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.