Since I retired I have a lot more time on my hands. That’s not altogether a good thing. It gives me time to watch more YouTube videos.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
I hope no one will think me uncharitable but it’s hard to take this kind of thing very seriously.
First of all, this is a “megachurch”? The audience seemed rather small. (And I use the word “audience” advisedly. This is a performance. Notice the constant references to the “stage”.)
These folks are so media savvy that it becomes its own parody. How much did the “preacher” spend on his clothes and hairdo?
Raised like I was this seems like children playing church. The “message” is so welcoming and affirming; no fire & brimstone here! I was taught to expect Jehovah out of the whirlwind, smoke rising forever and flashings of fire. Not Jesus “Bro”. Save me; cast me into Hell, but please don’t nurture me like a brain-dead sheep!
Of course this is all infinitely preferable to the tightassed hateful political church. But both expressions are signs of the end. Better to walk away.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
The sad part is by the time the effects of human generated Climate Change become so obvious that even the densest or dishonest among us cannot deny it, it will be too late.
That only in my sleep
Do the secrets that I keep
Float to the surface.
Till they don’t make a sound
Like they accidentally drowned
Except on purpose.
Today I’ll make a change
But falling into my bed at night I think
Man it was a beautiful day to stay the same.
We rightly eschew (gesundheit!) formal political partisanship at this blog but occasionally stuff comes up that is frighteningly relevant.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
I have to confess this makes me miss living in DC because I would surely have attended this rally. I hung out at the Occupy DC camp, attended three Tea Party rallies, and whatever the heck that was that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert produced back in 2010. Politics is a kind of theater in DC and the Mall is constantly being used as a stage for all kinds of groups. I would walk through, listen, stuff fliers in my bag and my evening entertainment was to drink beer and read all the material I collected. (It won’t come as a surprise to anyone but there are some rather strange folks being allowed to wander freely out there.)
My approach was to turn off any adversarial tendencies and listen to what these people had to say about themselves. I will miss this kind of experience.
BJH1960 said
I have to confess this makes me miss living in DC
How are you adjusting back to life in Georgia?
Is there, as I imagine, a different rhythm to life?
As silly as it might sound, the biggest culture shock is not religious or political but logistical. Here I have to drive everywhere. Groceries, post office, everywhere. I’m used to walking. I owned a car while was in DC but I mostly used it for outside trips. That’s the virtue of an urban environment.
I do enjoy the quiet and dark of night. Gazing up at the Milky Way from a nice big yard is a pleasure denied the city slicker.
Of course politics and religion is a bit different. Down here people feel the need to wear their views on their sleeves. It is very important that you know where they stand.
File this under funny/horrifying: the current governor’s allotted term is expiring so we’re having a race this year. Currently we’re having primaries. In their campaign commercials all three major Republican candidates feel the need to, first, assure us that they’re Christians ( like there was some doubt!) and then include a scene where they’re shooting guns. God and guns. Well, yeah!
The class differences are interesting. The “mainstream” candidate is skeet shooting with a shotgun. Another one is firing a handgun at a range. The MAGA guy is dressed in full camo firing a machine gun! I suppose these folks know their constituencies.
I do enjoy the quiet and dark of night. Gazing up at the Milky Way from a nice big yard is a pleasure denied the city slicker.
Sounds wonderful.
I can’t remember the last time I got a good view of the stars. It really is a pleasure like few others.
As they say, I’m not getting any younger, so perhaps a ** you do not have permission to see this link ** in the future is in order.
BJH1960 said
I can’t remember the last time I got a good view of the stars. It really is a pleasure like few others.
As they say, I’m not getting any younger, so perhaps a trip in the future is in order.
I remember as a kid camping at ** you do not have permission to see this link ** near the ruins of an old 19th century mill. You needed a four wheel drive just to get on the trail. The sky was like jewels in ink. Now, alas, fully developed with picnicking, boat marina and surrounded by McMansions. The Mill has a paved parking lot. -sigh-
At some point I am planning an expedition to all the accessible IDSA designated sanctuaries. Call me weird but for travel I’d rather do that than go on cruises or tour museums.
