The Weekly, August 28
Hi all,
Apologies for missing last week's update. There were... events. About which I have nothing more to say. On to the update:
I was talking with a friend last week about the difficulty of pursuing Christian community in moments of deep social isolation. As we were talking, I was reminded of one of C. S. Lewis's best moments in The Great Divorce. Lewis imagines Hell as almost being like a crack in the sidewalk in Heaven. People in Hell have been set against the good for so long that it has diminished them, weakened them, isolated them. And so they can live within a sidewalk crack and still be so small that they can have an apparent infinitude of space between them and the other residents of Hell.
The idea, in other words, is that character goes down hill, as it were; the person you are becoming is the person you will go on becoming forever because you are an eternal being. So if you live a life of anger, rage, and aggression, well, the person that that makes you is going to keep becoming more and more that person.
It's a fearful thing to be a person of anger and to live that way for 50 or 60 years. But how much more so to live that way for an eternity?
On the other hand: I'm reminded of Berry's comments to Bill Moyer about "being run over." If you attempt to live a life committed to love and justice, if you attempt to live according to the teachings of Jesus, then there are times in this life where you will be run over, where you will fail, where your desires or dreams will be thwarted. And yet I think we can be willing to be run over if we believe that it is better to live for eternity with love in your heart than it is to live a materially successful life for 60 or 70 years. So as we pursue Christian community, the ultimate goal can't be a specific measurable outcome, I think. That isn't in our control. The goal is to follow Jesus and to live with love in our hearts. And if we do that, then even if we die, yet shall we live.
Books
Andrew Wilson's new book came last week. I'm already enjoying it. I'm also still working through Benedict XVI's second book on Jesus and slogging my way through Deneen's latest, which has been a significant disappointment so far.
Articles and Reviews
Stay the Course: How to Keep Your Faith in College by Brad East
Why the world needs Iris Murdoch’s philosophy of ‘unselfing’ by Joe Humphreys
‘This Is a Really Big Deal’: How College Towns Are Decimating the GOP by Charlie Mahtesian and Madi Alexander
Elevate or embolden? Navigating Our Social Divisions by Matthew Lee Anderson
Toward a Post-Liberal Future by Geoffrey Kurtz
Elsewhere
Lately I've been playing around with a framework that Greg on How to Drink came up with for creating cocktails. His argument is that the classic Last Word is basically a template. So a Last Word is equal parts gin, maraschino, chartreuse, and lime juice--so that's equal parts spirit, sweet liqueur, herbal liqueur, and citrus.
My bar is severely depleted at the moment so my only even remotely "herbal" option is a bottle of homemade allspice dram. So I adapted the template to make a kind of tiki take on the Side Car:
.75 oz rum (I used Plantation Three Star)
.75 oz Grand Marnier (or any other orange liqueur)
.75 oz allspice dram
.75 oz lemon juice
On the first go, the allspice dram was overpowering. So I scaled that back to .5 oz and bumped the rum up to 1 oz and then split the rum with Plantation Three Star and Appleton Estate (.75 oz Plantation, .25 oz Appleton). That reduced the bite from the allspice, added some complexity with the Appleton Estate, and kept the overall character of the drink. It wasn't the best thing I've ever come up with, but given how depleted my bar is at the moment I was content with it. But the real fun here, I think, is in the framework Greg came up with. If you wanted to get a couple bottles of different Italian amaros, I think you could do some fun stuff with it.
Thanks for reading! Blessings to you in your week,
~Jake