Mike Paul

Prophets of a Future Not Our Own

A friend made this prayer into a short video and, while the focus is on the work of Christians (real Christians, not the power-mad Christian Nationalists currently trying to ruin literally everything in the world), I can’t help but see our work as educators reflected here, as well.

This prayer was first presented by Cardinal Dearden in 1979 and quoted by Pope Francis in 2015. This reflection is an excerpt from a homily written for Cardinal Dearden by then-Fr. Ken Untener on the occasion of the Mass for Deceased Priests, October 25, 1979. Pope Francis quoted Cardinal Dearden in his remarks to the Roman Curia on December 21, 2015. Fr. Untener was named bishop of Saginaw, Michigan, in 1980.

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent
enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of
saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith.

No confession brings perfection.

No pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.

No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an
opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master
builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.

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Apple TV Pulls ‘The Savant’ – a show about domestic terrorism

In a move likely to spark accusations of bowing to the powers that be and their ongoing battles with media companies and programming that doesn’t fit their narrative, Apple TV+ has pulled The Savant, a show about domestic terrorism based on a 2019 Cosmopolitan article.

We’ll likely never know the reason why the show was pulled, even if it does return. However, I can’t think of a time when media that makes people think is more important than the current time we’re living in.

Constructing Your Own Education

School is one thing. Education is another. The two don’t always overlap. Whether you’re in school or not, it’s always your job to get yourself an education.

More students (and teachers) should grasp this concept. School is a great thing, to be sure, but so is learning on your own. If we can bring that type of learning into our schools… oh, what a time we could have.

But it’s like Jim Henson said: “Your kids… don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.”

One of the things we’ve tried hard to do in our house is to make it a place of learning while also making it as unlike school as possible. What this shakes out to, essentially, is thinking about the house as a library.

– Austin Kleon

Actually, Slavery Was Very Bad

Family on Smith's Plantation, Beaufort, South Carolina, circa 1862. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress and learnnc.org. [1] — Image courtesy of the Library of Congress and learnnc.org

Clint Smith, author of How the Word is Passed, takes on some recent thoughts about slavery’s legacy and whether or not museums are the last refuge of “woke.”

Trump’s Truth Social comment on slavery was unsettling for me not only because I am the descendant of enslaved people, and not only because I was born and raised in New Orleans, which was once the center of the domestic slave trade, but also because I am an American who believes that the only way to understand this country—the only way to love this country—is to tell the truth about it. Part of that truth is that chattel slavery, which lasted in the British American colonies and then the American nation for nearly 250 years, was indeed quite bad.

No matter how you decide to spin events, slavery was bad. Like, for real. Really bad. Always has been. Don’t forget that.

On the Villainy of James Dobson

What a guy like James Dobson does, and what James Dobson did for his whole adult life, is offer people—white men primarily, but not exclusively—a rhetorical framework for doing evil and feeling good about it. Stand right here and look exactly there, he said, and psychology says it’s OK for you to beat your children, that when they cry for more than two minutes of the beating, it is because they are bad and not because you are hurting them; you should beat them harder for crying until they stop. Stand right here and look exactly there, and tradition says your wife should have no will of her own. Stand right here and look exactly there, and love of country says society should press its boot onto the poor and marginalized and crush them until they die. Didn’t you always hate them? Sure you did. Religion says right here that you are right to. He blew softly on a stupid and seething population’s resentments, its will to power, its lust to punish those who complicate their desires by having lives of their own, and watched those appetites stick up like the hairs on your arm, or glow like charcoal in a fire. It feels good. He tempts you with the promise that every cruel, fearful, punitive impulse you have aligns with The Way Things Are Supposed To Be, and that it is even your grim duty is to indulge them. In this respect, James Dobson was very much like Satan.

100% correct. James Dobson Is Dead, Was A Monster

Disturbing Stories, Violence, and Professional Liars

I see myself as a writer; I’m a professional liar.

– Harlan Ellison, 1976

Every now and then, we need a little reminder of our need to be antagonistic toward the establishment and really break things open that need to be broken.

In this interview from British television in 1976 (sorry, it won’t let me embed here), Harlan Ellison speaks about a bit of his life and his consistent efforts to be a thorn in the side of those in power.

The world might be a better place if we could stir up a little trouble as teachers and students by being a little more contrarian.

Interviewer: “I’ve read your stories and I was quite disturbed. There’s a lot of violence sometimes.

HE: “There’s a lot of violence in the world.”

Truth.

Interviewer: “I would call you a science fiction writer. Now, is that exactly what you are?”

HE: “No, that is exactly what I am not… I take contemporary events and look at them through the lens of fantasy and see what they really mean in mythic terms.”

Critiquing the world as it is through stories has been the primary mode of improving society since societies first formed.

On why he owns a gun (after describing taking out a sniper outside his home):

I own a gun because as much as I’d like to believe the world is a soft, pink & white bunny story, it isn’t. I deal with reality; I’m a pragmatist.

I still miss Harlan.

Everyday Objects Are Unrecognizable at Super Macro Scale

Posy takes us on a grand adventure into the world of the incredibly small and ridiculously close.

Prepare to sit in awe of everyday objects from an entirely new perspective.

Funny, we should probably try to look at the world from different perspectives more often…

We must build AI for people; not to be a person

My life’s mission has been to create safe and beneficial AI that will make the world a better place. Today at Microsoft AI we build AI to empower people, and I’m focused on making products like Copilot responsible technologies that enable people to achieve far more than they ever thought possible, be more creative, and feel more supported.

I want to create AI that makes us more human, that deepens our trust and understanding of one another, and that strengthens our connections to the real world. Copilot creates millions of positive, even life-changing, interactions every single day. This involves a lot of careful design choices to ensure it truly delivers an incredible experience. We won’t always get it right, but this humanist frame provides us with a clear north star to keep working towards.

Some thoughts from Mustafa Suleyman on building AI that doesn’t convince people that AI is a human, or needs rights. Or is a god.

Sadly, we’re already having those discussions.

What Trump Is Really Up to in Washington

white house — Photo by Aaron Kittredge on Pexels.com

You do not need the strongest powers of observation to see that crime is a pretext — and not the main reason — for the military occupation of Washington by federal agents and troops from the National Guard.

– Jamelle Bouie