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How People Relate to TIME
A recent story in The Times, by Emily Laber-Warren, describes the ways we relate to time, dividing us into two groups. Monochronic people “tend to live by the clock and are primed, at least during work hours, to prioritize obligations over relationships.” Polychronic people, on the other hand, “tend to give primacy to experiences and relationships that don’t always fit neatly into prearranged schedules.” If you prefer to work on one thing at a time, emphasizing deadlines and seeing interruptions as irritating, you’re monochronic. Those who are good at multitasking, who comfortably allow shifts in their schedules if, for example, a friend comes to town and wants to go for a hike — those people are probably polychronic.
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Why Smart People Doubt Their Own Intelligence…
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Humanity’s Quiet Extinction
BRIEF: We’re sleepwalking into species obsolescence, not through catastrophe but through comfort—trading physical reproduction for digital connection as social media rewires our deepest biological drives. The second fertility transition is dropping birth rates below replacement levels globally, creating a future where shrinking populations of aging humans huddle in empty cities, sustained by AI collective intelligence rather than individual genius. While we gain unprecedented access to humanity’s accumulated wisdom through large language models, we’re simultaneously losing the capacity for individual heroics and creative breakthroughs that once defined human progress. The posthuman age isn’t arriving through dramatic technological singularity but through the quiet dissolution of what made us human—our drive to create new life, think independently, and act as individuals rather than nodes in a digital hive mind.
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Capote on Loneliness
“But we are alone, darling child, terribly, isolated each from the other; so fierce is the world’s ridicule we cannot speak or show our tenderness; for us, death is stronger than life, it pulls like a wind through the dark, all our cries burlesqued in joyless laughter; and with the garbage of loneliness stuffed down us until our guts burst bleeding green, we go screaming round the world, dying in our rented rooms, nightmare hotels, eternal homes of the transient heart.” - Truman Capote
“all our cries burlesqued in joyless laughter” is a gut-puncher of a line… and the way it sends out “screaming” Gosh. Loneliness divides and it lies.
Lord, break the lies for all of us.
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Loneliness.
“Loneliness, for me, isn’t a lack of people; it’s an overall uneasiness with what life offers me.”
“Gentle human contact [can] disrupt the demon voice.”
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Benevolent Friction
The Haitian side of the family was very vocal, and dinner conversations were important. I remember being a child and looking at my aunts and uncles and asking them why they were always arguing.
What I realized was that they were very engaged in discussions about the economy or about what was going on in different countries. I was witnessing the best part of “benevolent friction” — to be hard on ideas but soft on people — because there was a lot of love and hope about the future. …
Tell me more about “benevolent friction.”
In a start-up, you don’t know what tomorrow will bring, so you have to be constantly learning and be adaptive with your colleagues. You might think you have a role to play, but you have to listen and be responsive to your colleagues in order for the team to really win.
In the beginning, some people didn’t like it when I used that phrase because they felt that friction is a negative thing, and they didn’t want to have any friction with their colleagues.
I would explain that if you don’t have pressure on the carbon, you never get to the diamond. You can still be very respectful, and assume everybody has a spark, but we have to subject our ideas to the toughest scrutiny because our work is important.
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How do you hire?
I look for that spark. I invite them to tell me their story and how our company fits into that story. You learn a lot when people tell you their story: what they care about, their integrity, their passions and the choices and sacrifices that they make. When you overlay the technical capabilities on top of that, you have a pretty good sense of someone.
I also look for what I call “nimble intelligence” — people who can take in information, harness collective wisdom and make good judgments. They can adapt and pivot, and they’re always in motion.
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“What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes? Herein lies the key to your earthly pursuits.” -Carl Jung
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Tim Keller masterclass on stating views without being a jerk.
Koch’s main strategy in the interview was to paint the traditional Christian position as extreme and therefore as non-inclusive. So when Koch asked his first question about the “hardline views of the church on abortion and homosexuality,” it would have been appropriate for Mason to ask a counter-question. “With all due respect, David, your term ‘hardline’ sounds like you are calling our views extreme. But just under 2 billion people, ¼ of the world’s population, are Muslim, and they hold the same views — are you saying no Muslim could ever be the CEO of a public football club?”
Such a question uses secular persons’ own cultural narrative (that of diversity and the value of racial minorities) against them. If Koch had responded by saying, “Yes, I don’t think a Muslim could be a club CEO,” Mason could have responded that now he was being quite non-inclusive, and if the more than ¾ of the world population that doesn’t hold the secular view of sexuality is excluded, who now is being extreme? And if Koch had said, “Well those people haven’t been enlightened yet,” Mason might have replied, “How is that not just another example of western superiority and imperialism? Aren’t you doing the very marginalization and exclusion you are complaining about?”
