In Summary: * Listening now to pregame coverage ahead of tonight's WNBA Fever/Phoenix Game. I'll stay with 1075 The Fan for the radio call of the game. Opening tip is scheduled for 6:30 PM CDT.

I spent an hour and a half at yard work this morning, breaking branches to load the big green organics bin, then mowing on the front yard. Heat index was 104 degrees when I quit working and came inside to cool down and clean up. I really want to finish up mowing the front yard over the next few days, but after two straight days of yard work, I may opt for a non-work day tomorrow. We'll see how much energy I have tomorrow morning before deciding about that.

Prayers, etc.: * I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night.

Health Metrics: * bw= 242.95 lbs. * bp= 156/92 (67)

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups, BP breathing exercises, pilates

Diet: * 05:50 – 1 banana * 06:15 – 1 ham & cheese sandwich * 13:00 – bowl of home made beef and vegetable soup * 14:15 – small bowl of ice cream * 17:15 – 1 fresh orange

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 04:00 – listen to local news talk radio * 04:50 – bank accounts activity monitored. * 05:00 – read, write, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials, nap * 09:30 to 11:00 – 1 ½ hrs. of yard work * 12:00 – tuned into an early afternoon MLB Game, already in the 4th inning, Rangers leading the Marlins 1 to 0. * 13:55 – and the Marlins win, 4 to 2. * 14:30 – resubbed to Frndly TV * 14:45 – follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials, listen to relaxing music * 16:30 – listening to Indianapolis Sports talk from 1075 The Fan. I plan to stay with this station for the radio call of tonight's WNBA Fever/Mercury Game.

Chess: * 08:40 – moved in all pending CC games

Chapter 1: The Uneasy Feeling in the Back of the Church

You can sit in the back of a church and feel two things at the same time. You can feel the beauty of the candlelight, the stillness, the old words, the smell of incense hanging in the air, and at the same time feel a question rising in your chest that you are almost afraid to say out loud. Something about it looks sacred, but something about it also feels strange. You watch people stand, kneel, bow, speak in rhythm, move through repeated prayers, and wait for a moment they believe changes bread and wine into something holy. And somewhere deep inside, especially if you have ever seen images of ceremonial magic, spell work, or Wiccan ritual, you may wonder whether what you are seeing is worship or something else. That is why I wanted to speak plainly through the truth about Catholic rituals, witchcraft, and how Jesus taught us to worship, because a person should not have to silence an honest spiritual question just to look respectful.

Maybe your question did not begin in anger. Maybe it began with a quiet discomfort. Maybe you were raised to believe every ritual was holy because an authority figure said it was holy, but now you are older, and you are trying to follow Jesus for yourself. Maybe you are not trying to attack anyone. You are just trying to understand why candles, incense, repeated sacred words, altar movements, robes, bells, and claims of spiritual transformation can look so similar across religious systems that claim very different sources. Maybe you have already been walking through the deeper difference between religious performance and worship in spirit and truth, and now the question has become personal. You do not want borrowed faith. You do not want fear-based religion. You do not want something that only looks holy from a distance. You want to know what Jesus actually asked of the human heart.

That question matters because many people are carrying spiritual confusion they were never allowed to name. They have sat through religious services where everything was controlled, formal, and mysterious, but their hearts still felt far from God. They have watched leaders speak as if sacred power depended on the right words, the right objects, the right gestures, and the right human office. Then they opened the Gospels and saw Jesus sitting at tables, touching lepers, forgiving sinners, calling children close, praying on hillsides, feeding the hungry, and telling a Samaritan woman that the Father seeks people who worship in spirit and truth. That contrast can shake a person. It can make you look back at all the polished religious motions and ask whether God was ever asking for all of that, or whether human beings kept building systems around the simple invitation Jesus gave.

I want to be careful here, because real people are involved. There are Catholic people who love Jesus with tears in their eyes. There are people who grew up Catholic and learned the name of Christ from a grandmother who prayed beside her bed every night. There are people who walk into Mass sincerely, humbly, and with a desire to honor God. I am not writing this to mock them, shame them, or pretend I can see every heart. Only God can see that deeply. But love for people does not mean silence about systems. Respect for sincere worshipers does not mean we ignore the spiritual questions raised by religious structures that place heavy emphasis on ritual objects, priestly mediation, ceremonial repetition, and visible acts of transformation.

