Freedom from Performance

"Every writer experiences this. At some point in your journey, you find yourself writing for the approval of others, not for pure love of the craft. You’re no longer satisfied with your passion, and there’s nothing you can do about it. All these royalty checks, all this blog traffic — you’re stuck...Stop writing for accolades, and start writing for passion....When you stop writing for readers’ affections, your work will affect more people...."

From You Are A Writer by Jeff Goins. This is one of the most helpful thoughts I read over Christmas. It reinvigorated my approach to writing and other things I enjoy doing! It so easy to do things with an eye on the audience. It is natural to want to be commended. For people to admire us. We all long to be commended, but what Jeff Goins shows is that when the search for accolades becomes our preoccupation, we stop being effective. Not only is our work no longer being done for the right reasons, the fire that burns within us for creativity also dies. The reason it dies is because no accolades will ever be good enough. The ego is a monster that is never satiated. Only when I write for the love of writing as a gift from God is my writing able to find its true purpose. The paradox here is that freedom from performing for others leads to performance.

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I Am Mother

I think it is true to say that the Netflix film I Am Mother is one the most disturbing movies I have watched for a long time. The film is set in a near future. Human life has been wiped out. An artificial intelligence (AI) called Mother is living inside a bunker where thousands of embroyos are stored. It selects an embryo and initiates a program to grow a baby within 24 hours. The AI then goes on to raise the child as its mother over the next few years. After 16 years, the girl, who now goes by the name of Daughter (Clara Rugaard) is a teenager. She has never been outside because Mother has told her that the air is toxic. Her time is spend being home schooled in science and ethics so that she can become a perfect human being. The bond between Daughter and Mother is unusually strong. To our surprise there does not appear to be any mental or pyschological trauma of having a machine as her mother. The strength of the bond between man and machine is tested when a nameless Woman (Hilary

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What is the best preparation for preaching?

The best preparation is not to be too anxious about it. Anxious care hinders liveliness and efficacy. It leads to too little dependence on the Spirit. Be not didactic. Aim at the conscience as soldiers aim at the faces. Consider I may be preaching my last sermon. This leads to setting forth Christ as The Way, the Truth and the Life . .. Make Christ the prominent figure…Pay less attention to dear self. JOHN NEWTON

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White Fragility, A Review

Robin DiAngelo has a sermon to preach. It is in form of a short popular book called White Fragilit y. Straight off the bat she tells us not to expect balanced analysis but a forceful argument “unapologetically rooted in identity politics”. She understands identity politics as “the [political] focus on the barriers specific groups face in their struggle for equality”. The group she wants to save is black people, whom she blankets under “people of colour”. So what is White Fragility about? DiAngelo is sick and tired of white racism in the western world, and specifically the USA. She believes every white person, including babies, are guilty of racism by virtue of being white. So she wants to use her “insider status” as a white American woman to challenge this white racism by getting her fellow “white progressives” to force forward her thesis. In her words, “I am white...and I am mainly writing to a white audience”. I was immediately tempted to put down the book because being black Afri

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