News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
Spring is springing here now, and the redbuds are in their full glory.
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In this week's Water Dipper I recommend essays about cruises, liberty, and plastic.
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John Murdock reviews Bono's new memoir and finds much to commend while also raising hard questions: "'The wisdom of the scriptures,' Bono tells Cosper, 'is sometimes tough love.' To hear that message of tough love for which he seems to be yearning, those who represent the church to Bono will have to have the courage to break through the aura of celebrity and invite a searcher into the true home he is looking for."
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Mark Botts speaks on behalf of embodied wisdom in a cultural moment enamored of artificial intelligence: "Will we distance ourselves from machines that, like carnival attractions, buzz and ping and light up with those grand prizes of ease and efficiency so that we might remember Christ’s body by way of our bodies? Or will we offload our humanity to those devices that hate our embodied souls?"
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David Larson considers the conditions necessary for authentic community: "Genuine community only arises when we need one another, and to the extent that we can fool ourselves into thinking we’re self-sufficient, we will find ourselves living in Frankenstein communities as beastly demigods, doomed to forever contrive chitchat or wave awkwardly to people who will always remain largely strangers."
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Mike Thompson Jr. narrates the exploits of his unlikely hunting dog: "Whether hunting or watching TV at home, you will never be alone with a good dog by your side. Dixie and I may never get another bird, but a bird hunt is a great excuse to get out of the office, away from a lunch at the faculty lounge, away from this or that electronically amplified human crisis and into the rhythm of nature."
I'm reading and enjoying Sylvie Weil's memoir At Home with André and Simone Weil. Sylvie is the daughter of the famous mathematician André and hence the niece of Simone, whom she looks very much like. She describes feeling like a living relic, one people wanted to touch to experience a closeness to her dead aunt. The Weil family was not always functional, but both Simone and her family had deep convictions and passions. As Sylvie writes about her father,
He considered himself immeasurably lucky to have had a passion.
He did not experience only one passion! As a boy, he was passionate about croquet. During the summer of 1914, my grandmother wrote: André is playing croquet from morning to night and, for the moment, nothing else interests him. How passionate this boy is! May he only be passionate about good things! André was only eight years old. One month later he had developed a real passion for geometry.
"The best that you can hope for in this lowly world is to experience a passion, one which allows you to earn a living."
That is what my father told me.
Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,
Jeff Bilbro