partsofspeaking

A partner in college ministry wrote:  We had a tough time last night during prayer time. One of the big tough athletes, XXX, broke down and cried and could only get out, “I’m just tired of losing people.” This was before we had heard about [the death of another student's] Mom.  To go along with the tragedies in Afghanistan. 

I’ve got the lazies. It’s so hot and humid here, I just don’t want to take my evening walk and sweat and be nasty.   But I did, and listened to a podcast about Joshua Harris, the I Kissed Dating Goodbye guy. This guy wants us to feel sorry for him, but I’m not buying it. He makes a fortune with an ill-conceived book at 18 and some publisher also benefits greatly. Without any formal education, he becomes a minister in a church organization for several years, one that comes under increasing scrutiny for accountability and how it handled abuse. Then he decides to get an education, then starts to "deconstruct" his faith, then leaves his marriage, and then leaves “identification as a Christian.”   Remind me, why are we listening to him?   It’s of course a cautionary tale about “Christian celebrity.” As much as I want people to read my writing (discussed below), Christian celebrity is toxic, a sin,  a travesty, a tragedy, all the melodramatic words...

  https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2021/august-web-only/sexual-abuse-ravi-zacharias-takes-village-escape-leader.html?utm_source=CT%20Weekly%20Newsletter&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_term=344793&utm_content=6589&utm_campaign=email "More often than not, this pattern of thinking doesn’t stop with childhood. Many of us have counseled abused women who conclude that the problem was that they didn’t adequately alleviate their partner’s stress. A spouse who is cheated on sometimes concludes that he or she wasn’t attractive enough, or is in some other way to blame for what happened. This often happens in church situations, where people sometimes find it difficult to see—sometimes until years later—that what they assumed was just 'the messiness of dealing with people' turns out to have been a toxic and harmful environment." I have sometimes thought maybe we were all too sensitive nowadays, name too many things abuse, and wallow in our own experience too much....

  Coddiwomple: to travel in a purposeful way toward a vague destination.    What is it to travel in a vague way toward a purposeful destination? Is there a word for that? That’s me, especially with my writing. I have twenty more novels and short stories in me but wow the process is vague.

 While American Christians fight to not wear a mask (a piece of cotton that might save a life), Afghani Christians pray and lament. (And Afghan women have to wear burkas.) https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2021/august-web-only/afghanistan-christians-prayer-lament-united-states-taliban.html

 I saw Respect this weekend. I recommend it. The eight-dollar ticket price was equal to the songs and the walk down memory lane and Jennifer Hudson’s powerful voice and portrayal, to say nothing of hearing my favorite pop song (You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman) played and sung by the real Aretha in her late 60s.   That was fabulous.   If there’s sound track, I imagine it will do well. It played with all the typical “biopic of singers” tropes: difficult childhood, too many badly-chosen relationships, addictions, ambition, the price of fame, etc. Is there a screenplay writing school for these? Aretha’s life was just more interesting than some. Her pregnancy at 12 and then 14 (molestation, but perhaps in a way she was convinced it was right or she was a big girl andmeant she was loved). The abuse from men trying to control her because they could control her voice and talent and thus money. How deep she was in alcoholism. Her family connections to the civil rights m...

David French on Afghanistan.

We sit on our butts in comfortable homes and watch the fall of a nation on TV. Helicopters are landing to evacuate embassy workers and other Americans. The unspoken words, "before the Taliban starts beheading Americans and those who helped them."  This was cast as a bipolar, either-or. Either we're there or we're totally out. Yet we still have military presence in Japan, Korea, and Germany after 60 and 70 years. Thousands will be beheaded, stoned, raped, kidnapped, terrorized, homeless. Our presence kept them at bay.  Tragic. Yet....Why were the Afghanis not able to secure their own civilization? And Biden's administration has no excuse.