A person can love people and still test practices. A person can respect someone’s devotion and still ask whether the structure they were handed looks like the way Jesus taught. That is not cruelty. That is spiritual honesty. In fact, if we never ask hard questions because we are afraid of offending tradition, tradition becomes stronger than truth. And when tradition becomes stronger than truth, people can spend their whole lives defending a system without ever asking whether that system is helping them draw near to the Father.

The uneasy feeling many people have around ritual does not come from nowhere. We know that in many forms of ceremonial religion and magic, physical objects matter. Candles are not just candles. Incense is not just fragrance. Words are not just words. Gestures are not just gestures. Clothing, timing, altar space, sacred direction, and ritual order can all be treated as part of a spiritual operation. The outer act is believed to participate in an unseen change. That is why the comparison between certain religious rituals and magical rituals feels so unsettling to some people. It is not because every candle is evil. It is not because every formal prayer is witchcraft. It is because the pattern can look familiar: set apart the space, prepare the objects, speak the formula, perform the action, expect spiritual transformation.

When someone steps into a Catholic Mass and sees an altar, candles, incense, robes, repeated responses, bells, gestures, sacred vessels, and a priest presiding over a claimed transformation, the similarity in form can be difficult to ignore. Again, this does not mean every person present understands it that way. It does not mean every worshiper is practicing magic in their own mind. But the structure raises a serious question: when worship begins to depend on ritual precision, sacred objects, ordained human control, and a repeated ceremonial act believed to bring spiritual reality into physical form, how far are we from the kind of religion Jesus kept breaking open?

That question becomes even sharper when we remember how Jesus moved through the world. He was not careless about holiness. He was not casual about the Father. He prayed. He honored Scripture. He went to synagogue. He kept the heart of God’s commands. But when Jesus confronted religious life, He kept moving the focus away from outer display and back into the heart. He challenged leaders who loved visible religion but neglected mercy. He warned against prayers spoken for attention. He touched people others would not touch. He healed on days when the religious system said healing was inconvenient. He told people that clean hands did not matter if the heart was full of corruption. He did not come to decorate ritualism. He came to reveal the Father.

That is where this whole subject becomes more than a comparison chart between Catholic Mass and Wiccan ceremony. The deeper issue is not merely whether two rituals look alike from the outside. The deeper issue is what we believe brings us close to God. Is it the candle? Is it the incense? Is it the priest? Is it the formula? Is it the altar? Is it the repeated motion? Is it the religious institution declaring that grace has been dispensed through its approved ceremony? Or is it the living Christ calling the human heart into surrender, trust, repentance, love, mercy, forgiveness, and truth?

A man can kneel in a cathedral and still be far from God. A woman can sit at a kitchen table with no candle, no incense, no robe, no altar, no bell, no ceremony, and speak to the Father with a broken honest heart, and heaven can hear her. That does not mean beauty is wrong. That does not mean order is wrong. That does not mean all traditions are worthless. But it does mean we should never confuse atmosphere with obedience, mystery with truth, ritual with relationship, or religious movement with worship.

Think about the person who has had a hard week and walks into a religious service hoping to find God. Their phone has been full of bad news. Their child is struggling. Their marriage feels tense. The bills are stacked on the counter. Their mind is tired from pretending to be fine. They sit down and the ceremony begins. People around them know when to stand and when to kneel. Everyone seems to understand the motions. But inside, this person is not thinking about theology. They are wondering whether God sees them. They are wondering whether Jesus still cares. They are wondering whether prayer means anything when life feels heavy. If the service gives them ritual but not Christ, it may leave them impressed and still spiritually hungry.

That is one of the great dangers of religious ceremony. It can give people the feeling that something holy has happened without requiring the heart to come into the light. It can make a person feel covered because the ritual was completed. It can place confidence in the system instead of in Jesus. And when that happens, the form may be beautiful, but the soul can remain untouched. The person may leave saying, “I went to church,” while never asking, “Did I come before God honestly?”

Jesus cared too much about people to let them hide inside religious performance. He knew how easily we use holy-looking things to avoid surrender. We can memorize words so we do not have to speak from the heart. We can repeat prayers so we do not have to confess what is really going on. We can trust a religious office so we do not have to personally seek the Father. We can point to a ceremony so we do not have to examine our life. Ritual can become a wall built from sacred materials.

