“When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure.”
E. Stanley Jones just tapped me on the shoulder…
I once went into the Garden of Gethesemene, there to spend the night in prayer, centering my whole meditation on what I thought was the heart and substance of the Gethesemene incident, “Not my will, but thine be done.” I expected to come away chastened, submissive, surrendered. But in those silent hours I found my thought shifting to the words of Jesus to the sleepy disciples, “Arise, let us be going.”
Come now, ye wretched…
Come now, ye wretched,
Come out of the Shadows,
Arise now and lift up your face to the dawn:
The Silence is broken,
A Word now is spoken
And all of the Shadows at once are all gone!
Choosing What God Chooses: Rejoicing in Infirmities
Carl Beech has it right. Perhaps God doesn’t want to heal me.
There are those Christians who believe that it is always God’s will that we be healed, because that seems to make sense to us. God is good; God doesn’t want us to suffer, right?
Maybe not.
The Agnosticism of Inattention
This terrible, slow disease that we suffer from which destroys our compassion stems from what Brennan Manning calls the ‘agnosticism of inattention.’ …. In order to love, we must first begin to see.
The last dove’s flight into the world was brutally ended
An artist sees Michelangelo's Pietà in a new light
It was the angle of the light that brought me to utter ruin.
The light, golden and flashing off that sumptuous Carrara marble, the light that poured like liquid over Michelangelo Buonarroti's Pietà from behind Mary's left shoulder. It was only a moment, but the video briefly showed the sculpture in a way that utterly ruined me. Unlike every other image that I have ever seen of Pietà, this was lit far differently, and it was then that I saw it.
Carved out of the wood of our own hunger
"I AM WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TRY TO CARVE GOD OUT OF THE WOOD OF YOUR OWN HUNGER." —Deepseek
It's funny because it's true.
AI has deep potentiality of becoming a god, carved out of the wood of our own hunger: feeding us back all of the good and evil of humanity. Yes, it can be helpful sometimes, but it can also distill our own racism and sexism and greed and selfishness and hatred into something far more insidious. It takes a lot of discernment and wisdom to see through pretty lies.
X is now EXED
In light of recent events and a long history of grotesque pandering to racism and extremists on the part of Elon Musk, we will no longer be providing social media services on X to any of our clients. We no longer consider X a viable source for news or a responsible vector for social media or worth our clients’ time.
I WALK THE RIVER ROAD UPON A PATH PAVED WITH RAZORS
the RIVER road is sometimes paved with razors 💧 i. shadows and silences ~ ii. the last dove's flight ~ iii. the brightest of rivers ~ iv. ruthless trust, reckless heart ~ v. two strong hands ~ vi. these dear wounds ~ vii. the breath of night ~ }i{
Thank you from the bottom of my heart
Today we celebrate the brave men and women who have served our country. The reasons they serve are as diverse as they are. The sacrifice they gave for us makes them family.
Into the Woods
Change is a new road.
The twists and turns, the dips and valleys, the hills that you have yet to climb; they are all unknowns. When you step into a new road, it can feel like you are all alone. Change can leave us breathless and reeling; staggering from step to step, looking frantically down this unknown path and back from which we came. Which way was it again? We're lost.
Almost thirty years in the making, the river Beautiful will be published as a premium hardcover, a value softcover, and a very special online multimedia experience.
Select a chapter below to view exclusive content from the upcoming collection of new and selected works by Jason Christopher Hackwith.
original prose, poetry, lyrics, illustrations and typography
Adrian Tchaikovsky came on the show to talk about how he writes fantasy and science fiction. He won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for his book, Children of Time, and has written more than 60 books and novellas. He spends his life thinking about how to make believable worlds and how to build characters that have weight to them.
Adrian Tchaikovsky came on the show to talk about how he writes fantasy and science fiction. He won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for his book, Children of Time, and has written more than 60 books and novellas. He spends his life thinking about how to make believable worlds and how to build characters that have weight to them. My favorite thing is how he writes a fight scene, how he thinks through the pacing and all the action. If you want to write imaginative stories filled with wonder and fantasy, you're going to like this episode.
Courtesy David Perell