I’ve been reading about 10 books a month this year and I just add things to my list as I see people recommend. I was just thinking about doing Interior Chinatown & Savage Detectives. But there are multiple here that are on my radar to read.
The problem is that I get multiple holds at the same time. They only give me 14 days John. I can’t go 14 days without sleep so I can fit all the reading in.
“One shouldn’t just hope to be treated well: one must insist on it.” - The Covenant of Water - Abraham Verghese
Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity.” - Bonhoeffer on stupidity Letters from Prison
“He is under a spell, blinded, misused, & abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil…
“All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.” - people who watched the Battlestar Galactica reboot
“It is one of the most astonishing experiences and also one of the most incontrovertible that evil—often in a surprisingly short span of time—proves itself to be stupid and impractical.” - Bonhoeffer Letters from Prison
“Everyone seems to agree that the world will end soon and the only essential task is to cleanse the besmirchment from one’s soul before that day comes.” - Cloud Cuckoo Land - Anthony Doerr.
Incidentally, my Tik Tok has been showing a lot of red heifer 3rd temple content 🤔 time to reread Left Behind
In the face of evil it is easy to feel a hopelessness to effect change.
What can I do as a single person to prevent the inhumane treatment of humans within our own society?
It is difficult to not allow my inability to fix everything to overwhelm my desire to do something.
So I share to magnify.
I won’t give the context but at one time I felt my Latino background was a detriment to how I was being evaluated so I said I was a Christian before I was Hispanic man. What I was communicating was that I was more formed by conservative white evangelicalism than whichever negative stereotype.
“Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.” - Thoreau
And if a people goes through enough wars, pretty soon all that’s left is the brute, the creature that we—you and I and others like us—have brought up from the slime.” - Stoner - John Williams
“A war doesn’t merely kill off a few thousand or a few hundred thousand young men. It kills off something in a people that can never be brought back…
I believe in the dignity and sanctity of life. Which has hard implications on where I think my taxes should go and who it should help.
I’m not saying taxation is theft per se. But also it’s not given freely nor put toward any worthwhile causes that help anybody but the rich. So. Maybe a little
That was a rough episode. I told my wife that it felt like a later season of Lost. So different in its essence than season 1.
But yes. Emotional torture with the expectation of gratitude and love. It’s beyond absurd at the moment.
“Events went on to show that it is not by chance that a prime minister reaches such lofty heights and that, as the infallible wisdom of nations has demonstrated time and again, each country gets the government it deserves,” Death With Interruptions - Saramango
“Because lawlessness will multiply, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.” Matthew 24:12-13
The road is long and the end is not in sight. Lawlessness pushes us into shock and apathy. It sends us into self protection. Love for others must prevail.
“We had to pick the lesser of two evils” well….it seems like you failed spectacularly at meeting your objective.
They arrived at the United States border from around the world, hoping to seek asylum. Instead, they were detained, shackled and flown by the U.S.military to a faraway country, Panama They were stripped of their passports and most of their cellphones, they said, and then locked in a hotel, barred from seeing lawyers and told they would soon be sent to a makeshift camp near the Panamanian jungle. At the hotel, at least one person tried to commit suicide, according to several migrants. Another broke his leg trying to escape. A third sent a plaintive missive from a hidden cellphone: "Only a miracle can save us."
In one window visible from a sidewalk below the hotel, a woman clawed at a latchless glass pane in an attempt to escape. When she noticed journalists below, she held up a piece of paper that read "Afghan. She made hand motions that indicated an airplane, then her head falling off. The message seemed to be clear: A flight home meant death.
Hundreds of asylum seekers from around the globe are being trapped by the US in a Panama hotel where they'll eventually be sent to a camp in the jungle.
One Chinese man said “I thought: America is a free country with respect for human rights. I had no idea it was like a dictatorship.”
Sorrow may last for a night but joy comes in the morning
www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8YuNAUA/ @holypost.bsky.social
I was saying to a friend yesterday that if someone claims Christianity & they are behaving in wicked ways it is our duty to rebuke them. Cut out the cancer lest the whole organism perishes. Always rebuke cruelty, but doubly so if paired with faith.
This is a pattern that has repeated over centuries & so an ancient scripture to people who claimed God & got His wrath is apt:
“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” Isaiah 5:20
The irony is that what is evident to some as wickedness is being celebrated as a defeat of wickedness. You could even argue that the ends justify the means.
The question becomes, are the ends all that good so as to be worth the cost?
Resoundingly no.
It’s not too early to tell. It’s no.
To be wicked is in itself a damnable offense. To be wicked in God’s name fills my heart with dread & ties my stomach in knots on behalf of those committing & supporting it.
They turn a message of hope & restoration into a practice of death & cruelty.
Oppose what is wicked & hold fast to the good
“I know a bit about cowardice, may it do ya…I have personal experience, you might say. I know how one cowardly decision leads to another…and another…and another until it’s too late to turn around, too late to change” - Wolves of the Calla - @stephenking.bsky.social
“What matters is being focused on what one still has and what can be done—and that is still a great deal—and on restraining within oneself the rising thoughts about what one cannot do and the inner restlessness and resentment about the entire situation.”
Bonhoeffer Letters From Prison
