Spent hours in the car listening to podcasts yesterday. In this one, I learned the following about Pat Robertson.
The New York Times on the life of Pat Robertson.
“He suggested. . . that Americans’ sinfulness had brought on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States, and that the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010 was divine retribution for a promise that Haitians had made to serve the Devil in return for his help in securing the country’s independence from France in 1804.
He said that liberal Protestants embodied “the spirit of the Antichrist” and that feminism drove women to witchcraft. He called for the assassination of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. He maintained that his prayers had averted hurricanes. And he condemned homosexuality as “an abomination,” linking it at one point it to the rise of Hitler and declaring that it provokes God’s wrath, as manifested in natural disasters and even the death and destruction of 9/11.”
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.”
Subtitle: For the ultra-wealthy and the super-famous, regular therapy won’t do.
Unsettling.
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.
From the New York Times:
“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.
“Need little. Want less. Forget the rules. Be untroubled.”
Lao Tzu
Battlefield Farm in Knoxville, Tennessee is trying very hard to be.
“‘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).
