Shared Links, Jan-May 2015

So 2015 came, and I was reading The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis for the very first time; I often think that if I'd been made to read it as a teenager, my spiritual path would have been quite a bit different: "And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off."

This Medium piece by Hans de Zwart is chilling: Ai Weiwei is Living in Our Future Living under permanent surveillance and what that means for our freedom

Pico Iyer in the New York Times: Healthy Body, Unhealthy Mind "We run and run in search of contentment, Pascal wrote in his 'Pensées,' and so ensure we’ll never be settled or content. We mindlessly race away from the one place where happiness is to be found."

Marilynne Robinson's Gilead wasn't around when I should've first been reading Lewis, but I'm sure glad it was here in 2015 when I needed to see a modern writer glorifying God's good and mysterious Creation: “That mention of Feuerbach and joy reminded me of something I saw early one morning a few years ago, as I was walking up to the church. There was a young couple strolling along half a block ahead of me. The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet. On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose, the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them, and they laughed and took off running, the girl sweeping water off her hair and her dress as if she were a little bit disgusted, but she wasn't. It was a beautiful thing to see, like something from a myth. I don’t know why I thought of that now, except perhaps because it is very easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash. I wish I had paid more attention to it. My list of regrets may seem unusual, but who can know that they are, really. This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it."

" 'For who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him?' In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable - which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us."

Scrolling through this digital Memory Lane is interesting because of the surprises. I shared virtually nothing in February or March, which is when I was going through my divorce, and when I was finally starting to tell others I was a Christian. I don't remember consciously stopping sharing things, and I can't say for sure what caused it: whether there was a connection between having more in-person conversations and spending time with friends and a decreased use of social media, or merely a very different mental state from the major life changes I was going through, or perhaps a challenge in finding things to share that were Christian (probably a decent amount of what I was reading at the time, although I can't be sure) without revealing my newfound spiritual allegiances too publicly. Perhaps the number of major changes just made everything else I could've shared seem insignificant, particularly to share with people I didn't know as well, compared with what I hadn't told anyone but those closest to me. 

One thing I did share: Leonard Nimoy passed in February, and while I was never the biggest Star Trek fan, this is a great quote: "There is a moment when we are all touched by the humanity in these creatures that are supposedly inhuman, when the character Spock, the Frankenstein monster, or Quasimodo, says, 'I, too, need love.' Millions respond and love pours out because we all need it and we all understand. When one is touched, by a flower or a drink of water, then we are all touched and we can cry for him and ourselves. Tears of connection. And now I realize that all of this was preparation for the role of Spock. Crying for Quasimodo’s heart inside that awful body. Loving the monster who spared the child. Joining with humanity to share understanding and compassion.
These very simple and obviously human experiences were the best preparation an actor could have to play the supposedly ahuman Spock. Spock was not my first experience playing alienated characters."

In April, likewise, I shared nothing, until the riots happened. My friend Kate was at Mondawmin when everything started, and she wrote at her blog what she saw: Cops in Riot Gear at Mondawmin Mall at Liberty Heights and Reisterstown Road

Matthew Loftus had a pretty quick turnaround after the riots, writing for The American Conservative on The Policing Baltimore Needs: "From Jim Crow to the War on Drugs, police have been incentivized to deny justice in support of an unattainable goal—but with an honest assessment of failures and a serious commitment to agreed-upon objectives, Sandtown can be a safer place. The community here will not give up fighting for our streets no matter what happens over the next few days. When the cameras leave and the fires stop burning, we’ll still be doing our best to work with the police and contribute to their efforts to make our community safer together."

For Baltimore City Paper (RIP), Rapper Kane Mayfield on Freddie Gray and the reality of police brutality. "The death of Freddie Gray didn’t even shock me. It’s not good, but it doesn’t shock me. I’m not shockable. I’m desensitized. I’ve been desensitized by the slow and deliberate destruction of people who look like me for longer than I can remember."

Matthew Loftus at The American Conservative again, asking the armchair pundits of the Internet as well as in-person protestors to Let Sandtown Speak For Itself: "With the nation’s eyes on Baltimore (and Baltimore’s eyes on Sandtown), what has struck me, as someone who has lived here for five years, is the speed with which people from the outside are willing to impose their own preconceived notions on my neighbors and our neighborhood. [...]
I have lost track of the number of sermons and conversations I’ve heard in which challenges to systemic injustice guided by wise policy changes, and personal responsibility shepherded by spiritual and cultural renewal, are combined into a comprehensive solution, not seen as being at odds in a culture-war skirmish. If you can’t comprehend that the two might work together, consider listening to the people here working for both."

Stop Making Sense.