly I’ve yet to read any of them.

Hopefully you find some of these helpful. Like I said, I’ll try to keep it updated. Any suggestions or thoughts are appreciated.

Happy reading/listening/watching!

This article by Anne Helen Petersen definitely hits home. The erratic dysrhythmia she describes of incessant context switching while attempting to do actual work was eerily similar to what a lot of my sessions writing either code or prose look like. I really feel for people who are in the content-hustle business – constantly needing to react to whatever the hive-mind buzzing about at the moment. For them, actively using social media in all of its most toxic ways is tragically an occupational hazard that is an inevitable part of their jobs. They can try digital detoxes, but the extent to which they can apply Cal Newport and Jaron Lanier’s exhortations is fundamentally limited. I’m grateful that I have a career that is essentially indifferent to my online presence. And I’ve leveraged that freedom to my benefit – the only account I still maintain is a rarely-touched (i.e. once a month) Instagram that only exists because I’ve been too lazy to go through the process of exporting my data.

I’ll preach social media withdrawal from the mountaintop, but also issue another warning – the principalities and powers of anxiety and distraction are still out there, and are quite possibly an inescapable presence in digital life. To be sure, the “Isle of Blogging” and “Republic of Newsletters” are kinder, more curious, and generally healthier places, but they still offer a greater abundance of interestingness than a human can reasonably enjoy day to day. And the major media outlets (of all partisan stripes, from NYT to Breitbart) are still hell-bent on grabbing your attention, and have no qualms harming your wellbeing if it means access to your eyeballs, even for a skim.

It’s hard to believe, but Jenoa and I have lived in Virginia for over a year. But it’s even harder to believe that in that time we hadn’t explored Shenandoah National Park until today. Since it was our first visit, we didn’t venture too far into the park and chose to take one of the shorter, mellower hikes, Blackrock Summit.

Blackrock Summit has a fascinating history. An informative sign at the trailhead tells visitors how the rocks of Blackrock Summit were once the seabed of the Iapetus Ocean. Before the Blue Ridge mountains, colliding tectonic plates raised the Grenville mountain range. As the collisions abated and the mountain range wore down, the same tectonic plates began to separate, leading to the formation of the Iapetus Ocean. The Appalachian mountains as we have them today are the result of the to-and-fro of those same forces causing the movement of the plates. You can read more about the geological formations in the park here.

Here are some pictures we took at the summit.

After walking around the summit, we decided to continue on to Blackrock Hut, a tiny, open cabin intended for through-hikers to stay overnight on the Appalachian trail. The saplings formed a nice canopy that lent the trail a sense of enchantment.

Here’s the hut. It’s nestled in a valley next to a quiet spring. There’s a picnic table, fire pit, and a locker to keep your food safe from roaming bears. The inside of the hut also has some additional bunks for sleeping. It’s meant to be used for just one night, on a first-come first-serve basis.

On the way back to the trailhead we caught one of the first glimpses of autumn.

We took many breaks, since the walk back from the hut was uphill.

After we left, we stopped at the Moorman’s River Overlook. You can see the river in the valley below.

Hard as it may be to believe, we’re well into the second half of 2020. Here are my favorite books I’ve read this year from January to July, with occasionaly commentary. I know July is technically the second half of the year, but… I didn’t think of this idea until July.

Dan Simmons, Hyperion

Christian Wiman, Survival Is A Style

Daniel Warren Johnson, Murder Falcon - My friend Collin bought this for me as a Christmas gift, and it is one of the coolest freaking graphic novels I’ve ever read.

Meghan O’Gieblyn, Interior States - A collection of essays full of great reflections on and explorations of religion, technology, and culture. As someone who is very familiar with the evangelical subculture O’Gieblyn was raised in, her writing was especially poignant for me.

Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary

Derek Olsen, Inwardly Digest - As a newcomer to Anglicanism, Olsen’s introduction to the Book of Common Prayer was fascinating and helpful.

Pauli Murray, Dark Testament and Other Poems - A collection of poems from Pauli Murray, a civil rights activist who was also the first African-American woman to be ordained as a priest in the Episcopal church.

Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways

Georges Simenon, Maigret Takes a Room

Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart - Nouwen demonstrates how the teachings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers on prayer can help us live in our (post)modern age.

Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House - Like Harry Potter, but set at Yale and way more sinister. Bardugo’s first non-YA novel.

Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell, From Hell

Ray Bradbury, Classic Stories 1 - A compilation of Bradbury’s short stories from a few collections. I’m amazed at his ability to build convincing worlds and interesting characters in the space of a few pages.

John Scalzi, The Consuming Fire - The second book in Scalzi’s Interdependency space opera trilogy. Some biting political satire in here along with good scifi fun.

John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, & Nate Powell, March: Books 1-3 - A graphic memoir of John Lewis’s time in the civil rights movement. I read this at the end of May. I wish I had known and appreciated the extent of Lewis’s story well before I read it. Now that he’s entered into glory, I commend this to you more than ever.

Walter Brueggemann, Reality, Grief, Hope - Brueggemann outlines how the three prophetic tasks - reality, grief, and hope - appear in the writings of the exilic prophets of the Old Testament, and shows how the circumstances they wrote to have striking parallels to 21st century America, and how they can act as a guide for the church today.

Jim Butcher, Storm Front & Fool Moon - The first two novels in the Dresden Files. Noirish urban fantasy, and great fun.

R.W.L. Moberly, The Bible in a Disenchanted Age - Moberly shows how Christians in our modern, “disenchanted” world can still take the Bible seriously as a means of God’s self-disclosure. The so-called “deconstruction” craze among “ex-vangelicals” seems so 2018, but I think his book speaks tactfully and compellingly to a lot of the questions that people were (are?) asking about scripture.

Junji Ito, Uzumaki - I had never read manga before, but Ito’s Lovecraftian tale is easily one of the best horror novels I’ve read.

Reginald Dwayne Betts, Felon - Betts' collection of poems viscerally and movingly explore the inner experience of prisoners, and the scars on the psyche that prison leaves, even after “release”.

Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy - I’ve been kicking the can down the road on reading this for years, but now seemed as good a time as any. Stevenson makes a convincing case for the necessity of reforming our criminal justice system, while also telling a profound story of the transformative power and necessity of mercy.

E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful - Published in 1973, Schumacher challenges the underlying assumptions of economics and argues for the urgent necessity of reframing our economy to value people and place over unchecked and unquestioned growth.

Clifford Beal, The Guns of Ivrea - A pirate fantasy with an historical fiction vibe, but set in a completely imagined world. One of the blurbs on the cover cited echoes of Master and Commander and Game of Thrones, and the comparison checks out

Suzanne Nossel, Dare To Speak - Nossel, the CEO of PEN America, makes a compelling case for the necessity of an open society that values free expression, while also urging those who advocate for it to be thoughtful and considerate in their use of language. I hope to have a post of booknotes from this one soon.

So, as you can imagine, Some Things have happened since the last post. To be honest, it’s been hard to find the will to write. I don’t really want to write about what Warren Ellis calls “The Cough”. But it’s also been unavoidable, and it seems to be on everyone’s mind, and with good reason. But, as Robin Sloan recently wrote, “Do you want every glorious weirdo you’ve ever followed to morph into the same obsessive faux public health expert? YOU DO NOT!". For the moment, it seems like a number of people have morphed into just that. It’s certainly provided a good opportunity to cull the feeds/newsletters.

I can understand why it’s so intensely preoccupying; it certainly is for me. There have been more than a few disappointments; the UK trip is postponed until further notice, as is a planned California trip. I miss the sights and sounds of people eating and drinking and shopping and working on the downtown mall. I miss church and sharing in the body of Christ with other bodies. I miss hugs.

And I’m worried. I’m worried for the elderly. I’m worried for the lonely. I’m worried for health care workers. I’m worried for countless small businesses.