Somewhere this counter-message needed to come through. It could have been put like this:
“The fact is, David, that everyone has a set of moral standards by which they include some and exclude others. No one is completely inclusive. And yes, Christians like everyone else lay down moral principles for people. We believe they fit in with how God created us and so they will help us thrive. And some people disagree with those rules and principles — but we do not kick them out and tell them they are abominable. We include them in loving community and walk with them as long as they wish us to. We believe that fits in with how Jesus lived and then died forgiving those who opposed him.”
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The Dangers of Porn
From NY Times Opinion: The Delusion of Porn’s Harmlessness
As a society, we are allowing our desires to continue to be molded in experimental ways, for profit, by an industry that does not have our best interests at heart. We want to prove that we’re chill and modern, skip the inevitable haggling over boundaries and regulation and avoid potentially placing limits on our behavior. But we aren’t paying attention to how we’re making things worse for ourselves. Ms. Phillips’s case is one example of how normalization of pornographic extremes has made even lurid acts de rigueur; it’s not hard to imagine a future that asks (and offers) more than we can imagine today.
www.nytimes.com/2025/05/1…®i_id=65067095&segment_id=198311&user_id=f072b8cd33fd7a4bada76d1ea460dee7
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Union with Christ is an intimate mystical mystery
Union with Christ as an intimate mystical mystery
From Gary Nebeker:
“I recall a time when, as a first-year Ph. D. student, I made a comment in a seminar. I told my peers and the professor who was teaching the seminar that it was silly to think of ourselves as “the brides of Christ.” We are “a part of the bride collectively,” I confidently asserted, “but we are not individually brides of Christ. That sounds weird and ‘mystical’ to me.”
My beloved professor gently corrected me. He said something along these lines: “We need to take Paul’s bridal imagery of union with Christ very seriously. This is not just corporate language, it is individual language as well. There is something deeply mysterious—even mystical—regarding our union with Christ. Marital intimacy is the closest analogy we have as humans to understand in some small way what union with Christ is like.”
I, along with my other Ph. D. students, knew this was a sacred moment. You could hear a pin drop. I will never forget it. Our professor was telling us that our union with Christ was “mystical.”
Of course, he was not talking about a profane, twisted, sexualized relationship with Christ, but of an intimacy and companionship with Jesus that is too deep for words, a union that defies rational explanation; an intimacy that is better experienced than explained.”
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Essay on "ALIVENESS" vs. Being Alive (and then on AI)
From Oliver Burkeman ckarchive.com/b/zlughnh…
In literal terms, of course, “aliveness” can’t be the right word here, because technically everyone’s alive all the time, whereas aliveness comes and goes. Still, I know it when I feel it. And I definitely know it when my misguided efforts to exert too much control over reality cause it to drain away. And so an excellent question to ask yourself – when you’re facing a tough decision, say, or wondering if you’re on the right track – is: “Does this feel like it’s taking me in the direction of greater aliveness?”
Crucially, aliveness isn’t the same as happiness. As the Zen teacher Christian Dillo explains in his engrossing book The Path of Aliveness, you can absolutely feel alive in the midst of intense sadness. Aliveness, he writes, “isn’t about feeling better; it’s about feeling better.” When I feel aliveness in my work, it’s not because every task is an unadulterated pleasure; and when I feel it in my close relationships, it’s not because I’ve transcended the capacity to get annoyed by other people – because believe me, I haven’t. … “I suspect that a certain form of naivete may be a precondition for aliveness. In a world where tech commentators confidently declare that we poor ignoramuses haven’t even begun to get our heads around what’s barreling down the tracks towards us, I think it’s good to stay fully, even slightly foolishly, committed to the idea that humans doing human things, with other humans, is and will remain at the vital heart of human existence. Because otherwise what on earth’s the point?
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Reader vs. Consumer
From John Warner:
“It happened slowly, and I’ve probably helped contribute to the shift, but much more energy has gone towards articles on “What people are reading” in general, than what happens to people when we read.
There’s obviously nothing wrong with recommending books. I do it as part of my column every single week, hopefully in a way that doesn’t fall prey to recommendation culture, but when recommending books is the entirety of book culture, well…we don’t have a book culture anymore.
We become consumers of content, rather than readers of books. I would argue (and have argued) that the chief identity for the American of this era is a “consumer.”
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How does faith shape my work?
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Pain is the touchpoint of all spiritual growth.
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“In art we research our feelings..Artists are feelings merchants — a piece of art is something designed to trigger feelings. Our feelings guide us as we move into new futures, either by tempting us one, or frightening us away.”
