We have posted one of Brian Jay Stanley‘s essays before, and heaven knows we’ve posted nearly everything that’s come from the Opinionator’s “Anxiety” series. This one is an unique take. Stanley here is talking about the body-soul/body-mind dualism we still believe today, the gnostic cleanliness we desire over the viscera and guts of nature. We are made anxious, in other words, by the body and the parts of nature’s innards we cannot control. Stanley points to Plato’s discourse of mind over matter, and inverts it: as much as we’d like to lord our big hearts and nervy wits over the…
Poorly Navigating Kamikazes and the Secret History of the World
How do you write about the reality of the human condition in concrete terms without coming off as sanctimonious or a total downer? I don’t know, but I think Tim Kreider may. I’m sure I’m not the only one who was so impressed with (and addressed by) his essay “The Busy Trap” that appeared in The NY Times recently that they immediately ordered his essay collection, We Learn Nothing, which came out in paperback last month. Hard to imagine there’s another volume out there with endorsements from both Judd Apatow and David Foster Wallace, not to mention an astonishing opening…
Daddy Momming: (More) Stress Cupcakes and the Extra Kid at Home
A wheelhouse piece, just in time for Mother’s Day: a litany of confessionals from the mothers of America about their partners-in-crime. It seems–as ever–that Dad could do more around the house, that his “assistance,” if it is there at all, becomes one more thing (or two, or three…) that requires surveillance and handholding and discipline. In other words, for most mothers, the father becomes another child. And for the most part, he is a more difficult child, because of what he should be.
This is not so much a repeat post on the “manchild syndrome” as it is an interesting glimpse…
Hopelessly Devoted: One Thing Needful, I Can Stay All Night, Baby Beluga, and How I Ended Up At The Bottom Of A Dumpster On Christmas Eve
The hits just keep on coming! In lieu of our usual bi-weekly Monday devotion, here’s four for the price of one, all of Drew Rollins’ wise, funny, and deeply pastoral words from the NYC Conference in one video. They are far less conference-specific than they may initially appear–each one is about 10 minutes long:
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Another Week Ends: Abercrombie’s Hot People, The Neverending “Me Me Me” Era, George Jones’ “Choices,” Katharine Welby, New TV, and New Vampire Weekend
1) The Atlantic provided an insightful zinger to the finger-waggers of today’s adultescent. Looking at today’s young people, of whom I am one—blogging away, shoes off—the piece is a response to the recent cover article of Time magazine, “The Me Me Me Generation.” The Time piece is a backhanded spotlight on the millennials, a heat-ray at their unique and insipid self-absorption, their phones, their extended stays at home. Contrary to this, Elspeth Reeve writes that the Me, Me, Me Generation is every generation—that we’ve been locating (and writing about) the narcissism of youth since we’ve written. She then delineates a…
The Rasta-Banana of Great Price
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a man in search of an X-Box Kinect, who, on finding one at a carnival game, went and emptied his life savings, didn’t win the Kinect, and was given a giant…
On the Religion of Mindful Self-Loathing
We know the old trope, either in family sitcoms or from within our own dramatic units: the inner-mirror moment when we realize we’ve just said something we always hated our parents saying. We find ourselves–or someone close finds us–doing the things we promised we’d never do when we got out of the house, when we one day had kids, when we held a steady job… The revelations in these vernaculars are generally lighthearted, but not all are, and it is nearly always painful to see that we have “accidentally” become the non-example we had striven to prove wrong.
This is what…
One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World – Tullian Tchividjian
Each morning this week we’ll be posting a different video from our recent conference in New York City. A major, major thank you goes out to David and Mark Babikow for making these clips possible. We begin at the beginning:
You may download this recording by clicking here.
