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Jack Shifflett
Missoula, Montana
“I have come into the world to disagree." (Maxim Gorky)
Interests: Russian history (19th century in particular), Russian theology and philosophy, St. Paul's writings, "theosis," "kenosis," "the common task," Original Sin, figuring it out
Recent Activity
Ken--thank you so much for your comments. I only saw Henry Aaron in person once: sometime in the early 1960's, when the Milwaukee Braves played an exhibition at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. The joy I experienced in 1974 when Mr. Aaron hit his record-breaking home run off Al Downing cannot be put into words: my celebratory shout may have been heard from Buffalo all the way to Atlanta.
Don't Mess With The Hammer
I understand that we live in a society in which different opinions are, and ought to be, tolerated. Cliven Bundy can offer his thoughts on the Negro, and Donald Sterling can lecture his girlfriend on the impropriety of being seen in public with a black person: fine, I disagree with what they sa...
Shovon1337: Thank you for your comment and your interest. We are referring, I think, to two different people named "John Gray". Mine is the iconoclastic British philosopher, author of "Straw Dogs" (not the movie) and other contentious volumes; you are referring, I assume, to a "John Gray" who is an American pastor of some evangelical-type denomination.
Do You Believe in Progress?
According to the classic General Electric slogan, circa 1960 and pictured above: “Progress is our most important product.” So how’s that whole “progress” thing been working out lately, anyway? 1 Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, for one, believes it’s working out pretty well: Plenty of things are gettin...
She could be all of the above--who knows?
On "Public Distrust" and "What the Hell Just Happened?"
On the issue of expertise: it is undeniably the case that experts are not always right; that experts often disagree; that experts sometimes change their minds; and that experts are subject to all the usual human biases. It is therefore also the case that we ought to exercise critical thinking an...
Ann: so I've heard, but please don't get me started on that topic. This excerpt from Camus caught my attention in part because I've been reading, in Berdyaev and other Orthodox writers, about "deification" ; while I find that idea fascinating and even inspiring, in the end I'm with Camus--we're better off if we just stick to being human.
Sunday Sermon
“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.” (Albert Camus) Albert Camus, from The Rebel: Man can master, in himself, everything that should be mastered. He should rectify in creation everything that can be rectified. And after he has done so, children will still die unjustly even in...
Ann: thanks for the input. As should be obvious, I continue to flail, to thrash, and to flounder at the very idea of spirituality. "The spirit" seems to me to be mysterious, and I am simultaneously attracted to and suspicious of "mystery," which I have always held to be (along with patriotism) the last refuge of scoundrels. Despite which, my current correct line of thinking is that world history in the past 200-250 years has been an era of spiritual warfare in which humanity's "yetzer ha-tov" and "yetzer ha-ra" have struggled for dominance; one of our main problems being that, even with the best of intentions, we don't always know which is which.
Making Sense of Spirit
“The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it.” (Henri Nouwen) “Spirit makes its own special order out of its special kind of chaos.” (Nikolai Berdyaev) If there is in fact a spiritual realm, many of us are apparently unable to detect it. Is it perhaps accessi...
Thanks, Ann. I'm pretty sure I've almost got it all figured out...maybe by next Tuesday?
Deedle-Deedle Queep
"Goin' up to the spirit in the sky / That's where I'm goin' when I die..." (Norman Greenbaum) I believe the following: (a) Human beings are in some sense “spiritual” creatures. (b) There is a spiritual element/dimension to all existence, and it is of the utmost significance for us that we culti...
Ann--thanks, as always, for the comment. Re "what is it that we have to give?": I don't mean to be flippant, and I am but a humble atheist, but it is my understanding that the Church claims to distribute God directly to believers on a regular basis. What more could it do?
Sunday Sermon
Andre Comte-Sponville (from The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality): When I contemplate the All, the ego seems laughable by comparison. It makes my egocentricity, and thus my worries, a little less intense, a little less powerful. Occasionally, it even manages to obliterate them for a few secon...
