Bent Back Into Shape: Serving A Disintegrating World

ByDrew July 15, 2021 1 Comment
Modernity bends us out of shape. It fragments our communties and institutions. If this is the case, what does it look like to be bent back into shape? An Old Insight, Still Fresh I am fascinated by cultural observers who noticed things decades ago that have only become more true. Richard M. Weaver's Ideas have Consequences, written in 1948, is one such book. Perhaps his most famous chapter is...

Shibumi Morality: Taking Economic Ethics to the Beach

ByDrew July 12, 2021 0 Comments
A view of the Holden Beach, NC pier from our Shibumi last week. (Personal photo.) Three people we've never met made our family beach trip much more enjoyable because they invented something called a Shibumi. This caused me to reflect a bit on morality and economics, in conversation with some recent reading. When Catching (Shibumi) Shade is a Good Thing This July 4th, our family took our first...

Necessary (D)evil

ByDrew June 15, 2021 0 Comments
In modern mass movements, the devil is a necessary evil. Voltaire famously observed that if the devil did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. The post-Christian West has replaced religious piety with ideological devotion, making it necessary to reinvent the devil for each successive movement. In his classic study of mass movements and the personalities drawn to them, Eric Hoffer...

Through the Deep: The Flood, D-Day, & New Creation

ByDrew June 7, 2021 0 Comments
Mosaic of Noah sending the dove. Public Domain image courtesy Wikimedia Commons. The path the new life often lies through deep waters. Yesterday (June 6) was the anniversary of the D-Day invasion in 1944, the World War 2 operation that opened up the Western front in the European theater and began the Allied assault on Hitler's Fortress Europe. I also happened to preach on Noah and the flood...

A Pandemic Prayer: Beginnings + Endings

ByDrew June 1, 2021 0 Comments
Where I've been Let's begin (again) with a pandemic prayer. I don't know anyone for whom the pandemic has been easy. Surely they exist, I just don't know them. For us, the most significant effect of the pandemic was that we took our toddler out of daycare and I was her full-time caregiver for a year. This was a wonderful year in many ways. I got precious time with her that I would not have had....