Currently reading: The Amish Way by Kraybill, Nolt, Weaver-Zercher Finished reading: Against the Wind: Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof by Markus Baum. Engaging biography. Will be reading more about the Bruderhof. Becoming Anabaptist by J. Denny Weaver. Focused on the Reformation era. Historical books often lose my interest (my fault, not theirs) but this one did not. Future plans: More by Kraybill The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder.
On my morning commute (i.e., walking a few blocks to work!), I’ve started listening to Remembering Peasants by Patrick Joyce. I think this is going to be a good one.
I’m honestly a bit surprised how much I’m enjoying this biography of Eberhard Arnold, founder of the Bruderhof. To be fair, it’s a friendly biography. Still, he’s an interesting guy.
This is cool: a device for stirring natural nut butters.
Byung-Chul Han, kicking off Psycho-Politics with a banger:
We are living in a particular phase of history: freedom itself is bringing forth compulsion and constraint. The freedom of Can generates even more coercion than the disciplinarian Should, which issues commandments and prohibitions. Should has a limit. In contrast, Can has none. Thus, the compulsion entailed by Can is unlimited. And so we find ourselves in a paradoxical situation. Technically, freedom means the opposite of coercion and compulsion. Being free means being free from constraint. But now freedom itself, which is supposed to be the opposite of constraint, is producing coercion. Psychic maladies such as depression and burnout express a profound crisis of freedom. They represent pathological signs that freedom is now switching over into manifold forms of compulsion.
Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him,
Donny quotes William E. Pannell discussing his crisis of conscience after the 1963 Birmingham church bombing. It strikes me that now such young deaths are common—barely newsworthy, and certainly don’t cause any crises of conscience. Doing nothing after Sandy Hook was a turning point for us.
Profile of Jack Baumgartner in Plough: “Downstairs, I start the hot water for coffee. I stir the coals in the wood stove we heat our home with, remove some ashes, and place two mulberry logs on the embers to ignite. This is priestly work and an art near to my heart, maintaining a fire for my family. It is a part of my worship.” “Farming the Universe.” Much the same material as above, but written by Jack himself.
Today I learned about the tolstoyans. I knew about Tolstoy’s beliefs here but I was unaware that there were attempts at building a movement specifically based on Tolstoy. Reproducing Markus Baum’s footnote: Regarding the tolstoyans: Count Leo Tolstoy, the great nineteenth-century Russian novelist and thinker, taught that the meaning of life could be found through the literal application of Christ’s teachings, especially the Sermon on the Mount. Tolstoy sought to rescue the true teachings of Christ from what he perceived to be the irrelevant, irrational doctrines of faith.
Karl Heim, as quoted in Against the Wind: “Every compromise between the Sermon on the Mount and the power politics of this world is like a water ditch dug by human firefighters – it limits the movement of divine life, dampens the spirit, and prevents the holy fire from spreading.”