partsofspeaking

I grew up watching, listening to, reading about--baseball. I lived outside of Washington, D.C., and we suffered under the fairly abominable Senators, who played there 1961-71. (Another team by that name preceded them.) I was there the last night those Senators played in RFK Stadium, with my father and brother in 1971. They were moving to Texas to become the Rangers.  I was 15. It was rather a strange event. So, I am happy to say that what we never got as fans back then we might get this year. I will actually pay attention to the World Series because of the Nationals. 

Okay, if we are going to have an orthodoxy and Biblical exposition contest, Macarthur is clearly going to win. However, the viral video of his answer to the question , What do you say to Beth Moore? is disturbing. His answer, Go Home. Could anything be more contemptuous or dismissive? "Women aren't supposed to preach." Well, we can discuss this; there were prophetesses in the book of Acts, women are expressly told to teach the younger women (which is how Beth got started), and there's always Junia and Priscilla, Lydia and Dorcas . . . . Johnny Mac thinks the only women in the Biblical were Euodia and Syntyche, the two cantakerous women in Philippi. Or the woman caught in adultery. Or the demon-possessed girl in Acts 16. In other words, the only women in the Bible are women who are non-exemplary. Go home. Don't dare use your gifts in education or leadership or writing or anything else. Go home. Raise the kids. Otherwise you're a feminist just lookin...

I introduced this word to my Life Group today. I don't think I explained it well. Our lesson was on II Kings 17, where the Samaritans were mixing worship of Almighty God with the rituals of their past religions. Syncretism is intellectually and spiritually dangerous and yet it's all around us. Horoscopes.  Yoga. Vampires. Harry Potter. Non-Christian religious symbols in your home. Halloween. It's easy to step on toes when you preach/teach about syncretism. I take it more seriously than many do. It might be a foolish consistency or even superstitiousness, but I think not. However, I would count dualism in there too, and probably more dangerous than some of these others, since most people don't take them seriously and therefore don't see the harm. Dualism, on the other hand, says the human body is evil. The human body God said was good and will resurrect, and did resurrect in Jesus. The view of the physical world being evil is more anti-Christian than Hall...

I read a lot of social science, educational texts, and related work. Almost all of them are based on an evolutionary worldview. There is a difference between "believing" in evolution (a term I find problematic) and having an evolutionary world view. Like Tim Keller, I can accept evolution, to a point, as a biological process; I can't accept it as an explanation for existence, as a defining mythos, or an all-encompassing explanatory theory. So it gets a little tiresome that every human behavior is attributed to something evolutionary that either comes from "our reptile brains," "our ancestors in trees," or "our forefather on the savannah in Africa."  Some things we do because over thousands of years we learned it from living in societies. And yes, some of it comes from inherent design. In fact, some of the evolutionary explanations sound like "slow magic." I was listening to an NPR program today on, well, bird sex, and at o...

I broke down and went to this film yesterday, inviting a friend so (a) I could kill two birds with one stone, and (b) to have someone to talk to about it. Let me just say that if there was ever a glorification or lauding of white privilege, this is it. Of course, it's white privilege over other whites. (added 10/21) The movie is fan service, pure and simple. I don't know why anyone would watch it who hadn't watched most of the show for six years. Two actors (two of the favorites) give a long prologue at the beginning to catch people up, but it's too much too fast and furious for anyone without a background to absorb. On that level--of fan service--it does very well. The best part is the visual--the clothes and the sweeping panoramas of the estate. I wondered throughout why we never saw those landscapes on the TV show--was it  technical limitations, or contractual agreement with the owner of Highclere Castle, which is shown in stupendous form here.  Some small qu...

Shame on us for abandoning the Kurds. I'm listening to people defend it; it's indefensible. I wish everyone at the ESPN game day carries a Free Hong Kong sign, just for spite. Disney and the NBA are the height of hypocrisy; however, we've all been enslaved to China for cheap junk for twenty years. There. I said it.

