1700 years since Nicaea, our Family Adventure, and a return to the Dark Side
Friends,
This email update is being sent on the week of my 40th birthday. I fully intend to have a Mid-life Crisis™️ of some sort, but I have not yet finalized quite what it will look like. You, my loyal readers, will surely be among the first to know. (Right behind Viv...)
Below I share some photos from our family adventure in the American Southwest and a note about my return to the Dark Side.
But first: Celebrating Nicaea
My most recent essay, published today by The Living Church, joins a series of other essays commemorating the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. In it I reflect on one way I have taught the importance of that Council and the Creed it eventually produced in both church and school settings over the past fifteen years.
On the horizon, you notice a group of children approaching your village with smiles on their faces and something round in their hands. As they get closer, you see that they are motioning for anyone and everyone to gather around them to hear what they have to share. You aren’t the only one to notice these things, and soon enough a small crowd is gathered around these young children, eagerly anticipating what they have to share.
“We come bearing news about a game being played in the other villages. Do you want to hear about it?”
The crowd’s answer is clear.
“This is a ball. You put it on the ground and control it with your feet. Half of you are trying to kick it through two trees in that direction, and the other half are trying to kick it through two trees in the opposite direction.”
The description of the game is intriguing enough to encourage you and a few other brave souls to try it out in practice. You join those visitors who have played the game before in what you will later recognize as the first soccer match your village has ever seen.
Click here to read The Nicene Creed: Deciding the Rules of the Game.
The Beautiful American Southwest
For this summer’s family adventure we drove 3,274 miles and camped five nights over the course of nine days. Along the way we joined hundreds of strangers in a Pub in Phoenix to watch Tottenham win the Europa Cup. You can see some highlights of our trip here!
A return to the Dark Side?
In the past six and a half years away from Big Social Media, I have enjoyed not knowing (or caring) about what various subcultures happen to be up-in-arms about every day of my life. I continue to hold that a more human life can only be experienced when avoiding the sort of fabricated crisis social media tends towards.
But … my forthcoming book on what it means to be a moral being and how the Church Calendar helps shape us towards that end should arrive some time this winter, and I have been asked to share what I am working on more widely.
So, two things have happened this week:
- First, I technically now have an X account, provided by my publisher.
- Second, I have learned a lot more about RSS, IFTTT, and how to make sure that what I already write on my website makes it out to the Big Social World without me having to login and engage in the algorithm myself.
If you would like to more regularly see what I am reading, writing, and thinking about, you can get those updates now on X. There you can join the THRONGS of people who seem to already want these things.