And that is where the comparison to witchcraft becomes spiritually serious. In many magical systems, the practitioner seeks to work with unseen power through ordered actions. The concern is not always the appearance of candles or incense by themselves. A candle on a dinner table is not magic. Incense in a room is not automatically occult. The concern is the belief that spiritual reality can be accessed, directed, mediated, or activated through controlled ritual means. When Christianity begins to look like that, people have a right to ask whether we are still following Jesus or whether we have baptized a pattern He came to move us beyond.

Jesus did not teach His followers to manipulate spiritual power. He taught them to trust the Father. He did not give His disciples a secret altar formula. He taught them to pray simply. He did not tell them to depend on a class of religious professionals to bring God down through ceremony. He tore open access to the Father through Himself. He did not build a system where grace was locked inside ritual performance. He offered living water.

This matters because a lot of people are spiritually tired. They are tired of being told to accept things they do not understand. They are tired of being warned not to question religious authority. They are tired of feeling guilty for noticing contradictions. They are tired of being given more ceremony when what they need is Christ. They are tired of systems that dress themselves in holiness while leaving people confused, afraid, dependent, or spiritually passive.

Maybe you know that feeling. Maybe you have sat in a pew, or watched a service online, or listened to someone defend a tradition, and quietly wondered, “Am I wrong for questioning this?” Maybe you have felt a little fear because the religious system seemed so old, so large, and so confident. It can be intimidating to question something millions of people accept. It can feel lonely to look at a ritual everyone else calls sacred and wonder if it has drifted from the simplicity of Jesus. But questions asked sincerely before God are not rebellion. Sometimes they are the beginning of freedom.

Jesus was not afraid of honest questions. He was far harder on religious pride than He was on confused people trying to find the truth. He welcomed the wounded, the doubtful, the ashamed, the rejected, and the spiritually hungry. He did not crush the person who came quietly at night. He did not turn away the woman with a complicated past. He did not shame the desperate father asking for help with unbelief. The danger was not honest uncertainty. The danger was a religious system so confident in its own forms that it could not recognize God standing in front of it.

That should humble all of us. This article is not an invitation to look down on Catholics while feeling superior. Superiority is just another costume for the flesh. The question is not, “How can we prove those people are wrong so we can feel better about ourselves?” The question is, “Have we allowed anything to stand between our hearts and the worship Jesus described?” Because ritualism is not limited to one denomination. A person can leave a cathedral and still carry ritualism into a plain room. A person can reject incense and still worship routine. A person can criticize robes and still depend on religious habits instead of a surrendered heart.

The human heart is very skilled at making substitutes for God. We can turn church attendance into a substitute. We can turn Bible knowledge into a substitute. We can turn ministry work into a substitute. We can turn emotional music into a substitute. We can turn moral opinions into a substitute. We can turn being right into a substitute. That is why Jesus’ words about worship in spirit and truth do not merely challenge Catholic ritual. They challenge every one of us.

Still, the visible similarities between high ritual religion and ceremonial magic should not be brushed aside as if only ignorant people notice them. They deserve careful thought. A person who sees candles, incense, sacred garments, repeated formulas, ritual vessels, altar-centered action, and a claimed transformation is not foolish for asking what is happening. The answer cannot simply be, “It is different because we say it is different.” The answer must be tested by Jesus.

When Jesus taught worship, He did not make sacred atmosphere the center. He did not make institutional control the center. He did not make mystery for mystery’s sake the center. He made the Father the center. He made truth the center. He made the heart the center. He made mercy, love, repentance, humility, and obedience matter more than religious appearance. And because He did, every form of worship must come under His light.

A tired mother washing dishes after everyone else has gone to bed may understand this better than a room full of religious experts. She stands there with warm water running over her hands, worried about her child, replaying an argument, wondering if she failed again. There is no choir. No incense. No polished ceremony. But in that small kitchen, she whispers, “Lord, help me. I do not know how to do this without You.” That may be closer to the worship Jesus described than a thousand perfect rituals performed by hearts that never open.

A man driving to work before sunrise may understand it too. His truck is cold. The dashboard light is the only glow in the dark. He feels the pressure of providing, the fear of falling behind, the regret of things he said yesterday. He does not have sacred objects in his hands. He has a steering wheel. He does not know a formal prayer. He just says, “Father, keep me honest today. Help me not become hard.” That is not impressive religion. But it is real. And real matters deeply to Jesus.

