There's Beauty in the Bellow

A little over three years ago, I joined a Reformed Baptist church. The Baptist part was some time in the happening. I worked for a baptist and my work took me to a couple Southern Baptist Convention annual meetings. He mostly brought me to pique his vanity and as an attempt to bring me to the "dark side." I had grown up in various Presbyterian and Reformed churches, culminating with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC). Other than early childhood outside of big cities in California (plus a babyhood stint in Minneapolis of which I have no recollection), I've spent the last 20 years in a small town in the "lower Alabama" part of Florida. (i.e. the Panhandle) I've been in small churches all my life (other than the fountainhead of the CREC in Idaho) and small towns. In all the churches I had ever been in, almost everyone was white. In 27 years, there was a total of three  black members and they were all single and never at the same church at...

The media outlets featured an early foray into activism by the Duchess of Sussex, then a ten-ish year old Meghan Markle. She called out a company for advertising dish soap to women. The company in question acquiesced and changed its campaign language to "millions of people ." Fair point: women aren't the only ones who wash dishes. In fact, humans aren't the only ones who use dish soap either. One brand advertises that its users include needy marine life. I have an uneasy relationship with "Activism". It seems too close to "lobbyist." Moreover, it seems synonymous with "busybody." I do fervently believe in being active  and actively useful . Maybe some might deem "useful" as demeaning but I would retort: not nearly as demeaning as use- less . But I should hope that one's activity would result in the noise of industry and not the noise of scolding. At any rate, that's an aside and I know that the Duchess intends, wit...

Update: rereading the title page . . . I read an abridged version! Should have followed Mortimer Adler's advice and read the informative bits more closely. Trying to spend less time lost in the swamp of social media, I've been trying to read more. Specifically books. Specifically in codex form . . . book books. Our library has few titles that I recognize these days. I rarely go to the library and more rarely still to the fiction because it seems so difficult and tiresome to wade through all of the best sellers from 2007. The "biography" section is similarly afflicted: if it's not about JFK, FDR, MLK, or Marilyn Monroe, it's a memoir by a celebrity. How the memoir of an actor or performer could be more interesting than their wikipedia page, I really can't imagine. For instance: Tina Fey does not strike me as a pleasant person. Therefore I avoid her company, even on the written page. Same for any Clinton. Or Barbra Streisand. Or Elizabeth Taylor. And thus...