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 and you will suffocate very quickly.
N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part 2
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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 thing they say in the saying of them. Just as the Lord says, “Let there be” and reality comes to be, just as the words “I do” or “I promise” bring a new family into existence, so saying “I’m sorry” and “I forgive you” seem to reach down into the stuff of the universe and shift it toward something more and new.
Ester Lightcap Meek, Forgiveness -
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 lot of unpacking and organizing to do, but more time will be available for other projects.
This website
I don’t think I made any updates to the design of this website in January, which is a pity since it still is in a state of unfinishedness. I want to finish the homepage updates and start a media page this month. Once this is done, anything else is cosmetic and less of a priority.
Game design
I started rewatching 007: Road to a Million in January and am now two episodes in. The big takeaway I have so far is the importance of story and narrartive in building a game. I’ve also been reading the book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell and found it to be very helpful in providing a series of perspectives that I should consider and plan for.
Synth building
My electronics parts are now out of storage so, once I have time, I can get back to building my synthesizer. The module I want to design this month is what I’m calling melodic orchestration: a module which uses an Arduino to manipulate signals in a variety of different ways. This will be a longer build, the hardware is relatively simple but I have a lot of ambition for the software.
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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.
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities -
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 of sinners. Precisely because he is the sole good one, he doesn’t allow himself to be separated from sinners; he does not become a Pharisee who wants to claim what is good for himself. The sinlessness, the goodness of Jesus, is attested precisely in his unconditional love for sinners. Jesus goes to baptism not out of penitence but out of love and in this way takes the side of sinners.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Meditation on Epiphany, January 1940 -
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 than they purify? For by a new kind of consecration the water does not so much wash Christ as submit to being washed.
St. Maximus of Turin, Sermon 13A -
All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.I like to think
Richard Brautigan, All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace. -
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 I use my mid-size SUV for towing more than the median pickup truck owner.
Hey, America: You Don’t Need a Full-Size Pickup Truck, You Need a Cowboy CostumeThe full-size pickup truck has become America’s best-selling vehicle by a country mile. But most Silverado, Ram, and F-Series buyers would be better served with a cheaper means of role-playing.
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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 argued that we should be willing to sacrifice our lives in defense of the economy. Turn away from mass vaccines, contract COVID, in the name of all mighty capitalism. I was looking forward to the lieutenant governor being the first sacrificial lamb. I mean you just can’t make this up.
The response to COVID that was led by right wing authoritarian forces was coded rightwing libertarianism rhetorizing about freedom. It was a strange combination of self suicide and genocide, in other words, there was nothing here with which to offer critical support. And this movement has now expanded to address an alleged right to refuse vaccinations in the name of self control over one’s body, a hideous use of the call of the pro-choice movement.
Bill Fletcher Jr. -
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.
N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part 1