Treated the family to a Korean HotPot and Barbecue joint for Sunday dinner:
Regarding #1: Grandson’s Prom was Saturday and son let him drive the vintage Miata for the first time. That’s all grandson wanted to talk about.
I thought Russell Moore’s podcast today, Trump’s AI Jesus Might Be the Messiah We’ve Been Looking For, was worth a recommendation.
Last week I heard Iain McGilchrist describe the Reformation is “left-hemisphere inspired” and “headstrong.” That got some juices flowing.
A really dirty campaign for the Indiana legislature, pitting a traditional conservative (targeted for blocking mid-decade redistricting) against a lady supported by TPA, MAGA, X Influencers and other spawn of Satan.
I keep forgetting: I’m not in that district. I have no vote in the matter.
I went to Substack controls to cancel the Free Press, which has become very disappointing. The straw that broke the camel’s back was an article on the Catholic Case for War with Iran, which might have risen to the level of sophistry if its premises hadn’t been lies, half truths, or post-hoc speculation.
When I got to the controls, I decided that what I really needed to do was to turn off notifications for the threads that have been consistently bad. There are a few remaining that justify the subscription, like Eli Lake on history, Coleman Hughes, Ruy Teixeira, and even Martin Gurri.
Virginia’s Unconstitutional Effort to Strip Property Tax Exemptions From Pro-Confederate Groups.
I concur in this opinion.
You’re the most successfully retired lawyer I know. A lot of lawyers struggle with retirement.
I had lunch yesterday with the younger lawyer I trained in the arcana of my practice niche so I could retire without the firm losing those clients.
She made that interesting comment.
Insofar as I’ve retired more successfully than others, it may be because I always saw law as a pleasant livelihood, not as an identity.
29% of Americans think Trump is somewhat religious or very religious..
29% of Americans are not very ightbray (Pig Latin used so they won’t understand and show up at my door with torches.)
The coin drops: I shouldn’t waste time on Why People Hate Lena Dunham - Freddie deBoer because I don’t know who Lena Dunham is (other than a hate-object) and have no felt need to find out.
I regret to inform you that this administration is a bunch of barbarians engaged in systematic mass vandalism. Josef Palermo, What I Saw Inside the Kennedy Center - The Atlantic.
Build a techno-social system which demands that humans act like machines and it turns out that machines can eventually be made to displace humans with relative ease.
L.M. Sacasas, AI as Christian Heresy
I’m not finished reading it yet, but I’m confident that I should recommend it to thoughtful people: L.M. Sacasas, AI as Christian Heresy - Comment Magazine.
My wife confirms that I’m not retconning when I say I’ve thought of Trump as antichrist for years. Glad the world is catching up, at least until … Hey! A squirrel!
I started the day with mere news summaries and haven’t yet gotten around to full news stories and commentary. Following rabbit trails instead.
It feels kind of human, actually.
Leaving momentarily for a surprise last-minute opportunity to hear Dean Erwin Chermerinsky on free speech and then to dine at Wabash College.
One of the most arcane rituals surrounding the death of Queen Elizabeth II, in September 2022, and one of the most affecting in its homeliness — affecting enough that I’m still thinking about it, almost four years later — was the royal beekeeper’s visit to the royal bees, to tell them of their mistress’s passing …
Unfortunately, reason on its own will lead you astray very, very quickly …
People detect from what I wrote in The Master and His Emissary that I am not a huge admirer of the [left-hemisphere inspired] Reformation … Unfortunately, it brought with it a kind of headstrong view that ‘now we’re in the clear. Everything must be made explicit. The word triumphs over the image’ and so on. …
The trouble with the left hemisphere is … it tends to be headstrong. It tends to think it knows far more than it does.
I hadn’t thought of Protestantism that way before.
It’s “Bright Week,” a no-fasting week after Orthodox Easter. But I only wanted a little breakfast, and don’t want to pork up (as has been known to happen). So it’s back to PB&J on a Wasa cracker, just like Lent. It almost felt like I was cheating.
Long day ahead. Liturgy in an hour (with Let All Moral Flesh Keep Silence). Then 5 baptisms and 3 Chrismations (we’re concentrating more of them on Great & Holy Saturday instead of “whenever catechesis is complete.”) Then Vigil overnight.
My voice has held up so far.
We sing that Christ is “…trampling down death by death” in the troparion of Easter. This phrase gives great meaning to Holy Saturday. Christ’s repose in the tomb is an “active” repose. He comes in search of His fallen friend, Adam, who represents all men. Not finding him on earth, he descends to the realm of death, known as Hades in the Old Testament. There He finds him and brings him life once again. This is the victory: the dead are given life. The tomb is no longer a forsaken, lifeless place. By His death Christ tramples down death by death.
Great and Holy Saturday (OCA)
I believe that Christians make a serious mistake when we begin to speak first about God rather than first about Christ and His death on the Cross and resurrection from the dead. It is a mistake because it presumes we know something about God that is somehow “prior” to those events. We do not, or, if we think we do, we are mistaken. The death and resurrection of Christ are the alpha and the omega of God’s self-revelation to the world. Nothing in all of creation is extraneous or irrelevant to those events.
The 15th Antiphon from the Matins for Great and Holy Friday, in the version I sing.
I had no idea that my friend Bethany had a YouTube channel, or that she recorded this, more beautifully than I could. I think our Cantor duties are safe when I “buy the farm” or otherwise can’t carry on singing.
Datapoint: In 2025, birthrates for women in their late 30s exceeded those for women in their early 20s for the first time.