“Like poppies among the corn” — Notes while staying human

🥴

Passing the smell test

Short newsletter update. Even shorter version:

Please welcome Wendell Henry Cole to “the enormous mural of the world.”

Whenever I post something online, or, frankly, use the internet at all:

Grant Wacker’s 4 major contexts and 11 minor contexts of (God and religion in) the American story reminds me of something from Martin Luther:

If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing him. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.

It’s not about killing drug traffickers; it’s not even about signaling to drug traffickers or about drug trafficking at all — “it’s about training the military to do bad things”, to do them without question, and about training everyone, from the CJCS on down to Joe Plumber, to sanction or tolerate it.

And this week’s bumper sticker award goes to the little blue, 30-year-old Tacoma out in front of Fernald’s: Slower Than Fast

Nate Hagens on those three beautiful, underused, underappreciated words: I don’t know:

This is a repeating pattern in our culture: certainty beats caution — and the costs come later. “And the costs come later” might currently be a good mnemonic tagline for homo sapiens sapiens.

Bath, ME • 17th Annual Trick or Treat TROMP