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Fred Smith's avatar

Okay, so I am an old English teacher. Make an edit in the following: “Somethings else surface. We get to go granular in our consideration—our analysis—of of the relationships that got us where we are and get us where we’re going.”

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David Dark's avatar

Thank you for this, Fred. I was being deliberately weird with my somethings, but you're right about the double of. I'll fix it. I was in a hurry because I wanted to get it posted by 5. If you think to, please text it over to Bill Haslam. He jogged past me the other day with earphones plugged in and I keep wishing I'd asked him to say something publicly about the threats his team captain poses to the people of Tennessee. If he shows up tonight, I might try to make a case for courage.

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Carol Buckley Frazier's avatar

This is delightful, David! Just thinking about these cartoon characters which I still love to watch sometimes on ME TV. Does bring a kind of comfort to a crazy world That is moving past us way too quickly.

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Jon Trott's avatar

Reading this was great fun. I'm wondering if you've read T. S. Eliot's "Cult and Culture" stuff?

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Darrell A. Harris's avatar

It was quite a few years ago . . . I was still serving as chaplain in The Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies ( http://iws.edu ). Because of the highly ecumenical mission and nature of the IWS I decided to take a year or two and visit churches of every denomination and stripe in order to have a better feel for the eclectic character of my “flock.”

I heard lots of great preaching. However, I should also note that most preachers I heard seemed to either be frustrated seminary professors stuck in a local church or frustrated stand-up comics stuck in a local church or some amalgam of the two.

But there was this one service. It was a weekday afternoon Taizé service at the Downtown Presbyterian Church. The homily barely took as much time to preach as it took for the Reader to read the short section from the Acts of the Apostles that was our text for the day. Yet I can still clearly remember what the homilest gleaned from and proclaimed from that text.

I had never understood more clearly the virtue of brevity.

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Mike A.'s avatar

This looks fantastic. I’m jealous. My small corner of the CULTure just hosted another Mockingbird conference so was able to take a deep dive in similar ponds. So I’m jealous but recently indulged. Blessings to you.

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