-Brian Eno and Bette A. in “What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory”
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Meaningful Questions
A list of questions posed by Morgan Housel. Some favorites: 1) If I could not compare myself to anyone else, how would I define a good life? 2) How many of my principles are cultural fads? 3) What question am I afraid to ask because I suspect I know the answer? 4) How do I know if I’m being patient (a skill) or stubborn (a flaw)? 5) Which future memory am I creating right now, and will I be proud to own it? Collab Fund (5 minutes)
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We do our best thinking when we’re moving. Human intelligence is an EMBODIED intelligence. - Austin Kleon austinkleon.substack.com/p/thinkin…
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Writing = engaging another mind
“The work of writing a book is not the selection of suitable words. The work is the task of engaging another mind. It is a constant dance between understanding your subject and understanding how a future reader will react to it - a reader you can never know, but which you still have to intuit.” -John Higgs
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Regrets and Reflections of The Dying
Top 5 Regrets Said on Death Beds:
I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. I wish I had let myself be happier.
This curation from Austin Klein: austinkleon.com/2018/02/0…
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ON Friendship -- And Why We Need to See Them Differently
“The problem with relationships is often one of quality rather than quantity. One firm believer in this principle is Shasta Nelson, who writes about friendship and hosts a podcast called Frientimacy. The title is a nod to what she believes many people are hungry for: not friends, per se, but real intimacy with those friends. “We don’t need to meet more people,” she told me. “We need to feel more met by the people we already know.”
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The Pope's Moral Vision for AI
“Ultimately, Pope Francis framed the Church’s objective not as stopping Al’s advances, but as harnessing its extraordinary potential to serve humanity, especially the most vulnerable. He stressed that Al’s success should be measured not in conventional technological benchmarks, market share, or productivity gains, but in whether it improves the quality of life for all humanity.”
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Trees in Scripture
“Other than people and God, trees are the most mentioned living thing in the Bible. There are trees in the first chapter of Genesis (verses 11-12), in the first psalm (Psalm 1:3), and on the last page of Revelation (22:2). As if to underscore all these trees, the Bible refers to wisdom as a tree (Proverbs 3:18).
Every major character and every major theological event in the Bible has an associated tree. The only exception to this pattern is Joseph, and in Joseph’s case the Bible pays him a high compliment: Joseph is a tree (Genesis 49:22). In fact, Jeremiah urges all believers to be like a tree (17:7–8). So does Psalm 1.
The only physical description of Jesus in the Bible occurs in Isaiah. “Want to recognize the Messiah when he arrives?” Isaiah asks. “Look for the man who resembles a little tree growing out of barren ground” (53:2, paraphrase mine).
Do you think trees are beautiful? You’re in good company. God loves trees, too. By highlighting every sentence containing a tree in the first three chapters of Genesis, you can get a pretty good sense of what God thinks about trees. Nearly a third of the sentences contain a tree.
Genesis 2:9 declares that trees are “pleasing to the eye.” This aesthetic standard does not waver throughout the Bible. Whether God is instructing his people on how to make candlesticks (Exodus 25:31-40), decorate the corbels of the temple (1 Kings 6), or hem the high priest’s robe (Exodus 28:34), the standard of beauty is a tree (and its fruits). If we were to examine the most comfortable seat in a home today, odds are that it faces a television. In heaven, God’s throne faces a tree (Revelation 22:2-3).
In Genesis 2, God makes two things with his own hands. First, he forms Adam and blows the breath of life into his nostrils (verse 7). Then, before Adam can exhale, God pivots and plants a garden (verse 8). It is here, under the trees, that God lovingly places Adam, giving him the job of “dress[ing] and keep[ing]” them (verse 15, KJV). The trees have their only divinely established tasks to accomplish. God charges them with keeping humans alive (Genesis 1:29), giving them a place to live (Genesis 2:8), and providing food to sustain them (verse 16).
Strangely enough, Scripture continuously portrays trees as things that communicate. They clap their hands (Isaiah 55:12), shout for joy (1 Chronicles 16:33), and even argue (Judges 9:7-15). What makes this pattern especially odd is that creatures that obviously do communicate – such as fish or birds – are virtually mute in the Bible. Over the thousands of years people have been reading the Bible, this has been passed off as mere poetry. But in the last two decades, tree scientists have discovered something fascinating about trees: They really do communicate. They count, share resources, and talk with each other using a system dubbed the “Wood Wide Web.”
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The stakes and cost of the digital age.
