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Folie à Deux

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A few years ago there was a movie called Joker. It was controversial; critics tended to love it or hate it (“bold, devastating” vs “as social commentary, Joker is pernicious garbage”), and the people who watched it tended to be at either extreme as well.

Inevitably, this year there was a sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux. Just as inevitably, it bombed. Even the people that loved the first one hated this one, it tanked at the box office, and it scored three points lower on IMDB than the original. To top it all off, the ending showed that the main character wasn’t the Joker, just a joker, so they essentially lied the whole time about what the movies were about.

Bible Study

Names

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Names are important; without them we’d all be yelling “Hey you, in the green!” when we wanted to talk to someone, and everyone in green would think we were talking to them. It would be very confusing, not to mention loud. Maybe wearing something chartreuse would mitigate things, but only if others knew the difference between green and chartreuse. (Which in any event comes back to names, in this case the names of colors rather than people.)

Names can also be controversial. When word got out that my name was going to be an abbreviated form of a saint’s name, my mother got a letter from a nun announcing that she (my mother) simply couldn’t do that.

Life / Spiritual Journey

My Story

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A couple of weeks ago, our pastor challenged us to write our Jesus story and send it to someone. I’m a little late because reasons, but here we go.

To the best of my recollection, I started going to church when I was five. As I got older, attendance became more frequent; it was Sunday morning/Sunday night/Wednesday night through most of my growing up years.

Life / Spiritual Journey

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to …

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We lead a small group (“Lifegroup” in our church body’s vernacular) that consists of young married couples, where by young I mean “kids,” as in late twenties to early thirties. They’re a lot of fun, and we have a lot of fun with them. As well as doing completely serious Bible study, of course…

One of the newest couples to the group has, in the last couple of weeks, been called away to a far-away mission field filled with people of dubious reputation and an environment of open hostility to human beings. This place is known in English as “Lubbock.”

This past Wednesday was the husband’s last day with the group (the wife is staying until the end of the month to wrap up things at their apartment).

Spiritual Journey

What is Money?

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“Papa! what’s money?”

The abrupt question had such immediate reference to the subject of Mr. Dombey’s thoughts, that Mr. Dombey was quite disconcerted.

“What is money, Paul?” he answered. “Money?”

“Yes,” said the child, laying his hands upon the elbows of his little chair, and turning the old face up towards Mr. Dombey’s; “what is money?”

Mr. Dombey was in a difficulty. He would have liked to give him some explanation involving the terms circulating-medium, currency, depreciation of currency, paper, bullion, rates of exchange, value of precious metals in the market, and so forth; but looking down at the little chair, and seeing what a long way down it was, he answered: “Gold, and silver, and copper.

Random

Demand Letters as Art

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Normally, I’m with Dick the Butcher, who Shakespeare famously had remark “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Lawyers are why you have warnings on your iron not to use it on clothes you’re wearing, and why you can no longer get hot coffee at McDonald’s.

I’m also not a fan of demand letters. They’re typically just a written form of bullying, and, like most bullying, draw the response of wanting to just hit them in the nose.

But (very) occasionally both turn out to be quite useful. And, as a fan of great writing of almost any form, I could not not link to this.