And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I’m lonely—
I’ll make me a world.

And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said: That’s good!

Then God reached out and took the light in his hands,
And God rolled the light around in his hands
Until he made the sun;
And he set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said: That’s good!

Then God himself stepped down—
And the sun was on his right hand,
And the moon was on his left;
The stars were clustered about his head,
And the earth was under his feet.
And God walked, and where he trod
His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
And bulged the mountains up.

Then he stopped and looked and saw
That the earth was hot and barren.
So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And he spat out the seven seas—
He batted his eyes, and the lightnings flashed—
He clapped his hands, and the thunders rolled—
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.

Then the green grass sprouted,
And the little red flowers blossomed,
The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,
And the oak spread out his arms,
The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,
And the rivers ran down to the sea;
And God smiled again,
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled itself around his shoulder.

Then God raised his arm and he waved his hand
Over the sea and over the land,
And he said: Bring forth! Bring forth!
And quicker than God could drop his hand,
Fishes and fowls
And beasts and birds
Swam the rivers and the seas,
Roamed the forests and the woods,
And split the air with their wings.
And God said: That’s good!

Then God walked around,
And God looked around
On all that he had made.
He looked at his sun,
And he looked at his moon,
And he looked at his little stars;
He looked on his world
With all its living things,
And God said: I’m lonely still.

Then God sat down—
On the side of a hill where he could think;
By a deep, wide river he sat down;
With his head in his hands,
God thought and thought,
Till he thought: I’ll make me a man!

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of his hand;
This great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in is his own image;

Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen.      Amen.

(From God’s Trombones by James Weldon Johnson. Copyright © 1927 The Viking Press, Inc., renewed 1955 by Grace Nail Johnson)

They must to keep their certainty accuse
All that are different of a base intent;
Pull down established honour; hawk for news
Whatever their loose fantasy invent
And murmur it with bated breath, as though
The abounding gutter had been Helicon
Or calumny a song. How can they know
Truth flourishes where the student’s lamp has shone,
And there alone, that have no solitude?
So the crowd come they care not what may come.
They have loud music, hope every day renewed
And heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb.

W.B. Yeats

I know that I shall meet my fate,
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

W.B. Yeats

The firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be live-streamed.

Of course it will, but they can’t force me to watch it.

Alabama Public University Professors Must Now Call Gulf of Mexico “Gulf of America” (Except When Speaking on “Historical” Questions).

Apart from being unconstitutional in a wide swath of situations (but not all), this law is petty and stupid. Have Alabama legislators nothing better to do?

Reading A.J. Conyers, The Long Truce: How Toleration Made the World Safe for Power and Profit. 📚

A kindred spirit speaks: I am a Christian in Texas. Putting the Ten Commandments in my kids’ classrooms alarms me..

55-ish years ago, as I recall, I was pleased with my formulation “fatuous little unitarian ditties” as the eventuality of mandated public school prayer.

My voice has gone from Tenor 1 through Tenor 2 to Bass 1 in 5 years or so. The overall quality is down, but I’ve gotten great intonation along with the knowledge from 63 years of choral singing. Rehearsing last night, I realized I’m still contributing decently to the chorus.

What tempts me to pack it in on choral singing though is the sleep disruption. After a rehearsal that ends at 9:30 pm, it’s 11 pm or later before sleep comes. My old body doesn’t like that one bit.

Over time, he came to acknowledge that his grasp of scripture had been tenuous. In a 1996 book, “I Was Wrong,” he wrote that his studies in prison had led him to understand that Jesus “did not have one good thing to say about money.” He added, “When I came to the awareness that I had actually been contradicting Christ, I was horrified.”

Jim Bakker, Television Preacher Felled by Sex and Financial Scandals, Dies at 86.

Never cared for him, but glad that he finally saw at least a glimmer of light.

Artificial intelligence would never evade guardrails. Really. It said so, and explained why.

But outwitting guardrails is another matter.

J Budziszewski explains

That all this happened in highly-secular France is heartening.

The botched execution in Tennessee may make some reconsider the death penalty, but I concluded ~45 years ago that there are just too many wrongful capital convictions for me to accept the death penalty. The Innocence Project has only strengthened that conclusion since then.

I could never be a pundit at the Dispatch. First, they’re probably smarter than me, but mostly, they often end up talking about pop culture, of which I am 99.9% innocent. Also, I’ve sworn off American football (and other encephalopathy-genic contact sports).

Too small for an e-reader?

I have, and like for the e-ink screen, a larger Boox. This has some appeal, but ….

What makes Sauron evil is not that he has a ring of power, but that he, like Saruman, has a mind comprised only of metal and gears and is concerned only with domination and his own Ring is inherently constrained by his own hatred and vanity.⁠⁠

Jake Meador, How and Why We Do (and Don’t) Use Generative AI

This long article is, in my opinion, the best thing I’ve read on the licit and illicit uses of AI. I pulled the quote not because it summarizes (though it may), but because of non-AI applications.

Let him who has ears to hear, hear.

Dispatch from my son traveling in Rome:
The most Italian thing ever? Vespa in front of a coffee shop across from the Colosseum?

“In a world of Donalds, be a Dolly.” Wisdom picked up by my better half on Pinterest or somewhere.

28th anniversary of my dad’s death combined with prep for a colonoscopy. Just how much fun can a guy have in one day?

An “artifact” has been spotted in some shallow Pacific waters that’s a plausible candidate for Amelia Earhart’s plane. (I’ve seen images: sure looks like a plane.) An expedition is heading out from Purdue.

I’ve (temporarily) subscribed to National Review online. Most of the stories could be titled “Gotcha, sucka!”

I generally like Jonathan Rauch, but I can’t work up any enthusiasm for Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy.

Democracy has no place treating religion as its handmaiden, grading its performance of a bargain it neither needed nor consented to.

Well, I guess that settles it. The Minnesota Lynx are more than just Olivia Miles. (And when the Fever breaks, it gets really cold.)

I’m old enough to remember Fulton Sheen and that, somewhat remarkably, my Evangelical parents (who got their Christian formation in a frankly fundamentalist church after the War) enjoyed watching Bishop Sheen teaching on TV.

I’m not quite old enough to remember any of his substance.

I must have set aside for later perusal a dozen interesting-looking columns and longer articles this morning, but when the smoke cleared, this one was the only keeper: What If Studying Christianity Is Keeping Us From Following Christ?.