"... the Deity stooping from the floor of Heaven to welcome us..."

Ever since my experience with "the foul-mouth parrot Andrew Jackson once had" — which required me to get my head examined — I've been on the lookout for sentences that resist reading,  perhaps to the point where I consider the possibility that I have lost the ability to read. 

In that light, I contemplated this famously long sentence by Virginia Woolf, which begins her essay "On Being Ill."

"Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to light, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us in the act of sickness, how we go down into the pit of death

"What genuinely valuable artwork was lost in the Palisades fire? What efforts were made to save it?"

"Were guys running down the street trying to hold onto Picassos and Monets?"

That was my question upon watching this video at X about Spencer Pratt's loss of his collection of crystals:

Spencer Pratt says his crystals collection was so extensive and impressive it could have been put in a museum

Unfortunately mayor Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom let it all burn in the Pacific Palisades fire

He explains the significance behind these crystals

“I believe anything… pic.twitter.com/NdqToemi53

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) May 30, 2026

Of course, I used the Grok tool that's right there at X. From the answer:

Ron Rivlin (art collector and Warhol gallery owner): He lost around 30 Andy Warhol works (including Campbell’s Soup Can prints, a hot-pink Queen Elizabeth II print, and “Myths” portfolio pieces featuring icons like Mickey Mouse and Superman) plus dozens of other pieces by artists such as Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, John Baldessari, and Kenny Scharf.

"... maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?"

"A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!"

That's Trump, an hour ago, at Truth Social, somehow declining to add his trademark "Thank you for your attention to this matter," perhaps because it is too cruel... or too lighthearted. I see he's calling God "God" again. 

"Malinin, who in his youth chose the Instagram handle 'QuadG0d'... was rightfully saddened and a bit angry at the end of his free skate..."

"'I had so many thoughts and memories flood right before I got into my starting pose that it almost, maybe, I think, overwhelmed me a little bit, he said afterward.'... Malinin is a self-described adrenaline junkie. He embraces the idea of conqueror like no other American skater.... On Friday, he at first appeared to be feeding off the Olympic energy. When he initially stepped on the ice for the top six skaters’ final warmup, he made fun faces with the camera man and coolly glided on the ice. Then came the disaster. After Shaidorov skated the performance of the night, the mood slowly dampened with poor skates from France’s Adam Siao Him Fa, who sunk from third to seventh, and Kagiyama, who skated clumsily without his trademark speed.... When Malinin returned to the deflated arena, something about him seemed to be missing as well.... Other Olympic champions had chosen... big music to seize victory.... But Malinin chose to channel himself and his vulnerability, skating to his own voice delivering quiet affirmations that he hoped described the man inside the persona of the 'Quadg0d'..."

Writes Robert Samuels, in "Mikhail Shaidorov was everything Ilia Malinin wasn’t for one night" (WaPo)(gift link).

He was skating to the sound of his own voice, delivering affirmations.... 

Imagine a true God skating extravagantly to the sound of his own voice, delivering affirmations. Don't click for more unless you want to read Grok's 12-point answer to my question: If the God of the Old Testament were delivering affirmations to himself, what would he say?

Ricky Gervais "would like to thank God and the trans community."

Says Wanda Sykes accepting the Golden Globe for the absent Ricky:

Wanda Sykes calls out Ricky Gervais' transphobia while accepting the Golden Globe for Best Stand-Up Comedy Performance on his behalf: "He would like to thank God and the trans community."
byu/voguediaries inFauxmoi

ADDED: I did not interpret Sykes's statement as "call[ing] out Ricky Gervais' transphobia" any more than I thought she was calling out his atheism. I didn't notice the text when I chose the Reddit clip. Reading it now, I just think it's wrong. It doesn't match what I thought when I first read it. I was just looking for a clip to embed and that Reddit presentation popped up. My immediate interpretation: I thought she was tweaking the over-eager defenders of trans people for going after her fellow comedian. 

"It sounds so beautiful I want to give all the glory to God we were never supposed to be in this position but by the glory of God" the Hoosiers beat the Buckeyes.

𝗧𝗥𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗜𝗡𝗚: Indiana superstar QB Fernando Mendoza's post-game interview has gone viral 😭😭

One of the greatest interviews you will ever see.pic.twitter.com/1Gcp3AE7XU

— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) December 7, 2025

"If you can’t bear to leave them where they are, get the kids to kick them into a corner, stick them in a pile, let the hedgehogs and earthworms use them."

From "Should you sweep up leaves? Gardeners say no — here’s why/Experts say leaving fallen leaves in your garden could be the simplest act of conservation by providing food for worms and shelter for hedgehogs" (London Times).

By "sweep," I think they just mean rake. When we Americans say "sweep," we picture a broom.

