The brave men of Fort Cody remain ever vigilant in North Platte, Nebraska.

Had our annual fondu Christmas extravaganza with the entire fam. It’s fun over function but always memorable.

Opting Out of Feelings

I’ve been meaning to see the classic Japanese film Ikuru for a long time. It’s about a man, a faithful government bureaucrat, who learns he is going to die and begins thinking back over how he has spent his life. One of the first things he recalls is the death of his wife when their only son was young.

The man and his son and her parents, perhaps, are riding in a car. The boy is staring ahead at the hearse they are following and panics when it turns a corner and he thinks they are going to lose track of it.

I turned it off shortly after that. I will finish it soon, maybe after Christmas. I’m actually assuming that it will be very life affirming in the end. In that moment, though, I knew I just didn’t want to feel all the closely observed feelings that make a powerful film so effective. I didn’t want to cry for all the vulnerabilities of my own only son or my own aging father. I decided I wanted to watch something blow up while nobody’s father walked away from the explosion without looking back. Weakness or self-care? Failed or functional masculinity? Yes, probably.

Cyrus Made Great by God

I’ve been loving a newsletter called Areopagus by a man named Sheehan, who calls himself the Cultural Tutor. Each issue includes seven short-ish cultural lessons about music, art, a historical figure, and much more.

The most recent issue included a short biography of Cyrus the Great (600-530 BC), who conquered much of the world, forming “the largest empire ever seen until then, and the first in the world to be truly intercontinental, multiethnic, and multicultural.” Cyrus, king of Persia, is the one who finally defeated the Babylonians and insisted on sending the Jewish people back to their own homeland from their season of exile.

Cyrus did not worship the Lord God of Israel, but he did give Israel’s God credit for his success in building his own vast empire:

“This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: ‘The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of his people among you may go up, and may the Lord their God be with them’” (2 Chronicles 36:23).

And this is what the Lord God of Israel said about Cyrus, who did not worship Him in spite of knowing that God is the one who made him great (Isaiah 45:1-7):

This is what the Lord says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of to subdue nations before him and to strip kings of their armor, to open doors before him so that gates will not be shut:

I will go before you and will level the mountains; I will break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron.

I will give you hidden treasures, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name.

For the sake of Jacob my servant, of Israel my chosen, I summon you by name and bestow on you a title of honor, though you do not acknowledge me.

I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged me,

so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting people may know there is none besides me. I am the Lord, and there is no other.

I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.

Who else has God made great for a season in order to fulfill His own purposes for the world? Who among them knew it was God that did it and still refused to bow before Him?

Amazing and beautiful. This UK group called cyberdrone uses hundreds of tiny drones to “rebuild” old ruins. Click through to their Instagram to see more.

Downtown aglow tonight

Half the moon and wee Jupiter hanging bright in the sky last night. How it looked on the Sky Guide app (highly recommended) versus the best my iPhone could do.

Baylor Humanities Prof Alan Jacobs:

Students today … have grown up in a media environment in which, as far as I can see, language is almost exclusively used for three purposes: to praise cultural friends, to condemn or mock cultural enemies, and to declare the Truth. The idea that language might be used to explore a way of seeing the world without judging that way — without issuing a thumbs-up or thumbs-down emoji — is pretty foreign to most of them, especially since most of the literature they’ve been assigned in school is either intrinsically didactic or is taught to them didactically.

M

Directed by Fritz Lang, 1931

Had somehow never seen this film. I knew it was about a serial killer of children, and that it was German. I had forgotten it was made in 1931 as the Nazis were coming to power. It doesn’t deal with Nazis, but apparently the Nazis had the power to stop it from being made before being convinced by Lang of the content of the story.

Not surprising that it regularly appears on the best films of all time lists. Working on the edge of filmmaking technology in sound, lighting, editing, and camera work, the movie is still so impressive and also remains a remarkable document of the era.

After establishing that the story is about the hunt for a killer of children, the movie spends most of the second act observing how the police’s obsessive search terrorizes the citizens of Berlin both by failing to find their man and by intruding on every aspect of public life. The criminal class decides that they must make it their business to find the killer to get the police to back off the constant surveillance and raids. Loved the scene that cut back and forth between the city leaders and the criminal bosses holding simultaneous strategy sessions in extremely smoked-filled rooms.

The ending was even more surprising. Instead of simply killing murderer once he is caught, the criminals and poor of the city hold an impromptu trial, complete with a defense attorney, to legitimize their execution of him. Although Lorre’s character insists that he cannot help himself, they argue that the reason they must kill him is because he will use the insanity plea to escape punishment and kill again. It’s the same argument I remember having in a class in college.

Currently reading: Everything Sad Is Untrue: (A True Story) by Daniel Nayeri 📚

Page 59: Every story is the sound of a storyteller begging to stay alive.

Page 80: This is not a happy lesson. But you either get the truth, or you get good news—you don’t often get both.

Page 92: Memories are tricky things. They can fade or fester. You have to seal them up tight like pickles and keep out impurities like how hurt you feel when you open them. Or they’ll ferment and poison your brain.

Page 122: Does writing poetry make you brave? It is a good question to ask. I think making anything is a brave thing to do. Not like fighting brave, obviously. But a kind that looks at a horrible situation and doesn’t crumble. Making anything assumes there’s a world worth making it for. That you’ll have someplace … to hide it when people come to take it away. I guess I’m saying making something is a hopeful thing to do. And being hopeful in a world of pain is either brave or crazy.

Page 258: “O wise and merciful Mrs. Miller, every story is nestled somewhere within another story.”

Just the moon last night

42% of Self-Described Evangelicals Believe Salvation Can Be Earned

The most recent findings of the AWVI 2020, conducted by CRC Director of Research Dr. George Barna, also show that these views of sin and salvation have permeated American culture so deeply that even a majority of people who describe themselves as Christian (52%) accept a “works-oriented” means to God’s acceptance.

What is even more shocking is that huge proportions of people who attend churches whose official doctrine says eternal salvation comes only from embracing Jesus Christ as savior nonetheless believe that a person can qualify for Heaven by being or doing good. That includes close to half of all adults associated with Pentecostal (46%), mainline Protestant (44%), and evangelical (41%) churches. A much larger share of Catholics (70%) embrace that point of view.

The Morning Dispatch: One Bad Debate

“Watching that debate,” one Democratic strategist told us after, “was like watching the Angel of Death unfurl its glorious infinitely black wings before me, my eyes being taken ever deeper into the absolute void where no color can exist, and seeing in that moment nothing but death and the end of all things shouted at me through the guttural Queens accent of a madman.”