So where, you may have wondered, are the promised Link Logs? The answer is that I've not done a lot of surfing this week. I'd like to say that I've been busy working with a writer on a forthcoming book. Well, I am, and it's a big serious book full of heartwarming and heart-rending stories, the sort of thing my mother would have liked to read and promote while occasionally muttering "But where's your own book?" But it's still at the stage where the writer is doing most of the actual work. I've been busy being sick from glyphosate poisoning. I have got some other chores done, too; there's that.
I suppose these logs need a few rules. Links will be organized into general categories rather than being time-stamped. Link logs will close at midnight and will officially go live, whether I'm online at midnight or not, at midday the next day.
Books
Warning: if you skipped the whole vampire fad in the 1980s and 1990s because you'd already read Dracula, this article may cause you to want to go back and reread vampire novels.
Christian
So many good things come from Plough.com...In this post, which is a good thing, I smell the mold spores of potential emotional abuse. Trying to be "teachable" among flawed mortals can turn into a rule for setting up hierarchies of verbal abuse in which some people just arrogate to themselves the "right" to shred others' emotions any time their sick egos crave a boost, and others just let them. As a general rule the ones dishing out the emotional abuse will not always be White, male, older, or richer than their victims, but they will be either extroverts, or introverts trying desperately to pass for or even become extroverts. And the ones taking it will be conscientious introverts trying to cultivate the virtue of meekness, or teachability. And, for that reason, the victims will be much nicer people, "better" Christians by any measure, than the abusers. And right up until the day when they realize that they're not receiving God's guidance but aggravating a mental disorder, what they are taught will be that it's not possible for them ever to do anything right.
This must be stopped. We have to become comfortable, when we hear any little uninvited "suggestions for personal growth" or, more likely, sneaky verbal attacks, with saying loudly: "FAULT-FINDING! Out, demon, out! I rebuke you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ!" If you say this with authority, most verbal abusers will be speechless for at least a few minutes. And during that time, any fellow believers who are present need to rally to support the person attacked, saying things like "From the evil spirits of fault-finding, arrogance, verbal bullying, and forming hierarchies among ourselves, dear Lord, protect and deliver us." There should be a very clear sense that the fault-finder has lost status. It may help to avoid looking at, speaking to, or listening to the person until the person has said, with bowed head and sincere humility of manner, "I'm sorry I said anything that was heard as judgmental. Please forgive me. If I was asking my kind and gracious Brother/Sister X for any kind of change in behavior, I FAILED to do that in the correct form and beg permission to withdraw the request while I show repentance."
In any church or fellowship group I wanted to attend regularly, the rule against abusing anyone's "teachable spirit" would be so strictly enforced that ninety-year-olds who wanted to be recognized as not being senile would be subject to correction if they indulged a fault-finding spirit toward thirteen-year-olds. Seriously. Such that if I blurted out an unsolicited "Who did that to your hair?" or "Don't you have a decent black skirt to wear to your uncle's funeral?", The Nephews would be encouraged to express concern for their poor old Auntie Pris with the fault-finding problem. I don't say that sort of thing, but if I did I'd hope that sincere Christians would rebuke me for it. As I expect them to rebuke anyone who tries it on me.
After shaking the dust of some verbally abusive fellowship groups off my feet, I worked out Three Rules for Teachability:
1. Always accept the correction implicit in the behavior of your unquestioned subordinates--children, students, animals, employees. This does not mean accepting displays of rebellion against their subordinate status. It does mean learning from their behavior when you, as the superordinate, have gone too far--or not far enough.
2. Always invite correction from (a) anyone who is paying you to do a job, and (b) anyone you are paying to do the job of teaching you: teacher, lawyer, doctor, etc.
3. Never encourage a fault-finding spirit in anyone else.
With that caveat, here are some lovely thoughts on the virtue of teachability.
Glyphosate Awareness
Regular readers should already have the book, or e-book, Merchants of Poison. New readers can gank a chapter from it here:
Poems
This one's been sitting in the e-mail since February but, when opened, it was still fresh and succulent.
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