  I am not a biologist or epidemiologist. I am a social scientist and understand research and basic biology. I also understand persuasion and with it, self-persuasion (confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance) and the history of thought since the Renaissance. So why is there so much opposition to just wearing a piece of cotton over one’s mouth and nose, when in crowded places? What we have here is a perfect storm of several contributing factors. 1. Social media and polarized professional media; 2. A change of administrations and a contentious election in a polarized ; 3. Poor leadership and even worse messaging from the government; 4. An uneducated public that thinks it’s educated (and that in itself is a book); and 5. Rampant individualism that has made everyone an expert on what they want and what is “right” for them individually regardless of the facts; 6. Twenty years of vaccination-suspicion pumped into society, 7. Distrust of authority and government and institutions, ...

Church & verses Characteristics Of Jesus Characteristics Of church location Commendation Problem Solution Ephesus; 2:1-7 Holds the seven stars Temple of Diana, Wonder of the World. Sexual pagan worship. On Coast but now inland. John’s home church. Works, labor, patience, intolerance of false teachers, You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. Smyrna; 2:8-11 First and Last, resurrected Center of emperor worship. Wealthy city; road of gold Godliness under persecution Will undergo even worse persecution Be faithful and you will get a crown of life Pergamum; 2:12-17 Wields the two-edge sword (symbolic of the word, judgment) Temple to Aesculapius (snake). People c...

 Cats v. Dogs.  I'm a dog person to the bone (bad pun). And I'm a sucker for a dog movie. Whoever cries at the end of a cat movie? When do cats ever save a life in a movie? Cats are never heroes of movies. I'm glad to be proven wrong: https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/cats-meowing-helps-rescuers-find-owner-83-fell-ravine

Not feeling well last night (two reasons: exhausting first week of class and my air conditioning was out, making for a very hot house in Northwest Georgia in mid-August, and hopefully not a third reason, an infection), I opted to watch some movies. My son has a collection on Google play, and then I have access to his HBO and Disney streaming services (I hope I don’t get in trouble here). Having read Sid Field’s book on screenwriting this summer, I had learned what a model screenplay Collateral was, and Mystic River sounded interesting. In general, I liked Mystic River more, but Collateral is technically superior. However, that is not my point here. Both are about evil and men, but are very different in how they portray the origins of evil, the practice of it, and the outcomes of it. I told my son Collatera l is like The Terminator. It’s not of course, but what I meant was that Vincent is a killing machine who even after a car crash where the car rolls several times and being sh...

Como-  "how" in Spanish and Italian How did he get away with this one?  "I had no idea of the extent to which the lines have been redrawn."   Are you kidding me?

  I saw this photo in a story about the "pullout from Afghanistan" and I was reminded of the line from The Dark Knight. "Some people just want to see the world burn." Do those people work in the upper levels of the U.S. Government?

 After a long-running battle with the autocorrect function on my phone. It has changed words to others that are less than acceptable for polite conversation and just generally gotten too creative for its own good. So I turned it off. Doing so did not help my texting or add to less frustration, and it slowed me down. But it did make me aware of what I was sending.   One, however, was interesting. "Middle school" came out "muddle school." Yes, we muddle through it. 

  This is not an argument against undergraduate education or the bachelor’s degree. It is an argument against the unreasonable expectation of finishing in four years.   One could argue that our higher education credential is fundamentally flawed. Why the Bachelor’s degree of 120 (more or less) hours? (no longer just B.A. or B.S. but with lots of different letters following the B.) Isn’t that essentially anachronistic? We’ve been used since the deep Middle Ages. We don’t hold to much else from then, so why the term and concept of a “Bachelor’s” degree (itself man-centered, and heaven knows we don’t want any gender-bias now). So why do?   For one, it’s controllable. Everyone knows it. Eight neat little fifteen-hour semesters. Mathematically easy.   All the programs have been built around it. It makes money for colleges—there’s a disincentive to do Prior Learning, condense hours, go to a competency-based model.   But assuming we stay with 120 (give or t...

The Kayak commercial of the woman with the steak pounder screaming: No cancellation! I haven't left he house in a year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4v2qahAJnAY Why? It's violent. There is something abusive about this "relationship" (won't go there). Only old or infirm people should have stayed in the house during COVID. That woman looks healthy. It's played all the time.  What about you? What commercials are you sick of? (Also, Relief Factor, although the string of conservative "stars" is interesting. Who next? Kevin Sorbo? Hercules needs pain relief? Sebastian Gorka kills me.)