And I’m also hopeful. Our rector said there’s been a pandemic of kindness. People are shopping for their shut-in neighbors. Local communities are organizing ways to provide for those who have lost work and income. Those who can afford to seem to have doubled down on their support for the vibrant small business community of Charlottesville, taking advantage of takeout and curbside pickup where it’s available. I’m hopeful that this tragedy is revealing the arbitrary cruelty and fragility of our current political economy.

I’ve been hesitant to write about this because, compared to many, my problems are far less significant; the most I’ve had to suffer is disappointment. I still have a great job, a home, good friends, a support network, and my health. The disappointment is real nonetheless, and I’d rather accept the feelings than deny them, but I’m finding gratitude is a powerful corrective when disappointment slips into self-pity or anxiety.

Another reason I’ve been hesitant to write is that I don’t want to become another “faux public health expert”. There’s no shortage of coronaviral prophets, both of the hortatory and predictive variety. I’m more sympathetic to exhortation than prediction; people should take the health of their neighbors seriously, through all the appropriate behavioral mechanisms. But I fear for the physical integrity of my laptop and any nearby window if I read another piece of fortune telling from a writer or artist or developer or science journalist turned futurist-cum-armchair-epidemiologist.

We cannot know the future. We can try to make informed guesses, but I’d rather leave that to experts.

That was way more than I wanted to write about this. Thus, I conclude this section with a few pieces that discuss but are not actually about The Cough. I think they deserve more engagement, but maybe that’s for another day.

How to Live in the Shadow of Calamity - Ethan Richardson (Mockingbird)

March 2020 newsletter - Robin Sloan

The Convivial Society: Vol. 1, No 5 - Michael Sacasas

Oh, and this bit from C.S. Lewis, which makes an appearance in all three:

The war creates no absolutely new situation, it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun. We are mistaken when we compare war with “normal life.” Life has never been normal.

A Public Space is doing an online book club/readalong of /War and Peace/. It’s 12 days and about 170 pages in. The daily readings are roughly 12-15 pages, which will bring the book club to an end in June, which seems to be appropriate timing. I never intended to read W&P, and I honestly decided to jump in as a way to discipline my mind in the morning, and keep me from the beckoning vortex of The News. I don’t have an opinion of it right now. Reading it is more enjoyable at certain times than others. But, I will say so far that Tolstoy is a keen observer of human motivation/behavior, and renders his characters with great psychological acuity. The small daily assignments allow me to read other books in parallel with this one, but so far I think I’m enjoying it more than I expected. Also, don’t listen to anyone who tells you to skip the “war” parts and just read the “peace” sections.

Last weekend we visited Chiles peach orchard out near Crozet. The blossoming peach trees were a surreal sight.

I’m also wearing shorts as I write this. Today is the first shorts days of 2020. Everything is blooming and pollen is everywhere and woe to those whose allergies require them to clear their throat with a cough. So far I’m really liking spring in Virginia.

On the right is a pale ale from Reason Beer, which is about a 5 minute bike ride from our house. We rode over there today, where you can still purchase cans from the tasting room.

As long as we’re allowed to be outside while maintaining responsible distance from people, we plan to do so. The city skatepark has been closed, so for now it looks like a lot of nature walks, bike rides, and neighborhood skating.

I don’t want to remember this time and think all I did was be anxious and remain super informed in order to feel a sense of control, but I know that’s exactly what I’ll do if I’m not deliberate about it. Do what you need to do to remain physically and mentally healthy during this time, but please don’t expend either of those things by enriching those platforms and outlets whose business model parasitically rely on your misery. Read a book, write a thing, bake a cake, watch The Office again, or play Animal Crossing instead.

This will not have the final word.

Reading

Preparatory reading about Britain has been put on hold until we set a new date for the trip. In the meantime, I’m enjoying /The Difference Engine/ by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. I also finished the manuscript I mentioned in my previous entry, and all I can say is that I want more of it.

Watching

Recent viewing includes The Man in the Iron Mask, Young Sherlock Holmes (on the Criterion Channel!), and The Godfather (Jen’s first viewing!).

Listening

We enjoyed some Django Reinhardt recently.

Links

ASCII art + permadeath: The history of roguelike games

Morning Prayer - Alan Jacobs

Look Who’s Talking - Fr. Stephen Freeman

Common Good Capitalism - An interview with Marco Rubio

Jesus, Lead the Way - Neil Willard

Christ Episcopal Church Morning Prayer service

I’m struggling to conjure some thoughts to share here today. The past couple of weeks feel like a bit of a blur. Jen’s in Texas this weekend, where I’ll be joining her this Wednesday.

In the spirit of owning, rather than “renting” my music collection, I’m spending this morning importing CDs to my laptop and rebuilding my digital music collection. As I write this, I’m listening to “Sun Forest”, from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’s most recent album, Ghosteen. I’m astounded how, after countless listens, the album is still so profoundly moving. For those who missed it, I wrote some thoughts about the album here.

I may have linked to it before, but I was inspired by this post to reclaim my music collection. I’m still tweaking things here and there. I liked the idea of putting all music in the Documents folder and syncing it with iCloud. Yes, it’s still in Apple’s walled garden, but as a colleague and I were discussing yesterday, it’s a walled garden that works very well. Eventually I’d like to host my collection on network attached storage and expose it for remote listening with Subsonic, but for now this arrangement works quite well.

I still maintain a Spotify subscription, primarily as a way to sample artists whose work I might buy, but I’m finding Bandcamp’s streaming interface to be more intuitive and pleasant. I know my preference for owning music betrays me as being anything but a rational economic animal, especially when I have so many options available for a modest monthly fee through Spotify. The trouble is, I’m not convinced that the plethora of choice is necessarily beneficial, either for the listener or for the artists. The “curated” playlist and “artist radio” approach to listening seems perfectly catered to putting music on in the background, but therein lies my concern: our relationship to music becoming just another piece of ambient “content”, not a first order piece of human expression to which we give our attention. That’s not to say I never listen to music in the background; Charlottesville’s WNRN provides a fantastic stream of music curated by actual humans.

Also, we have good evidence that Spotify is producing fake music, which is just…weirdly awful (apologies for linking to a tweet).

A few weeks ago, I finally retired my iPhone 6S as it was in its death throes, and purchased an iPhone 11 pro. I’ve never been one to take pictures, but I’ve been so impressed with the camera that it almost feels like a waste not to take advantage of it.

We’ve been trying to go on walks regularly in preparation for our journey along St. Cuthbert’s Way in a few months.

Here’s one I snapped from walk through McIntire Park:

And a couple from a trek through one of the Monticello trails:

One of Jones:

And one from a winery near Crozet we visited for a friend’s birthday:

I hope Ansel Adams would be proud.

Reading

Finished The Gardens of the Moon. Currently plodding through Max Adams’s The King in the North: The Life and Times of Oswald of Northumbria in preparation for the Britain trip. I’m also reading the manuscript of a novel that a friend’s working on, and I have to say that I am truly excited for the finished product. I hope it finds a wide audience.

Watching

Nothing in particular comes to mind, other than Abandoned and falling asleep to episodes of Star Trek TNG. I also want to watch the new season of Castlevania.

Listening

I cannot stop listening to the new Cloudkicker album.

Links

What Happened to the Company That Raised Minimum Wage to $70k/yr?

A Decade of Sore Winners

Big data could yield big discoveries in archaeology, scholar says

I think I’ve more or less given up on the “weekly” commitment to posting here, though I’ll still try to maintain some consistency. This blog is meant to be fun, not a chore, and that’s all I have to say about the matter.

I recently took up skateboarding again. The last time I skated was probably 6-7 years ago, and probably another 5-6 years before that since I had skated with any regularity. The other week Jen and I went for a walk around McIntire Park, where the city has installed a truly impressive skate park that’s as good as any, if not better than some, parks that we had in Orange County. It’s a concrete park that includes street and vert areas. The embedded video at the link showcases the street course, which is connected by a path to the vert section, which consists of various bowls, including a snake-run like component and a reconstructed kidney pool with tile beneath the coping.

