FrChazzz

I’m still Christian and I adore both bands. David Bazan (Pedro the Lion) is recording some of the most theologically rich music of his career now, back under the Pedro name, as he’s come through his whole wrestling with faith. Not sure what he considers himself these days, but it’s clear that he’s never going to shake his Christian upbringing.

Like MxPx, their inclusion of faith in their lyrics became so much more honest and less forced once they left their Christian music label. They introduced me to punk.

Amazing Grace is one of those songs that uses a particular meter that allows for these kinds of tune changes. You can sing it to the tune of House of the Rising Sun as well (among others). One of my supervising/mentoring priests (Episcopal) from when I was in seminary did a Lent study on Amazing Grace and had people listen to all these different versions.

Tracy Chapman’s version is truly excellent.

I feel like the majority of people I see quit Mastodon do so because the platform (and Federation in general) don’t coddle their egos. With no algorithm to game and ingratiate themselves on everyone’s timelines, they make a public exit and talk about how broken Mastodon is and offer their takes on what it needs to be. Which, unsurprisingly, sounds like a non-Elon-ed Twitter.

I love Mastodon. I love discovering new people and accounts by happenstance (and not spoon-feeding).

Sorry for late-reply/paleo-posting this one. I’d say the biggest personal change I’ve experienced since my ordination is how “broad” a lot of my thinking has become as I’ve delved deeper into the traditions of the Church. Christianity is so much more (good) weird than we often allow it to be, to our detriment. And we don’t have to abandon the traditions in order to become “progressive.”

I came from a Southern Baptist upbringing that was very homophobic. I began to question that alongside my shift into Anglican/Episcopal Christianity. My studies into the ancient aspects of the Church wound up making me far more open to various Queer identities than I would have imagined as a teenager. So that’s a big change.

The other is that I’m absolutely convinced that Christianity is supposed to be about telling people that they no longer have to try and save themselves. God loves us as we are, a place in His kingdom is ready for us. We just wind up robbing ourselves of something liberating when we keep thinking that God has abandoned us and throwing each other under the bus. Jesus doesn’t save some at the expense of others. He saves all of us.

Praise God other people see this connection! A friend and I have been referring to the GOP as Wimp Lo for the last couple of years and are always sad when others don’t get the reference. It’s perfect!

My wife uses AI tools a lot (while I occasionally talk to Siri). But she uses it for things like: she’s working on a book and so she used it to develop book cover concepts that she then passed along to me to actually design. I feel like this is the sort of thing most of us want AI for—an assistant to help us make things, not something to make the thing for us. I still wrestle with the environmental ethics of this, though.

Been this way since the harnessing of fire or the building of the wheel.

Howzit, braddah?!

I’ve had adblockers on my browsers for years and pay for ad-free streaming. I easily went over a decade without seeing an ad on a screen in my own home. But when I’d go to a restaurant that had TVs (or to my mom’s house where she’d run the TV constantly) I’d marvel at how unwatchable it was. Just a constant interruption.

My wife has a friend who produced a TV series for Tubi and so we signed up to check it out and, wow. I had to tap out of watching it because of the ads. Just completely obnoxious and loud.

We don’t have billboards here on O’ahu and it’s great. When I went to visit my family on the continental US (Boston and Florida), it was very annoying and distracting to see them everywhere.

I actually said “bye Fash-licia” to Reddit last week. I thought about trying to get banned for something stupid, just for the story. But instead I just quietly deleted the account.