My mother bonded with three other women when she took chemotherapy for over a year at an oncologist's practice. I still meet with two of them and their daughters, seven years later. Two of the women have died. The other two are doing well. One has other medical problems, but not the cancer. It is a miracle they are still here, considering the extent of their cancer (this practice works with reproductive cancers, not breast). I rejoice that they are still with their families and living productive lives. They are phenomenal ladies. So why them? I do not say that in any type of cynicism; I celebrate that two of the four are left, since zero of the four could be still alive. I have heard many cancer patients and survivors say, more or less, getting cancer is like a crapshoot, a roll of dice. Having treatments work may be too. I don't know. There are many genetic and lifestyle issues involved, and some treatment differences. We are told positivity makes a difference; I subscri...

Hillary Clinton, whom I consider the reason for Trump being president, (as well as gutless Republicans) whines about the electoral college. Well, yes, she did get more votes, but not in the right places. It's something like college students who change their majors and transfer to different colleges and accumulate more than 120 hours. They have enough hours to graduate, just not in the right disciplines. The great irony has always been that her husband became president with only 43% of the popular vote. Far below a majority. She didn't have a mathematical majority either. She and Trump combined only won 94.3% of the vote. Will Trump get through this? I think his attitude is like that of the Virginia governor of whom pictures in blackface (or a KKK robe) were found. He just rode it out and the media got tired of it.  Trump doesn't care. He'll just say increasingly outrageous things about his enemies and opponents (but I repeat myself). 

O how high would I climb mountains If the mountains were where You hide O how far I'd scale the valleys If You graced the other side O how long have I chased rivers From lowly seas to where they rise Against the rush of grace descending From the source of its supply In the highlands and the heartache You're neither more or less inclined I would search and stop at nothing You're just not that hard to find So I will praise You on the mountain And I will praise You when the mountain's in my way You're the summit where my feet are So I will praise You in the valleys all the same No less God within the shadows No less faithful when the night leads me astray You're the heaven where my heart is In the highlands and the heartache all the same

Last night I made the mistake of watching the Amazon movie Late Night. I do not recommend it and I did not finish it.  It was, like many of the reviewers said, a PC mess, and I found it profane. However, there was one bit where I laughed out loud and thought it made a good point. In trying to spruce up the talk show hosts comedy bits, the writers come up with "Katherine Newberry, White Savior." In a clip, she talks to two young black men who say they have trouble getting a cab because "of the way they look." So Emma Thompson's character (she is a great actress) hails a cab and shoves the two young men into it. "But I don't want to go anywhere!" the young man protests, but she implies that she is white and knows better than he. She is his white savior. I wonder sometimes if we in ministry, with good intentions, don't find ourselves in the same role. We are the Christians who are here to help. If we expect the help will result in some sort of...

I am officially tired of hearing about this matter. He is guilty of a lot of things, including crassness and I would have to agree, some forms of racism. That doesn't mean he's guilty of this particular and should be impeached. It's hard to take the Democrats seriously on this, since they've been screaming impeachment since before the election. But no defense here. Still, it's better than the alternative, by a long shot. I have no doubt more people are alive. All the horrible things predicted about his election seem not to have come true. DACA still here, Medicare in place (more endangered by the left than the right), ISIS less powerful (though not dead), and the employment rate very good.  We can never know what might have been.

I'm finishing up this book. It has taken rather a bit of Grit on my own part to read it. Addendum: I finished it. Thoughts. 1.  She refers to herself as a paragon of grit. Is she being self-deprecating? Why do I think not? 2. All her examples are of people at the absolute top of the world, and a lot of them were born at third base and thought they hit a home run. 3. Beyond that, the sections on parenting for grit and the grit culture are good and I'm glad I slogged through all the anecdotes about her own successes to get to that. 4. So, what about my own grit? No one's business.  Her grit scale would not measure the ways that a person with my life would be gritty, but I think my career has shown some grit. Earning three graduate degrees, teaching for over 40 years, staying married for almost as long, finishing seven novels and five other books probably says something. I know lots of others who aren't CEOs of Fortune 500 companies but they had grit in their own wa...