Category Archives: Thoughts

Things that happen in my head. Then I write them on here.

Saturday Challenge: A Fast (sort of)

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Most Saturdays, I forget the weekend is only a break from work – not from life. I figure if there’s nowhere to be, then nothing I do really counts.  That includes the obvious:  Eating pizza for breakfast, no showering, drinking before a socially acceptable hour.  The usual.

That’s all fine.  I recommend it, in fact.  The problem is when I start thinking I’m on vacation from being a generally decent human being.  You know, I start giving people the stink eye and not looking away when they notice, or making little kids cry. Things I maybe try to avoid on weekdays. Continue reading →

7 Things More Important than the Government Shutdown

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Politics has become something of a Whose Line Is It Anyway episode.  Everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.  Or rather, the crises are made up and everyone behaves like the issues don’t actually matter.  The debt ceiling, the fiscal cliff, the sequestration, the government shutdown – is it all one desperate attempt to stay relevant?

I have an idea:  What if we all collectively agreed to stop paying attention to their invented political melodramas?  What if news stations realized we were not watching anymore?  What if we stopped tweeting our frustrations and feeding their insatiable hunger for attention? Continue reading →

Where is the Gospel in Your Neighborhood?

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(This is adapted from my first post at Rethink Bishop.  You should follow that blog, too.  It has smarter people than me.)

“We could use zoning laws to force the state’s hand.  You know, you can’t have more than three unrelated adults in one house.  These transitional homes have at least eight men in them!”

“That’s a good idea.  How did they even get into our neighborhood in the first   place?  Did they use some rental loophole?”

“I don’t know.  Let’s talk to the city commission about this – I bet we can use zoning to get them out.”

So went the conversation at my first meeting of the local neighborhood association.  The topic was:  How can we (wealthy homeowners) get rid of them (residents who are recovering from addiction or homelessness in a transitional housing program).  Or, as community activist Bill Barnes puts it, NIMBYism: “Not In My Back Yard.” Continue reading →

I Love, Therefore I Am. Or: It’s All An Act

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Do you ever take a step back from the reality of day-to-day obligations and just let your mind run amok?  Frankly, I wouldn’t recommend it.  I was in just such a zone of self-indulgent mental prancing the other day, and I thought myself into the worst dilemma.  I began to wonder if everything in my life – what I do, who I am to the rest of society – if it is all an act.  If the people who I surround myself with would run in fear and disgust if they actually knew “the real me.”  If I am something wholly other than what I convince everyone else (and myself) that I am.

Continue reading →

The War on Sanity, Part 2

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In a small town somewhere in Midwest America, a little girl used to like to play on the merry-go-round with a little boy from a few streets over.  Their parents would bring them by the park on Saturdays, and the two would play for hours until it was time for dinner.  As the children’s friendship grew (based on nothing more than a shared love of dizziness), the parents likewise began to strike up a casual relationship. Continue reading →

The War on Sanity

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CHOCOLATE-COVERED STRAWBERRIES!

I had an English teacher who told me that most writers lose their reader within the first paragraph, so you need to start off with a good hook.  Did it work?

Anyway, an issue that began two years ago at my alma mater has begun to dominate public discourse at the school (and even in national news).  I want to talk about that particular case, but I also hope to address the deeper societal illness of which this issue is but one symptom.  As a culture, we are quickly arriving at a state in which our identity as progressive or conservative defines not only our worldview, but also our relationships, our religion, and our ability to function in community.  And I don’t like it.

Continue reading →

What I Learned from Megamind

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…that cartoon Jonah Hill with super powers is incredibly disturbing.

A lot has happened since my last post.  Quite a lot.  We can get to that in a second.  First, I want to talk about that lovably goof-tastic alien with the big blue head: Megamind. Continue reading →