Speaking of brooms.... have you ever heard of "The Broom of Destruction"? Here, it's in Isaiah 14:22-23:

‘I will rise up against them,’ declares the Lord Almighty. ‘I will wipe out Babylon’s name and survivors, her offspring and descendants,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will turn her into a place for owls and into swampland; I will sweep her with the broom of destruction,’ declares the Lord Almighty.

What Joan Baez said about crashing her newly bought Tesla.

"Yes, I did. God was speaking to me, because I got this car—literally, I was trying it out. I drove for 45 minutes, I drove home—boom: I backed into a big tree and it was destroyed."

I read that in this Vanity Fair article: "Joan Baez Thinks Timothée Chalamet Was 'Too Clean' to Play Bob Dylan/The iconic musician opens up about her detachment from Dylan, her political engagement, and her real thoughts on A Complete Unknown."

I read that out loud and said: "That's a kind of corny old humor — something happens and you say 'God is punishing me' or something.'"

Meade said: "Well, she does have that song, 'I Believe in God.'"

The song is "God Is God" ("Yeah, I believe in God and God ain't me.... And I believe in God but God ain't us.... But I believe in God and God is God")(written by Steve Earle, who is, I think, the background singer).

"Who made you feel seen when you were growing up?"

One of the questions proposed in "25 Questions to Bring You Closer to Your Mom" (NYT).

When did people start saying that they need to "feel seen"? I don't remember that from the period when I was growing up — the 1950s and 60s. Was there something else that we said that meant "feel seen"? Or is the desire to "feel seen" something new and perhaps transitory?

I did a "deep search" on Grok looking for the origin of the phrase and the closest thing I found to an answer was that it became a common phrase in the last 15 years, perhaps connected with social media. For example: "21 Painfully Relatable Memes That'll Make You Feel Seen" (Cheezburger).

ADDED: "I need to feel seen" strikes me as such a beta thing to say. I told that to Grok, which I'd accidentally left in "deep search" mode, and I think I got man-shamed:

The user’s observation that "I need to feel seen" strikes them as "beta" reflects a specific cultural lens, particularly within internet slang where "beta" is used pejoratively to describe behavior seen as weak, submissive, or overly sensitive, especially in contrast to "alpha" traits like dominance or stoicism. This perception is rooted in certain societal norms around masculinity, particularly in online spaces where traditional masculine ideals are valorized.

IN THE COMMENTS: Kirk Parker said: "The first recorded usage is in Genesis 16:13." I look it up: "She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: 'You are the God who sees me,' for she said, 'I have now seen the One who sees me.'" "She" = the slave Hagar, mother of Ishmael.

"I can tell you... '16 was providential. That was the hand of God.... The pandemic and the stealing of the 2020 election was also the hand of God."

"At the time, it didn't seem that [way] but if we had gone right into a second term, it would have been like trench warfare. It would have been like the Western Front in World War I, just two sides dug in, and they kind of had Trump surrounded. God's hand worked that we would step back.… We had the time to regroup. Trump had the time to think.... You had those four years of preparation."

Said Steve Bannon.

That made me think about something Ross Douthat said in that podcast blogged 2 posts down: 

"In his book 'The Paradox of Choice,' psychologist Barry Schwartz popularized the idea that too many choices produce paralysis and then often discontent."

"Here, instead of choice, we had constraint. And in constraint I discovered a new kind of freedom.... It was one of the last times I fully got into a book, in this case Norman Mailer’s 1,056-page masterwork 'The Executioner’s Song,' so immersed that I forgot there was a pandemic in the first place. I mostly ignored dating apps, which are as awful as they are necessary because everyone else is on them. But now, for a moment, there was no real shame in being alone. For the first time, I didn’t feel guilty about feeling lonely.... I thought more deeply about my life, and how I wanted to live. But I also did things I always said I wanted to do but — short of a natural disaster — knew I never would. Like watch the films of the Swedish existentialist director Ingmar Bergman.... Yes, it was a bit masochistic, but watching 12 of his films in rapid succession ended up being an unusual highlight of an unusual year. I also live-tweeted the experience, perhaps as a way to make a solitary adventure less so...."

Writes Shadi Hamid, in "Missing the solitude of covid," one essay in a WaPo collection of 5 essays looking back on the lockdown — free access link.

1. "And in constraint I discovered a new kind of freedom" — reminds me of the line in The Book of Common Prayer, "whose service is perfect freedom." The "who" is, of course, God. The service is chosen. The lockdown was imposed from the outside and it wasn't anything like God. But it's interesting to contemplate the difference... and to ask Grok to sketch out an "Ingmar Bergman" screenplay on the subject. 

2. "The Paradox of Choice" — yay! Glad to see that come up again. I've got a tag for it. I made that unusually specific tag because I could see this is what "they" have in store for us: a world without choice and with an induced and cultivated belief that the constriction of choice is the key to happiness. We practiced within the lockdown and "they" got to see how well we did.