The reason ritual can become dangerous is that it often promises spiritual meaning without requiring that kind of honesty. It can train people to think that holiness happens over there, at the altar, through the official person, during the sacred moment, while ordinary life remains untouched. But Jesus did not separate worship from life that way. He brought worship into the heart, into the home, into forgiveness, into money, into anger, into lust, into mercy, into enemies, into secret prayer, into how we treat the least noticed person in the room.

If worship does not change how we speak to our family, what exactly are we worshiping? If ritual does not lead us into mercy, what spirit is being formed in us? If ceremony leaves us dependent on ceremony but not more surrendered to Christ, what has it done for the soul? These are not easy questions, but they are necessary ones.

The Catholic Mass presents itself as Christian worship centered on Christ. Wiccan ritual presents itself differently, often involving nature, deity, intention, energy, or magical practice depending on the tradition. They are not identical in belief. It would be lazy to say they are exactly the same. But the question raised by many observers is not whether the theology is identical on paper. The question is whether the ritual pattern trains the soul in a similar direction: toward sacred objects, sacred formulas, mediated power, repeated ceremony, and an event of transformation controlled through ritual order.

That is the place where followers of Jesus have to slow down and think. The issue is not whether something is old. Old does not automatically mean true. The issue is not whether something is beautiful. Beautiful does not automatically mean holy. The issue is not whether millions of people do it. Popular does not automatically mean faithful. The issue is whether the practice carries the heart toward the Father in the way Jesus revealed, or whether it wraps the soul in religious mystery while keeping direct, simple, obedient trust at a distance.

There is a kind of religion that makes people feel small in the wrong way. Not humbled before God, but dependent on the system. Not convicted by truth, but afraid to ask. Not drawn into love, but trained to comply. Jesus did not come to make people spiritually helpless. He came to make dead people alive. He came to call sons and daughters home. He came to bring sinners into forgiveness, not into endless dependence on religious machinery.

When the curtain of the temple was torn, it was not a minor detail. It was a thunderclap of access. It declared that through Christ, the way was opened. And if the way has been opened by Jesus, we should be very careful about any system that seems to stitch the curtain back together and then charge people emotionally, spiritually, or institutionally to stand on the other side waiting for access.

That may be why this question feels so personal to many readers. It is not only about Catholicism. It is about every place where people were taught that God was far away and had to be reached through religious control. It is about the child who grew up afraid of getting the ritual wrong. It is about the adult who still feels guilty for missing a service but does not feel convicted about bitterness. It is about the person who knows how to repeat words but does not know how to talk to the Father. It is about the one who has been near religion for years and still wonders why Jesus feels distant.

Maybe the most honest starting point is this: anything that can be performed without love can become a hiding place. A ritual can be performed without love. A song can be sung without love. A sermon can be preached without love. A prayer can be repeated without love. A post can be written without love. A doctrine can be defended without love. Jesus does not merely ask whether the outside looks correct. He asks what is happening inside the cup.

That is uncomfortable, but it is also hopeful. Because if worship is in spirit and truth, then you are not locked out because you do not understand religious systems. You are not disqualified because you do not know the approved gestures. You are not less loved because you pray in a simple room instead of an ornate building. You are not farther from God because your voice shakes and your words come out messy. The Father is not impressed by theater. He is near to the humble.

This is where the conversation has to begin: not with outrage, not with mockery, not with a desire to win an argument, but with the quiet courage to ask whether our worship looks like Jesus. If the answer is no, then something has to change. If the answer is unclear, then we must keep testing. If the answer exposes places where tradition has crowded out truth, then we should not be afraid to follow Christ out of confusion and into freedom.

The back row of the church can become a holy place if that is where honesty begins. The uneasy feeling can become a doorway if we bring it to Jesus instead of burying it under guilt. The question that once scared us can become a prayer: “Lord, teach me what worship really is. Strip away what is false. Keep what is true. Lead me past empty ritual and into the life You came to give.”

Chapter 2: When Holy Objects Start Carrying the Weight

A person can keep a small cross in a drawer for years and never think of it as power. It may have belonged to a mother, a father, a grandmother, or someone who prayed through seasons the family barely talks about now. One day, while cleaning out a bedroom, that person may find it tucked beside old receipts, a dry pen, and a folded funeral card. They hold it for a moment, not because the metal saves them, but because memory rises. They remember someone who believed. They remember a kitchen where prayers were whispered. They remember the way faith used to feel close before life became busy, wounded, or complicated. An object can carry memory without becoming an idol. A symbol can point the heart toward God without becoming the thing that gives life.

