Sometimes I talk to a guy who has very, very few people to talk to. Very isolated, very offline, has about one good friend plus me. Tonight he said he'd gotten the bad news that an old high school teacher died. /1 He just wanted to tell me all about this PE teacher, Mr. S. How he appreciated effort even if you weren't very good. The way it felt when he called you by your first name. What a good friend he was to a scared little kid. /2

Wanting to warn churches about abusers is not liberalism.

Implementing Title IX-style reform that allows someone to go on a List based on mere accusation, is a problem yeah.

https://twitter.com/jaredcwilson/status/1532009060521988099

If anything, it's *more* effective for catching *real* abusers to *not* make a name public after just one accusation, because if more come in they will be independent.

Tonight my grandpa called me suddenly while I ate dinner. He was very excited because he had just listened to one of my hymn arrangements on YouTube, which he thought I had "sent" for him to hear.

Grandpa gets confused sometimes. In fact, my aunt had just found it for him. /1 The hymn was "There'll Be No Dark Valley," a classic gospel piece by Ira Sankey. My aunt used to bounce me on her knee and sing it to me when I was little. She had a strong soprano voice, and I still remember giggling helplessly with the momentum of the bounce and the hymn. /2

So, speaking as a woman (clears throat) I feel like I can say a few things out loud about the circumstances that led to Jordan Peterson's recent decision to quit Twitter. Here's the context, followed by a 🧵. /1

torontosun.com/news/world/jor… Peterson's tweet was tactless. But there was something true that wanted to be teased out and stated properly underneath it. When he said "not beautiful," he was attempting to articulate a reaction against the demand that the viewer affirm something relativistic and unhealthy. /2

If your skies are cloudy (raises hand) watching this guy livestream tonight's lunar eclipse is almost as much fun as getting to see it yourself.

Seriously this guy is such a character. Making fun of his own weight, chatting about his family. He should be a radio DJ.

If Tim Keller had only concentrated his energy on outreach to a particular class of unreached people, there would not be nearly the frustration that there is around him. People are frustrated because he spends half his energy contemptuously mocking Christians to his right. People who don't really understand the dynamics here have sincerely convinced themselves that this is a matter of taste--Keller doesn't go about evangelism the exact way we would/speaks to a different target audience. If that were the issue, there wouldn't be an issue. It's not.

The problem w/ Slavich's "we can care about black babies in the womb and black boys at truck stops" frame is this: When it comes to the latter, it has never been about whether you actually care. It has been about whether you will care in a particular WAY.
dannyslavich.substack.com/p/you-winsome-… Many of us have been around that mulberry bush many times, and it always ends with one side shouting "YOU DON'T CARE!" merely because the other side has politely declined to accept one and only one particular blanket narrative for a complex web of social phenomena.

For a Mother's Day post, I'm sitting down for the first time to read the correspondence between my mom and her birth mom when they first connected.

This is gonna be an evening. Mom was close to the age then that I am now when she made contact. I can see me in her, her in me.

"While intersectionality and social-justice activism certainly pose epistemological and ethical challenges for churches, issues like technological addiction, suicide, and sexual abuse do too."

Except these things are all interconnected.

thegospelcoalition.org/article/renew-… Kids' technological addiction is in symbiotic relationship with TikTok, which is where so many girls are picking up the latest sexual identity fads. Social justice activism in schools is pitting sexually vulnerable young people against their parents.

So I'm reluctant to join the Tim Keller Discourse because I don't find it all that interesting, but I picked this up because I thought it might lead to an article, and guys this is just...it's just bad. I feel bad.

quarterly.gospelinlife.com/the-decline-of… "And over here we have the fundamentalists, which you know how everyone says they're a bunch of racist, misogynist, anti-science, anti-intellectual knuckle-draggers? They totally are. Now, moving on to my tribe..."

The way patches of ice catch a sunset The sunset: hey come back outside I'm doing cool stuff

Me: no, it is cold and I am eating dinner

The sunset: pleeeeease-uh?

Me: no

The sunset: ...

Me: ...

Thinking about an American YA lit course, something like:

Quarter 1: Shane

Quarter 2: To Kill a Mockingbird

Quarter 3: The Chosen

Quarter 4: Peace Like a River Shane as a novel has been overshadowed by the film but is an ideal classic for high school readers. The Chosen has always been underrated, orders of magnitude better for introducing kids to American lit than, idk, Gatsby.

Sitting in bed wearing layers and STILL COLD. I'd forgotten this cold/flu state of being simultaneously too cold and sweating hot, this is fantastic.

It's very late, and I'm not going to name names in this thread. But since this is now the second night in a row that somebody in my adjacent Christian circles has impugned my intellectual integrity w.r.t to COVID, vax, etc., I should probably say a couple things. /1 People who have actually been seriously following me will know that I've said some of this before, but it can't hurt to say it again. So, once more for the folks in the back: My mother is a philosopher. My father is a philosopher. I am the philosophers' daughter, twice over. /2

1. This whole thread.

2. It must be said: Much of this could apply to SSA as well.

https://twitter.com/TruthAgape/status/1489636783428100099

Obviously there are disanalogies, the one being by definition an inclination towards abuse, the other an inclination towards consensual sexual intimacy. But there's also overlap, e.g. in where a "normalizing" therapist locates the root of a patient's shame.

My old edition of Bambi came with treasure inside. "How did she show Brave instead of frighten"

Kids ❤️

Seen on Twitter today: If you're a parent and you don't want your child to be vaccinated, why not just homeschool instead of agitating for a rule change?

I mean, I'm in favor of homeschooling, but I also recognize that's not an easy quick option for every parent? We're talking about kids who have their whole lives bound up in school activities, friends, etc. We're talking about parents who may be working-class and unable to provide schooling and care during the day.

It's hard to convey the difficulty of the medical situation for vaxx-injured folks if you've never had to navigate this "kingdom" (using Ross Douthat's helpful language). Let me try to give a sketch of how it's been for my mom. /1 To begin with, Mom is lucky to a degree, in that she was believed at all. There's tremendous stigma around vaccine injury. Many folks in the same or similar boats have been told they're really suffering "anxiety." /2

Quick answers to a few reactions to my Babylon Bee piece.

Q: Why don't their critics try getting an open door w/big secular names first?

A: You can actually do this cool thing where you open doors w/secular folks w/out committing sacrilege. Source: personal exerience. /1 Q: They're a comedy org, not a ministry.

A: If they're not a ministry they shouldn't pretend to be one just for the sake of a dumb sacrilegious joke. /2

We are 7 subscribers away from hitting 1000 on the Substack. As an incentive, here's a sampler thread of some of the columns that have meant the most to me.

It seems fitting to start with by far the most-read, where I officially introduced myself. /1

estheroreilly.substack.com/p/coming-out-a… Coming in second is the piece by which a number of my readers first discovered me, through no intention of my own. I owe this one to Caitlin Flanagan, even though I'm not tagging her. If you have a read, you'll see why. /2

estheroreilly.substack.com/p/frail-as-sum…

Alright gang, it's time for My Year in Writing: The Twitter Thread. I'll start with my February reflection @TheCriticMag on @holland_tom's popular appeal. /1

thecritic.co.uk/tom-holland-a-… I launched a byline @spectator with four pieces this year. First, a short look-back as my favorite film turned 40. /2

spectator.co.uk/article/what-c…