“It starts with substitution: The digital age takes embodied things and offers virtual substitutes, moving entire realms of human interaction and engagement from the physical marketplace to the computer screen. For romance, dating apps supplant bars and workplaces and churches. For friendship, texting and DMing replaces hanging out. For entertainment, the small screen replaces moviegoing and live performance. For shopping and selling, the online store supplants the mall. For reading and writing, the short paragraph and the quick reply replace the book, the essay, the letter.” …. “But this substitution nonetheless succeeds and deepens because of the power of distraction. Even when the new forms are inferior to the older ones, they are more addictive, more immediate, easier to access — and they feel lower-risk, as well. Swipe-based online dating is less likely to find you a spouse, but it still feels much easier than flirting or otherwise putting yourself forward in physical reality. Video games may not offer the same kind of bodily experience as sports and games in real life, but the adrenaline spike is always on offer and there are fewer limits on how late and long you can play. The infinite scroll of social media is worse than a good movie, but you can’t look away, and novels are incredibly hard going by comparison with TikTok or Instagram. Pornography is worse than sex, but it gives you a simulacrum of anything you want, whenever you want it, without any negotiation with another human being’s needs.”
… All of this describes our trajectory before artificial intelligence entered the picture, and every force I’ve just described is likely to become more intense the more A.I. remakes our lives. You can have far more substitution — digital workers for flesh-and-blood colleagues, ChatGPT summaries for original books, A.I. girlfriends and boyfriends and companions. You can have far more distraction — an endless stream of A.I.-generated content and entertainment and addictive slop from a “creator” whose engine never tires.”
-Ross Douthat www.nytimes.com/2025/04/1…
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Oprah's Gospel Playlist
Oprah’s Favorite Gospel Songs
“Mary, Don’t You Weep,” by Aretha Franklin It’s my favorite because it’s about the miracles that can happen. Lazarus got up walking like a natural man—that speaks to me that anything can happen. You can be surprised by a miracle that shows up in your life.
“You Brought the Sunshine,” by the Clark Sisters It’s a big wake-up song—such strong beats. I open my workout with this song.
“Amazing Grace,” by Wintley Phipps There are as many versions of “Amazing Grace” as there are singers. Wintley’s is my favorite because of the richness and fullness of his baritone voice and how he starts out talking about being in the hold of a slave ship and hums.
“Blessed Assurance,” by Wintley Phipps It’s always been my favorite hymn—giving the assurance that I was going to be okay.
“Strong God,” by Kirk Franklin I just discovered this a couple of years ago and think it’s so appropriate for the time. My girls also love gospel, particularly Thando. When we would watch the news during the pandemic, every time something would go a bit wrong, we’d say, “We need a strong God.”
“Stand,” by Donnie McClurkin The first time I heard “Stand,” it was performed by BeBe Winans on Easter Sunday morning during a sunrise service on a ship I had rented for Maya Angelou’s 70th birthday party. We had 14 parties in eight days, and we began with that sunrise Easter service. I remember distinctly Gayle turning to me saying, “Oh my God, I’m feeling things I’ve never felt before. What’s happening to me?” And Maya said, “Baby, that’s the Holy Spirit.” I realized it was by Donnie McClurkin. So great.
“Great Is Your Mercy,” by Donnie McClurkin I listen to this on my headphones while I am doing a walk. It’s my praise and gratitude song. You can’t help but think of your blessings when you listen to that song.
“Take Me to the King,” by Tamela Mann The idea of being brought before the King, the Almighty, with your offering of yourself and your life is why I love this one so much.
“No Longer Slaves,” by Eddie James featuring Daniel Kolenda This is for all people who have been inhibited by their own fears and are afraid to move forward. It was also introduced to me by Thando. During the pandemic, she’d be in her room playing music, hit the wrong button, and the music would go all over the house. I’d be like, “What is that?”
“Way Maker,” by Eddie James featuring Daniel Kolenda It shows how God provides for us. As we used to say in the church: There’s always a way out of no way. And when you trust and believe, you can always find the way.
“Promises,” by Maverick City Music featuring Joe L. Barnes and Naomi Raine I love it because of its promise: “I will praise Your name / In every season, great is Your faithfulness to me.”
Aretha Franklin’s Amazing Grace Album You can pick any song from that album, and every one is more spectacular and spiritually centered than the one before. I’ve had this album ever since it came out in the ’70s and still listen to it today. Best gospel album ever made. Period. Full stop.
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Value of Religion: Americans need it
Religion provides what sociologists call the “three B’s”: belief, belonging and behaviors. It offers beliefs that supply answers to the tough questions of life. It gives people a place they feel they belong, a community where they are known. And it tells them how to behave, or at least what tenets should guide their action. Religious institutions have spent millenniums getting really good at offering these benefits to people.
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