Donny C
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The happier the dog, the stinkier the breath
Donny C
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Finished reading: The Best of It by Kay Ryan 📚
I’ve been reading this without an ounce of haste for two years. Not once did I feel the need to hurry up and finish it.
Donny C
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Donny C
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😆
Donny C
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@dwalbert Ha!
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@jabel Can you take a higher res picture so that I may better zoom and scan your bookshelf 🧐
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Donny C
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@alexink Absolutely!
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@annahavron Hearing that from you means a lot. Thanks, Anna 🙂
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@jabel Excellent. I didn’t really follow the he-said-she-said history of labels that I know nothing about, but the zombie-ghost comparison is apt. We need more ghosts!
Donny C
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Donny C
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Donny C
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@jayeless His latest thing is to crawl a beeline across the couch or floor to Jack and launch himself over Jack’s body. Jack never moves until Will is done 🙂
Donny C
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@jimmitchell @alexink On paper v ebooks, Julian Barnes is 👌
Happy reading!
Donny C
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Donny C
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@jabel I had your post bouncing around my head somewhere while I was finishing Christian Wiman’s Trinity Forum’s interview. Around 26 minutes in, he mentions the book of Job and need for more poetic understanding. But he says “The more we learn about reality, the more it seems that consciousness is much more widespread than we thought, and that the world is close to some kind of sentience.”
Donny C
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@jabel I do love it when a good sentence “snaps things together.” 🙂
I’m not sure this has anything to do with polytheism, per se, but I’m reminded of a book on Job that I’ve never read but the subtitle of which I’ve loved thinking about: A Contest of Moral Imaginations
Donny C
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Donny C
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Also finished reading: The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann 📚
Some thoughts (and a poem from Kay Ryan) here.
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@JohnBrady Excellent. Do share what you find in it. I may follow your lead
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@JohnBrady Enjoy!
Donny C
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Lately we’ve been watching Raising Hope for our highbrow entertainment needs. With this show, it’s the little things you might miss whilst digging for cookie dough in the ice cream bowl that are the funniest. Fortunately Meghan caught this one.
Donny C
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Donny C
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Donny C
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@jonah Beautiful
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@dwalbert There's a great line from the introduction to the 1998 reprint of Night Train at Wiscassett Station, about the writer Lew Dietz: "He understood the importance of the seasons. To this day Mainers generally don't have as much pavement separating them from the earth as residents elsewhere. Snowstorms are still largely respected in Maine—neither feared as cataclysmic, nor ignored as nuisances. Summer is perceived as the anomaly that it is, a hectic blip on the radar screen of the year, not to be mistaken as 'the way life should be.' Who residing anywhere on the coast or up in the woods has not felt the palpable sense of relief that washes over the state once the leaves have fallen? 'By the time of October's hunter moon,' Lew wrote, 'the trauma of summer has been healed, health and sanity restored.'"
I was saving that for October but what the hell.
Donny C
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@toddgrotenhuis I should checked out the director’s cut if there is one. While I was mildly disappointed when it came out (I was not expecting an Alien origins thing), I’ve weirdly liked that movie and “bored watched” it a dozen times
Donny C
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@mbkriegh Fwiw, I understand the sentiment but think that it’s also an unavoidable part of an “internet community” that doesn’t cater to the easy (and addictive) likes and shares. Personally, I have much more anxiety (to a degree I’m not excited to admit) over online conversations and commenting, which I always fear will be “judged,” misunderstood, or read in the wrong tone (I use the 🤓 face to cover a multitude of sins … 🤓), than I do about just posting for posting/writing/sharing’s sake. I opened a micro.blog page because friends and family had asked for so long for some way to “follow” me online. I know zero people in real life who use micro.blog. It was (is) meant to be for them to check and read if and when they feel like it, which they sometimes do, but it’s never the same because it doesn’t show up in a newsfeed or a notification. But that means, again, personally speaking, that I have to remind myself that while what I write or share here at least can be for others, it’s mostly just for me because I like doing it. When I start feeling like I’m posting for the micro.blog community or for comments, I quickly feel that anxiety come back in and it makes me want to remove the internet from my life altogether. (Still not an impossibility, frankly.) I’ve also found benefits to different kinds of online life: this one, a static blog with no social connection, a Buttondown newsletter — each has its own (mental) benefit, for sure. In any case, I hope you find some peace about it and keep on sharing 🙂
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@ReaderJohn Exellent. You mentioned one of his earlier book that I haven't read. I finished reading Brueggemann's first book the other day, and he mentions Cavanaugh's first book, Torture and the Eurcharist. Reminded me of this talk from 2016 on the Eucharist. Quite good.
Donny C
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Naomi Shihab Nye:
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I have not succeeded this week in having a genuine day of Shabbat. But I did get a good reminder that Good News, in its simplest and everyday form, is also stripped of human elaboration. It’s good to let it be simple.
Donny C
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@mjkaul Love to hear what you think of it
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@dwalbert Nice. She’s been my pocket buddy lately. I look forward to seeing how that turns out.
Donny C
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@tinyroofnail An addendum from Walter Brueggemann… a Brueggemendum 🤓
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@jabel Lovely cover. Thanks for sharing. Reminded me of the early Covid video Curt Smith posted with his daughter
Donny C
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Quick stop at Broad Arrow Farm • Naturally, their motto “Do you know where your food comes from?” reminds me of this. 🙂
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Meghan’s random book grab today. I figure the subtitle could just as well have been “A Brief Jaunt Through Human History.” Or even “A Brief Jaunt Through My Own History.” 🤓
From the epigraph: “To every kid with a little daydream and every grown-up with a big idea …”
Donny C
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“Mournful punditry” — Some thoughts from this week.
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@ReaderJohn 😁 You as well!
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📚Happy New Book in the Mail Day! Celebrate accordingly
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@JimRain Lovely!
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@ablerism Same! “The impulse of the Bible is always to complicate judgement — always.” Volf’s summarizing of her “humanism” as a “finding a humane way to deal with the inhumanity of human beings” too. I loved her book as well.
Donny C
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I love Jennifer Roberts’ phrase “the formative powers of delay”.
…Patience
comes to the bones
before it takes root in the heart
as another good idea.
— Mary Oliver
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Power always sincerely, conscientiously, de tres bon Foi, believes itself Right. Power always thinks it has a great Soul, and vast Views, beyond the Comprehension of the Weak; and that it is doing God Service, when it is violating all his Laws. Our Passions, Ambition, Avarice, Love, Resentment &c possess so much metaphysical Subtilty and so much overpowering Eloquence, that they insinuate themselves into the Understanding and the Conscience and Convert both to their Party.
Donny C
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Donny C
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For over a week, whenever I open Richard Wilbur I have been unable or unwilling to turn the page past his poem “The Event.” This is a pleasant and frequent dilemma. 🙂
Delighted with myself and with the birds,
I set them down and give them leave to be.
It is by words and the defeat of words,
Down sudden vistas of the vain attempt,
That for a flying moment one may see
By what cross-purposes the world is dreamt.
Donny C
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Kay Ryan:
Donny C
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We Could All Use More Sabbath Fundamentalism:
The key is to lean into Heschel’s “realm of endless peace.” Shabbat is a taste of a world that could be, a 25-hour glimpse into a healthier, less stressful and more even-keeled existence.… It allows you to let go, to lose sight of the give-and-take of Sunday through Friday, and just breathe, and accept, and enjoy. By mandating a pause, Shabbat enables us to see once again the beauty of creation, to return to the simplicity which God gave us, stripped of human elaboration.
I love that phrase, stripped of human elaboration.