"Leave it to good old Jesus and the rest of His family..."

Chris Green writes about the communion of the saints and Jesus not just loving us but liking us. It’s all wonderful stuff and worth a read, but his last quote, from the late Russian human rights activist Alexei Navalny, is timely and worth quoting in full:

You lie in your bunk looking up at the one above and ask yourself whether you are a Christian in your heart of hearts. It is not essential for you to believe some old guys in the desert once lived to be eight hundred years old, or that the sea was literally parted in front of someone. But are you a disciple of the religion whose founder sacrificed himself for others, paying the price for their sins? Do you believe in the immortality of the soul and the rest of that cool stuff? If you can honestly answer yes, what is there left for you to worry about? Why, under your breath, would you mumble a hundred times something you read from a hefty tome you keep in your bedside table? Don’t worry about the morrow, because the morrow is perfectly capable of taking care of itself. My job is to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and leave it to good old Jesus and the rest of his family to deal with everything else. They won’t let me down and will sort out all my headaches. As they say in prison here: they will take my punches for me.

Amen.

Small Wonders: The Pixies Are In the Attic

This short piece on Small Wonders by Azure Arther titled “The Pixies Are In the Attic” just made a real mess of me.

It’s short enough I don’t feel like I can meaningfully quote from it here without reproducing the whole thing, so I won’t. Just go click the link and read for a couple minutes. So many feelings about the challenges of raising children into wonderful, amazing adults brought about by so few words. Amazing.

Life’s too short for uninteresting books

Nick Hornby, writing over at Lithub, says something that I am finding increasingly true: as you get older, life is too short to spend time on bad novels.

I try to find works of fiction, I promise, but it’s like pushing a wonky shopping trolley round a supermarket. I constantly veer off toward literary biographies, books about the Replacements, and so on, and only with a concerted effort can I push it toward the best our novelists have to offer. I suspect it’s to do with age and risk. A bad book about, say, the history of Indian railways will inevitably tell you something about railways, India, and history.

Reading a bad novel when you are approaching pensionable age, however, is like taking the time left available to you and setting it on fire.

It’s no secret that I read lots of books. For a long time my reading strategy has been one book at a time, in completionist fashion. Once I’ve put the effort in to give it a try, why not finish it so I can add it to my reading log? But more and more I pick up a book, almost always a novel, get a few chapters in, and decide I just can’t be arsed to finish it. So back it goes to the library. (Or, rarely, it gets resold to the used book store. Though I very rarely buy fiction any more when it can be borrowed instead.)

I’m at the point where my “to read” bookshelf has books that have been sitting there so long that I am no longer interested in the topics that were apparently interesting to me when I bought them. It feels like an entire next level of giving up to just throw those books in the resell pile, but, well, I’m getting older. Life’s too short to spend time in uninteresting books.

Today the blog turns 20

Twenty years ago today, October 29, 2004, my friend Geof set me up a Wordpress install on his server and sent me the keys to login. I wrote a hello world post and the rest is history. 20 years and 1477 posts later, I’m still at it. The URL has changed a few times. The original install was a shared site on rmfo.com/blogs. Then I grabbed thehubbs.net, thinking some of my family members would also want to blog. (None of them did more than once or twice.) But then in December 2007 I registered chrishubbs.com and I’ve been here ever since. (In early 2024 I migrated from Wordpress to micro.blog. I’m still very happy with that choice.)

My early posts set the tone for repeated themes over the years: a little bit of politics, a lot of music, theological rumination, and books. So many books. If I have a favorite post format, though, it’s probably bullet points. Sometimes you just need a post format to let you do a random brain dump, and then see how those random bits weave together.

There have been plenty of changes over that time, too. Shifts in political views. Going from one kid, to three kids, to two of those kids growing up and heading out. Going from a Baptist church to a church plant] to a Free Church to a little online church community, to finally the Episcopal church. Made lots of friends. (Often forgot to tag them.) Lost some, too. (RIP, Geof. I miss you.) Added family members, lost family members. It’s not all change, I guess. Through it all I still have the same wife, still live in the same house, and still have the same employer. All blessings.

I’ve never had an overarching philosophy for my blogging; I just write about things that interest me. I find the process of writing to be helpful for me to pull my thoughts together. If I can take the thoughts rattling around in my head and organize them into something that holds up when written down, maybe then I’ve really got something. I blog in spurts. I’ll write a post a day for four or five days in a row when the topics are flowing, then I’ll go dormant for a month. I’ve tried writing series (e.g. on NT Wright’s Surprised By Hope and positive politics), but usually struggle to complete them.