I was especially struck by the diversity of the park’s users. There were a fair number of teenagers, but also young kids and “older” skaters. I watched one man who was probably in his mid thirties attempting a backside maneuver (I can’t recall the names of the tricks like I once did) out of the most vertical section of the kidney pool. When I asked if he had any recommendations for a shop in the area, he suggested checking out StrangeHouse in Louisa if I wanted to purchase an old school deck shape, or one that “might have been popular back when” I skated. Of course, the now-standard popsicle shaped decks were dominant when I was younger, and I had a moment of “shit, how old do I look to this guy?”, but I appreciated his suggestion nonetheless.

I have yet to take advantage of the park myself. All of my riding so far has just been in front of the house, just pushing, turning, and cruising. I’m approaching this like a complete beginner again, and it’s been a joy. No ollies or any sort of tricks yet, just becoming confident on the board, taking it slow. It’s been an experience of learning to feel comfortable in my body. It’s also a pretty powerful medicine to get me out of my head. When I stepped on the board for the first time, I felt a bliss I hadn’t felt in some time. My internal dialogue just went silent, all my attention focused on movement and environment. As a mindfulness “practice”, skateboarding can be surprisingly effective.

I’ve been hesitant to write cultural commentary, particularly as it pertains to our political life, for some time. As Alan Jacobs put it, I’ve been experiencing “opionionlessness”. That could partially be due to my efforts in trying to break my headspace out of the news cycle. But I’d also attribute it to increasing frustration with the thought patterns that seem to dominate online discourse.

I’m not just talking about “polarization” or the collapse of civility; troubling as those trends are, I think much of the talk around them glosses over the real pain and problems that fuel the anger many people are feeling. Rather, it’s the intellectual habits that characterize the most vocal and ideologically committed adherents of the left and the right. I’ve observed a reluctance, if not outright refusal, to entertain data or evidence that might complicate the story buttressing political ends. Conservative evangelical Christians, who frequently cite the Old Testament in support of various positions on social issues, seem to have all but forgotten the Levitical laws concerning treatment of the sojourner, or debt forgiveness, never mind Isaiah’s warning about “grinding the faces of the poor”. Similarly, the censoriousness and hyperbole displayed by the some on the left toward conservative speakers on university campuses, or those who would question the practice of “cancelling”, bespeaks a dogged commitment to ideology before all else.

Before I go further, please don’t hear this as equivocation between the actions or ideas put forth by either side. “Both sides” are not equally at fault in some things (though neither should be immune to criticism). For all my dislike of ANTIFA, it was not one of their members who drove a car into a crowd of people on a street that I now walk by at least once a week. Nor do I think that certain notorious statues to Confederate generals should qualify as Civil War memorials, considering that they were built over 50 years after the war ended. (These examples are prominent in my mind since they’re relevant to the place I now call home). Expressed outrage can, in fact, sometimes be a commensurate response to something that is outrageous (though its effectiveness is another question). “A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it is”.

I don’t know what I’d describe my politics as, except maybe left-of-center, politically homeless, with a strong distaste for partisan BS. My concern is for the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, the planet. I believe in personal responsibility insofar as you can help it. I believe people are more than units of labor, and they should be compensated well for any labor they perform. I believe we should extend a hand to, rather than kick, those who are down. I believe we need to acknowledge our limits and dependence on the natural world in order to survive and thrive. I think a strong, public safety net, and strong, public institutions, can be excellent ways to achieve these ends, but/and I’m open to the possibility that there are better ways.

That was way more than I intended to write, and part of me still wants to delete it. I don’t want to deal with either Social Justice Twitter or MAGA Twitter, but thankfully I don’t deal with any Twitter (nor should you, really). I originally started writing this section to highlight two pieces that both exemplify the kind of social-political writing that I’d like to see more of, and speak to the habits of mind that I’ve been talking about. First, David French addresses “The Church’s Real Political Correctness Problem”. French has become one of my favorite political writers, not because I agree with him (much of the time I disagree), but because we share similar fundamental concerns, and because I’m forced to intelligently disagree. He’s not one to tout a MAGA hat while calling opponents snowflakes — he writes thoughtful, principled conservative arguments that are intellectually honest, and doesn’t hesitate to criticize those in his own camp. Second, Tara Isabella Burton tells us “What The Culture War Is Really About”. She poignantly distills the debate between “atavists and activists” to one about human nature. She unexpectedly turns her attention to the techno-optimism of Silicon Valley, especially toward the end of the piece, showing how the fundamental ontological disagreement lies not between the social justice warriors and Jordan Peterson fans, but between a worldview that acknowledges fundamental limits to reality and one that denies them. I feel like there’s more to engage with here, and as someone working in tech, I need to reflect on it more.

This also might have been the first time I’ve ever typed “MAGA” twice in the same paragraph, and for that I’m deeply sorry.

Reading

About to wrap up The Gardens of the Moon. A Mind for Numbers has been on a brief pause, mostly because Gardens is so enjoyable, but also because my learning capacity has been devoted to actually practicing the skills in the book while learning a lot of databases for work.

Watching

I finished Watchmen last night, and would say it’s a worthy follow-up to the novel. I also binged four episodes of Abandoned with Rick McCrank, and I rarely binge shows. I expect to write more about it sometime soon.

Listening

Getting in the mood for the Great Britain trip with Nettlebone. John Moreland’s LP5 has also been on repeat lately.

Links

American Paganism

The Truly Common Core

On Lawlessness and Understanding - The Gospel for Jews and Greeks

Neal Unger - 60 Year Old Skateboarder

So I’ve really breached the “blog every week” commitment I made to myself. Two full weekends in a row and the cognitive load of the new job more than account for this, so I won’t belabor the point any longer.

Both the technical work and the actual business domain of my new role are much more technically rigorous than anything I’ve done before. My old manager was fond of quoting Gene Kranz in Apollo 13: “Let’s work the problem people. Let’s not make this worse by guessing.” That phrase has come in handy to me many times the past few weeks. Writing raw SQL forces you to face the complexity that Rails’s ActiveRecord ORM conceals from you. Because I’m unsure of the nature of the NDA in my employment contract, I won’t discuss the actual content of the data, but suffice it to say that it’s much more mathematical in nature than anything I’ve worked with before.

I never would have called myself a “math person” before, but programming is essentially algebra, and computer science, being the science of computation, is largely mathematical. So, given my choice of career, I’ve been plodding through Barbara Oakley’s A Mind For Numbers. Oakley’s book isn’t a high-level overview of math and science fundamentals, but rather a guide to developing the cognitive skills that help in learning said fundamentals, and beyond.

Already, much of what she writes resonates with my experiences learning STEM-adjacent skills, both positive and negative. For instance, I’ve felt considerable frustration when “stuck” as I focused intensely on solving a problem or learning a new concept. My cognition was experiencing the “Einstellung effect”, rehearsing an erroneous pattern in the “focused mode”, when I needed to engage the “diffuse mode” by walking away and allowing my brain to think on something else, preferably something less rigorous. Sometimes the path to understanding means actually getting off the path.

Fortunately for me, walking is a part of the company culture at Everactive. That time away from the desk and the screen has probably helped me on more than one occasion.

About 10-11 years ago, I really enjoyed reading Donald Miller, and was somewhat captivated by the whole “emerging church” movement. Whether or not it could be properly called a “movement” is up for debate, as are the merits of it. But, it did seem to function as a precursor to the new trend of “ex-vangelicals”, “deconstruction”, and even “de-conversion”.

I have a few thoughts about their similarities and differences; for instance, they both were quite online, and both mirrored the shift from blogs/forums to centralized social networks. I feel like this is worth exploring at some point, and probably deserves its own post.

But another subtle shift I noticed was in the movements’ attitude towards politics. A common critique of evangelicalism was that it was too political. Memories of the Left Behind books, the Bush administration, and the religious right loomed large in everyone’s mind. But now, the critique made by more “progressive” Christians is that many of their more conservative or moderate counterparts are not political enough.

