Join 📚 Favorites And Reflection Questions
A batch of the best highlights from what Todd's read, .
The story of Jesus speaks to me because, in one scene, Jesus is lovingly blessing little kids, and in another, he’s calling religious leaders a bunch of snakes. Jesus’s paradigm for God is of a gracious, loving Father who kisses the faces of his sinful, rebellious children, but the seriousness with which he regards evil is so intense that he says it’s better to gouge your own eye out than to objectify women. One thing makes me gush. The other makes me nervous. I’m suspicious of voices that only tell me what I want to hear.
Were it me, I might emphasize one thing, but not the other. I’d conceive of a God who is either never angry or never not angry. A soft, enabling God who doesn’t care enough to stop me from destroying myself, or a God so appalled at my relentless failure that he can’t bear to look at me without retching. But in Jesus, our soul-longings to be known and loved, for an end to evil and injustice are realized in the unfathomable beauty of truly self-sacrificial love.
Death to Deconstruction
Joshua S. Porter
Well, I actually think that one of the good things that is happening today is precisely the loss as Christians of our status and power in the wider society. That loss makes us free. We as Christ’s disciples ain’t got nothing to lose anymore. That’s a great advantage because as a people with nothing to lose, we might as well go ahead and live the way Jesus wants us to. We don’t have to be in control or be tempted to use the means of control. We can once again, like the first Christians, be known as that people that don’t bullshit the world.
Peacemaking Is Political
plough.com
Burkeman ends the book with ten ideas to help you live life fully in the moment through meaningful choices:
1. **Fixed volume approach to productivity** - tough choices are inevitable: focus on making them mindfully and well. He recommends two lists: “Open” (everything on your plate) and “Closed” (a fixed number of entries - 10 at most - then only add new items if your list is under ten.) An “On Hold” list is OK too. In addition, set a fixed time boundary for daily work.
2. **Serialize** - focus on one project at a time or at least one work and one non-work project. Work until completion then move on to the next.
3. **Decide in advance what to fail at** - our time and energy is finite, so planning in advance what is OK to fail or be mediocre at allows you to reduce anxiety of trying to do everything.
4. **Focus on what you've completed**, not just what's left to complete versus starting each day fresh in productivity debt. Create a Done list and fill it out each day. Anything counts.
5. **Consolidate your caring** – society and media operates on enticing you to care about everything. Pick your battles and focus.
6. **Embrace boring and single purpose technology** – make your devices as boring as possible. Make it a tool vs a toy.
7. **Seek out novelty in the mundane** – life gets routinized and that is what makes time feel like it passes so quickly. Childhood is filled with novelty so it feels like it lasts forever. Pay more attention to each moment and plunge more deeply into each moment you have. Meditation helps, but also taking unplanned walks, new routes, photography, or bird watching, anything that draws more attention to what you are doing in the moment.
8. **Be a researcher in relationships** – when you are bored in a moment with someone else, turn to curiosity without any plan or goal.
9. **Cultivate instantaneous generosity** - act on the impulse to give money, send a nice message, give someone a call, or simply be nice to someone. Only generosity that counts is the one you do. Generous action also increases happiness.
10. **Practice doing nothing** – if you can't sit with doing nothing, you will feel like you need to fill every moment and make poor choices about your time. Resist the urge to manipulate your experience or people around you. Meditation can help.
Finitude and Productivity
Jason Dettbarn
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
Readwise