Ann: but I said you can get there in your own way...in point of fact, this is one of the least coherent, least thought-out pieces I've ever posted; I just felt like posting something this morning, and this is what came out.
Giving Them Hell
Among other things, a new year is an opportunity to consider the state of one’s immortal soul. I’m pretty sure that mine is in serious peril. Sister Mary Josephine made it quite clear back in 1959, as did the Baltimore catechism from which she labored to instruct me: Hell awaits the habitual and...
Thanks, Ann. May your New Year be bright with promise and may your heart be filled with hope...
2020
Teilhard de Chardin {New Year’s Day 1932, in China}: My dear friends, we are together this morning to begin, in front of God, the new year. God, for each of us, certainly does not have the same precise image. But since we are all human, we cannot escape, not one of us, the sentiment and the idea...
Oh, I dont actually read them. I just write a little bit about them based on their cover blurbs...
Books Report
Now and then, I try to take a break from reading about Paul the Apostle in order to focus on (among other things) the likely collapse of the American republic. Here are the non-Pauline books to which I am currently attending. Over the years I’ve taken a passing interest in the perennial controv...
You "disagree"? With "most of this post"? This does not bode well for your spending a congenial week in Missoula. Perhaps you should re-read the post, more carefully this time; I for one find it highly persuasive.
Return of the Blinks
{As the probably non-existent God is my witness, I will get this blog up and running again...} David Johnson, writing at Aeon, would like us all to stop sucking up to the rich, the powerful, and the inexplicably famous. In "Let Us Now Stop Praising Famous Men and Women," Johnson reminds us, in c...
Reverend Markle: I am just getting warmed up on the subject. Won't we have fun conversations about this when I'm in Buffalo!
Paul's Divine Invasion (Part Two)
Before proceeding further with the implications of Paul’s “in Christ,” I should make it clear that the conclusions and speculations here are entirely mine and not Bruce Chilton’s, whose book RABBI PAUL I have been reading and to which I have referred. Chilton, in fact, doggedly attempts to recon...
Mr. Ballor: You did indeed make that connection in your other article at Acton--thanks for pointing it out. Like Alaska, internet archives are a vast and wondrous wilderness; it helps to have a guide when exploring the territory.
We Didn't Build That
Among the numerous high crimes and misdemeanors perpetrated against this Republic by former "President" Barack Obama, none were considered more egregious than this statement from July 2012: "If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere i...
Dear Rev. Markle: thank you for your comment but I will not be dissuaded by "facts," especially when promulgated by liberal media like PBS. Everything wrong with this country is traceable to the Sixties, so please don't go blaming poor William McKinley--has he not suffered enough already?
Fortunate Sons
At The American Conservative, Gil Barndollar makes the very reasonable argument that America's contemporary class divide began in the 1960s with the Vietnam War: The widening gulf between American elites and the rest of their countrymen has many causes and few apparent solutions. Economics, tec...
Thanks for the comments, Terry. Have a great New Year's yourself; we will just have to keep muddling along with our lives until the robots put us out of our misery.
Breakfast Links
At First Things, Matthew Schmitz reminds us that, way back in 1996, Richard John Neuhaus saw it coming: Neuhaus thought attachment to our liberal democracy much weaker than generally supposed. “What is happening now,” he wrote, “is a growing alienation of millions of Americans from a governmen...
Ann: you are indubitably correct, both about the Obama/Holder group and about changing the lawyer joke. Maybe we should put Jared Kushner to work on this?
It's Broke. Let's Fix It. Please.
I am not a greedy man. All I want for Christmas is the establishment of a bipartisan blue-ribbon commission to take a long, hard look at our dysfunctional government and our dysfunctional electoral system. The commission should include all of our living ex-Presidents, a number of retired legisla...
Nice try, James and Bunni, but I am sworn to secrecy about Dissenting Commenter. The Little Red Blog protects its sources, such as they are.
