[Main Blog Post] [Book] Thoughts on The Sunlilies - and a Request

[jprussell]

Another fairly short write-up of a book I read of late, this time The Sunlilies by Graham Pardun. Though this book is written from very much within the Eastern Orthodox worldview, I found it to have a number of useful spiritual insights for those of us outside of that, but your mileage may, of course, vary.

Besides the post, I also have a request: I would very much appreciate it if you enjoy my writing if you either a) subscribe to my DIY mailing list, or b) let me know in a comment whatever reasons you'd prefer not to.

While I am mainly writing as a way to gather and sharpen my thoughts, it's nice to have some idea of whether what I'm writing is worthwhile to folks. Email subscriptions tend to be a pretty strong indicator of genuine interest, and should writing ever turn into a part of how I earn my keep, email lists are very helpful (promoting new books, soliciting more direct feedback, and so forth).

So, I'm starting to feel my way around that whole process, but refusing to do it the easy way and just creating a substack. Not that I'm going to start selling anything any time soon, and if I ever do, I will give everyone on the list a chance to get out of Dodge before the shilling commences, and after that, I will do my very best to make it occasional and non-annoying.

Oh, and btw, if you are not interested in subscribing, I will in no way be offended, but I would be just as glad to hear your reasons, as that also helps me understand the landscape I'm dealing with.

Comments

[sdi]

Hi Jeff! I don't subscribe for the simple reason that your posts are hit-or-miss for me—I am only interested in perhaps 20% of what you write about (for example, I am uninterested in society and sociology, actively disinterested in Christianity and any insights gleaned from it, etc.). Because of that signal-to-noise ratio, I consider it more efficient to check in periodically and see if there's content I'm interested in, rather than be pushed content that I probably won't be interested in. That is to say, psychologically, I prefer to find a surprise every so often than to have to filter things I don't want!

And that's not to say you should cater to my interests: it's important to me that everyone does their own weird thing. But because my weird thing is, you know, weird, I tend not to subscribe to very much. :)

[jprussell]

Thanks very much for this feedback, and fair enough! I'm well aware that my interest are quite weird, and I actively work against what causticus below calls "audience capture" by trying to write about whatever I'm interested in, rather than catering to what gets the most comments, positive responses or what have you.

Thanks again, and thank you as well for sharing your thoughts when I do hit the mark (for you)!

Cheers,
Jeff

[causticus]

Hey Jeff, on

(b) I have similar reasons as SDI re: signal/noise, though I am very much interested in sociology and society. Besides that, I see all of your posts in my feed here without any difficulty, so subscribing by email would be quite redundant and unnecessary.

On being reluctant to blog on substack, I feel you. One of the big dangers of participating on a big platform with a big user base (youtube and twitter being the most notorious) is having your content succumb to what I (and I think some others have) would term "audience capture." If your blog were to be successful to the point of having at least a few paying subscribers, you might find yourself writing what they want to hear rather than what you really want to talk about.

Even on this tiny little platform I've found myself refraining from making public posts on topics I don't think my subs would have any interest in; the last thing I want to do is clog up their feeds with the written equivalent of white noise.

Having said all of that, a substack might be a good idea if you were to write about a single theme or topic you might think would have broader appeal than what you normally post about there. I'm thinking of going that route if I were to build myself a content brand around a topic I'm intensely interested in (like history) that might be able to attract an audience larger than the very niche stuff we tend to talk about here on DW.

[jprussell]

As I said to sdi above, fair enough, and thanks very much for this feedback. "Audience capture" is a concept I've thought about quite a bit, and I try to strike the right balance between not succumbing to that and also not just sniffing my own farts, as it were. A tough balance!

As for substack, yeah, I've had some similar thoughts, but I've gotten some pretty strong nudges through intuition, meditation, prayer, and so forth that I need to strive to weave together my various weird threads (wait till I get back to posting on Old School D&D!), which is another reason I've avoided it.

I've also worried a bit that the convenience of posting here is eating into email subscribers, but my current hosting solution doesn't really handle comments (a Github static site, which won't run any javascript of any kind), so having a nice, (fairly) easy way to let folks comment has won out. I've arrived at that for a few reasons (ease of set up and administration, hardening against degradation of the internet, and so forth), but I do sometimes look enviously upon the substackers I enjoy and think "why don't I just do that?"

At any rate, once again, thanks very much for your feedback, even if it's not exactly what my over-inflated Ego might most hope for ("all your writing is great, thanks for reminding me!").

Cheers,
Jeff

[thinking_turtle]

Thanks for your blog! I read:

a big problem if you believe that the Bible is the divinely inspired word of God

It seems to me that when God speaks through humans, he cannot speak truth, because human language cannot express truth. Likewise, two human statements can contradict, while both represent aspects of the underlying truth. To go even further, what God would say in 1024 is not what he would say in 2024, because the meaning of words and the context is different. So for me the bible contradicting itself doesn't conflict with the bible being the word of God.

I tried to subscribe to your mailing list. I think I've tried before. I pick up new post through your Magic Monday contribution.

[jprussell]

Howdy,

1) All of that makes good sense to me, and I know is close to how many Christians interpret the Bible - religiously inspired, but not inerrant. I didn't really get into this in this write-up, but I think there's real value in having a fairly compact corpus of writing that is treated as having "all the answers" and as "if it's in here, there's something important and true about it, even if it's not 'literally' true as a truth-proposition about the material world." It encourages very deep engagement and finding of non-obvious insights, both of which I think can foster great spirituality. On the other hand, there definitely are Christians that think the Bible is literally true the way science is meant to be literally true, and that the kind of qualifications you give don't count, because God is eternal and all-knowing, so whatever He said then is just as true now as it was then, in just the same way. I get the impressions most Christians are somewhere in between these two ends of interpretation, and may vary in how they interpret different parts of the Bible (e.g. "The Gospels are basically accurate historical accounts, while the early books of the Old Testament are more myth, and the books of ancient Hebrew Law are legal documents that give some insights into morality, but shouldn't be followed word-for-word by us.")

Anyhow, point being, I wasn't trying to suggest all Christians are Biblical literalist fundamentalists, more I was making the point that some amount of "if it's in here, it's right" is pretty core to Christianity, and that makes dealing with apparent contradictions harder than an outsider stance for interpretation.

2) Thank you for subscribing! Somehow your request ended up in spam, which was annoying, so thank you for the heads up, I found it and have added you to the list.

Cheers,
Jeff

[thinking_turtle]

there definitely are Christians that think the Bible is literally true the way science is meant to be literally true

Thank for your reply! I think the science and the bible are meant to be true in the exactly the same way. Like you could not doubt the bible in the 1500s you cannot doubt the science today. Like the bible, the science is a captivating story you can use to support any hypothesis and also its opposite. In 500 years, people will look back at us an scratch their head in wonder. Did they really believe they put a man on the moon?

[jprussell]

And you for yours.

Well, there is that way of looking at it as well! Though, what I meant is that there are folks who think that anything in the Bible about the material world can be treated as objectively correct truth-propositions, the way that most folks accept the earth is about 4.5 billion years old and the rate of acceleration of gravity here is ~32 fts/s^2

Cheers,
Jeff

[boccaderlupo]

I'm in a similar boat with some folks here, in that I generally don't subscribe...to anything. I prefer sniffing around, as it were, but has no reflection on your writing, per se.

All the best,
Fra' Lupo

[jprussell]

In what seems to be a running theme, fair enough! I try to be selective about what I subscribe to as well, though the number of substacks I get might seem to contradict that, so I can understand and respect that.

Thanks very much for taking the time to let me know,
Jeff