“The Weekend Wanderer” is a weekly curated selection of news, stories, resources, and media on the intersection of faith and culture for you to explore through your weekend. Wander through these links however you like and in any order you like. Disclaimer: I do not necessarily agree with all the views expressed within these articles but have found them thought-provoking.
“Work and Leisure: A Pieper Primer” – Christine Norvell in Front Porch Republic: “No other author has so immediately affected my perspective on work as Josef Pieper. In my mind, work was separate from the rest of life. Working hours have always been a discrete part of my day since I took my first job as a teenager. Maybe this division is inherent to American culture and how I grew up, but in Pieper’s mind, work is part of our response to the gift of life. Though published decades ago, German philosopher Josef Pieper’s commentaries on work, leisure, and festivity bring to light two deficits within our culture today—true community relationship and conscious introspection. His works, Leisure: The Basis of Culture (1948) and In Tune with the World: A Theory of Festivity (1965), posit not a solution to our culture’s dis-perspective, but a call to return to a meaningful and fruitful life. If we can’t recognize leisure, then our culture is endangered. But leisure is a tricky word in the twenty-first century. Is it welcoming visitors at our leisure? Is it reclining on a couch in a leisure suit? Is it being free from work demands? Is it the opposite of work? What kind of leisure is this?”
“Are You a Tree? Or are you a potted plant?” – Joy Marie Clarkson in Plough: “I had moved house at least once a year for seven years straight. It is simply the way of life during higher education, the path I chose in my early twenties. When the short years of an undergraduate degree expire, one is sent into a seemingly endless game of musical chairs; if you’re not moving for a new degree or a new short-term job, you’re moving to find a cheaper place to live or a better roommate, or simply bending yourself to the will of campus housing. It became wearying, but as the years wore on, I began to strategize. In preparation for my move to each new domicile, I kept a few prized possessions, pictures, sentimental things, and valuable household items to be loaded into a single cardboard box. I’d collected these objects in hopes that one day I’d have my own home, where they could be of use or gather dust on a decorative shelf. ‘Have nothing in your house which you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ wrote William Morris, and I tried to follow his maxim. But each year as another June rolled around, a less idealistic proverb formed itself in my mind: have nothing in your apartment which you do not know to be disposable, or believe to be easily transported.”
“Global Christians are Praying for U.S. Elections. Will We Pray for Theirs?” – Adam Russell Taylor at Sojourners: “By the end of this year, more than 50 countries — representing half of humanity — will have held national elections. Thinking about this statistic as an American helps put my own anxieties about the U.S. presidential elections in greater perspective. As Americans, we can easily be insular and self-centered, thinking that our nation’s political situation is exceptional and that we don’t need to be aware of what is happening in other countries. At the same time, we can also be unaware of the ripple effect that our own elections have on the rest of the world. I was reminded of this ripple effect at a recent gathering of global Christian leaders. Throughout the gathering, many leaders from other nations told me in private conversations that they were actively praying for the U.S. election. I was both moved by their concern and somewhat embarrassed that I have not been as committed to praying for them as they have been for us. Their commitment to praying for the U.S. felt especially powerful knowing that so many of them were also facing pivotal and contentious elections in their own countries this year. I left that gathering reminded of our increasingly interdependent world — and resolved to be better at praying for elections beyond our own borders. While it may sound inconsequential, I believe prayer is a meaningful and even essential way we can be in solidarity with our siblings around the world engaged in ongoing struggles to protect freedoms and human dignity.”
“The Architecture of Authority: Why the church must resist the lure of coercion” – Mike Cosper in Comment: “On October 31, 1992, a pastor made a public statement addressing a long-standing controversy in his church. It involved false accusations against a famous intellectual whose conflict with the church had not only led to the destruction of his career and reputation but also imperiled his life. The pastor, acknowledging the hazardous nature of academic exploration for people of faith, called the entire episode a ‘tragic . . . mutual misunderstanding,’ which—as anyone who follows the careers of politicians and pastors knows—is as close to ‘We got this wrong and I’m sorry’ as some of them get. It was all the more extraordinary that the pastor in question was Pope John Paul II. While ‘mutual misunderstanding’ was morally and factually insufficient, I imagine it was incredibly satisfying to the ill-fated academic—or would have been, had the victim in question not been dead for 350 years. But such was the fate of Galileo Galilei. Still, the gesture was enough to make news around the globe. On the front page of the New York Times, the headline read, ‘After 350 Years, Vatican Says Galileo Was Right: It Moves.'”
“Have the courage to have children despite climate change and wars, Pope Francis says” – Claire Giangravé at Religion News Service: “Amid plummeting birthrates in many countries around the world, Pope Francis urged young people to ‘go against the current’ and have children, during his speech at a conference on natality near the Vatican on Friday (May 10). Francis entered the hall on Via della Conciliazione near the Vatican in his wheelchair while hundreds of young people, couples and children greeted him with a standing ovation at the meeting of the States General on Natality. Friday marked the fourth year that the pope has attended the meeting, which gathers politicians, journalists, intellectuals and entrepreneurs to address the problems and propose possible solutions for declining birth rates. ‘I know that for many of you, the future may see unsettling, and that between falling birth rates, wars, pandemics and climate change it’s not easy to keep hope alive,’ the pope said, ‘but don’t give up, have faith, because tomorrow is not something inevitable: We build it together, and this together we find first and foremost with the Lord.’ Francis encouraged young people to not ‘follow a script written by others. Let’s row to turn the tide, even at the cost of going against the current.'”
“Books are Big AI’s Achilles Heel” – Dan Cohen in Humane Ingenuity: “Rapidly advancing artificial intelligence is remaking how we work and live, a revolution that will affect us all. While AI’s impact continues to expand, the operation and benefits of the technology are increasingly concentrated in a small number of gigantic corporations, including OpenAI, Google, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft. Challenging this emerging AI oligopoly seems daunting. The latest AI models now cost billions of dollars, beyond the budgets of startups and even elite research universities, which have often generated the new ideas and innovations that advance the state of the art. But universities have a secret weapon that might level the AI playing field: their libraries. Computing power may be one important part of AI, but the other key ingredient is training data. Immense scale is essential for this data—but so is its quality.”
Music: David Baloche, “Lead Me to the Rock,” from Labyrinth
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Matthew Erickson 