Friday Roundup (7/11/25)
The flooding in Texas, an essay by Freya India, music from Billy Strings
Happy Friday. Here’s what I’ve been reading and thinking about this week:
Rod Dreher, quoting David Bentley Hart, on Christians wrestling with tragedy and suffering. Dreher, like all of us, is wondering where God was in the Texas floods that swept away so many innocent lives. Here’s his quote from David Bentley Hart, which he wrote in response to the horrible tsunami in Indonesia in 2004:
I do not believe we Christians are obliged—or even allowed—to look upon the devastation visited upon the coasts of the Indian Ocean and to console ourselves with vacuous cant about the mysterious course taken by God’s goodness in this world, or to assure others that some ultimate meaning or purpose resides in so much misery. Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation; our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred. For while Christ takes the suffering of his creatures up into his own, it is not because he or they had need of suffering, but because he would not abandon his creatures to the grave. And while we know that the victory over evil and death has been won, we know also that it is a victory yet to come, and that creation therefore, as Paul says, groans in expectation of the glory that will one day be revealed. Until then, the world remains a place of struggle between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, life and death; and, in such a world, our portion is charity.
As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of His enemy. It is not a faith that would necessarily satisfy Ivan Karamazov, but neither is it one that his arguments can defeat: for it has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead.
Emma Foltz, a counselor at Camp Mystic, is a name every American should know. Foltz, a rising senior at Louisiana Tech, didn’t hesitate and guided 14 young campers from rising waters to high ground. We often think of our younger generations as fragile and afraid. How wrong that caricature can be. It was Americans in their late teens and early 20s who answered the call after 9/11, who stormed the beaches of Normandy, and who fought the British in 1775. Like them, Emma Foltz should be remembered for the same heroic public service.
Searchers later found Eastland downriver alongside three young campers. His grandson, George, said this about him: “If he wasn’t going to die of natural causes, this was the only other way, saving the girls that he so loved and cared for.”
Nearby, on the same stretch of river, in the Bumble Bee Hills neighborhood, Erin Burgess and her 19‑year‑old son were swept away until they found a tree to cling to for an hour before the water receded. When asked how she survived, Erin credited her teenage son’s strength and tenacity. “Thankfully, he’s over six feet tall. That’s the only thing that saved me, was hanging on to him.”
In the small town of Ingram, 27-year-old Julian Ryan fought to get his fiancée, their two young children, and his mother onto the roof. He punched out a window to give them an exit, a desperate action that severed the artery in his arm. Before the slashed artery rendered him unconscious, he refused to quit and made sure his whole family was safe on top of their roof. He looked at his loved ones, told them he loved them, and apologized that he “wasn’t going to make it.” His body was taken by the river and found hours later, after the water receded.
Read this essay, Nobody Has A Personality Anymore, by Freya India. Just stunning stuff on how a rising generation is processing their lives. Here’s the beginning of it:
Therapy-speak has taken over our language. It is ruining how we talk about romance and relationships, narrowing how we think about hurt and suffering, and now, we are losing the words for who we are. Nobody has a personality anymore.
In a therapeutic culture, every personality trait becomes a problem to be solved. Anything too human—every habit, every eccentricity, every feeling too strong—has to be labelled and explained. And this inevitably expands over time, encompassing more and more of us, until nobody is normal. Some say young people are making their disorders their whole personality. No; it’s worse than that. Now they are being taught that their normal personality is a disorder. According to a 2024 survey, 72% of Gen Z girls said that “mental health challenges are an important part of my identity.” Only 27% of Boomer men said the same.
This is part of a deeper instinct in modern life, I think, to explain everything. Psychologically, scientifically, evolutionarily. Everything about us is caused, categorised, and can be corrected. We talk in theories, frameworks, systems, structures, drives, motivations, mechanisms. But in exchange for explanation, we lost mystery, romance, and lately, I think, ourselves.
I enjoyed this list of 85 favorite books of all time from writer Boze Harrington. I found plenty of books that I’ve never read that I’d like to.
An article from the religion news service about how ‘exvangelicals’ are turning to tarot card reading. I post this, obviously not endorsing the practice, but so we can all learn the kinds of spirituality people are turning to when they reject Christianity. The article notes the higher use of tarot cards among those who identify as LGBT:
Ultimately, each practitioner sees tarot as a tool that helps people understand themselves more fully. And for people who have left conservative Christian spaces, it is also a tool in which self-discovery can happen in a way that offers personal agency, which feels new and refreshing, they said.
These days, each of these practitioners identifies their spirituality in different ways. Garcia still sees Jesus as an important faith teacher, but also incorporates alternative elements such as ancestor veneration and yoga. They define themselves as “spiritual but not dogmatic or religious.”
Adam identifies as pagan and connects the most with the goddess Athena, he said.
Burgess said, “I don’t subscribe to any organized religion, and my spirituality is inherently queer — by which I mean expansive, curious, questioning, relational, anti-dogmatic, constantly transforming, and devoted to the care and liberation of all people.”
I had a friend recommend bluegrass artist Billy Strings. He has a powerful life story of overcoming, from Wikipedia:
Billy Strings was born William Lee Apostol on October 3, 1992, in Lansing, Michigan. His father died of a heroin overdose when he was two, and his mother remarried Terry Barber, an accomplished amateur bluegrass musician, whom Strings regards as his father. The family later moved to Morehead, Kentucky, and then to Muir, Michigan. While he was still a preteen, his parents became addicted to methamphetamine. He left the family home at the age of 13 and went through a period of hard drug usage. His family eventually achieved sobriety; Billy stopped using hard drugs and drinking alcohol…
You can hear a lot of that in his voice, and in his magnificent guitar playing. Here’s one you might enjoy, but I highly recommend any of his live recordings:
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