Internationally I definitely want to go to the Atacama desert in Chile.
I think that sounds perfectly reasonable.
Earlier in the day I was looking at rental cabins in Northern Minnesota for the weekend of the 4th. I’ve never been much of a fireworks person and can think of no better way of celebrating the 250th anniversary than gazing up at a sky free of them and sparkling with stars.
Chile has been on my places to visit since working with a woman in the 80s who with her husband had spent time there. She told me of its wonders, and I’ve never forgotten.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
As usual some of these photos are taken from the Atacama desert.
These kinds of photos give me mixed emotions. Their beauty is a function of being heavily processed, using long and sometimes multiple exposures. They don’t prepare you for what you might see with the naked eye. I remember one night setting up camp and wondering why it was so cloudy when the weather folk assured me it was going to be crystal clear. Then I realized, it was cloudy! Cloudy with banks of stars. What naked eye astronomy gives us is a sense of depth and a sense of space. Completely uncapturable with a camera. And ambient sky glow deprives us of even that.
When I become dictator of the known universe, “light pollution” will become an important social issue.
Well we just had another SBC convention.
The 2026 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting took place at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida, from June 7 to June 10. The accompanying Pastors’ Conference took place on June 7 and 8, followed by the main convention on June 9 and 10.
Go ** you do not have permission to see this link ** for a wrap-up if you’re interested.
Generally the trajectory remains rightwards. The newly elected SBC President, Willy Rice, is positioned on the firm right wing of the SBC, who represent themselves as an insurgent faction of “reformers” who believe the denomination has experienced a “decline and drift”. Rice came out of a ministry in Florida which is the state convention most sympathetic to Christian nationalist ideas. His “issues of concern” are about what you would expect:
He publicly challenged what his supporters call a “woke” drift among previous denominational leaders regarding race, gender, and immigration. He campaigned on a promise to challenge the existing SBC institutional system rather than capitulate to shifting cultural norms. Rice holds what’s called the “complementarian” view, firmly supporting a total ban on churches utilizing women as pastors. (Such a resolution was passed enabling the convention to immediately disfellowship churches with female type pastors.) He explicitly objects to modern cultural shifts regarding gender roles, advocating for a return to strict biblical literalism.
A bit more controversial is his stance regarding the SBC’s handling of its recent sexual abuse crisis. Rice has claimed that concerns regarding a systemic, top-level cover-up within the convention were overblown, stating that previous leadership sometimes “followed the culture more than the Bible” during reform advocacy.
If you’ve got the time here is a very interesting ** you do not have permission to see this link ** vid. These two brothers discuss some of the issues and their perceptions of the current status of the convention. Just be aware that they’re insiders who speak the language and assume that on the part of their audience.
My quick take for what it’s worth. Jon and David Harris are really nice guys who probably wouldn’t hurt a fly. But they’ve swallowed the kool-aid and inside their hermetically sealed environment they are completely divorced from reality. Consequently they are prepared to accept really dangerous and destructive ideas with the certain faith that it’s all for the best. Because it’s God’s Will.
Now don’t be deceived. I have no wish to correct them. I celebrate when they double down. The SBC is rapidly losing members. Young people especially are leaving in droves. (One of the bros comments during the vid how nobody at the meeting seemed younger than middle-aged.) These folks think it is “accommodation” that is causing this. They are blind to the fact that it is their very own ideology that is driving people out. More power to them!
It’s the usual thing. Conservative white America, especially men(!), are under attack by people called “progressives”. These progressives are bringing in all the worldly concern for gender and race – and economic class. Conservatives on the other hand are only concerned with ministry and reject politics!
