tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69650326783479552272024-03-13T04:41:23.441-04:00A Sound of Sheer SilenceWe are all just walking ourselves home.Michael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.comBlogger542125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-41507085406427968732024-03-05T15:01:00.001-05:002024-03-05T15:01:25.322-05:00We Need to Talk About Dune and ReligionMuch that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within Michael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-36165544312370578532024-02-14T11:41:00.007-05:002024-02-15T08:58:16.577-05:00A Reflection on the Past, and Also on ArtExactly twenty-two years ago, in February of 2002, I was living in River Forest, Illinois, finishing up my undergraduate degree. I was living in an enormous old priory, hoping that I would be able to join the Dominicans when I was done with school in the summer (which, in fact, happened). The priory was built in the 50s, when the Dominicans would have classes of a fifty or sixty Michael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-25147047339451765242023-12-18T08:54:00.013-05:002024-02-19T12:31:29.203-05:00On a Pelagian Politics, and Why It Would Be GoodI 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 Michael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-88234171292885747872023-11-09T10:40:00.011-05:002023-12-18T10:42:47.941-05:00Five Notes on IrelandPictures by Nick Hofmeister, Jon Achenbach, and myselfA 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 Michael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-21322840262813214312023-08-02T11:21:00.007-04:002023-08-02T15:49:50.514-04:00On NapoleonWhen 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 Michael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-36115629995234690922023-07-07T11:04:00.001-04:002023-07-07T11:09:30.133-04:00On Pride: A Speech (from a Cis Straight Guy) to its Religious Despisers1.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. Michael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-11612162926313439342023-06-02T14:17:00.004-04:002023-07-07T10:56:01.208-04:00Notes on a Time at Sea1.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 Michael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-25961963105831806322023-01-03T11:14:00.000-05:002023-01-03T11:14:16.027-05:00RPG Philosophy--Traveller and CapitalismAs 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 Michael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-51876798552725401772022-12-09T09:29:00.003-05:002023-09-14T10:40:08.444-04:00RPG Philosophy--Traveller and PsychologyEveryone has their thing. Mine, more or less consistently since I was 12 years old, has been tabletop rpgs. For those not familiar, the best known (and first) tabletop rpg is Dungeons and Dragons, but there are thousands of similar games out there. The basic concept is that all of the people playing save one take on the role of a protagonist character, usually one that the Michael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-18515543856973748312022-10-18T22:03:00.004-04:002023-09-08T08:39:40.435-04:00"If You Can't Love Yourself, How the Hell Are You Gonna Love Somebody Else?"For extended portions of my adult life, I was celibate. For a period of about three or four years, while I was exploring becoming a Roman Catholic priest, this was part of an intentional program--I was "voluntarily celibate," or "volcel" to use the term that has become popular in the Discourse. But, for the rest of that period, I would have rather not been. So, most of my adult Michael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-73646497882712337782022-09-21T13:52:00.014-04:002023-03-20T09:13:03.986-04:00On Being a ProtestantOn Sunday, I had a visit with a man that I got to know during my time with the Dominicans. He was enormously supportive of me during that time; in fact, he was the most supportive member of the Dominicans, all told. I will always be very grateful to him for his kindness and support in my early 20s. He was a couple of years ahead of me in formation, but he entered the Order olderMichael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-12094595067423034212022-08-09T09:25:00.000-04:002022-08-09T09:25:45.530-04:00Signpost #2--What Faith is NotSo, I thought that was now going to turn to discussions of God, but I think there is something else that is worth getting out of the way from the beginning, and that is what it means to "believe" in God or some faith tradition, and how one goes about doing that. In other words, what it means to have faith. Because I think there is a fundamental divide here in the way this is presentedMichael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-34023161614023046712022-08-01T10:00:00.001-04:002022-08-01T10:00:36.306-04:00On Naming the FearThis weekend, there was a dust up on so-called Weird Anglican Twitter, or WAT. The question was whether clergy (in this case, in the Episcopal Church) should be required to "really believe in" the Creeds. As a matter of doctrine, this is not a disputed issue--the answer is an unambiguous "yes." But one will find those in the Episcopal Church, including clergy, who think that Michael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-37536623332498066622022-07-27T09:11:00.004-04:002022-07-27T10:23:29.679-04:00Signpost #1--What is Religion, Anyway?Statistics tell us that we in the United States are approaching the point at which a majority of people do not consider themselves "religious." Western Europe reached that point a while ago. But behind those statistics is the question of what the survey recipients might mean by "religious" or "religion." The popular understanding of this word, an understanding that I think is