I gotta have my orange juice.

I’ve been reflecting on the proper kind of mask. It occurs to me that vocations are a practiced self-denial, a practiced governance and stewardship of our selves in order to better steward other things. It also occurs to me that the family is the first and chief place of practiced (in both senses) affection.

Some things are impossible for God:

Thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us. (Hebrews 6:17-18)

I learned Stein’s law this week: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

You really know that you’re in thrashing mode at work when every meeting ends up veering into a discussion of every thing.

I’m struck by the sevenfold sun of Isaiah 30:26:

Moreover the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun,
​​And the light of the sun will be sevenfold,
​​As the light of seven days,
​​In the day that the LORD binds up the bruise of His people
​​And heals the stroke of their wound.

I see here the world’s end in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. But maybe there is some Bism there too; you ain’t seen nothing yet when it comes to global warming. Are we meant to adapt and thrive in the time of the sun’s final days? I do think we are meant to bind the Pleiades and loose the belt of Orion.

And you thought That Hideous Strength was fiction:

On my first visit to Moscow, I met one of Lenin’s embalmers. “When I began, the body was in a poor state”, said Styopa, whose expertise was the use of electricity. Skin grafts and a new partial-vacuum glass sarcophagus had helped to inhibit decay, but Styopa’s shock treatment had reversed it. “Once every two or three months, a high-voltage charge was applied to keep up the tone. But the first time we tried it I overestimated the power needed. Lenin suddenly sat up from the table, his arms shook, and his lips started to quiver. I thought he was going to speak. It was quite a shock. After that, we reduced the voltage.”