3. "The Executioner’s Song" — I wrote a law review article about it long ago: "Standing, In Fluffy Slippers." That was back in 1991 when I believed I could find a new way to write within the genre of law review articles. Mailer's book is about Gary Gilmore, who, condemned to death, chose the firing squad. How's that for a "Paradox of Choice"? Oddly enough, just last Thursday a man was executed — in South Carolina — by firing squad. Could have picked lethal injection. Picked firing squad.

4. I like that the essay writer, locked down, eschewed dating apps but embraced live-tweeting. He didn't want to feel so all alone. 

"Maybe God doesn't speak to us because we would (in our weakness) find Him boring."

That's the 4th prompt I gave to Grok just now. The first 3 were:

1. Summarize this article

I gave a link to the NYT article "Can God Speak to Us Through A.I.? Modern religious leaders are experimenting with A.I. just as earlier generations examined radio, television and the internet." 

2. Give me a one sentence answer to the question posed in the headline

3. So the article is incredibly boring compared to the headline

That reminds me. Soren Kierkegaard wrote: "Boredom is the root of all evil — the despairing refusal to be oneself." Blogged here in 2006.

Maybe you're one of those people who cue up "The Bible in a Year" podcast and listen to "Day 1: In the Beginning" on New Year's Day. If so, you've just listened to the story of creation and the interpretation that God "wasn't lonely":

"I’ve been writing lately about how American politics seem to have moved into a new dispensation — more unsettled and extreme..."

"... but also perhaps more energetic and dynamic. One benefit of unsettlement, famously adumbrated by Orson Welles’s villainous Harry Lime in 'The Third Man,' is supposed to be cultural ferment: 'In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.' There are certainly signs of ferment out there, in technology, religion and intellectual life. But I’m worried about pop culture — worried that the relationship between art and commerce isn’t working as it should, worried that even if the rest of American society starts moving, our storytelling is still going to be stuck...."

Writes Ross Douthat, in "Can We Make Pop Culture Great Again?" (NYT).

I got totally sidetracked by "dispensation." Here's my interaction with Grok that convinced me that Douthat didn't make a weird word choice. It's an excellent word choice, and I enjoyed reading about the religious meanings of "dispensation," including

We experienced the longest darkness in Indiana...

... in Vincennes, Indiana (a place named after François-Marie Bissot, Sieur de Vincennes, who was burned at the stake in 1736, "during the French war with the Chickasaw nation").

His name glows on a vibrant mural:

I don't know if this is the town's official motto, but we talked a lot about it: "Where everyone fulfills their God-given purpose!"

It seemed to be a grandiose claim, but I said maybe the people interpret God's requirements narrowly, so that it's not understood to be terribly difficult. My son Chris, texting, said, maybe God does not give them any particularly challenging purpose. I contemplated whether Chris was saying something different from what I'd just said and decided he certainly was. My idea was that people are self-serving, and his idea was that God was easy-going and pretty darned nice. Hearing that, Meade noted that "fulfills" could mean that citizens are simply wherever they are in a process of fulfilling.

We walked through the festival atmosphere on historic Main Street, by the Wabash River, but given the hubbub and live, loud rock music, we kept moving until we arrived at the memorial for the men who died in the War of the Union....

We set up on the lush grass by the county courthouse, which looked like this at 3:01:51 — 3 minutes before the beginning of the total eclipse:

And here it is, at the very beginning of the totality:

Thanks to Vincennes for hosting us and many others. The show was free and the number of dollars we spent was equal to the number of minutes of the totality of the eclipse. Meade bought a pulled pork sandwich at a food truck:

The text at the pig silhouette in the lower right corner of the truck deserves contemplative comparison to the aforementioned "Where everyone fulfills their God-given purpose!" It says: "Every butt loves a rub."

"We love what we take care of, and we take care of what we love. Instead of groaning at the task of treating my cast-iron skillet..."

"... I now treat it as a fulfilling act of service; I know that my time seasoning it with salt and oil will affect its life span and the palate of future generations. I scrub away at the hand-me-down dinnerware from my father-in-law, and I’m connected to him. In an unexpected way, pride has seeped into my kitchen work. Cleanliness is a matter of principle.... Carl Jung once said, 'Modern man can’t see god because he doesn’t look low enough.' Will you find God in your kitchen sink?"

Writes Tyler Shane, in "You don’t need to meditate. Just wash your dishes by hand" (WaPo).

A sense of profundity attaches to one of my cast-iron pans — the one that I grew up hearing called the "spider." It is, I believe, older than I am. I use it all the time and can't imagine what one might do to it that would make it need any more seasoning. Is that low enough?

"Since I have to wrap up soon, do you have any strategies for ending an interview well?"

