Echoes and Stars

1. It has long been the evangelical tradition to react to whatever cultural movement or issue that threatens its hold on the people who once embraced it. All reaction. All fortification. What if instead the church started another conversation? The culture wants to talk about Gender Issues? So? What if we stopped playing issue whack-a-mole? What if we said we are going to talk about this even though the entire internet explodes with that?

2. The smile of my wife like victory and all the spoils thereafter.

3. Books should be less Henry Ford and more Alfred Sisley.

4. Baseball has no time limits. It can go on forever if it needs to. Sometimes I want a game to be over because I want a team to win or I need to go to bed. But when the desire to shorten the time of the game itself enters the discussion it attacks the strength of the game of itself. It’s not like any other sport with their times periods of play. It stands outside and waits and asks us to wait alongside. There is no frenzy like the surrounding world. “It’s boring.” Good. We need that. Incessant laser, smoke and mirrors entertainment has destroyed our taste for long periods of only the smallest of details asking us to pay attention.

5. I am torn between two men. T.S. Eliot saw his work in a bank as a gift for his writing, providing financial security. But there’s Buechner writing on vocation and calling.

6. That lady who sang God Bless America last night for Game 7 of the World Series is someone’s mother or daughter or wife. She’s not a public figure. And so many of you just ridiculed her on social media without mercy.

7. Outside of Louis Coleman, who I know personally, Billy Butler is my favorite Royal. He looks so normal. Only so much more.

8. Sometimes the dread of an event will gather debris as it rolls downward toward the marked day. And you will try and steal happiness with distraction in one moment and then in another wonder how happiness is even possible under the circumstances. You will tell yourself so many things while on the cliff of despair. However, the euphoria you expected when the event is over and the dread was without warrant, is just not there.

9. The excitement most people feel about vacations is pretty close to how I feel about pizza night at our house.

10. I now keep a little book of T.S. Eliot’s poems on my desk at the bank as a reminder.