Tabitha

“I don’t believe in proofs of God. Proofs are human things based in the logic of materiality. But it seems to me what we know as beauty must be the expression of God’s very nature. Unlike the arts we make, which are always open to interpretation, this sort of loveliness is purified of anything like thought. It is what it is—and isn’t that the name

“The tide comes in, the tide goes out, and when you are older, around the time when you stop feeling like you’ve crawled into somebody else’s shell, old friends begin to die with appalling regularity.”

— Anne Lamott, Somehow (73)

“After 9/11, people were afraid that we were going to live in an America where the local grocery stores were constantly getting bombed and we had to fight the terrorists in the streets, where nothing would ever be the same. They were afraid, but there was such yearning in that fear. I think AI hype comes from the same place.”

— Freddie DeBoer on

“The world is suited to human enjoyment—”out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sign”—in anticipation of human pleasure, which the Lord presumably shares. This is an extremely elegant detail. The beauty of the trees is noted before the fact that they yield food. It is a rich goodness that the Lord intended

“Abram again show little understanding of the nature of God. In imagining his relationship with God as exclusive, he denies respect to these strangers whose righteousness God Himself recognizes, values, and protects.

The moral appears to be that fear of outsiders, which amounts to contempt for them, leads to unrighteous behavior, and also that God

“This family, of whom it is uniquely true that they are chosen by God to carry forward His will for humankind, must be as unhappy as any family could be. When we consider what the favor of God can look like, Jacob and his sons should surely be borne in mind.”

Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson, page 206 (talking about the saga of Joseph’s