Don’t Miss These
Wendell Berry and Zoom
By Jeffrey Bilbro
Enjoy two metaphors for how zoom replaces genuine conversations: tinned fruit and a prosthetic hand. A thoughtful offering from Front Porch Republic.
C. S. Lewis On Living in an Atomic Age
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
— “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays
For Such a Time as This: Living Out the Gospel During the COVID-19 Pandemic
UNC/Duke webinar with Dr. Nathan Theilman. I would like to thank the UNC study group for hosting this webinar and to Madison Perry, the UNC Executive Director, specifically for their generosity in sharing this information with all of us.
‘WE’RE ON AN EXPONENTIAL CURVE’
NIH Director Francis Collins speaks about the coronavirus, his faith, and an unusual friendship.
Two views on the problem of Evil and the COVID-19 Virus
