Welcome to Midweek Dinner. If this is your first time here, feel free to poke around and ask questions (but don’t go in the attic). Perhaps you’d be interested in seeing the very first edition? If you like the look of the place, stick around! You can sign up here to receive a new issue every Wednesday, delivered piping hot, right to your doorstep.
There are stretches in life that are just plain overwhelming. Not in a despair-inducing kind of way, but definitely a treading-water-to-keep-afloat kind of way. I’m in one of those stretches right now. Lots of emotional labor with and for my kids. Lots of logistics for lots of different situations. Lots of time away from my desk, away from my thoughts, away from creative work. Knowing that, I hope you will forgive my occasional absences, from this newsletter and the site and even on Twitter. Everything that isn’t home and family will stay a little lower on the totem pole, probably until September.
When faced with more than is feasible to accomplish in a given day or week, it is all-too-common to use “I don’t have time” as the justification for why certain things don’t get accomplished. I choose, instead, to say, “I’m not making that a priority right now,” or for an even more positive spin: “I’m choosing to prioritize other things.”
To me, that sense of choice, the empowerment of those words, is the difference between despair and hope. And as my people know, I choose hope.
As I prioritize other things, I may pop in with a few choice links, things that I’ve found interesting or provocative, presented with little to no commentary. As always, I welcome your feedback. Here’s a few things that have come across my desk in the last bit:
This TEDxTalk from Matthew B. Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soul Craft and Why We Drive (I own but haven’t read the first of these titles; the second, I just checked out from the library)
Basketball, art, activism: The Gold Nets project is a lovely intersection of athletics and the stewardship of public space
For those that have been following along with the Bittersweet video series with Walter Brueggemann, here’s installment IV.
I hope you are well. I hope your head remains above that water. Until next time.