Hypothetical Fatherhood has migrated to The Life Mosaic.

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I’ve migrated my blog posts and twitter feed for my 2011 side project, Hypothetical Fatherhood, to here at The Life Mosaic.
In the months leading up to becoming a father in 2011, I created Hypothetical Fatherhood to explore and share some of the creative-yet-inappropriate ideas running through my head as I prepared for this new role in my life. Eventually, I lost steam for posting on the blog, which required quite a bit of time commitment, and shifted to a Twitter-only feed. However, I found keeping up the character of a “meta” version of myself wasn’t authentic enough for me to feel invested, especially on Twitter where it seems like a majority of my friends are themselves there and I was just in it for the jokes. It was fun and I’m glad for the experiment, and in the end it was yet one more thing on my plate and I let it go.
That’s one of the best things about creativity: sometimes, you get to let something go.
So I let it go. And now I bring it here. So it lives on, archived for (at the very least) my own amusement and to confuse people who happen into

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Pre-Trip Reading: Witnesses to the Kingdom

Students going to El Salvador have been assigned a handful of books to read before the trip and after the trip, each requiring a brief written reaction piece. Here’s one of mine:

Witnesses to the Kingdom: Martyrs of El Salvador and the Crucified Peoples by Jon Sobrino

A figurehead of liberation theology, Jon Sobrino is a respected theologian who’s writing about those who have gone before him who engendered both his respect and represented something profound in their theology or what they represent theologically. He’s writing about martyrs.

Rather than tour through all of the stories Sobrino tells of martyrs, I want to address his writing style and philosophy because that is what intrigues me most as a writer. With all due respect to those who have died for a cause, all I can say about reading these stories is I was struck by how I’ve never even contemplated this sort of thing to be a part of my life. I don’t know anyone who has died for a cause and I don’t know what cause I believe strongly enough in to offer my life. I’ve heard it said many parents would die for their children though perhaps I need children in order to truly understand this idea. I’m still wrapping my head around the concept of martyrdom, even after reading the stories in Sobrino’s book, though something tells me it’s going to come up more than once on the trip. With that said, exploring why Sobrino’s writing style is so powerful definitely intrigues me and is inspirational in terms of my own desire to produce better writing.

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Your Friday Recommendation #36

Some of the teenagers in my youth group have been coming together for a year to perform in short videos that satirize The Office. Rather than an annoying boss who disrupts an office setting, our videos feature an annoying youth director who disrupts his youth group. Writing the script is always an exercise in excruciating … Read more

Is this wrong? A moral politics poll

As one who wrote editorial cartoons for nearly six years, I wonder if the writers of Real Time with Bill Maher, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, SNL, and other politically-charged satirical shows are also pondering this (near-) rhetorical question which has been in the back of my mind of recent: If you’re both a … Read more

Your Friday Recommendation #9

I’m a fan of great books at great prices, and if you’ve been in a B&M (“Brick & Mortar,” or physical store as-opposed to online store) Barnes & Noble lately, you’ve probably seen a stack of America (The Book) by The Daily Show with Jon Stewart for under $10 a copy – a real steal. … Read more