A Sound of Sheer Silence

I have two very hot takes.  The first is that Joe Biden is the best United States President in my lifetime, and probably the best since Franklin Roosevelt, and his many critics on both the right and the left are wrong.  The second is that the Irish monk Pelagius and his (mostly Celtic) disciples were basically right, and more specifically Pelagius's great opponent Augustine (and by extension the rest of the Western Church ever since) was wrong.  But the hottest take, the Hegelian synthesis of this Hotness, is that these two takes are ultimately the same take.  I believe that Biden is a great President because I am a Pelagian with a Pelagian world view, whereas American politics is fundamentally Calvinist, which is just Augustinianism taken to its logical conclusion. Let me try to justify this ball of hot takes. 1. Most of what we know of Pelagius comes from his opponents, especially Augustine and Jerome, who attempted (more or less successfully) to have him cast out ...

Pictures by Nick Hofmeister, Jon Achenbach, and myself A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of taking a trip to Ireland.  It was a gift from some very close friends, in celebration of my upcoming marriage.  We had a fantastic time, especially because it was my first trip to Ireland. Five experiences really resonated with me, and will stick with me for a long time.  After a couple of weeks to process the experiences, I wanted to put into words the ways that this trip has affected me.  Three of the five experiences have to do with churches; two (and really, three) of them have to do with dying to some degree, which is not all that surprising as I very clearly brought my Mom with me on this trip.  Most people would say that three of them have to do with spiritual matters, but I actually think all of them do, in truth.  And all of them are, in one way or another, about the past and how we relate to it in our time (or, at least, how I relate to it) One--S...

When I was in high school, I went through a period where I was obsessed with Napoleon.  There has never been a historical figure before or since that has captured my imagination in the same way.  I read multiple biographies, did a fairly deep dive into his campaigns, even for a brief period thought I wanted to join the Army and become an artillery officer in emulation of Le Petit Caporal .  And while I would not characterize myself currently as "obsessed," I still retain a weird amount of Napoleon knowledge.  I listen to the (outstanding) Age of Napoleon podcast  recreationally and have developed Opinions on various commanders of the period and their relative competencies.  Some guys are Civil War Guys, some guys are World War II Guys; I'm a Napoleon Guy. Now, some might say that I felt a kinship with Napoleon because he and I are firmly on Team Short King.  And I would be lying if I said that had nothing to do with it.  But that's not really the ...

1. A couple of weekends ago, I went to the Columbus Gay Pride Parade.  The main parade route goes up High Street, and I live a couple blocks from High, so I gathered the folding chairs and walked to the parade route to reserve a spot for myself, my fiancé, and some friends. You will likely be surprised to learn that Columbus, Ohio has one of the largest gay pride parades in the country.  Stonewall Columbus announced a total attendance (participants and spectators) of 700,000 people.  I am not sure how they calculate that beyond a basic estimate, but the actual parade portion took close to three hours to fully pass by our location toward the end of the route, so I have no reason to doubt the big picture number.  To be fully transparent, I don't have three hours of parade in me, no matter the content or circumstances, so we abandoned ship around the 2:45 mark.  Plus, I had ribs to cook for dinner, and anyone who has done that knows it is a lengthy process. I saw a...

1. Faith is a very strange thing, at least in my experience.  People report experiencing "the loss of faith," which I take to mean that they had this thing called faith (however they understood that concept) at one point in time, but then at some later point in time no longer had it.  Under that definition, I have never experienced any loss of faith.  There has always been this thing, this presence, this sense of something that is far beyond me, and far beyond the collective us.  That has never waivered, never gone away. What has changed, and changed fairly radically, is understanding  of that presence.  There have been periods of my life where I have believed to understand that presence in rather clear and explicit terms.  And there have been other times where, despite the continued and sustained presence  of the presence, I feel like I have no idea what it is, or what it means.  For folks who believe that the proper orientation to this inch...

As a game, Traveller is best known for its character creation system.  Most games, modelling themselves off of D&D , build out the character as it is at the time play begins.  In other words, character creation determines how strong the character is right now , what abilities he or she has right now .  Traveller , instead, pioneered the "life path" system.  After rolling up some basic stats, the player moves the character through a series of "terms"--four year chunks of time starting at age 18 in which the character takes on a particular job and develops new skills and abilities.  At the end of each term, the player making the character rolls to see if the character is promoted within that career, and rolls to see whether the character is allowed to continue in that career into the next term.  If the character is kicked out of the career, or wants to go pursue something else, they have to roll to see if they qualify for the new career--otherwise, they h...