My account of things may be somewhat reductive, but it’s a thread I feel is worth pulling on. I have my own thoughts about how Christians should approach political involvement/activism, but those are for another post. More than anything, I’m interested in the shift in attitude, and how it relates to the shift in online engagement.

I’m not totally sure what my thoughts are, but hopefully the foregoing notes will serve as a big fat TODO on this blog’s homepage.

Reading

Aside from A Mind For Numbers, I’ve been enjoying Steven Erickson’s The Gardens of the Moon, the first book in his series, The Malazan Book of the Fallen.

Watching

Jen and I purchased tickets for a trip to the UK(!) at the end of May, so we’ve been watching videos of Rick Steves travel around the island, as well as documentaries about ancient Britain.

Listening

Pyroclasts by SUNN O))) was on heavy rotation at work this week, and I finally brought myself to order the vinyl so I can subject Jen to ceaseless droning guitar sounds.

Links

Prepper Style Music Hoarding

Against Identity, or By the Grace of God I Am What I Am

Being a Noob

So you think you can be a reality TV producer

Paul, Patriarchy, and the #MeToo Movement

Week 2 of the new position was a success, I’d say. Feeling more productive and contributing to the team’s efforts. Coming from the Ruby/Rails world, I’ve had to make a lot of major adjustments, especially working with Go. You write a lot more boilerplate code when working without a framework, and that’s doubly true when working with a small, statically typed, compiled language like Go. I definitely experienced some frustration when trying to cast a request body of unstructured JSON into a map, but it’s forced me to think more reflectively about what the computer actually does with the code I write.

My parents gifted me a new record player for Christmas. We gave or sold our old one prior to moving, and I missed it considerably. That said, it was a Crosley that I’ve owned since 2010/2011, and we were due for a change. I think I’ve listened to records more in the past week than I have in the last year. I’ve also discovered the joy of actually owning my music collection again, as opposed to renting it.

Yes, I realize that a vinyl record with a download code sells for roughly twice the price of a subscription to any of the major streaming services, and I’m certainly privileged to even afford such a luxury. Nor will I begrudge anyone their thriftiness. But, if I really love an album and would like the artist to continue making things I like, I try to purchase it outright. And when I consider that I usually only listen to the same few albums on rotation on Apple Music anyway, the endless options provided by streaming services seem less and less compelling. I might be more prone to decision paralysis than others, but I’m finding limits, however self-imposed, to be a helpful thing.

This piece over at Comment was one of those essays that crystalized something I’ve been intuiting for a while but struggled to put into words. If you’ve ever struggled with a desire to “do justice” while feeling wary of ideological commitment or tribalism, I heartily recommend it. This bit especially stuck with me:

Building on the previous pair of habits, it seems essential to develop the Habit of Attention: Cultivating acute sensitivity to the moral texture of my surroundings.
Such sensitivity seems to be able to be grown in local and concrete practices: halting myself in a moment of annoyance; spending my lunch hour with a painting or an afternoon with a homeless stranger; taking time from my phone and giving it to poetry; rejecting an ill-fitting promotion; letting nature or my family be an inconvenience; refusing to let a friendship drift away. Such concrete acts seem essential for pulling the soul back to its native tenderness. The grander habits of aspiration and apprenticeship need the fine-grained sensitivity of attention.

The essentiality of “concrete acts" to cultivate our “native tenderness” cannot be understated. For the very-online, this is probably especially true. I can speak from experience the value of minimizing and de-tuning my internet. It’s a simple step toward greater attentiveness.

Reading

Still going through Hyperion, but I also read an ARC of Christian Wiman’s forthcoming poetrycollection, Survival Is a Style. I meant to write a review, but realized I don’t really know how to write about poetry, other than to say that if you want to be deeply affected by language, give it a read.

Watching

Sam Mendes’ 1917 might have been the best movie I’ve seen in the last 12 months. The plot is so so simple, but the power of the movie might be in its utter simplicity.

Listening

I’m finally seeing Between the Buried and Me this April, so I listened to both The Parallax II: Full Sequence and The Great Misdirect on Friday. Here are samples of both, respectively.

Links

What the Death of iTunes Says About Our Digital Habits

Bryan Stevenson interviewed by CT

When Your Theology of Pain Is Painfully Bad - Mbird

I went to see a movie, and instead I saw the future - Signal v. Noise

This is my first post since starting my new gig. I’ve learned a lot this week, and have much more to learn. Suffice it to say, I’m really excited to be working where am I, and I’m both exhausted and energized. I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt this excited about programming and technology.

I’ve also been fortunate to see some friends this week. On Friday, Jen and I serendipitously ran into some friends at Champion brewing, then saw some more at Lampo Pizza, and Saturday evening we had some other friends over for a delightful evening of dinner and conversation. One of our favorite things about living in Charlottesville is how easy it is to accidentally see people you know. Although it’s not a “small town” in any conventional sense, I regularly see friends and acquaintances out and about. Shopping, eating, drinking, and moving about the same places provides visible evidence that you’re part of a community. In California, I felt that I had community amongst a close group of friends, but it was probably in spite of the infrastructure of our lives, not because of it; in a typical day, you’ll work in one town, shop for groceries in another, and live in a third, driving at least twenty minutes to each.

Of course, it doesn’t take much imagination to realize that spending a week learning a new domain, codebase, and programming language taxes one’s faculties. Unsurprisingly, I’m struggling to think of something to write about. I’m experiencing what Alan Jacobs recently called “opinionlessness”. He puts it well:

At the moment I have fewer opinions that I have ever had in my life. When I see all the people online and in print giving advice and instructions and guidance, I think, Do these people really know all the stuff they think they know? By contrast, I seem to be moving asymptotically to the point of not believing that I can give anyone advice about anything at all.

Again, the cognitive load of a new job certainly contributes to this, and it behooves me to devote most of my resources to that right now. But at the same time, I have had the nagging sense that it’s hard to produce quality writing for the internet that isn’t half-baked, even if it’s at a lower frequency than cycles of what Gordon White calls “insta-anxiety and twitter-derived-amygdala-damage”. The full context of that quote is worth reproducing here:

Here’s my Capricorn season take on the return to blogging: It is what passes for a ‘return to the real’ in our post digital future. Which is to say the realisation that there is value in considered, researched, diligent content -as opposed to neurochemical fear/rage flares on social media- is exactly what we should expect right now. This is a fall to earth from the polluted, ephemeral skies of insta-anxiety and twitter-derived-amygdala-damage.

I might not always have the energy on a weekly basis to produce something that’s considered, researched, and diligent, and that’s fine. The blog is a web_log_, which in its primary form is a simple chronicle. And I’d rather chronicle simplicity than forcing any pseudo-profundity.

Reading

The Western Wind was fantastic, and highly recommended if you enjoyed either Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose or Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead. The novel exists somewhere between the two. Currently reading Dan Simmons’ Hyperion.

Watching

I watched Cats last Sunday, which you should only see if you have a theater subscription or are streaming it on $ServiceOfChoice. I feel like CGI should be made illegal after that movie, but damn if some of those songs aren’t catchy.

Listening

I made my first record store trip since moving, to Sidetracks Music. I grabbed vinyls of Wilco’s Ode to Joy and Nick Cave’s Ghosteen, and a CD of Torche’s Admission.

Links

Your Bonhoeffer Moment - Note: I try to avoid explicit discussion surrounding our current commander-in-chief for a few reasons, but I think this article poignantly addresses a current phenomenon among evangelicals and brings one of my favorite theologians to bear on it.

Ian McKellan’s 1999 Lord of the Rings Blog - I feel this needs no explanation.

And it’s the first update of 2020. I hope you had pleasant and safe New Year celebration. Jen and I were fortunate to have a few friends over and play some Jackbox games before watching the ball drop at midnight. When we lived in California, we could just watch the ball drop live in Times Square three hours ahead, and be in bed by 9:30. This was the first proper NYE party we were apart of in a few years (I believe the last one we attended was NYE 2016). 2017 we were in fact in Manhattan, but just to catch a movie with relatives (The Post). After that we took a nearly empty train back to New Jersey, walked back to my uncle’s house from the train station, and walked in the door at about midnight. 2018 we visited friends in Dallas and spent much of the day exploring the city, grabbing drinks in Fort Worth before returning home sometime around 10. Fun times, but it felt good to do something with friends again, and in our new home.

