We’re now in a new decade, and I thought it would be a good idea to keep writing on my blog in 2020. With a new year comes resolutions and plans for the coming twelve months, but also the helpful and informative habit of looking back on past accomplishments, challenges, and growth. With that in mind, I hope to do a few posts over the next while to review some of the most influential books, favorite music, and exciting events of 2019.
One of my favorite folk bands just came out with a new album this month. For the uninitiated, Flook is an Anglo-Irish folk band comprised of members Sarah Allen, Brian Finnegan, Ed Boyd, and John Joe Kelley. Their music is predominately instrumental, featuring intricate and often very fast tunes played on flute and whistle. My wife refers to them as the “tootey-fluteys” whenever I play one of their albums in the car or around the house.
Well, it has been an entire year since I was in the full-tilt gardening mood, and some of that has started to kick in again. This time, I feel I’m exercising a greater dose of moderation in my enthusiasm for starting plants from seed, not to mention the fact that I started almost a month later than last year. I’m hopeful that this will help me avoid having to keep crazy tall tomato plants in my living room like last time.
The other night I happened upon an article about Stéphane Breitwieser, arguably the world’s greatest art thief. What a shockingly fascinating read! The amount of art this guy stole is insane, but most interesting to me was the thinking that motivated his crimes. The author was able to interview Breitwieser himself, who describes the inner struggle that led to the first theft of hundreds:
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been listening to an audiobook of David Platt’s Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream while driving to and from work and running errands. Almost every chapter has impacted my thinking in some small way, and I’m currently listening to the chapter about world poverty and American luxury. This has led me to consider the desire that I have for stuff, and how that desire has only grown in an age of two-day Amazon Prime shipping and endless email marketing campaigns.
A few weeks ago, I was reading in Matthew 10 where Jesus chose his twelve disciples, gave them authority over demonic forces and the ability to heal all kinds of sickness, and then sent them out to preach the good news of the Kingdom and heal people. The specific and radical nature of Jesus’ instruction to these messengers struck me, and I wrote down a note to study this more carefully.
