Author: Sean Carney
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N.T. Wright on Forgiveness
Forgiveness is more like the air in our lungs. There’s only room for you to inhale the next lungful when you’ve just breathed out the previous one. If you insist on withholding it, refusing to give someone the kiss of life they may desperately need, you won’t be able to take in any more yourself…
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Esther Lightcap Meek on Forgiveness
While the words aren’t a magical formula – the “proper” words could be uttered with no forgiveness transpiring – I am convinced that it matters to utter them. To say “I apologize” or “I forgive you” is to carry out a speech act, not unlike saying “I do” or “I promise”. The words accomplish the…
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February 2025
Housing January was a whirlwind as we moved out of our old house, in to our new house, and started to get unpacked and organized in the new place. In reality, this meant I wasn’t able to make any progress on anything else during the month of January. Moving into February, there is still a…
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Jane Jacobs on Old Buildings
As for new ideas of any kind – no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be – there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error, and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.…
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Epiphany
When Jesus desires baptism, he does it as the sole good one, the one without sin, the one who does not need forgiveness, different from all human beings. As the good one, he desires baptism, even though he does not need it for himself, for the sake of those who need it, for the sake…
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St. Maximus of Turin on Epiphany
What sort of baptism is this, when the one who is dipped is purer than the font, and where the water that soaks the one whom it has received is not dirtied but honored with blessings? What sort of baptism is this of the Savior, I ask, in which the streams are made pure more…
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All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace
I like to think (andthe sooner the better!)of a cybernetic meadowwhere mammals and computerslive together in mutuallyprogramming harmonylike pure watertouching clear sky. I like to think(right now, please!)of a cybernetic forestfilled with pines and electronicswhere deer stroll peacefullypast computersas if they were flowerswith spinning blossoms. I like to think(it has to be!)of a cybernetic ecologywhere…
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You Don’t Need A Full-Size Pickup Truck, You Need a Cowboy Costume
Brett Berks article, You Don’t Need A Full-Size Pickup Truck, You Need a Cowboy Costume, provides a good look at truck culture and the disconnect between how trucks are marketed and how they are actually used by owners. On one hand there’s no accounting for taste, on the other hand I appreciate the statistic that…
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Bill Fletcher Jr. on Responses to COVID
Yes, people were angry about restrictions imposed as a result of the pandemic, I got that, but what was being proposed in opposition? What was being proposed in response to the very real problem of dealing with a virus? An almost humorous response from the US right came from the lieutenant governor of Texas who…
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N.T. Wright on the Pace of the Kingdom
Somehow Jesus wanted his followers to live with the tension of believing that the kingdom was indeed arriving in and through his own work, and that this kingdom would come, fully arrive, not all in a bang but through a process like the slow growth of a plant or the steady leavening of a loaf.…