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Another Week Ends: Fairness, The Life of Wiman, Motherly Love, Malick Sacraments, Karr Talks Saunders, Anderson Shoots Prada, and the Ke$ha Trump Card
1) The Chronicle released a preview last month to Wiman’s newest piece of work, My Bright Abyss, which we’ve already pulled from a couple of times, here and here, and the life and the illness that spurred it. Jay Parini writes that poetry criticism and commentary began by pulling the fabric of a piece of work as closely as possible upon the tables of lived experience, but Parini also notes that contemporary criticism has become so po-mo-phobic of plainspeak that it winds up saying nothing at all. But Wiman, on the other hand, with sickness, has been voided of this…
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2013 NYC Conference Recordings: Good News That Never Gets Old
Another heartfelt thank-you to everyone who helped put on this year’s Mockingbird Conference in NYC, especially our friends at Calvary St. George’s Church. It’s a good thing most of the presentations below have to do with grace, as the very thought of trying to top it is incredibly scary…! Speaking of freebies, though, we are once again making the recordings available at no charge; we only ask that those who were not able to attend this year *consider* making a donation to help cover the cost of the event. Download links are followed by an in-line player for each recording.…
From The Onion: Come On, Carl, Pull It Together
Capping off a refreshingly funny week on the site, a new classic from America’s Finest News Source, ht JD:
That’s right; reports indicate that you, Carl Mendel, 33, of Dayton, Ohio need to wake up, get moving, and pull yourself out of this weird funk you’ve been stuck in for, what is it, sources confirm, three years now? Those familiar with the situation said that we all care about you, Carl, and experts claim it’s time you take charge and break out of this cycle of apathy that’s preventing you from living up to your potential.
“You know, life’s short, Carl,” said…
The Subtle Horror of Mad Men
Mad Men is a horror series. There… I said it. I didn’t believe this until recently. My impression was that it was a dark and brooding drama about the desperate and horny realities of life. This was until I had a conversation with a woman who could not watch the show. “Not watch Mad Men?” I thought… “How could you not watch Mad Men?” “You don’t understand,” she said… “Watching Mad Men to me is like watching horror movies to you.”
That registered with me because I am a notoriously scaredy-cat horror movie-viewer. I fidget, cover my eyes like a kid, and furiously…
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From One Juliet to Another: Sufferers Comforting Sufferers
One of the criticisms of Gospel preaching is that it can, at times, be gloomy. “Do we have to hear about sin again?”, the complaint goes, “Do you have to be so down on humanity?”, “Can’t we talk about how great life is sometimes?”, “Can’t you give me some self-improvement tools?”
To these voices the Gospel preacher replies that life is often (perhaps mostly) hard, and that as much as we might crave a word of optimism, a little fuel for the part of us that longs to live in blissful ignorance (or denial), what we really need is not to…
Psychopharmacology Nightmares and the Sanctuary Model
In an enticingly titled NY Times op-ed “Diagnosis: Human” this past week, Harvard ethicist Ted Gup warned of the dangers of approaching our problems in an overly/exclusively pharmaceutical fashion. The temptation with certain types of psychotropic drugs being that they will serve as quick-fix band-aids rather than as part of an actual cure, and in doing so, they may even backfire. Part of his concern has to do with what he sees as the fallout of prescription-happy doctors when it comes to the diagnosing of boys with ADD/ADHD. You’ll have to read the whole article to understand just how deep…
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Another Week Ends: Jackrabbit Madness, FOMO, Faith Like a Mumford, Radical Rhetoric, Alan Partridge and the Sitcom Smackdown
1) If you are a sports fan, today is (arguably, I know) day two of the best four days in college sports every year. March Madness has begun, and Grantland is the place to be for the most hare-brained predictions and analyses—including a Charles Barkley shark jump and a Marshall Henderson moment only Marshall Henderson could think up. It’s not all fun and games, though—this story on the South Dakota State University Jackrabbits is one of the best team profiles I’ve read in a while. I defy you not to root for this team in the tournament, even it means…
brandon: This needs to be the onion article: Man who burns Down Neighbors Yard ...
Zach: "Amen" 27 times to that Bradley post. All that stuff about being "mis...
John Zahl: The British version blows the American version out of the water! One ...
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michael cooper: The Office at its best was full of grace-infused irony, and concrete p...