Quotes | Todd Grotenhuis

Quotes

Nov 10, 2024 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote

> The other problem with big-tech recommendation systems is they’re designed by people who are convinced that “popularity” and “recency” equal “valuable”&10;&10;(Medium, “Rewilding Your Attention”)

Jul 7, 2024 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote

“We’re called to be peacemakers, and peacemakers cannot be fearmongers”

May 5, 2024 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote

> "That diabolical connection—demons associated with the political kingdoms of the world—is highlighted right at the start of the New Testament. In the temptation narratives in the Gospels, Satan is described as ruler over all the kingdoms in the world: The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to.” (Luke 4:5-6) I don’t think the connection between the spiritual and the political could be any clearer. The price for political power is spiritual allegiance. Jesus rejects both offers, refusing to worship Satan and refusing to rule the world through political power. Turning his back on Satan, Jesus sets out to establish a very different sort of kingdom exercising a very different sort of power as a very different sort of King." (Richard Beck, Reviving Old Scratch)

Mar 31, 2024 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote

"In contemporary American culture our slavery to the fear of death produces superficial consumerism, a fetish for managing appearances, inauthentic relationships, triumphalistic religion, and the eclipse of personal and societal empathy. These are the “works of the devil” in our lives, works produced by our slavery to the fear of death." (Richard Beck, The Slavery of Death)

Feb 18, 2024 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote 🏴

"So this is what I have come around to, this is how I have made sense of my obsession with anarchism: the first target of anarchistic practice ought to be whatever it is *in me* that resists anarchy—what resists negotiation, the turning toward the Other as neighbor and potential collaborator." (Alan Jacobs, Between Chaos and the Man)

Feb 4, 2024 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote: unfortunately still holds up.

"Every job will be automated until only five remain: a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal." (Ben Werdmüller)

Courtesy of @benwerd

Jan 21, 2024 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote

from No Time to Spare: Thinking about What Matters by Ursula K. Le Guin 📚

"“It doesn’t have to be the way it is” is a playful statement, made in the context of fiction, with no claim to “being real.” Yet it is a subversive statement. Subversion doesn’t suit people who, feeling their adjustment to life has been successful, want things to go on just as they are, or people who need support from authority assuring them that things are as they have to be. Fantasy not only asks “What if things didn’t go on just as they do?” but demonstrates what they might be like if they went otherwise—thus gnawing at the very foundation of the belief that things have to be the way they are." (Ursula K. Le Guin, Karen Joy Fowler (Introduction), No Time to Spare)

Dec 10, 2023 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote

"“Every time we have an outage, we’ll be conducting a blameless post-mortem like this one. The spirit and intent of these sessions are to learn from them, chronicling what happened before memories fade. Prevention requires honesty, and honesty requires the absence of fear. Just like Norm Kerth says in the Agile Prime Directive, ‘Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.’" (Gene Kim, The Unicorn Project)

Oct 29, 2023 ∞

Sunday Quote 🕊️🏴

Call to Worship&10;Left: What burden do we bear? Is it the yoke of empire, heavy as cast iron, shackling our lives to the machinery of power?&10;Right: Let us bind ourselves to the plowshare of Christ.&10;Its crossbeam is light. Its harness rings with bells.&10;Left: We do not wish to harden the earth with our weight or trample&10;the oppressed with our force.&10;Right: We yearn to turn over the ground and sow the seed of peace&10;and compassion!&10;All:&10;Gracious God, we relinquish the burden of empire. We long to shoulder all those who mourn.&10;Prayer of Invocation&10;Welcome

Sep 17, 2023 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote:

“Katrina was an extreme version of what goes on in many disasters, wherein how you behave depends on whether you think your neighbors or fellow citizens are a greater threat than the havoc wrought by a disaster or a greater good than the property in houses and stores around you.”

Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell

Aug 6, 2023 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote

"In fact, there’s absolutely no reason a modern state should fund itself primarily by appropriating a proportion of each citizen’s earnings. There are plenty of other ways to go about it. Many—such as land, wealth, commercial, or consumer taxes (any of which can be made more or less progressive)—are considerably more efficient, since creating a bureaucratic apparatus capable of monitoring citizens’ personal affairs to the degree required by an income tax system is itself enormously expensive. But this misses the real point: income tax is supposed to be intrusive and exasperating. It is meant to feel at least a little bit unfair. Like so much of classical liberalism (and contemporary neoliberalism), it is an ingenious political sleight of hand—an expansion of the bureaucratic state that also allows its leaders to pretend to advocate for small government." (David Graeber, Against Economics)

Jun 4, 2023 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote

“We are quite literally a people that morally live off our wars because they give us the necessary basis for self-sacrifice so that a people who have been taught to pursue only their own interest can at times be mobilized to die for one another.”

Stanley Hauerwas & William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens

"We are quite literally a people that morally live off our wars because they give us the necessary basis for self-sacrifice so that a people who have been taught to pursue only their own interest can at times be mobilized to die for one another." (Stanley Hauerwas & William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens)

Apr 6, 2023 ∞

📑 Quote

"But we cannot find liberating joy in the cross by spiritualizing it, by taking away its message of justice in the midst of powerlessness, suffering, and death. The cross, as a locus of divine revelation, is not good news for the powerful, for those who are comfortable with the way things are, or for anyone whose understanding of religion is aligned with power. The religious authorities of Jesus’ time were threatened by his teachings about the reign of God’s justice and love, and the state authorities executed him as an insurrectionist—one who “perverts the nation” and “stirs up the people”" (James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree)

Mar 26, 2023 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote

"Hospitality isn’t just about welcoming sinners; it’s also about welcoming people we think are idiots." (Richard Beck, Stranger God)

Mar 19, 2023 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote:

"• To make mistakes is human. To own your mistakes is divine. Nothing elevates a person higher than quickly admitting and taking personal responsibility for the mistakes you make and then fixing them fairly. If you mess up, fess up. It’s astounding how powerful this ownership is." (KEVIN KELLY, 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice)

Mar 10, 2023 ∞

📚📑 Another goodie from Death to Deconstruction.

"The story of Jesus speaks to me because, in one scene, Jesus is lovingly blessing little kids, and in another, he’s calling religious leaders a bunch of snakes. Jesus’s paradigm for God is of a gracious, loving Father who kisses the faces of his sinful, rebellious children, but the seriousness with which he regards evil is so intense that he says it’s better to gouge your own eye out than to objectify women. One thing makes me gush. The other makes me nervous. I’m suspicious of voices that only tell me what I want to hear.
&10;
&10;Were it me, I might emphasize one thing, but not the other. I’d conceive of a God who is either never angry or never not angry. A soft, enabling God who doesn’t care enough to stop me from destroying myself, or a God so appalled at my relentless failure that he can’t bear to look at me without retching. But in Jesus, our soul-longings to be known and loved, for an end to evil and injustice are realized in the unfathomable beauty of truly self-sacrificial love." (Joshua S. Porter, Death to Deconstruction)

Feb 5, 2023 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote

“Which path do you intend to take, Nell?” said the Constable, sounding very interested. “Conformity or rebellion?” “Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded—they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.”

Jan 29, 2023 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote

I keep thinking about this.

Every job will be automated until only five remain: a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal.

Jan 22, 2023 ∞

Sunday Quote 📑

Leaning into a challenge means that we ask ourselves some version of the question: "What can I learn about me in these circumstances?"

Jan 15, 2023 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote

“We describe hospitality as “making room,” and we tend to think of this as making room in physical space—making room at our table or making a bed available in our home. The practice of stopping is a different sort of making room. Interruptibility is a practice of making room in time, finding space for others in the midst of our busy day. That’s the inhospitality of hurry; there’s no room for you in my schedule.”