Michael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-16296119260301603762022-07-20T16:26:00.001-04:002022-07-20T16:26:55.327-04:00A Shot At The Night1.I lost.It was close, and it was a good race, but I lost. And, looking at the totality of the circumstances (the details of which are boring, especially since they were completely out of my control), I believe I did as well as I could have done.In the two months or so since the primary, many people have asked me how I am doing. They are expecting, I think, for me to be traumatized onMichael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-7012908581779940922022-03-25T11:03:00.004-04:002022-03-25T15:22:22.701-04:00A GoodbyeIt's been a long time coming, but the time has come to shut down this blog for good. Even a casual look at the posts shows that the output here has slowed to a crawl, so the trajectory has been easy to see. But I think it makes sense to officially and formally close things down.The primary reason for closing things down now is that I am at a point in my life where it is no longer Michael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-47687377955319152582021-07-19T10:29:00.001-04:002021-07-19T20:08:16.997-04:00The Freedom that Comes From Being a FailureIn the past, I have written about the project that I was a part of called the Community of Mary, Mother of the Redeemer. As of last Thursday, I am no longer part of CMMR. It still exists, just without me (and other core members). I would love to be able to say that I have all the confidence in the world that CMMR will grow and flourish, but that would be a lie. I think theMichael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-85669875677057859692021-07-09T09:15:00.003-04:002021-07-09T09:29:22.936-04:00A Return to Tutu's WagerWhen I was in the process of becoming an Episcopalian, a close friend of mine--someone who was a serious Christian, a priest actually, but not a Roman Catholic--expressed very serious concerns about the project. One of his concerns was over my perceived (correctly perceived, as it turned out) lack of institutional loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church. In his mind, once you are on a Michael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-89707260093881803672021-07-06T11:38:00.002-04:002021-07-07T13:43:44.574-04:00On Church Discipline and Its Discontents"So, what do you think about the bishops wanting to deny Biden Communion?"I've gotten that question a lot. There are a number of ways to approach this issue that I think are interesting on their own merits, but not ultimately the heart of the conversation. For example, the lawyer in me is fascinated by the applicability of Canon 1405 p.1, which states that "[i]n the cases mentioned in CanonMichael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-90172163512367065442021-04-05T11:45:00.006-04:002021-04-07T08:35:17.729-04:00The Slow Work: On the Poetry of FaithA while back in this space, I told a story about my first really significant encounter with a personal faith. It was an experience that came about via the medium of stories, more specifically the stories of this particular person named Jesus who lived a long time ago in a far off place. I wouldn't have had that vocabulary at the time, but it was a "poetic" experience and encounter.&Michael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-87967381434107711092021-03-25T09:00:00.008-04:002021-03-25T09:15:12.890-04:00The Slow Work: MoonlightA while back in this space, I wrote about a book entitled Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor. The core idea, concept of "lunar faith" as contrasted with "solar faith," was a home run for me. Many people, maybe even most people, either have or want a faith that is solar--it provides clarity and definition and warmth pretty much all the time. A faith that has Michael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-57059529198379801792021-03-24T15:04:00.008-04:002023-03-20T09:24:50.512-04:00The Galileo Affair 2.0In The Eighteenth of Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Karl Marx said, "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." In the early 17th Century, the Roman Catholic Church committed an enormous, wholly unnecessary own goal when it condemned Galileo's astronomical Michael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-26451575733580973422021-02-09T11:41:00.016-05:002021-02-09T19:44:20.148-05:00On Marketing and Max LucadoThis Sunday, the Washington National Cathedral, which is technically the cathedral of the Diocese of Washington of the Episcopal Church, invited Max Lucado to preach. Lucado is an evangelical author and speaker, known (at least in my sense of things) as one of those guys who writes those novels that fill up the massive shelf space in the "Christian Living" section of Barnes & Noble.&Michael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-28323557232732997722021-02-01T09:09:00.005-05:002021-02-01T09:09:43.852-05:00A Shameless PlugFor the first time in almost 20 years, I preached in a church yesterday. And, through the magic of the Internet, it is archived for all time. If you are curious, here it is.Michael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6965032678347955227.post-57120656171034076612020-12-31T22:04:00.005-05:002021-01-01T12:06:36.066-05:00Journal of the Plague Year: On the Lightbringers' QuestI'm going to cross my streams a bit here, incorporating some stuff from my other blog that reviews and discusses tabletop role playing games, my hobbyist passion. More specifically, I want to talk about Glorantha, one of the most interesting and compelling fantasy worlds that I have encountered. Glorantha was the creation of Greg Stafford (1948-2018), though Stafford preferred to say Michael Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06226770975036666826noreply@blogger.com0