@RianVDM

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This is my favorite photo of my dad, my brother, and I. It shows my dad in the exact spot where he was always most happy. In the dirt, in front of a fire with some wine, and surrounded by his sons. This is how I will always remember him.

Can't stop thinking about this quote from Lord of the Rings.

Sad news: he can't play drums any more due to surgery.

These are all fantastic.

David Foster Wallace

Some lovely poster art here.

It feels like one of the invisible forces of nature that keeps the earth spinning around its axis is disintegrating. I feel dizzy all the time, off balance, as if I might fall over at any point. Kind of like how flocks of birds suddenly start flying into stuff in the beginning of that terrible movie where the earth's core stops spinning. Dad is a force that I don't see often, but who helps to keep everything in its rightful place, and I'm not sure how to survive without it.

This article really spoke to me.

Every story is told from a vantage point; it has a bias. The bias of the Bible is from the vantage point of the underclass. But what happens if we lose sight of the prophetically subversive vantage point of the Bible? What happens if those on top read themselves into the story, not as imperial Egyptians, Babylonians, and Romans, but as the Israelites? That’s when you get the bizarre phenomenon of the elite and entitled using the Bible to endorse their dominance as God’s will. This is Roman Christianity after Constantine. This is Christendom on crusade. This is colonists seeing America as their promised land and the native inhabitants as Canaanites to be conquered. This is the whole history of European colonialism. This is Jim Crow. This is the American prosperity gospel. This is the domestication of Scripture. This is making the Bible dance a jig for our own amusement.

And yet, all is not lost.

If I read the Bible with the appropriate perspective and humility I don’t use the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus as a proof-text to condemn others to hell. I use it as a reminder that I’m a rich man and Lazarus lies at my door. I don’t use the conquest narratives of Joshua to justify Manifest Destiny. Instead I see myself as a Rahab who needs to welcome newcomers. I don’t fancy myself as Elijah calling down fire from heaven. I’m more like Nebuchadnezzar who needs to humble himself lest I go insane.

These are lovely.