Drew Downs

Make a New Normal

June 2012

  • In this great comment on Forbes (of all places), The Dark Secret of Meritocracy: Reality is Rigged, Karl Smith speaks to hidden costs and the world it creates. His argument? Cheaters may almost never win but, given equal opportunity and a large enough competition, the winners are almost always cheaters. What does this make of cheating?…

  • The last few days, the following photo has bounced around my space in Facebook: The cynical person will no doubt ask: what are the comparable costs of metal spoons, eh? Why don’t we compare apples to apples, here? And then the intuitive among us will point out, yeah, but you only buy one metal spoon…

  • We all hate when our pants don’t fit. My wife put my favorite jeans in the dryer and now I have to lose a couple of pounds to get them back on. Thankfully, these aren’t jeans I’ve had forever. I’m not trying to put on any pants I wore in high school, trying to prove…

  • Many thanks go out to our wonderful friends at St. Paul’s. They threw us a surprise housewarming party a short time ago and it was too good. So much fun! This is what it is like to be loved! For Sophia, the highlight was her new sandbox that she, despite the photo above, doesn’t have…

  • a Homily for Proper 6B  –  Text: Mark 4:26-34 Two Teachings Some here have noticed that I ask questions. I like to tell the group there are no right answers. That this is not question and answer time, but question and response time. That I’m not looking for something specific, but I want to hear…

  • What if the seeds we scatter and grow into grain for the harvest aren’t merely the good things we’ve done, but also the bad? What are we left with? a homily for Proper 6B, Mark 4: 26-34 A reflection on ideas put forth in this previous post: Not the Root of Conflict; the Stalk.