The Amazing Amazingness of Amazing Stuff

Creation of Man

Amazing.

Did it creep up on you as well?

This overuse of the word “amazing” just sort of … appeared.

Amazing.

Here I was just a moment ago trying to read about the Dodgers, and Don Mattingly wanting more instant replay — they’d lost recently to the Brewers on a questionable call to end the game — and up pops a Weight Watchers advertisement, with Jennifer Hudson allowing as how yeah she enjoyed the first iteration of WW she tried, but their new Points Program is … wait for it … amazing!

The word is effortlessly everywhere, with an emphasis on the word “effortless” because something that easy is surely not going to have any power or weight (no pun on the Points Programs intended) at all.

And lo and behold!

It doesn’t.

I swear to you that within the last week someone at a conference posted some social media saying, essentially, I’m at an amazing place with some amazing people, and I’m having a blast. Amazing. It was not significantly different. Fewer than 140 characters, and 21 of them were that word … times 3.

Amazing.

Here’s where I should be all lathered up about the decline of Western Civilization, but honestly, it’s not a big enough deal. Not amazing, if you will.

Because this too will run its course, and some new depredation will take its place.
Because the suppleness and subtlety of English means it can survive even this.
Because there are dozens of other violations of this sort every single day.

And maybe if we ignore it, the self-promotion tweets that start, “So pumped/jazzed/stoked to have my new blog/book/video out tomorrow. … ” — faux excitement as ways of mentioning something that you’re kinda sorta supposed to mention to “promote” events you’re involved in — will die die die die die.

Though no doubt many super amazing people were involved.

Doesn’t anyone just say thank you anymore?

It’s nothing short of

You know.

Recent

Coyotes and Christians

I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,

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And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

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What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.]   One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

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Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

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Random

You’re Doing It Wrong

A friend once recounted how a mutual acquaintance of ours had told her God spoke to him, which he meant both literally and verbally. It’s enough on one point to note the gent didn’t say God spoke with him — which wd seem to be preferred, all things taken together — but that isn’t what I’ll

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Jesus All The Way Down

The other day I wrote about having no hope. More specifically no hope in this world, more specifically because the hopes we had have been hammered against hardened sand and dirt and clay, that is, against the rocks. That may be the basic choice in life: Heart hardened … or Hopes hammered … And then

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Shock And Ow

I’ve had many exchanges over the years where my statement about something was taken as surprise at the event rather than what it was — which is anger over human inaction facing it. Having worked 1.75 teenage males through the household over the last dozen years this has often been a thing one or the other has

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Room Where It Happens

If the line between good and evil cuts through the human heart there’s gotta be some overlap. The lovely mesh seems so far to last oh … about forever and it occurred this morning it will never quite be clean this side of the fundy conception of the Jordan. Even Dr. Willard, averring as he

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Related

I Wasn’t Talking To You

There is a story from the Johnson Administration which has PBS journalist Bill Moyers, at the time LBJ’s communications director, praying before a meal. With many guests attending, Moyers was at one end of the table and the Leader of the Free World at the other. As Moyers said grace, President Johnson said, “I can’t

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Saving Grace

Don’t ask me for grace. Not because I don’t want you to have it, for I certainly do. But I can’t give it to you. Only God can give you grace, of this I’m becoming certain. Grace is God’s action in our lives to accomplish what we could never do on our own. Dallas Willard which

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Inglorious Bastards

This is a post borne of a recent article in Leadership Journal, by a guy who’s been meeting with Ted Haggard. I don’t usually write on stuff like that — it is cheeseball to even appear to piggyback for one’s own benefit on somebody else’s popular post, or to try and capitalize on an au

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Lookit! Lookit! Lookit!

Don’t see my sin, Lord. Look at Jesus on the cross, Father … then look at me. Look at Jesus Christ risen, Father … then look at me. Look at Jesus ascended, Father … then look at me. Amen.

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