All Shall Have Trophies!
It’s been a while since we’ve checked the old mailbag here at the Little Red Blog; in fact, come to think of it, we’ve never checked the old mailbag. Be that as it may, my recent post on self-esteem provoked a Dissenting Comment: “After reading your "self-esteem" or as we in fifth grade used to...
Thanks, Terry. Of all the various categories in which America leads the world, "Locking people up" is one of which we should be ashamed. I repeat my recent citation of a quote from Jon Langford--Americans are "the most frightened people on earth".
Crime, Punishment, and Forgiveness
Adam Ericksen draws this lesson from the biker shoot-out in Waco: God calls us to participate in a culture of divine forgiveness, as opposed to a culture of human violence. The first step is to realize that we all have a tendency toward violence in thought, word, and deed; and so we are all in n...
Thanks for your kind comments, ME. I believe that, in the original text of Genesis, Adam was busy watching a football game and therefore he didn't notice when the serpent approached Eve; either that, or he was out playing golf. But perhaps Adam's "liturgical failure" in Eden was mean to prefigure all the failures of male priests ever since.
A Leithart-ed Look at Scripture
Peter Leithart (at First Things) offers a defense (by his own admission, not a “full defense”) of the male priesthood.1 In “Liturgy and Interchangeable Sexes,” Leithart bases his argument on Paul’s having written (in 1 Timothy 2:12-14): “I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over...
Oh yeah--I'm just learning now about President Obama's announcement. As for optimism-- I'd say impeachment is all but a certainty after the new Congress takes office. (Also, happy birthday, James!).
Defining Miracles Down
Commenting on a column by Matt Lewis, Damon Linker1 notes, not without a certain sadness, that modernity has defined miracles down: Miracles have traditionally been understood as temporary transgressions by God of the natural order. You know, like Moses parting the Red Sea, or a virgin giving bi...
Ann: I'm sorry I'm late getting to your post; I rarely check Facebook anymore, so I wasn't aware you were writing here again. In any case, you do sound happy, and that's great to hear. I have some questions: first, why did your car hit a deer? Had the deer offended it in some way? Are you concerned that, in France, your rental car might decide to sideswipe a Black Madonna or two? Finally, since when does Rachel Maddow tell people to watch your blog? That's very impressive; I didn't even realize the two of you knew each other.
Six Months (and More) Later
Hello. Here I am again. I've retired (well, semi-retired). I live in Buffalo now, not on the Cumberland Plateau. I've left my beautiful little church, my beautiful house, my beautiful (too big) gardens. I'm still trying to downsize. I've left a 4-bedroom house and now live in two rooms. M...
Thank you, Rev. Markle. I could not have put it better myself.
A Beautiful Lie?
I’m reading NOTHING TO BE FRIGHTENED OF, Julian Barnes’ “memoir of mortality,” the first line of which is “I don’t believe in God, but I miss him.” Here is Barnes, an agnostic, on Christianity: “The Christian religion didn’t last so long merely because everyone else believed in it, because it wa...
Thanks, Ann. You were definitely underpaid monetarily, but hopefully there were other compensations of which Erick Erickson knoweth not.
I think I recently posted a quote from Karl Marx to the effect that, under capitalism, the more distasteful and unpleasant the work, the lower the wages. This must explain why men (mostly) who play games for a living (professional sports, that is) are paid outrageous amounts, while men and women who clean and scrub and lift heavy and often unpleasant burdens are paid a pittance.
Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig has also written about Erickson's comments (don't tell Cheryl): http://elizabethstokerbruenig.com/2014/09/06/minimum-wage-failure-at-life/
Failing At Life
For those of you (um, Cheryl?) who were concerned that things would get boring on talk radio with Rush Limbaugh on vacation, allow me to pass along the wisdom of Rush's guest host Erick Erickson, a man who was once allowed to opine on CNN: "The minimum wage is mostly [for] people who've failed a...
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