Weekend reading

Hello hello! My brain has been swimming with ideas lately and I’m trying to channel them into a few different essays, which feels a lot like wrangling an octopus into a net. Or buckling a frantic toddler into a carseat. Or any analogy that conveys a sense of struggle! 😉

All of that to say, sometimes I need to take a break from forming sentences and read ones that have already been written. Below are five of the best articles/essays I’ve read on the internet lately. If you ever want to discuss any of these with me, I am alllll ears. Happy reading!

If I Have to Ask by Adrienne Garrison: “It only took becoming physically incapable of carrying the load alone to realize that having to ask for help isn’t about being weak, or even about being unseen and unappreciated. It’s about acknowledging that I am finite. I have a limit. It’s about having someone to turn to and actually turning to them, sharing the burden of this daily life we live.”

The Slippery Slope to Becoming an Influencer Part Two: Why I Got off the Ride by Jill Atogwe: “And here, nearly five months after stepping away from Instagram and my career as an influencer, I can say I have a peace in my mind and spirit that I haven’t experienced in years. I have gone on trips without documenting them play-by-play in stories. I’ve celebrated birthdays and created things I’m proud of and laughed and cried without reporting it to anyone but the people in my arms. I’ve learned what it means to come face to face with idolatry and name it. My relationships are deeper, my friendships sweeter and my head feels more like Hans Zimmer than Metallica.”

White Churches, It’s Time to Go Pro-Life on Guns by Charlie Dates: “You have asked us to join in the fight for pro-life legislation, and now we ask you to do the same. Be pro-life by urging your congressional leaders to protect the lives of school kids who die at the force of weapons too easily placed in the wrong hands. Urge your senators to pass morally upright gun legislation. Be true to the same book you preach on Sunday.”

Like & Subscribe for a Chance at Eternal Life by Yi Ning Chiu: “The internet as described by [Jia] Tolentino and [Zadie] Smith—a place where we are held in the gaze of a constant watcher, circumscribed by the imagination of a distant and authoritative mind, consumed by the attentions of something intent on taking everything we have to give—is like the profane equivalent to how Paul describes God to the Athenians. “In him we live and move and have our being,” says Paul, and while he was speaking of the Lord, in our cultural moment this phrase could be mistaken for a dark and concise summation of the internet.”

I’ll Show Myself Out (book excerpt) by Jessi Klein: “Every mother you know is in this fight with herself. The sword that hangs over her is a sword of exhaustion, of frustration, of patience run dry, a sword of indignation at how little she feels like a human when she so often has to look and behave like an animal. Mostly, it is the sword of rage: the rage and shock of how completely she must annihilate herself to keep her child alive. Ultimately, the hope of impossible delight almost always wins out over the impossible torment. I know this because here I am, alive, writing this, and here you are, alive, reading it, which means our mothers did what heroes do: They kept us all alive to tell our own tales one day.”

(Ok, I’m just now realizing that all of these articles are v serious. Here is a funny video to lighten the mood a bit!)