Plot Points #6 💌

Survival instincts, purity culture, and the only good thing about AI

Boston Public Library - Central Library via Google Images

Hi friends!

Pierce and I are in Boston (!) this weekend celebrating the wedding of one of my former students. I met Olivia in 2015 when I became a high school small group leader at our then-church, and we connected immediately. For four years, I got to watch her grow into an incredibly thoughtful, kind, and compassionate woman and I’m so, so honored to get to witness this beautiful day.

On another note, we will be visiting the Boston Public Library while we’re here, so be prepared for much swooning in my next email.

P.S. Our summer book club is only in the second week of reading Lessons in Chemistry, so if you haven’t joined yet, you’ve still got time! Just introduce yourself in the group chat and catch up with chapters 1-12. I shared my thoughts on the reading so far in my latest post here and since we will be out of town this weekend, I’ll post about weeks 2/3 next Saturday.

Happy weekend!

Point #1: Miracles still happen.

I’ve been following the story of four children—ages 13, 9, 4, and 11 months (!!!)—who survived alone in the Amazon for 40 days after a plane crash before being found. This article about their rescue brought me to tears. Such resilience and courage! Let’s be in prayer for their recovery. I imagine it’s going to be a long road ahead.

Point #2: A Biggie-inspired baking rap is possibly the only good thing about AI.

“Ground cinnamon for that spicy relation” is an excellent metaphor.

Point #3: Ordinary lives are really quite extraordinary.

As we enter into Ordinary Time on the Church calendar, with nothing “exciting” awaiting us until Advent in November, I thought the latest piece by Diana Butler Bass summed up this season in a really lovely way: “[F]ollowing [Jesus] in the midst of the ordinary is to awaken ourselves to the extraordinariness that surrounds us.”

Point #4: She deserves better.

Y’all, I just stumbled across Preston Sprinkle’s Theology in the Raw podcast, and WHEWIE this episode on the devastation purity culture has wrought on generations of women and girls (and how we can do better) was absolute FIRE. (CW: there is a detailed, but not graphic, discussion of sexual assault.) Sprinkle’s guests Sheila Gregoire and Rebecca Lindenbach don’t hold back on this topic—or the host!—for a single moment. BRB, going to buy all of their books now.

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Reading In The Nook

I fumbled through Caraval—Stephanie Garber’s YA fantasy novel billed as a book for fans of The Night Circus—and was…underwhelmed, to say the least. But I’ve heard the series gets much better in the later installments, so I’m giving the second book a go.

“You pay God a compliment when you ask great things of Him.”

— St. Teresa of Avila —

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