In my last post, I mentioned that among all of the things that happened, we “started new jobs”. We moved to Charlottesville so Jenoa could be a College Minister with Christ Episcopal Church, while I continued working with W+R Studios. On Monday, however, I’ll begin a new job as an Engineer with Everactive, and industrial IoT startup. I’ll be a member the cloud team, and am excited for the new challenges I’ll get to work on. I mentioned in a previous post that I had been learning Go; this job was the reason. It’s a complete departure from Ruby-land, and a major change, but I’m excited for this opportunity to grow.

I’ve always been kinda cynical about new year’s resolutions. That proclivity probably stems from an annoyance with what I perceive to be American culture’s widespread and near-religious zeal for optimization and self-improvement (what my friend David Zahl calls Seculosity).

That said, I’ve been wanting to make a few changes in my life, and the start of 2020 seemed an appropriate time to do them. At high level, they are:

1. Improve my flexibility. I can’t touch my toes, and for as long as I can remember, I’ve been unable to sit cross-legged for any length of time without my feet falling asleep. I’m doing some basic stretches and yoga postures upon waking every morning, and I’m planning to start taking a weekly yoga class.

2. Live less compulsively. I realized that I frequently operate from a sense that I must do something, rather than wanting to do it. Obviously, discipline is good, and sometimes I ought to do something regardless of my desire in that moment. But I do have compulsive tendencies — something I’m especially prone to because of my anxiety.

One change I made in this area was to stop journaling every morning. While I still journal occasionally, I removed it from my daily routine. I found that the ritual was becoming a source of anxiety rather than a treatment for it.

Another was to delete my Goodreads account. Reading, arguably my favorite hobby, felt like it was becoming a chore, and I was slogging my way through books that I didn’t necessarily enjoy. The book wouldn’t necessarily be bad, and I might even like it on another day, but it just wouldn’t be for me at the moment. I know many people have resolutions to read more; if so, I commend to you Austin Kleon’s thoughts on reading. I think that if I enjoy what I’m reading, I’ll want to read it more.

As far as Goodreads is concerned, I think its main value is as a “to-read” list; I already keep a separate journal of books read. I now keep a to-read list as a text file in Bear, where a link can sit quietly without an app beckoning me to engage.

Writing about an app “beckoning" sound ridiculous to me, but the truth is that I have limited willpower, and there’s a whole team of well-paid professionals on the other end whose job is figuring out how to undermine it. If I already have compulsive tendencies, that makes me especially vulnerable.

3. Consume more mindfully. This point dovetails nicely with the previous one. I’ve mostly disappeared from social media. I have no Facebook. I removed the Instagram and Twitter apps from my phone. While I still maintain accounts there, they are mostly dormant, and it’s been weeks, if not months, since I’ve last logged in. I’m toying with exporting my photos from Instagram and setting up a separate photos feed here, so I can shut down my account entirely. I’m not even sure why I still maintain Twitter — I originally created it to syndicate links from this blog, something I haven’t done since last February.

All that to say, despite my blogging, I’m probably not among the “very online”. Nonetheless, it’s still possible to feel inundated when you’re only subscribed to RSS feeds and newsletters. So, I’m limiting myself to reading two articles in Pocket per day, and periodically archiving all unread articles.

Again, it feels ridiculous to write these things out — who cares whether or not I make my way through some nebulous digital “backlog”? But, for someone like me whose default behavior is to mindlessly consume, these deliberate decisions feel like a pretty big deal.

The 2010s was a very online decade for many of us. Maybe, as Alan Jacobs hopes, the 2020s will be less online. I’d like more signal and less noise from my internet, and maybe that means turning down the volume considerably.

Wow, that was way more than I originally planned to write. I didn’t even mention how I want to extend “consuming more mindfully” to food and other areas of life, but I suppose it’s not necessary. If you want to tune me out of your internet, I won’t hold it against you. Much.

Onto our regularly scheduled programming.

Reading

I’m taking a break from Fall. I desperately want to know how it ends, and while some parts of the book are fascinating, others are just a slog. I read Anthony Horowitz’s new James Bond novel Forever and a Day. Currently enjoying Samantha Harvey’s The Western Wind.

Watching

Jen and I have been watching a number of movies. Recently, we viewed Psycho, The Postman, Rosemary’s Baby, Austin Powers, and The Little Hours.

Listening

Nothing exciting this week unfortunately.

Links

How We’re Going Back To The Moon

Having Kids - Paul Graham

Strategies for Working with Message Queues

I spent the majority of last week traveling for the Christmas holiday and for mine and Jen’s birthdays. We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my Grandpa and some extended family in Connecticut. On the 26th (my birthday), we drove to New Jersey, dropped my car at a relative’s house, and took the train into Manhattan. We visited the Morgan Library & Museum, shopped at The Strand bookstore, and ate dinner at Cafe Altro Paradiso followed by drinks at King. On the 27th (Jen’s birthday) we ate breakfast at Kopitiam, visited the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, ate lunch at Gertie, and shopped around Williamsburg before returning to NJ to spend the evening and eat pizza with family. We returned to Cville on Saturday. I’m writing this on Monday, January 30th, the penultimate day of 2019. What a year it’s been.

In my previous post, I enumerated all of the traveling the both of us have done this year. I continually find myself using the term “whirlwind” to describe it, and I suppose that’s appropriate. We packed up our lives, drove across a continent, set down roots in a new town, bought a house, dealt with loss and grief, made new friends, started new jobs, and traveled back and forth across aforementioned continent multiple times.

And in the midst of the chaos, there is so much I am grateful for. I’m grateful for the new people and place that mark our lives. And I’m also grateful for the place we left, and the friends there that I’ll always cherish.

And it’s the end of a decade. This was the decade that I started blogging, on a Blogger site buried under the detritus of the web. This was the decade in which I lived the most of my twenties. I feel like I’m supposed to reflect on the 2010s. There’s no shortage of thinkpieces about the cultural, political, economic, and technological changes of this decade, and I don’t feel I need to add to it here. Of course, I can think of the various ways my life intersected with said changes — working at a Borders bookstore when the chain closed its doors, using and leaving Facebook, learning programming and starting a career in software development, witnessing economic desperation, struggling with my evangelical faith, meeting my wife through online dating. But, when I think back on this decade, it’s the specific and the personal that I remember, not the general and the cultural. Much like this past year, this past decade gave me much to be grateful for. Of course, there are decisions that I regret, circumstances that I wish I could change. But if I could talk to newly-20 Robbie at the end of 2009, I’d tell him to be hopeful. And I think that’s what I needed most through my twenties - hope.

I’m ending this one here this week. I’ve been enjoying a number of books, albums, shows, and games. I had some thoughts on goals and habits for the new year. I also considered writing out my favorite reads of 2020. But I’m deciding to save those for another post.

Take care, friends. May you know the grace of God in surprising and wonderful new ways in 2020 and beyond.

Four entries in and I broke the weekly rhythm, hence the title change to “update”. Oh well.

To be fair, last week was spent traveling to California for my W+R Studios’ year-end meetings/holiday party. I flew in on Tuesday the 10th. Meetings and work related events lasted until the morning of Friday the 13th. I got to spend the rest of Friday and all of Saturday seeing friends and catching up on Watchmen. I flew to DC on Sunday the 15th, where I met up with Jenoa. Spent much of Monday the 16th exploring DC, before taking the train back to Charlottesville that evening.

