I gotta have my orange juice.

Lessons learned from René Girard: (1) We all construct our desires and beliefs through imitation and rationalize them later. This is equally true if we think we have outgrown imitation. Since imitation is inescapable, choose carefully whom you imitate. (2) Righteousness and virtue are social. We all acquire righteousness by being joined to the right group and by casting shame on the right scapegoat-victim. Since the pursuit of righteousness is inescapable, make sure you join yourself to King Jesus and cast your guilt and shame on him, rather than envying and despising and biting and devouring one another. (3) Very often the temptation to envy and despise and bite and devour comes with those closest to and most like us, because we must find some small difference that allows us to vaunt over each other. (4) Job is, first and foremost, a type of Jesus.

Lessons learned reflecting on Edwin Friedman: (1) Do not be anxious. (2) Do not get caught up in others’ anxiety. (3) The anxious brother is not a weaker brother toward whom you must adjust your behavior because he is tempted to follow your example into a kind of sin. Rather, he is an immature brother who should be following your example. (4) Anxiety is cancerous. The only way to get rid of it is to cast it up to Jesus, and receive peace coming down from him. (5) Jesus is not anxious! (6) Leaders, parents, etc. can walk in Jesus’s footsteps and be anxiety absorbers and calming peace givers provided that they pass the anxiety on up to him rather than holding on to it. (7) One key way in which a leader or parent absorbs anxiety is simply by their own “gracious stability” (Toby Sumpter) or “calm presence” and “non-anxiety” (Friedman) which has a calming effect. This is how Jesus comforts us. (8) Another way in which we absorb others’ anxiety and help them mature is by mixing our patience and consideration toward them with tough love that allows them to face and overcome their anxieties rather than coddling them. (9) This is how God matures us.

Insights from Eugen Rosenstock–Huessy: (1) People and bodies of people are always stretched out along at least two axes, what ERH calls the “cross of reality”—past and future, in–group and out–group. In terms of a church you could think of these axes as teachers and prophets on the one hand, and discipleship and evangelism on the other hand. It’s fruitful to reflect on what these axes mean for your business (e.g., quality control and research, engineering and marketing) or household. (2) Enduring organizations must strike a balance between all four points of the compass. Mature individuals also need to make provision for a balance, but it is natural to have inclinations and specialties and to make up the differences together with your spouse, family, church, community, etc. In fact there are natural average tendencies for men and women here. (3) In a sense, because there is a tugging in all of these directions, the balance will always be struck by a kind of “tearing,” but the tearing needs to be a gracious giving–honor to one another and not an envious or Satanic competition. Another way of saying this is that for a body of people not to be torn apart by garden–variety differences, we must absorb the tearing into ourselves by following 1 Corinthians 13; our personal preferences and inclinations cannot at every moment be pre–eminent even, and perhaps especially, if we are in a position of leadership. Good leadership begets fruitful work at all points of the compass. (4) Love is the fuel on which the world operates and by which it overcomes entropy. Choose yourself a spouse, church, vocation, etc. and give yourself to that one in a joyful and risky Chestertonian “duel to the death.” (It is truly amazing to listen to a college professor preaching to his students.) (5) History cycles between phases of tribe, nation, and empire; and the next tribal phase is imminent. ERH likes to speak of 500–year patterns, in which case we seem overdue. According to his view, then, we should not expect to see a successor empire like China or Islam or an international banking cabal, but a truly tribal state of the world.

My wife has a rule that she strives to live by and teaches to our daughters: what would a Jane Austen herione do or say? This is a good rule.

In this week’s Theopolitan newsletter, Peter Leithart quotes David Dusenbery reflecting on Justinian’s Institutes. Dusenbery observes that “Justinian inscribes, at the head of his foyer-text to his monumental code of Roman law . . . as a sanctifying and legitimating figure, [our Lord Jesus Christ,] the name of a man who was crucified by a Roman judge as a Roman convict.” Leithart comments that “the invocation of Jesus is at least a standing rebuke to any pretense that Roman law, or any law, automatically secures justice.”

I reflect briefly on the [ab]use of NoSQL. Stick with sonnet form, kids; free verse only brings slavery.