I’m happy to have maintained a presence online for two decades, under my own name, with content that I own. The internet has gone through so many changes in 20 years, but it turns out that a self-owned site with your own domain will let you stick around regardless of how the dominant platforms change. I’d recommend it. I hope to keep writing. If I’m still around 20 years from now it’ll be time to write another summary.

Marilynne Robinson on Community and Absence

Posting this quote from Marilynne Robinson here just so I have it at hand for later use:

To speak in the terms that are familiar to us all, there was a moment in which Jesus, as a man, a physical presence, left that supper at Emmaus. His leave-taking was a profound event for which the supper itself was precursor. Presence is a great mystery, and presence in absence, which Jesus promised and has epitomized, is, at a human scale, a great reality for all of us in the course of ordinary life.

I am persuaded for the moment that this is in fact the basis of community. I would say, for the moment, that community, at least community larger than the immediate family, consists very largely of imaginative love for people we do not know or whom we know very slightly.

In full context, she’s talking about community with fictional characters and authors here, but this rings so true to me in a world full of online communities.

Looking back or looking forward? Reading Ivan Illich up against Ilia Delio

A useful maxim for me over the years has been to find out who my favorite writers are reading, and start reading those authors. As I wrote previously, I’ve benefitted quite a lot recently from Chris E. W. Green’s podcast. One of the thinkers Green has been referencing frequently is Ivan Illich, an Austrian Catholic priest and thinker from the first part of the 20th century. So, off I went to learn about Ilich.

It appears that a digestible canonical form of Illich’s thought is in a wonderful CBC radio series titled ‘The Corruption of Christianity’ as presented by journalist David Cayley. I’m only through 3 of the 5 hour-long episodes so far, but it’s fascinating stuff. Illich contends that the movement to formally establish programs to do good, even (especially?) church-run programs, is a horrible corruption of the original Christian call, because the benevolence then ceases to be a voluntary act of love on the part of the individual believer.

Frequently through the first few episodes of the program, Illich argues that the early Christian view of certain acts was different than we understand today because those Christians had a different scientific view of the world. For example, he says the ancients thought of “the gaze” as an act where the human eye actually casts a ray out to the perceived object, by which the viewer and the viewed interact. With the advent of modern science, he says, we now think of the eye as a lens through which an image is received, and now we have a more passive interaction with the representation of the object rather than an active interaction with the object itself. And this represents a “corruption” of the ancient understanding.

This is really interesting for me to set in conversation with Ilia Delio’s writing. Delio approaches the question the other way around. Given what we now know, she says, about science and cosmology, how should we update our understanding of God and Christianity based on that modern science? Illich seemed to assume that the early church understanding was the perfect, uncorrupted one, and that we should work to get back to it. Delio takes a more progressive revelation view that encourages us to look forward rather than back. I have been helped a lot by Delio’s work over the past few years, so it’s interesting to run up against Illich and interrogate some of her premises. I haven’t reached conclusions yet but it’s some fascinating stuff to think on.

Recommended reading: Excavating AI

I hadn’t run across this until today when Michal Wozniak shared it on Mastodon, but it’s an excellent read: Excavating AI: The Politics of Images in Machine Learning Training Sets.

One of the “standard” image sets used for training models to do image recognition is ImageNet, originally published in 2009. It contains more than 14 million images which were categorized by humans via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk project. The challenge, of course, is that when you use humans to create the training data, all the implicit (and explicit) bias of the human trainers is trained right into the data.

[ImageNet] provides a powerful and important example of the complexities and dangers of human classification, and the sliding spectrum between supposedly unproblematic labels like “trumpeter” or “tennis player” to concepts like “spastic,” “mulatto,” or “redneck.” Regardless of the supposed neutrality of any particular category, the selection of images skews the meaning in ways that are gendered, racialized, ableist, and ageist. ImageNet is an object lesson, if you will, in what happens when people are categorized like objects. And this practice has only become more common in recent years, often inside the big AI companies, where there is no way for outsiders to see how images are being ordered and classified.

While I don’t think the current AI tech boom will sustain in the long term, certain applications are very useful and probably will stick around. As we employ systems that are trained, we must always interrogate the assumptions and biases that have gone into that training.

There is much at stake in the architecture and contents of the training sets used in AI. They can promote or discriminate, approve or reject, render visible or invisible, judge or enforce. And so we need to examine them—because they are already used to examine us—and to have a wider public discussion about their consequences, rather than keeping it within academic corridors. As training sets are increasingly part of our urban, legal, logistical, and commercial infrastructures, they have an important but underexamined role: the power to shape the world in their own images.

It’s worth reading the whole thing.