I think I’ve travelled more this year than any other. Let’s see if I can get a comprehensive list:

• January 3 — Fly back to CA after spending Christmas and New Year’s in Texas.
• February 20—23 — Four days in Pasadena for an event at Fuller Seminary.
• March 15-17 - Men’s retreat for church in Big Bear.
• April 4-7 - Fly to Texas for four days to attend the Mockingbird Tyler conference. While there, Jen has preliminary talks about the College Minister position.
• April 25-28 - Drive to and from Oakland for Jen’s friend’s wedding.
• April 29-May 2 - Fly to Boise for RESO Spring Technology Summit. During this time, Jen is in Palm Springs for an education conference.
• May 11-14 - Fly to Charlottesville for Jen’s interview at Christ Episcopal Church. She’s offered the position and accepts it on the last day of the trip.
• May 24-27 - Drive to Crestline (near Big Bear) to stay with friends at a cabin for Memorial Day weekend.
• June 17-19 - Much needed mini-vacation to Palm Springs. The first proper do-nothing vacation Jen and I had since our honeymoon.
• July 13 - Day trip to Tijuana. Neither of us had ever been.
• August 5-10 - Drive across the country from Rancho Santa Margarita, CA to Charlottesville, VA. Along the way we stay in Cloudcroft, NM; Glen Rose, TX; and Franklin, TN.
• August 12-15 - I fly right back to California for the Product Team summit at work. Two days after I moved across the country. I’M NOT TIRED YOU’RE TIRED.
• September 20-22 - Church retreat at Shrine Mont.
• October 1-8 - Fly to Texas unexpectedly for Jen’s grandmother’s funeral.
• October 15-21 - Fly to CA for Here We Still Stand and to see friends.
• November 17-20 - Fly to Nashville for RubyConf.
• December 10-15 - Fly to CA for W+R Studios year-end meetings.
  
  So, for seven out of twelve months this year I got on a plane, for a total of nine trips by flight. It could have been ten; I originally planned to fly back to CA to be in a wedding the week after the product team summit, but Jen wisely convinced me that that was going to be way more than I could handle. In the midst of all the traveling, we also said goodbye to close friends, bought a house, dealt with loss, hosted family for Thanksgiving, and Jen started a new job (at which she has been doing fantastic). We’ve been given amazing new friends, and moved to a town that we love. It’s been a whirlwind year filled with a range of emotions.

That last trip will be the last one I take for some time. Much as I love seeing close friends, I’m also looking forward to not getting on a plane.

In an odd way, I felt a peace when I left California last week. I’m accepting having both feet firmly planted in Virginia. Of course there will be trips back west, and some of the friends I have there could never be replaced. But it’s not home anymore. I’m writing this from Charlottesville, VA — my new home.

Reading

Still plodding through Fall and Advent. I also picked up Paul’s Apocalyptic Gospel by J. Christiaan Beker from The Center for Christian Study’s library as a supplementary interlude to my reading of Advent. I’m also learning the Go programming language and making my way through The Little Go Book.

Watching

Thanks to Collin, I’m mostly caught up with Watchmen. Just need to watch that finale. Jen is also trying to get me hooked on Mad Men and it might be working.

Listening

I told a friend of mine that I wanted to get into choral music. He recommended the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge. Their Best Loved Hymns kept me company on the turbulent flight out to California. Also thankful for Penguin Cafe’s Handfuls of Night and City and Colour’s A Pill for Loneliness.

Links

10 Best TV Shows of 2019, I’m Assuming - A list from a friend. If you read no other year-end listicle, at least read this one.

“A Word That Would Light Up The Night”: Listening to Nick Cave’s Ghosteen in Advent - Mockingbird was kind enough syndicate this piece I wrote here a couple weeks ago.

A Primer for Staying Married at Christmas - I know, a lot of Mbird, this week, but some wise advice here.

on not owning my turf - Good reminder from Alan Jacobs.

futurity: an Advent thought - More advice reflections, this time from the aforementioned AJ.

Please for the love of Blarg, Start a Blog - A blogging jeremiad from Jay Springett

So I’m a day late on this one, but I did publish a thing yesterday, that the good people at Mbird will also be publishing on their space sometime early next week.

This week has mostly been focused on buttoning up minor things at work before next week’s trip to California for year end meetings. I’m also staying a couple extra nights to see some friends.

J. and I spent much of today making some much needed furniture purchases. Thank God for Cville’s Habitat for Humanity Store and Circa. I honestly never imagined that purchasing high quality furniture could be such an affordable and accessible experience. Friends, if you have a Habitat store or any sort of used furniture store, seek it out. I promise you, you are not damned to an endless cycle of particle board and opaque instructions from big box stores for the rest of your life. And, surprisingly, we’ve been able to make purchases that cost little more than what you’d find at said big box stores, and I think we’ll need to make fewer purchases in the long run.

Reading

Still working my way through Neal Stephenson’s Fall; or, Dodge in Hell and Fleming Rutledge’s Advent. Stephenson’s novel touches on the eschatological in such a clever way that I never would have expected from an almost satirical sci-fi novel. I’m still forming thoughts about it, but there’s likely a dedicated post in me that I’ll write once I’ve finished reading it.

Watching

Last night we watched Prospect, an indie sci-fi film that was surprisingly good. The plot is a straightforward survival story, but the world was fascinating and immersive. It felt like a small glimpse of a large narrative universe. My only complaint is that there was so much left unaddressed about the world, that it almost felt like a film was the worst medium to employ this setting. Nonetheless, I’d recommend it.

Listening

Finally listening to Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’s Ghosteen. Beyond what I said in the aforementioned post, I have nothing more other than an admonition for you to listen.

Links

The Weight of Advent: Speak What You Feel, Not What You Ought to Say - Ian at Mockingbird

The 8 Requirements of Real-Time Stream Processing — For any programming nerds out there, this was really interesting, especially given that it was written in 2005. Also see The Morning Paper’s summary.

As a relative newcomer to the Anglican tradition, Advent’s significance as a season, while not totally unfamiliar, has been welcome and refreshing. I also deeply appreciate a phrase I read in various places that seems popular in Anglican circles: “All may, some should, none must”. It’s a principle that, at first glance, seems to respect individual conscience and, dare I say, the diversity of Christian experience.

That said, it’s also been strange to see the contentiousness that the faithful sometimes bring to this season. Some admonish personal observance of this part of the liturgical calendar as form of resistance to the relentless commercialization of our broader culture, while self-described “Advent snobs” are making an effort to repent of their pretensions and urging us to break out the Kenny G records post-haste in opposition to the bleakness of our news cycles and political polarization.

Coming from a church background where Advent is merely the weeks leading up to Christmas (and we listened to a lot of Kenny G), there’s no shortage of Advent hymns I’ve never been exposed to. That said, when I finally gave a listen to Ghosteen, the most recent album from Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, I didn’t expect to find an expression of longing and hope in the midst of darkness so potent, that you could almost call it an Advent album.

Written wholly in the years since the tragic death of Nick Cave’s son in 2015, the album feels equal parts hopeful and haunted. In the first track’s outro, “Spinning Song”, Cave repeats these words,

“Peace will come, a peace will come, a peace will come in time
A time will come, a time will come, a time will come for us”

Which leads into the second track, “Bright Horses”, where he sings in the second verse,

“And everyone has a heart and it’s calling for something
And we’re all so sick and tired of seeing things as they are
And horses are just horses and their manes aren’t full of fire
The fields are just fields and there ain’t no Lord
And everyone is hidden, and everyone is cruel
And there’s no shortage of tyrants and no shortage of fools
And the little white shape dancing at the end of the hall
Is just a wish that time can’t dissolve at all”

Cave’s lyrics express the longing of every heart that feels sick and tired, that is discontent with the world as it is. We hide our true selves and show cruelty to one another. Tyrants and fools dominant our public and private lives. And what is the “little white shape” that dances? According to one review), the suffix “-een” in “Ghosteen” is an anglicization of an Irish expression denoting “something small, but also something benevolent.” References to ghosts and spirits permeate the record. Perhaps we could infer that the “little white shape” is the ghost of his lost son, whose absence is almost felt as a presence that cannot be taken away. It’s a bleak image of this present darkness.