It’s to be expected that it will be the hardcore who will hold on the longest. If you really believe that you are doing God’s Will and that compromise is defeat then you will not go easy. It’s possible there will be another Great Awakening but I think it more likely that in twenty years or so when the last of the Boomers go to their reward the bottom will fall out and the cultural and religious landscape of this country will look very different. The demographics are in – the fastest growing ethnicity is Hispanic and young folks are the least religious group in our history.
In my wanderings to and fro upon the earth and walking up and down on it I occasionally stumble on interesting particulars. In this case, what has come to be called Astrophobia or Cosmophobia. Both terms describe an intense irrational fear of outer space, celestial bodies, and the cosmos, an existential dread at the sheer vastness of the universe. Specialists like their distinctions: Astrophobia focuses on the specific fear of celestial objects (stars, planets, and meteors) or deep-space phenomena like black holes; Cosmophobia is a broader, more general anxiety specifically related to the cosmos, infinity, and the unknown.
These are in fact medically recognized conditions with categorizable symptoms and treatments. These conditions are associated with fear of the dark or of being alone or lost or perhaps even of heights. What strikes me though is how modern these types of anxiety are. It might give us pause to remember that it is barely a hundred years that we’ve been aware that our Milky Way galaxy does not consist of all there is, but is only a single galaxy in a universe that contains trillions of others. Since then astronomers and cosmologists have been producing larger and ever more detailed ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
To be truly afraid of something it seems to me you must have some experience of it and be able to internalize it. You experience the dark and are afraid. But who has experienced the cosmos? And if we truly did experience the cosmos and internalize it might we not all expect a certain degree of existential vertigo? Trillions of galaxies! WTF!?! Now I am not making a medical diagnosis but it seems to me that anxiety over a sci-fi movie or the popular idea of bug-eyed aliens might not adequately describe what we are talking about here.
There are literary precedents for a sense of cosmic dread. In his Pensées Blaise Pascal wrote Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraye. “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.” Howard Phillips Lovecraft often pictured his tortured protagonists cringing in dread of strange constellations and monstrous entities seeping down from the stars. I was always struck by how he would characterize outer space as “Outside”. Inside is where it’s warm and sane. But Lovecraft’s monsters could only bite your head off. Pascal describes something much more terrifying. Emptiness. Indifference. And that’s the cosmos we are presented with. It just sits there. Undeniable and inescapable. However we shield our civilization from it with ever brighter and more radiant lighting.
I have always loved astronomy. I’m glad I don’t have such fears. I don’t suppose I have any real phobias. My only irrationality is that I fly into a sub-psychotic rage when I hear whispering or the fizzing of a soft-drink being poured over ice. I say “sub-psychotic” because I never lose self-consciousness or have ever actually attacked anyone. Of course as I get older…who knows?
I did have one weird experience. I once went to an exhibition of the work of Japanese artist ** you do not have permission to see this link **, known for her immersive, mirrored environments and sculptures entirely covered in polka dots, apparently inspired by the visual hallucinations she has experienced since childhood. I literally had to run out of the room where everything was covered in polka dots. I didn’t hallucinate but I just couldn’t remain in the room. Pictures don’t have that effect on me. But I have learned my lesson. Don’t go into the room where everything is covered with polka dots. I try to imagine what it would be like to feel that way under a clear night sky.
The Infinity Mirrors portion of the exhibition was pretty cool but the problem in Your Nation’s Capital was that because of the popularity of the exhibit and the resulting crowd size, the length of time one was able to enjoy it was limited. They crowded folks in and hustled them out. If I could have spent a while alone I would have been able to appreciate it more.
***
Last evening I found myself doing some channel surfing and the display function on my TV provided this helpful information –
Gunsmoke: After Matt refuses to teach a cowboy how to be a sheriff’s deputy, the cowboy plans to boost his quick-draw reputation by challenging a retired gunman who has returned to town in order to woo the the woman he abandoned 20 years ago.
That made me laugh. Wow, what a plot! Such drama! Such pathos!
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