“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.
“3 Spiritual Habits for Tired Pastors” – From CT Pastors: “As a pastor juggling crushing schedules and overflowing inboxes, carving out time and space for spiritual nourishment can feel burdensome. Thankfully, we can look to church history for resources to refresh the soul. Throughout the centuries, Christians have woven intricate tapestries of renewal, each thread a path designed to draw God’s people closer to him and to each other. n the pages that follow, we examine a few of these tapestries, illuminating strands that have dimmed with age or lack of use. In doing so, we find permission stitched into every image—permission to consider these practices, to honor our own longing for sustenance, and to find, or even create, the quiet moments where our souls can drink from the well of God’s goodness.”
“The Four Apostles: How De-Toxing from the Church and Pastors Saved My Soul” – Steve Smith at Potter’s Inn Substack: “Gwen and I once camped in a magical forest not far from Pagosa Springs, Colorado. We drove our truck on a gravel road for 25 miles, deep into a National Forest to find a postcard worthy place to enter and actually camp in for seven days—that holy number—that just seemed right. It seemed a miracle, that as we drove into this forested campground with a glistening blue lake, one sole camper was packing up and leaving the most pristine and beautiful of all the possible sites for us to be. We waited for their exit to arrive at our own new beginning. Then, it happened. The Four Apostles greeted us. We needed the peace of wild things. We needed rest. We needed life. There beside a crystal blue mountain lake, stood four giant, Ponderosa Pines. They were a hundred feet tall—maybe more. They grew there in almost perfect symmetry making a rectangle shaped space of grass and straw between their trunks. There I felt compelled to fall down and lie prostate—face down and surrendered there between those massive trunks of life. I felt small. I felt insignificant. I felt as if I, like Moses was on holy ground and I too needed to take my shoes off—shoes that I had worn too long over unsure ground in my work.”
“How primordial black holes could explain the enduring mystery of dark matter” – Jacopo Prisco at CNN: “For about 50 years, the scientific community has been grappling with a substantial problem: There isn’t enough visible matter in the universe. All the matter we can see — stars, planets, cosmic dust and everything in between — can’t account for why the universe behaves as it does, and there must be five times as much of it around for researchers’ observations to make sense, according to NASA. Scientists call that dark matter, because it does not interact with light and is invisible. In the 1970s, American astronomers Vera Rubin and W. Kent Ford confirmed dark matter’s existence by looking at stars orbiting at the edge of spiral galaxies. They noted that these stars were moving too fast to be held together by the galaxy’s visible matter and its gravity — they should have been flying apart instead. The only explanation was a large quantity of unseen matter, binding the galaxy together. ‘What you see in a spiral galaxy,’ Rubin said at the time, ‘is not what you get.’ Her work built upon a hypothesis formulated in the 1930s by Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky and kick-started a search for the elusive substance. Since then, scientists have been trying to observe dark matter directly and even built large devices to detect it — but so far, with no luck.”
“Marriage and birth rates, household size, all drop sharply in Milwaukee over 50 years” – Mike Gousha and John D. Johnson in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Cities are always evolving. Like the people who call them home, they experience highs and lows, moments of celebration and disappointment. Their economic fortunes rise and fall depending on factors both within and beyond their control. The constant is change. The challenge is to adapt. That is certainly true for Wisconsin’s population center — Milwaukee and Milwaukee County. In the last 50 years, the state’s largest city and county underwent enormous change. To begin with, they shed thousands of residents. An estimated 916,000 people lived in Milwaukee County in 2023, roughly 125,000 fewer than 50 years ago. The population decline was driven by the city, which lost more than a fifth of its residents during the same period.”
“At least nine dead, 25 injured as gunmen attack synagogues and churches in Russia’s Dagestan” – Darya Tarasova, Jen Deaton and Mariya Knight at CNN: “At least nine people have been killed and 25 injured in what appear to be coordinated attacks by gunmen in Russia’s southernmost Dagestan province, local authorities say. Attacks have been reported in churches, synagogues and a police traffic stop in the cities of Derbent and Makhachkala, which are about 120km (75 miles) apart. Among the dead are seven law enforcement officers, a priest and a church security guard, according to local authorities. Four “militants” have also been killed, according to the Russian news agency TASS. ‘According to the information I received, Father Nikolay was killed in the church in Derbent, they slit his throat. He was 66-years-old and very ill,’ Dagestan Public Monitoring Commission Chairman Shamil Khadulaev said. He also said a security guard at the church armed with only a pistol was shot.”
“Soyinka and the Mythical Method” – Alan Jacobs at The Homebound Symphony: “I have an essay in the new issue of Harper’s called ‘Yesterday’s Men: The Death of the Mythical Method.’ It traces the interest in myth and myth-making from Giambattista Vico to George Lucas, tries to explain why myth has ceased to be an appealing and useful category to our intelligentsia, and asks whether there might be a case for restoring it to a place in our conceptual toolbox. I do think such a case can be made, and while I do not in this essay make that case in any formal way, I conclude by pointing to the example of Wole Soyinka, who (I’ve been saying this for decades) just may be our greatest living writer. If you don’t know anything about Soyinka, here’s an introductory essay I wrote about him more than twenty years ago. I’d love to make a few converts to Soyinka.”
Music: Cross Worship ft. Osby Berry, “So Will I (100 Billion X) // Do It Again”
Renovate 