But as the melody turns back to the instrumental refrain of the song’s opening,

“Oh, this world is plain to see
It don’t mean we can’t believe in something
And anyway, my baby’s coming back now on the next train
I can hear the whistle blowin’, I can hear the mighty roar
I can hear the horses prancing in the pastures of the Lord
Oh, the train is coming, and I’m standing here to see
And it’s bringing my baby right back to me
Well, there are some things that are hard to explain
But my baby’s coming home now on the 5:30 train“

Despite the plainness of our world and its apparent brokenness, we can still have hope. We await a better world, that comes with a “mighty roar”. And the fields which seem barren of divine presence are in truth the “pastures of the Lord.” And the speaker’s baby is returning, and the speaker watches for this train.

Or consider the second verse of “Sun Forest”:

“And a man called Jesus, He promised He would leave us
With a word that would light up the night, oh, the night
But the stars hang from threads and blink off one by one
And it isn’t any fun, no, it isn’t any fun
To be standing here alone with nowhere to be
With a man mad with grief and on each side a thief
And everybody hanging from a tree, from a tree
And everybody hanging from a tree”

Admittedly, I’ve overlooked some passages from these songs, to say nothing of the entire songs I’ve neglected to explore. I know nothing of Cave’s spiritual inclinations, and I don’t presume to impute any intending religious meaning to the album. To appropriate Cave’s creation to make a theological point without honoring the grief and sorrow along with the wonder and joy therein would be to do violence to his work. I commend it to you regardless of any spiritual significance I might find in it. But I also believe his words, regardless of their intent, are a profound example of the emotions and experiences to which the season of Advent is addressed.

And I also think Cave’s words are worth considering when we encounter the push and pull of controversies around the observance of Advent. Such debates can sound like mere dogmatic infighting to those listening who simply need the promise the season offers. To people “sick and tired of seeing things as they are”, liturgical debates as such can ring hollow, and risk rendering abstract the true comfort in the story they’re fighting over.

For one grappling with loss, or frustration at the tyrants in the world, Advent opens a space in which to lament, and to yearn, for a better world and a “word that would light up the night.” While the “Advent police” can seem severe, there is also a deep grace in allowing the church, whose expressions can devolve into sentimentalized joy or exacting demands for personal improvement, to be a place that acknowledges and embraces the grief and longing many feel.

I’m unsure how to end this, other than to say regardless of how we observe the season, let it be in a manner that reflects the grace given to us. The word that lights up the night came from the man who was mad with grief as he hung from a tree: “Father forgive them, they know not what they do”. Let us not forsake others in their grief and madness. We have been given a word to share with the world. And that word always lights up the night.

This is the first entry that’s testing the fortitude of my commitment to regularly publishing here. It’s been a hectic week — good, but hectic. Much to process, and much of it to be thankful for. Time spent with family. A caring church. New opportunities. Lots of food. These entries have so far leaned heavily on diary entries and synthesized them, but the demands on my time and will this past week have left me with 0 entries to glean from, so this’ll be a shorter one.

Reading

I had the bright idea of starting Neal Stephenson’s Fall; or, Dodge in Hell and Fleming Rutledge’s Advent in the same week. Both are fairly hefty. I also tore through the third volume of Jeff Lemire’s Black Hamer today. I’ve been dipping into Faith Once Delivered, a collection of sermons from our Rector, Paul N. Walker.

My reading habits are fairly erratic.

Watching

Thankful for Disney+, as it allowed us to watch Home Alone 2 this week.

Listening

Gave Common’s Let Love another spin this week and it has yet to disappoint.

Links

Not much internet reading this week.

I spent the bulk of this past week in Nashville for RubyConf. I arrived late Sunday night, and flew home Wednesday afternoon. Having attended RailsConf for two years, my coworkers and I decided to mix things up this year and check out RubyConf instead. As much as I’ve enjoyed RailsConf, RubyConf proved to be a refreshing experience. There was much discussion around the Ruby language with little reference to the Rails framework. In my experience, RailsConf tended to be high-level discussions of various technologies and how they can be integrated into Ruby on Rails. RubyConf, on the other hand, while still having a fair number of talks that touched more on the “soft skills” (we need a better term for those), also consisted of more technical deep-dives.

Warning: technical babble follows

For example, I learned that, depending on the data structure you’re working with, writing to disk can actually be faster than writing to memory. How so? Turns out, when a program writes to a file (e.g. with something like File.new), Ruby actually delegates the file-saving task to the operating system, which then queues up the task to do later. Now, in something like a database, where you don’t want to lose any data if your program crashes, writing to disk occurs immediately. But, in Ruby’s case, writing to “disk” is in effect writing to memory, and proves to be more efficient. The talk explains the details much better than I could. End technical babble

Avdi Grimm shared about some painful personal experiences and how they might be applied to both life and software systems. If you don’t follow Avdi’s newsletter, I highly recommend subscribing. His denunciation of transactional thinking and incisive examination of our achievement-obsessed/goal-oriented culture was nearly biblical.

Colin Fulton actually got a Ruby implementation to run on an Apple II. They also put their slides on a floppy disk, which ran on a physical Apple II machine on stage.

Sandi Metz’s keynote about how lucky we were to be at that conference was damn near prophetic. Her call for all present to use their skills and knowledge for good and to address systemic injustices was inspiring.

Finally, my manager, Jon Druse, gave a talk!. He discussed how poor processes, cutting corners, and complex legacy systems led to “the worst catastrophe” of his career. Having been present for said catastrophe, I can attest to how painful and powerful a learning experience it was for our team.

I’ll be sure share links to these talks once they’re posted.

By the end of this year, I will have traveled five times since August alone. Some of it has been fun, some of it less so. I’m pondering travel for next year. Jen and I are committing to more fun, and less obligation. That might mean dialing back the conferences.

It’s strange how the web has shaped my habits and expectations. The other day I was irked to discover that if I wanted to subscribe to more than 100 RSS feeds with The Old Reader, I would have to upgrade to a paid subscription. Similarly, I was surprised that Feedbin also charges (something that shouldn’t have been surprising). My new RSS reader of choice, NetNewsWire, only currently offers syncing with Feedbin. While NNW is open source and free to use, syncing services cost money to operate. I realized that the “closed web” (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, et. al.) has so accustomed me to paying with my data and not my money that I simply expected a similar arrangement from everyone else.

RSS is an open web technology, and there are many ways to consume RSS feeds without paying a single dime. But syncing between devices is a service that is not trivial to implement, and requires labor. That labor must be compensated.

Perhaps the first step to “fixing" the web is accepting that we need to pay for its benefits, and perhaps that means enjoying fewer benefits. Perhaps we could all use some subtraction of “content” in our lives.

Reading

I finished Marilynne Robinson’s /What Are We Doing Here?/ on the plane to Nashville. Her love for the Puritans almost makes me want to love them too.

I’m also tearing through David Koepp’s Cold Storage. Really enjoying this one.

Watching

Disney+’s The Imagineering Story is making me miss Disneyland, and leaves me wondering if I want to start a new career as an Imagineer.

Listening

The most recent Ultima Thule podcast provided soothing soundscapes for the return flight.

Links

Not much internet reading this week, but I commend to you David Zahl’s foreword to a collection of sermons by our church’s Rector, Paul N. Walker.

Given the fact that I flew to California and Texas for two separate trips AND bought a house in the time since the last post, I think the gap of nearly three months is perfectly acceptable, which yes I know is a very familiar refrain of mine. Of course, it’s not like anyone’s monitoring this space. So, hi.

I may be taking a risk by assigning a frequency and sequence to this post’s title, but it’s also arguably a healthy motivator since it’ll create an artificial sense of shame if I miss an entry. The name for these posts (“Weekly Update”) is a work in progress.

That said, I do think there’s wisdom preemptively collating work that doesn’t exist yet. So, in the spirit of Jay Springett’s blog, I’m publicly committing to a consistent series of blog entries. Let’s try this for at least a year and see where it goes. I’m unsure what form it will take, but I’ll take some cues from Springett’s posts and start there.