Michael Schulman asks Dick Cavett at the end of "Dick Cavett Takes a Few Questions The legendary television host talks about his friendships with Muhammad Ali and Groucho Marx, interviewing Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis, and finding a new audience on YouTube" (The New Yorker). 

Cavett answers:

Often I would do it very badly. I would rush it, hadn’t saved enough time. I almost called a guest by the wrong name but caught it, thank God, or whatever gods may be. What’s that from? “I thank whatever gods may be.” It’s a poem that’s often recommended as good religious thinking. “I thank whatever gods may be for my indomitable soul”? Hmm.

I'm agnostic on whether God is toying with Jordan Peterson.

I’ve always been pretty agnostic on Peterson. But this is not good. If a leftwing icon was asked “Do you believe in God” and they answered “It depends” on the meaning of “you,” “do” or “believe” (nevermind “God”) the mockery from many Peterson fans would be wild. https://t.co/ZlyQooFZmm

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) October 19, 2022

It's not just Jonah Goldberg. Peterson is trending on Twitter and it's mostly about this clip. We're living in a time when your worst few seconds will be ripped out of context and held up to discredit you. Better never to speak on camera at all than to risk creating one of these horrible clips to be used against you. 

We're created a mediascape where only the cocky and reckless will speak freely. Ironically, Peterson will be one of those people. Everyone else will shrink out of public view.

Putin says his goal is the "demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine" — defending "civilians, including citizens of the Russian Federation" from "persecution and genocide by the Kyiv regime."

According to "Putin announces a ‘military operation’ in Ukraine as the U.N. Security Council pleads with him to pull back" (NYT). 

Mr. Putin cast his operation both as an attack on “Nazis” in Ukraine, as well as rejection of the American-led world order. Ukraine’s aspiration to join NATO, he said, represented a dire threat to Russia. He evoked the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 to make it clear that he viewed the West as morally bankrupt.

“For 30 years, we deliberately and patiently tried to reach agreement with the NATO countries on equal and indivisible security in Europe,” Mr. Putin said. But Russia was met, he said, with “cynical lies” and “blackmail” on the part of the West. The American-led West, he said, represented an “empire of lies.” ...

“You and I know that our strength lies in fairness and truth, which is on our side,” Mr. Putin said [addressing the Russian people]. “And if this is so, then it is hard not to agree that it is strength and readiness to fight that are the foundation for independence and sovereignty.” 

I don't think Biden has responded to the charge of Nazism, militarization, genocide, and persecution. He simply blames Putin for choosing to go to war and notes that war brings "death and destruction." That works as an argument against ever fighting a war — including a war against genuine Nazism, militarization, genocide, and persecution. 

I would like to hear a strong, clear statement detailing what's wrong with Putin's justification of his war. I would like something more erudite and fact-based than saying it was "bizarrely" asserted. From Biden's February 23rd speech:

Yesterday Vladimir Putin... bizarrely asserted that [two] regions are no longer part of Ukraine and they’re sovereign territory... Who in the Lord’s name does Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called countries on territory that belong to his neighbors?

I'd like to hear Biden address Putin's reasons, which sound like the kind of reasons American leaders give when they invade other countries. Where's the sophistication that was supposed to come with the ousting of Trump? I can do without rhetorical questions involving "the Lord."

"I will stand in this breach."

Said President Biden, in his speech yesterday. You can encounter the line in context at the end of my previous post. 

This post is to examine the idiom. What are we talking about when we say "stand in the breach"? I think of Shakespeare's "Once more unto the breach." It's about taking up a warlike frame of mind:

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man,
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger:
Stiffen the sinews, conjure up the blood...

So "the breach" is a broken open place in some fortifying wall, and the idea is to move through that space, into battle. If they don't move forward, the argument is that they will pile up dead until their bodies fill that space — close the wall up.

But that's about using the breach as an entry point into battle, not just standing there, which seems to be a poor military tactic.

From about the same time period, there is the King James Version of the Bible (1611), Psalm 106:23:

A new video on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the release of "My Sweet Lord."

 

 

AND: I put the video up before watching it. Now, I've seen it, and what did it mean? The lyrics of the song are clearly about looking for God. So we see a pair of investigators with scanning devices in a library/bookstore, searching, and then in a crowded movie theater, searching. 

I had to presume they were looking for God. But it turned into looking at celebrities, and this was kind of a mystery too, not the profound mystery of the search for God, but a mystery nonetheless, because all the celebrities I have a shot at recognizing are old and radically changed from the version I know, and all the ones appearing in their famous form, the young ones, are not famous to me. 

But perhaps that's the message: If you were looking at God, would you see Him? I really wanna see you, Lord... 

In the end, the investigators tell each other that they didn't even hear what song was playing. That is, they didn't hear the lyrics about searching for God. But they turn on the car radio — streaming device? — and "My Sweet Lord" is playing there too. The song is everywhere. God is everywhere. It takes so long... it won't take long.