Favorite image: Paris, from Rays of Light by Bethany Salvon on Beers and Beans:
Hat tip: @AprilA2Z.
Favorite health reminder: Your Phone vs. Your Heart by The New York Times' Barbara L. Fredrickson:
Our ingrained habits change us. Neurons that fire together, wire together, neuroscientists like to say, reflecting the increasing evidence that experiences leave imprints on our neural pathways, a phenomenon called neuroplasticity. Any habit molds the very structure of your brain in ways that strengthen your proclivity for that habit.Hat tip: Dirk Stanley, M.D.
Favorite piece of life advice: Always Go to the Funeral by NPR's Deirdre Sullivan:
Sounds simple — when someone dies, get in your car and go to calling hours or the funeral. That, I can do. But I think a personal philosophy of going to funerals means more than that.Hat tip: Larry Levi, MFT.
"Always go to the funeral" means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don't feel like it. I have to remind myself of it when I could make some small gesture, but I don't really have to and I definitely don't want to. I'm talking about those things that represent only inconvenience to me, but the world to the other guy.
Favorite weird-but-true-story tweet, by Sarah Pulliam Bailey: "Big Cheese: Man busted for stealing 21 tons of Muenster worth $200,000. Cheese=most stolen food in the world (ABC)." (Fair warning: ABC plays different videos in sequence after playing the one you loaded the page in order to play. Annoying-but-true.)
Favorite shows of vulnerability by courageously telling a hard story: I Wasn't Raped, But I Was Still Violated by Caris Adel (trigger warning for abuse, victimization, assault, creeps):
[I]t’s on me to handle it, right? It’s the woman’s job to suck it up and deal with it. I know creeps count on women who shut up and just sit there. And even after all of these months of learning about feminism, equality, rights, abuse, victimization – I still found myself incredibly vulnerable. I knew the information and yet I still sat there, terrified and uncomfortable. Side aching from the tension and the stress, and the unnatural position I was in.
And On Feminism: The Rehumanization of a Soldier and the Reconstruction of a Man by Luke Harms at Living in the Tension (trigger warning: sexual assault and violent sexuality):
Feminism was what allowed me to begin reclaiming my own humanity by seeing that exact same humanity in others. Starting at that fundamental precept, the "radical notion that women are people," I was confronted with my own privilege and my propensity for dehumanizing others. It started right here at home, with the way I saw my wife and the way I saw our relationship. (In fact, if you go back to the first post I ever published on this blog, you can actually see the metamorphosis taking place.) I stopped seeing her as a means to validate my own masculinity, and started seeing her for the incredible human being that she was in her own right, regardless of (perhaps in many ways in spite of) her relationship with me. It was feminism that gave me the tools to critically deconstruct the false idol of masculinity that I had fashioned over the first 25 years of my life. When there was nothing left, it was feminism that allowed me to reconstruct a healthy view of maleness that respects the humanity, the Imago Dei, within us all.
Favorite hilarious parody: How Sesame Street is Undermining Biblical Values by Matt Mikalatos at The Burning Hearts Revolution:
I know, you might think I'm overreacting, but the Bible is very clear on the role of bears in human relationships. They are meant to be voracious killing machines. I mean, the ONE COMMAND God gives specifically to bears is to "Arise and devour much flesh." This attempt to anthropomorphize and humanize bears strikes at the heart of everything the gospel teaches about bears.
Favorite analysis: "But That's What the Bible Says" by Kristen Rosser on Wordgazer's Words:
And this is the sad thing. That we'd rather live with cognitive dissonance, believing that women are somehow equal but yet somehow lesser-- or that they are to be restricted for no reason, but that God is still just-- than to believe it's possible we're misreading our Bibles.Hat tip on the previous three: Rachel Held Evans.
We'd rather restrict women and have the Bible be "clear" than admit that we just might be wrong.
Favorite pointing out of an amazing-but-often-unknown reality: When the bias of our blinders changes the Bible by Fred Clark at Slactivist:
Junias is a character in some translations of the Bible.
More specifically, he’s a character invented by translators and inserted into the Bible. He’s a made-up person with a made-up name.
Junias never existed. And Junias’ name never existed.
Favorite defense: ...But I'm Still a Christian! by Perfect Number, guest posting at Love, Joy, Feminism:
Apparently, Christianity is about holding certain political views. Apparently, it’s about gender roles. Apparently, it’s about not asking too many questions. And if you just go along with all those things, you get to call yourself a Christian, and no one will challenge that claim.
Why is this? Why is it that, in the section of evangelical Christianity I come from, those issues are so tied up in the definition of “Christian”? I thought Christianity was about proclaiming Jesus as Lord. I thought it was about loving God and loving people. I thought it was about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I thought it was about proclaiming freedom and healing and rescue. I thought it was about taking up my cross and following Jesus, no matter the cost. I thought it was about studying and obeying the bible—what the bible ACTUALLY says, not what we’re told “the bible clearly teaches.”
Favorite takedown of a theology that deserves to be taken down: Bite Me, Joel Osteen by Chad Jones at Randomly Chad:
My Best Life Now? Seriously?
Does that best life include:
My sleep apnea
My wife’s:
Diabetes, Fibromyalgia, and allergies so bad she can’t breathe through her nose for months on end?
My son’s chronic back problems?
Loved ones dying of cancer?
What part of this is “best,” Joel?
Favorite posts about the giving of one's heart: Hearts are not construction paper by Aprille at Kindred Grace:
A broken relationship can leave you with a broken heart, but it can’t leave you with less of a heart. Your heart is still yours, and you can choose what you do with it. Mr. Knight-In-Shining-Armor-Who-Fell-Off-His-White-Horse doesn’t carry around that piece of your heart in a box somewhere…it’s not collecting dust on his shelf. It’s where it’s always been. Within you.
And I stopped guarding my heart ten years ago. by Emily Maynard at Prodigal Magazine:
As with all significant events in my life, I bought a new journal, hoping for a fresh start and new inspiration. I didn’t end up writing much in it, but I wrote one thing in there that has been written on my life since: I will never withhold the words I love you. When they are true, I will speak them. This applies to family, friends, boyfriends, puppies, and strangers.
I made that small commitment with a heart that had been ripped open by new grief. I didn’t even really understand what I was saying or if it would stick. But it did. I’ve gone back to that open-hearted idea over and over in the past ten years. Every time I want to shut down emotionally, every time I’m feeling bashful or embarrassed by my affections, every time I’m scared I’ll love something I can’t have, every time a wave of unexpected grief knocks me down again, I go back to that scrawled choice. I’m committed to a whole heart in all relationships, not just romance.
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What's your favorite thing that you've read or written lately?
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