I’ve been meaning to write, and I actually have written too. But I also have a poor habit of not finishing things. I completed a rough draft of what turned out to be a short story for children (I think?), but have yet to type it up and give it a proper revision. I’ve also begun a few essays but not completed them. I’ve been writing these by hand in a notebook, and I’m ambivalent about the results. I struggle with momentum on unfinished things. Maybe handwriting, rather than typing is to blame? Or maybe I’m just externalizing my own propensity for procrastination onto superficial issues around process? I don’t think I need to write every day – I think such a demand is unreasonable for most adults with other full-time responsibilities Jeff Vandermeer will back me up on this. But, I do think some consistency is in order. And perhaps forcing myself to put unpolished things out in the world will help me maintain the habit.

So, here’s to good habits.

I spent last weekend in Washington DC and Annapolis. We stayed with my Aunt and Uncle in DC. On Saturday we visited with my parents, who finally made a move from southern California to Annapolis, MD. We ate some fantastic barbecue, crab cakes, and Italian food.

I had the opportunity to facilitate the 20s/30s Bible study at our church Tuesday evening. I can’t remember the last time I prepped and formally facilitated discussion around spiritual matters. Maybe ten years? I shudder to think what 18 year old Robbie would have subjected fellow students of holy writ to. I think this week actually went quite well. Hopefully everyone else felt the same.

Reading

I’ve read a few books since the last post. Some highlights include Jemar Tisby’s /The Color of Compromise/ and /Speaking to Skull Kings and Other Stories/ by Emily B. Cataneo.

I also David Bentley Hart’s /That All Shall Be Saved/, which is causing quite a stir in some circles. I think many of the negative reviews fail to substantively engage with the book’s arguments, and focus instead on Hart’s acerbic tone. Personally, I found his thesis compelling, but I wish he had engaged more with the relevant scriptural passages, rather than devoting just one chapter to it. Of course, being a philosopher, it makes sense that the bulk of his work is concerned with philosophical, rather than exegetical, questions. I also think his pugnacious tendencies and self-assured tone, while amusing, made the book a missed opportunity. Hart admits he expects to persuade no one – that those who disagree with him will persist in their disagreement, and those who agree with him, vice versa. While I think Hart’s arguments were compelling to someone like me who’s open to the book’s thesis, but not thoroughly convinced at the time of reading, I also think that it could have been equally off-putting. I believe in addressing “final things” (and any weighty topic, really) with some reverence and humility. Maybe that’s just my fragile disposition coming through. My argument against his tone is mainly pragmatic though; the substance of his argument deserves serious consideration, and I’d commend the book to anyone.

I’m about two-thirds of the way through Marilynne Robinson’s essay collection /What Are We Doing Here?/. I’m enjoying the way she winsomely and incisively interrogates unexamined cultural assumptions about economics, history, theology, and humanity.

Watching

I’ve seen the first two episodes of Watchmen. I think it’s a sequel to the book? Friends have said episode three is particularly noteworthy.

I signed up for Disney+ and watched the first episode of The Mandalorian. It immediately evokes memories of Firefly and carries the atmosphere and tone of a “space western”. It’s a deep-dive into an area of the Star Wars universe that, until now, we’ve only seen the surface of. For me, it’s some of the most enjoyable television I’ve watched in a while.

Listening

/The World Is A Bell/ by The Leaf Library, TOOL’s /Fear Inoculum/(finally!), and IDLES’ /Joy as an Act of Resistance/ have been on rotation lately.

Links

• the command to be reconciled - Alan Jacobs
• Toy Story 2 At 20: Mortality And Acceptance On The Edge Of 30 - The Quietus
• I Am Your Pug and I Have Heard the Call of the Wild - McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
• Ruminations: Keeping Advent in the midst of marketplace hysteria - Fleming Rutledge
• /Update 11/16: Adding this one from Rune Soup that I forgot about/
• Blowing Filter Bubbles: World Without Sin

So, Jenoa and I moved. I’m writing this from Charlottesville, VA. We made it.

We drove the whole way, taking a total of 5 days and logging more than 2000 miles and over 40 hours of drive time. We watched the landscape change from from high-desert, to mountains, to plains, to hills, to dense forests. We stayed in New Mexico, two nights in Texas, and one night in Tennessee before arriving in Cville. We also swam in a river.

I got to enjoy Charlottesville for two days before having to fly right back to Orange County for my company’s product team summit. That was a fun trip. I even got to see my best friend.

Surprisingly, this place has already begun to feel like home. When I flew into John Wayne Airport, it felt like I was visiting, not returning. It felt normal to tell myself, “Orange County is not my home anymore”. And when I returned to Virginia four days later, it felt like coming home.

There are moments when I miss my close friends. Really miss them. Today marks the third Wing Wednesday I’ll be absent from. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sad. And I really wish I had them here with me.

And at the same time, people here have been more than welcoming. We’ve already had a game night. Jenoa’s begun her job and is excited to start regularly meeting with students. I feel like I have less stress and more time. Charlottesville, in many ways, feels like my ideal place to live. There’s a lot to be grateful for.

It’s sometimes unsettling to experience grief and gratitude in equal measure. But I suppose the grief is also an extension of gratitude – gratitude for having such good friends that I’m sad to no longer have them in close proximity. And the grief does not erase the gratitude for the new place and people that have entered my life.

All is grace.

It feels like periodically I write these “it’s been a while, but been really busy and all you know how it goes” posts. That said, I feel like there’s some justification for the silence over the last few months.

If you haven’t heard, Jen and I will be moving to Charlottesville, VA, where she’s accepted a role as College Grounds Minister at Christ Episcopal Church. Excitement and anxiety and sadness and joy and wonder have ensued.

For the last 18 years, Orange County has been my home. My deepest friendships are here, and I intend for them to persist regardless of the distance. Despite my complaints about it, this place will always be part of me. I speculated about moving to Cville to attend UVA for grad school at one time, but that possibility was precluded when I decided to pursue programming instead of academia. Funny how things work out.

Ergo, this space has been quiet. I’ve had fits and starts of ideas, moments of “oh I should write that down”, but other matters take priority. For the next couple of months, my focus will be on enjoying valuable time with friends, packing, planning, and resting where I can. It’s a forced break from pseudo-profound thoughts, which I’m perfectly content with.

As to what will become of this blog, I’m not entirely sure. I intend to keep it around and will complete the redesign I last touched in early May according to git log. If I have to guess, the content will become more eclectic, focusing more on life updates than reflections on what’s going on “out there”.

That said, life hasn’t completely stopped. Jen recently shared some highlights, and here are a few of my own:

• Took a much needed vacation to Ace Hotel in Palm Springs. We’ve traveled quite a bit as a couple, but not since our honeymoon had we taken a true sit-by-a-pool-eat-drink-do-nothing vacation. This trip was a corrective to that.
• I’ve poked around with this “course” from Gregory Brown’s Practicing Ruby that I stumbled upon. It’s focused on using Ruby to implement low-level tools and Unix programs that are usually abstracted away for us in day-to-day development.
• I’m enjoying video games again. My brother in law introduced me to Wargroove. Having never played a tactical RPG, it’s been a refreshing and fun experience.
• After punting on it for years, I finally read Frank Herberts Dune. Worth every moment spent reading it. I’m still astounded by how Herbert balances page-turning action with philosophical/ecological/political/theological reflection. Other reading highlights include Diogenes Allen’s Theology for a Troubled Believer and Jenny Odell’s How To Do Nothing.
• I’ve fallen back in love with music. That feels strange to say, but I realized that I had been listening to a glut of podcasts and audiobooks, but was mostly unaware of what music had been released over the last year and half. Lately, I’ve been enjoying Thrice’s Palms - Deeper Wells, Hundred Acres from S. Carey, Son of Cloud, and the new singles from Alexisonfire and City and Colour (Dallas Green’s output is impressive to say the least).

Robbie