Recommended podcast: Chris E. W. Green's Speakeasy Theology

Lately I’ve really been enjoying Bishop Chris E. W. Green’s podcast called Speakeasy Theology. Green is a bishop in the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches and Professor of Public Theology at Southeastern University in Lakeland, FL. Green’s background is Pentecostal, but his move into the CEEC has put him in an interesting place where he is deeply invested in the Episcopal tradition while still embracing a strong Spirit-filled embodiment of faith.

His podcast isn’t particularly fancy or polished. It does have theme music, but generally consists of Green in conversation with one or two others, delving into some aspect of theology and/or practice. I particularly appreciate his humble approach to these conversations. While many podcast hosts and theologians would work to make their own points and push their own agenda, he is very willing to just ask questions and let his guests provoke the conversation in the direction they want to go.

A couple recent episodes that stuck out to me: first, God Is More Exciting Than Anything with Dr. Jane Williams. Dr. Williams talks about loving theology, loving prayer, loving God, and serving the church. Green doesn’t do extensive introductions of his guests on the podcast, so as I listened all I gathered at the beginning is that Dr. Williams is a British professor of theology. As the discussion went on, Green asked some questions about advice on the life of a Bishop, and the impact on the Bishop’s family, and what a Bishop should prioritize, and as he listened to her advice with great esteem, I thought wait, I need to connect some dots here. So I Googled Dr. Jane Williams, and found that in addition to being a professor of theology, she’s been married for more than 40 years to Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. (Lightbulb!) What stuck out to me about this interview, beside the wonderful conversation and counsel from Dr. Williams, was that she was presented (deservedly) entirely on her own authority and merit, with no reference to her husband. This felt like a beautiful and, sadly, remarkable display of respect by Dr. Green.

The second episode I want to recommend is titled The Difference is Doxological, Green’s conversation with Richard Beck. Beck is a professor of experimental psychology at Abilene Christian University and a long-time blogger. (I’ve read Beck for a long time and blogged about his thoughts frequently enough he has his own tag on my blog.) Beck’s specialty is the intersection between psychology and theology, and his discussion with Green is a wonderful hour wrestling with how we think about the acknowledged work of God in people’s lives vs. the work that God does through the common grace of psychological practice. Beck also talks about his own faith journey of deconstruction and rebuilding, giving his long-time readers like Green and me some good background for his blogging.

I’ve recommended Chris Green’s books here before, and I’m happy to recommend the podcast, too. It’s worth a listen.

You can become more holy by becoming more merciful

Fr. Matt Tebbe is one of my favorite writers at the moment. A former evangelical turned Episcopal priest, Matt has a keen eye for the systems at work in our world and a voice for calling them out clearly. The other day he turned his thoughts to God’s mercy:

You can approach God’s holiness in your sin because God’s holiness moves towards you first. Any suggestion that God can’t look upon you or is far from you or doesn’t want to be with you in your sin: what do we see in Christ?

In him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. And Christ moves toward- not away- from sinners.

You can become more holy by becoming more merciful: with yourself and others.

In my previous evangelical life, it was always the other direction that was emphasized: God, in his (always his) holiness, is offended by you and your miserable, sinful, inept little self. When Jesus touched a sick person, they said, that sick person must’ve been miraculously healed an instant before Jesus hand actually reached them, because Jesus could never have broken the law by touching a sick person. (Such mental gymnastics!) Then I read Richard Beck say that Jesus was so full of life and health that of course he touched the sick person because Jesus’ life and health overwhelmed and pushed that sickness right out of them.

What a blessing to finally see God’s love and mercy and goodness in a restorative and healing way! And thanks Matt for reminding us of it.

Bryce Harper: Mentoring at 1B

Here’s a really lovely story on The Athletic about Phillies 1B Bryce Harper and his gentle efforts to mentor younger players, even those from opposing teams.

This is why Harper started talking more to opposing players.

“It’s being able to see the human element, as well,” Harper said. “You know how intense I am on the baseball field. I’m a very intense person. But talking to them gets you away from being so intense where it’s just overbearing.”

Over time, he’s become more accessible to his younger teammates. He has frequent talks with Alec Bohm about the mental side of hitting. He wants to be regarded as one of the best ever — and someone who cares.

“Obviously, I don’t want to help them when we’re playing against them,” Harper said. “So I think it’s that give and take. But, also, I’m not scared of other players having success. I don’t want them to have success against us. I don’t. But I never want them to not be confident in their ability.

“I want every single guy when they get to the big leagues to really have success and enjoy what they do. Enjoy each moment. Find gratitude in the moment. Find gratitude in the struggle. Find gratitude in the moment of having success. Enjoy the success. Enjoy the struggle, too.”

I’ve always been kind of ambivalent on Harper but I love this. One of the things that gives me hope for the future is seeing increased awareness and empathy across the younger generation. As they say, the kids are alright.