A “traditioned” life is not a static existence. Instead, it is something of a co-existence. The givenness of life is allowed. The mountains get a vote (or even a veto). There are many “mountains” in our lives – it is an ever-present feature of a material existence. Our planet is “traditioned” in a very unique position. That position (and much else that has been given us) make life possible. Very slight changes to that position would make life (certainly human life) impossible. At some point in our future, the ravages of an ice age will return (and there will be nothing we can do about it). —Fr. Stephen Freeman
...if God thinks and feels and speaks—if God has something like a ‘mind’—then maybe to be fully human means exercising our own mental functions, and not enfeebling them through excessive device use. Or, if God is face-to-face relationship as a Trinity, then our real center is not within us, but within the other—in our real relationships. And if God made the earth, plants, and animals, then maybe being human means staying physically close to these things.All that might sound very basic, yet in all these areas—mind, relationship, nature, embodiment—the ‘Machine’ competes against God, by framing every part of reality as a biological mechanism or a simulation, to be manipulated according to our caprice. I think this is where the real battle is—a battle to answer the question, “What is reality?”But this is not a question for Christians alone. It matters to all of us, and I think we need to wrestle with it in our families, our schools, even in our politics. We’ll come up with varying answers, but what matters is that we’re left with a robust moral awareness of the dark side of technology. Without that, the only thing left to wake us up will be suffering. --Peco Gaskovski
...if commitment comes with risks, the price of trying to avoid those risks is higher still. Committing to family life may be to risk abandonment. But the manosphere, and it female mirror-image ideology of Sex and the City liberal feminism, is a sterile, futile war not just on emotional risk but the inevitabilities that stand behind that risk: time, ageing, and death. The advice offered by these ideologies is far worse than risk-taking: to eschew all the long-term commitments that make life meaningful, in case the sight of your partner ageing normally reminds you of the passage of time. Grow old anyway, and leave no legacy of love to nourish the next generation. --Mary Harrington
This paragraph probably sums up the truth I would most like to pass on to my daughters. So many contemporary popular fictions (aka politics, belief systems, ideologies) have an unspoken assumption: namely, that one can (and should) live forever the way that one (might) live in one's twenties. From one perspective, this might look like personal autonomy, or even eternal youth. But it is a terribly brittle mindset, implying that the only good things in life are the things we choose and the things we control. Change and loss come for all of us, however. Things we cannot control, both welcome and unwelcome, happen to all of us. Just based on my experience, however, the things we do not control are sometimes the very things we need. It seems to me that the sane way to live is invest some time in figuring out what and who is important, stick with it/them, and not try to bulldoze every mountain that stands in the way.
A feast without a fast is a strange, half-finished thing: this is something I’ve only learned recently. We are coming up to the greatest annual feast of all, the one that most people, whether Christian or not, are going to end up celebrating. I’ve celebrated Christmas all my life, mostly with no religious trappings, and I’ve always loved it — more so since I became a father. But Christmas, in historical terms, is only one of a number of great feasts that make up the Christian ritual year, which was once — and still is in those parts of the world which continue to take it seriously — studded with saints days, festivals, processions, and feasts. --Paul Kingsnorth
- Technology use (reducing, altering, removing, replacing)
- Self-sufficient, minimalist practices
- Embodied & mental practices
- Children and family
- Spiritual and relational practices