Lauren Daigle, according to the New York Times, has crossed over into the pop world with greater success than anyone since Amy Grant in the early ’90s.
She comes across as very likable in the Times profile. And what a voice.
This paragraph is funny.
“She wrote some songs with Shane McAnally, a Nashville hitmaker who is gay. And because the themes on her album are less faith-based than in the past, she knows some will count what’s referred to in the CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) world as JPMs (mentions of Jesus Per Minute) and find the music too worldly.”
The clinics seek recurring revenue more than their clients’ health and well-being. Some financial advisors are “fiduciaries” meaning they have a legal/ethical responsibility to act in their clients’ best interests.
To prevent these types of clinics from proliferating, the mental health profession should have a similar type of designation. Absent that, they may weaken the public’s trust in the mental health profession.
“The Southern Baptist Convention on Tuesday decided to expel one of its largest and most prominent churches, Saddleback Church in Southern California, over the church’s installment of a woman as pastor.”
Good move to nip that whole gender equality thing in the bud. If you let women be pastors, they’ll probably want to pick the music, weigh in on the budget, shape long-range planning, and chip away at the rest of men’s work.
The Southern Baptists are like some Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian states that somehow think they’ll be perfectly fine operating at 50% capacity.
“‘Generally, I’m here because I want two things out of church,’ says Kelly Sauskojus, a 27-year-old PhD candidate in English who says she’s a refugee from fundamentalist churches.
‘I want time to sit down, like we do on Sundays sometimes or around the fire, and, like, pray and re-center and figure out what we’re about in the world. Because the world is very noisy. And then I want a church to get s*** done with your community and for your community.’
Typically, Battle delivers a brief sermon on the teachings of Jesus. They talk about it. Then, instead of altar calls or holy communion, his congregation — such as it is — tends to the 50 raised beds of kale and eggplant, string beans and squash, tomatoes and greens, the chicken coop and the compost pile.”
I have good news. META Platforms, Inc., also known as Facebook, has lost 70% of its value in the last year. Zuckerberg’s gamble on creating on-line, virtual reality work places (and entertainment), is off to a terrible start. Zuckerberg, who seems convinced people want to spend more time on-line, is calling for patience and additional investment in the “metaverse”.
Zuckerberg is making a classic mistake, generalizing from his own experience. Because he wants to spend more or most of his time on-line, he thinks others do too. Surrounded by sycophant’s who depend upon him for their livelihoods, he doesn’t have anyone to tell him to snap out of his on-line fantasy world.
No one, two months from now, is going to say their 2023 resolution is “to spend more time on-line”.
Pre-pandemic, there were a lot of snake-oil salespeople promoting distance learning. All will be well, they proclaimed, if we just move school on-line.
Aspects of hybrid learning obviously make sense, but maybe with the exception of Zuckerberg himself, we are an intensely social species. We desire stronger social connections, involving all of our senses, in real life.
That is the lesson of the pandemic and Meta’s swan dive. Couldn’t be happening to a nicer corporation.
Postscript: Marques isn’t rooting for META either, but for a completely different reason (start at 9:00).
“One can always take this defense of idleness too far and risk becoming like the lazy man who, when asked ‘What do you do?’ answers, ‘As little as possible.’ The trick is to avoid becoming either a workaholic or a layabout. It’s a question of finding balance between work and leisure, where neither is neglected or crowding the other out. Both should be on your to-do list, undertaken with purpose and seriousness in designated places and times.”
My friends who know me best worry I am a workaholic. My pledge to them, and the universe, is to try to strike a better balance from this point forward.
I appreciated Tim Alberta’s clarity about what is really at stake with the rise of far-right evangelicals. The unholy alliance between radically conservative Christianity and radically conservative politics doesn’t seek the kingdom of God; instead, it wants to impose a theocracy on the United States of America. Such a theocracy would cheapen the foremost requirement of the Christian faith: humbly carrying one’s cross daily.
Early Christians believed that following Jesus Christ transforms a person into a well of compassion, humility, kindness, and generosity. They put the needs of others before their own.
Theocracy does not require such an inner transformation; the evangelical-right base and its prophets are quick to condemn cherry-picked sins. Jesus, by contrast, said that the important matters of God’s commands are “justice, mercy, and faith.” I don’t think Jesus himself would fit with today’s evangelical base.
Pressing Pause 