On Wednesdays I offer a glimpse into the chaos of my inner life. These are random thoughts.

1. Let’s do everything we can to end Putin’s war in Ukraine, and to help the refugees it’s created. At the same time, let’s not forget the folks we left behind in Afghanistan or the people displaced from Syria.
2. So Tucker Carlson is blaming his being a Putin booster on President Biden. I’m shocked, really.
3. If someone uses the term “Leftist,” I stop listening to them.
4. The people in charge of Major League Baseball continue to hate their own sport.
5. The go to defense for Evangelicals when they are called out for their actions is often, “You don’t know my/their/his/her heart!” Here’s the thing, Jesus said we’d know a tree by its fruit ¹. So when deeds don’t match words we do know someone’s heart ².
6. I lived in Pennsylvania for twenty-four years, growing up. This mother’s day I’ll have lived in New Jersey nineteen years. PA will forever be “home,” though ³.
7. Sure the world is falling apart, but the Philadelphia Stars are coming back. So that’s nice, I guess?
8. There are points when I really like Star Trek: Discovery, and points where it just tries too dang hard. Telegraphing, “And now we’re dealing with this issue,” without any sort of arc. feels like lazy writing. Detmer’s PTSD was a very good idea, but it disappeared for almost a full season only to suddenly become a major plot point in the last episode, which had to be referenced out loud several times so people would remember it ⁴.
9. The world isn’t broken up into “good progressives” and “evil conservatives.” There is a difference between people who have principled disagreement and those who practice scorched earth ideological warfare. Sadly, for everyone, the Republican Party has fallen into the scorched earth mentality.
10. Picard Season 2, episode 1, was OK. Not great, but OK.
11. Last week I thought Tuesday was Wednesday, because time has no meaning any more.

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1. Matthew 7:16-20. ↩
2. And the need to make sure we hold up a mirror to our own words and actions is essential. Nor should we excuse discrepancies in people with whom we may philosophically agree—that’s not principled thinking, it’s tribalism. The thing is, Evangelicals have living with a thin skin down to a science. ↩
3. I miss hills. ↩
4. If you want to see a serious issue dealt with in Star Trek, which works for both the narrative and character arcs, check out DS9’s “Far Beyond the Stars.” ↩