I gotta say my favorite type of women are Deborahs who tell the men around them: "There's nothing to fear here. Trust in the Lord & do what's right."
There's something invaluable about a women's ability to break the cycle of intimidation & bullying that men so often try to trap each other in. It is a thing of beauty & a joy for ever.
B/c sometimes the most important thing we do for each other is not to take the responsibility off another person's shoulders; it is to support & enable them as they meet it.
Men, a trustworthy woman who does not fear the same things you fear is a GIFT. She can grant you perpsective & clarity in moments when you're being pressured by others, particularly other men.
"Then Deborah said to Barak, ‘Up! For this is the day on which the Lord has given Sisera into your hand. The Lord is indeed going out before you’." (Judges 4:14)
Note too, that this kind of simple, clear-eyed statement of reality is not manipulative, & it doesn't perpetuate the cycle of fear & intimidation. It breaks it. It breaks the hold of fear with the facts.
So here's to all the Deborahs leading in their particular spaces with hope & trust in the Lord. Here's to the women who refuse fear & help break its power over others.
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It's the perfect combination of deep affection for a place, love of people & all their foibles, & respect for the natural world.
I know other folks might have higher ambitions, but I don't need to write the next great novel. I'd just want to write stories that honor place & people as much as All Creatures honors Yorkshire.
I am so enjoying watching folks fall in love w/ the new #AllCreatures. I grew up watching the original w/ my dad & I have to say, my understanding of manhood was pretty much formed by how a man relates to the natural world around him. No offense guys.
Another neat thing watching the show this time around is already knowing the stories & having previous scenes in my head. New series diverges from both book & previous series in some ways but also stays pretty close in core characterization.
You can practically see Samuel West channeling Robert Hardy's Siegfried Farnon in certain stances & phrases. And it's wonderful. West definitely owns the role but also honors previous embodiment.
Follow this thread backwards for more clarity on short selling. My thread yesterday was, at best, imprecise & most likely, flat-out wrong. Plus Angela has made graphics!
Here's the benefit of having written books on both humility & discernment: There's just no escaping. I spoke out of ignorance & that ignorance led me to overconfidence in my opinion. You simply can't know what you don't know.
This is a good example of staying in one's lane. One might understand what healthy, ethical dynamics look like in general, but that doesn't mean they can look at a certain phenomenon & pronounce it healthy or unhealthy. To do that, you must have knowledge of phenomenon itself.
We code it in language of stock prices & sell high/buy low, etc. But the entire model is based on the stock price falling--not getting in on the ground floor of a company & rising w/ it. In short selling, you're actively rooting for someone else to lose b/c that's how you profit.
I'm not trying to be precious here. I understand that the stockmarket involves certain amount of risk & that part of healthy growth means accepting that this risk as part of investing. This is something different.
So I'm seeing folks discuss the age-old Q about who is & who isn't an evangelical & it raises another equally significant Q for me:
To whom do the outliers belong then? Who is going yo take responsibility to confront & warn them?
I understand the importance of carefully defining terms & movements, but it strikes me as an exercise w/out a real world purpose or end. Other than perhaps distancing ourselves from certain elements.
It's one thing to say XYZ is no true evangelical & while that might be rhetorically significant, I'm not sure it's pastorally significant especially if it enables us to just ignore or disregard the outlier.