Amanda

Hello from Charleston, SC, where I am at a library conference doing the quintessential conference behavior, sitting on the floor by an outlet charging my laptop and checking email

i feel like people who are into ttrpgs would like lectio divina

oh hi there

YouTube video by NPR Music clipping.: Tiny Desk Concert

If you're unfamiliar with Daveed Diggs's rap career when he wasn't in his friend's Broadway musical, I must insist that you watch the clipping. Tiny Desk www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0-k...

right now: october 2025 (just under the wire!)

Making: plans for the weekend and for my conference in Charleston next week; plans for November and December; plans for 2026 Q1 (yes, already) Cooking: soup (my family has a tradition of making this particular soup the first time it gets cold…

Anyway, normalize other ways of finding kinship in this world

I had a couple of cousins when I was a little kid to whom I had no relationship other than we were adopted around the same time and our parents were in the same adoptee family support group; yes, their parents were my aunt and uncle (and mine were theirs)

I mean, I'd much rather my tax dollars go to feeding people than kidnapping them

I mean, fair, eternity kind of freaks me out, too

I see--if it helps, I don't believe we're going to be disembodied souls in some ethereal eternity. The historic Christian creeds talk about the resurrection of the physical body, and many sections of Christianity believe in the world to come as a physical one, albeit a physical one

Side note: I’m very and genuinely curious why you think the “could” is a far reach

I don’t know if it diminishes suffering so much as it recontextualizes it. Like: Yeah, this is temporary and a blip compared to eternity, but while you’re going through it and waiting for that eternity it still sucks. Jesus knew what was coming and he still got freaked out about the suffering part.

YouTube video by Deal Hudson St Crispin's Day Speech, Mark Rylance at the Globe

Today is St. Crispin’s and therefore a good day for some Henry V youtu.be/UOouofFFrZE?...

”He’s just saying stuff, he doesn’t mean it” as though our Lord Jesus Christ did not tell us that we would be judged for every careless word uttered

You say this like my story doesn’t also say that the same could be true for you and me (well, not the being worshipped part, but eternal glory for sure). This isn’t the end goal of the endeavor but it is a nice side benefit 👍🏼

And I therefore must enter into the suffering of others as well if I am to follow where he's going.

One of the reasons I'm a Christian is because we believe God understands human suffering from inside of it. God has undergone physical pain, shame, persecution, fear, grief, all of it; he has not distanced himself from it but has entered into it.

Mostly it's been so I could ask said animal "what is your deal, bro"

I don’t know what it says about me that there have been multiple instances this past week where I have wished that the D&D spell Speak With Animals was real

He’s around. He’s organizing and trying to get James Talarico to be our senator, I think

Another thought: Is Stephen's death and Philip going out to the Ethiopian eunuch to explain the Scripture (like Jesus x the two disciples on the road to Emmaus) and then getting taken up part of the same pattern? In both cases it's right around the church in general getting pushed outward

Thanks!

Theoretically, yes, but everyone I know that I would otherwise be into is not available and/or into women, and the remainder are not my type

Read Acts 12 earlier today and it occurs to me that Luke's framing Peter's escape as a type of resurrection (right after James's death)--the church, like her Lord, dies and rises again, to the embarrassment of the rulers of this world

some little kid dressed as Gavroche comes and rats you out

The Ottoman Empire and Nintendo overlapped for about 20 years

Hi! Are you distinguishing (wrongly) between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament? You might be (you definitely are) committing a heresy called Marcionism.

Anglican/Episcopal folks, I would welcome your thoughts on the new archbishop

It got to the point that we could do the whole interaction in Italian. He was gone for a while and I legit got worried about him

I used to work at a Starbucks and without fail every weekday at 2 this Italian gentleman would show up and order an espresso shot, add a sugar, shoot it, and then walk out. (It was the suburbs in the ‘00s, so not a lot of other coffee around.)