Ted Lasso Returns, Buy Nothing Groups, and More

a Blue Room grab bag

Good morning from the Blue Room!

Two announcements! First, episode 2 of the podcast is live, a conversation about “What Hope Is” with psychotherapist, Enneagram teacher, and family systems guru Marilyn Williams. Listen here, or find the show on your favorite podcast app (searches for “blue room maryann” should get you there). Reviews help others find the show–please consider leaving one on your app of choice!

Also, this week’s bonus post for paid subscribers is for the movie lovers among us. Which flick does MaryAnn find most relatable? How about biggest tear-jerker? Sexiest film? They’re all there. (h/t Brett Goldstein, aka Roy Kent, and his Films to be Buried With podcast for the list of questions.)

Because it’s already been a content-heavy week, I’m sharing my monthly grab-bag today: a list of stuff that’s inspired, consumed, confounded, and amused me recently:  

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Of course I’m ready for season 3 of Ted Lasso on March 15:

But even more, I loved how many friends and colleagues reached out to share their excitement about it when the teaser dropped. I deactivated my personal Facebook account awhile back and don’t regret that decision. But I loved the big community debrief that happened during season two. We got up to 200 comments per episode by the end of the season!

I’m thinking about hosting a discussion each week on Substack–creating a post (separate from the Friday newsletter) with my initial thoughts after each show and inviting people to comment. I don’t have any illusions that participation will be as robust as it was at FB, but it’s better than nothing, and I love delving into the compassionate wisdom of this show with other smart, open-hearted fans. I don’t plan to send those out via email–two emails a week from me would get spammy, and not everyone has AppleTV+, let alone watches the show–so folks would need to come looking for it on my Substack page. Thoughts? Comment with the button below, or if you’re receiving this in email, reply to me directly.

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After I wrote about the spiritual practice of abandoning projects, including books, I’m midway through Anand Giridharadas’s The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy and finding it so valuable that I’m currently racking up overdue fines at the library so I can get through it. So much for lack of completion! (shrug) Some excellent wisdom about bridging our divides in healthy, winsome, effective ways. 

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I’m also reading The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict. Although I find some of the dialogue to be clunky, I’m intrigued by the story. I knew absolutely nothing about this book going in–our church’s book club is reading it–and about a quarter of the way through I thought, “this feels like a World War II-era retelling of the book of Esther.” I went poking around for more about the book, only to find out it was a novelization of the life of Hedy Lamarr! I guess I should have known that. (facepalm) 

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Fellow Substacker Jen Zug is as enamored of Buy Nothing groups as I am, and like me, she also tries to bring some panache to her listings. These are lovely little pieces of writing! 

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What is mine to do? Suzanne Stabile, Godmother of the Enneagram, uses this question as a guide and a check on her overfunctioning tendencies. I’ve been living with it as well, and it’s helpful. Like a lot of things though, the devil’s in the details. Working on some ideas for a potential post about how we really sort out what’s ours and what’s not. How do you do it? 

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Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is out, and not getting great reviews, so for the first time in a long time, the Danas will not be clamoring to see an MCU movie. And like NPR’s Glen Weldon, I’m bummed about it:

A chilling thought occurs. What if the snobs were right, all this time?

You know: Those imperious jerks who've spent decades now peering down their noses at superhero movies, who’ve clucked their tongues and stroked their beards and dismissed the appeal of these films, waving them off as mere cartoons? I’ve fought against them, one way or another, my entire adult professional life — but what if, in one narrow sense at least, they’re right? What if they’ve had the answer all along?

The MCU gets many mentions in Hope: A User’s Manual (the bit about conservative and progressive stories remains one of the things people quote back to me the most), and I stand by the view that pop culture juggernauts can be bearers of meaning, but the superhero fatigue does feel pretty real in our culture and our household at the moment. 

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If you’re Presbyterian, you may have heard about a dust-up involving a recent question on the ordination exams, asking candidates to exegete a so-called “text of terror,” what is perhaps the worst story in the Bible. This article has the details, and my colleague Traci Smith is persuasive about how ill-advised the choice of text was. I can’t add much to what’s been said about the substance of the issue. How can the word “trauma” be so ubiquitous in the culture these days, yet with so little understanding of what it is and how it works? Our institutions are not nearly trauma-informed enough. Traci covers that aspect well. 

But I’m also thinking about the response from the committee and staff that oversee the administration of ordination exams. Admittedly, I only know the high-level response, but it was essentially this: 
-Students who wanted to back out of the test would be allowed to take a future exam without additional fees (cold comfort if you’re graduating in a few months but can’t complete your ordination requirements until the fall–are people supposed to work retail in the meantime?)
-Other than that, it’s too late to change the exam or offer alternate arrangements this time around. 

How is it not possible to make a change? I’m disappointed, though perhaps not surprised, at the lack of organizational agility at play here. It’s one thing to miscalculate, or not foresee the negative repercussions of a decision. It’s another to be completely unable to (here comes that pandemic word again) pivot to a solution once new information comes to light. What’s the missing ingredient here? Imagination? Flexibility? Empathy? Bandwidth? And which of these ingredients are our institutions missing when they remain burrowed down into process and traditionalism?

What’s inspired/consumed/confounded/amused you recently? 

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What I’m Up To

In addition to this week’s podcast and bonus article, I’m also preaching this Sunday at 10:15 EST at Trinity Presbyterian in Herndon, in person and via livestream. And local folks, I’d be pleased to see you in person on Sunday, March 12 at 3 pm, when I will be officially installed as associate pastor there! 

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Link Love

In honor of Black History Month: Dr. Bettina Love speaks compellingly about the difference between being an ally and a co-conspirator–from the Underground Railroad to Bree Newsome and beyond. This seven-minute video will bless and challenge you.