That is why this subject requires honesty and patience. It is too easy to flatten everything and say, “Candles are witchcraft,” or “Incense is evil,” or “Any ritual object proves corruption.” That may sound bold, but it is not careful enough. The Bible itself contains altars, oil, incense, garments, lamps, bread, cups, washing, laying on of hands, and visible signs that taught people something about God. The problem is not that human beings use physical things to remember spiritual truth. We are embodied creatures. We need reminders. We forget quickly. We mark graves. We keep photographs. We wear wedding rings. We put Scripture on walls. We place a Bible beside the bed even when we know the paper itself is not magic.

The problem begins when the object stops pointing and starts carrying. It begins when the candle is no longer a reminder of light but becomes part of a required spiritual mechanism. It begins when incense is no longer a symbol of prayer but becomes a sign that the ceremony has entered sacred power. It begins when bread and wine are no longer received in remembrance, gratitude, and faith, but are placed inside a system that says a priest’s ritual action changes their substance and mediates grace in a way ordinary believers cannot approach apart from that system. At that point, the concern is not beauty. The concern is dependency.

You can see a smaller version of this in ordinary life. Someone may have a certain chair where they pray every morning. The chair itself is not the issue. In fact, it may help them become still. But if they begin to believe God hears them less when they pray somewhere else, the chair has quietly changed roles. Someone may keep a worn Bible on the passenger seat during a difficult season. There is tenderness in that. But if they begin to treat the closed Bible like a protective charm while ignoring the words inside it, something has shifted. The human heart does this easily. We reach for visible things because visible things feel easier to manage than surrender.

That is part of why ritual feels safe. Ritual gives the hands something to do when the heart feels uncertain. It gives order to fear. It gives shape to longing. When life feels out of control, there is comfort in an action that always happens the same way. Stand here. Say this. Bow now. Wait for the bell. Receive from the authorized person. Leave knowing the ceremony has been completed. For a wounded person, that can feel deeply stabilizing. It can feel like the chaos of life has been placed inside a container.

But Jesus did not come only to stabilize frightened people through religious containers. He came to heal, forgive, awaken, and lead people into the Father’s life. He knew we needed more than repeated motions. He knew we needed truth reaching the hidden parts of us. He knew a person could honor God with lips while the heart remained far away. That is a frightening possibility because it means the most polished act of religion can still miss the point.

Imagine a man who has spent the whole morning being hard on his family. He snapped at his wife before breakfast. He ignored his son’s attempt to talk in the car. He carried resentment into the church parking lot like a stone in his pocket. Then he walks into a sanctuary where the lights are dim, the candles are lit, the words are ancient, and the ceremony feels weighty. He participates correctly. He knows when to kneel. He knows when to respond. He receives what he was told to receive. But when he gets back in the car, he is still cruel. He is still cold. He is still unwilling to apologize. If the ritual did not bring him into repentance, what did it accomplish?

That question is not limited to one church. It can happen in any setting. A person can lift hands during a song and refuse to forgive. A person can quote Scripture and cheat a coworker. A person can criticize Catholic ceremony while being proud, harsh, and unteachable. Jesus sees through all of it. He is not fooled by plain walls any more than He is fooled by stained glass. The issue is not whether the room is ornate or simple. The issue is whether the heart is surrendered to God.

Still, Catholic ritual deserves careful attention because it does not merely use symbols as reminders. At the center of the Mass is a claim of transformation. The bread and wine are not only signs that point to Christ’s sacrifice. They are treated as becoming, through the action of the priest and the words of consecration, the body and blood of Christ. That belief changes the whole meaning of the ceremony. The altar becomes the place where a sacred change is said to occur. The priest becomes the necessary human figure through whom the rite is performed. The words become more than teaching; they become part of the claimed event. The objects become the focus of adoration.

This is where the resemblance to magical thinking becomes difficult to dismiss. Again, I am not saying Catholic worshipers are Wiccans. I am not saying they consciously practice witchcraft. I am saying the structure raises a serious spiritual concern. In ceremonial magic, the practitioner often works through set words, consecrated space, symbolic objects, and ordered action with the expectation that unseen reality will be affected. The Catholic Mass uses different theology and different language, but it also places heavy meaning on consecrated space, ordained authority, sacred vessels, repeated words, and a claimed transformation that ordinary people cannot simply perform on their own.

The defender of the Mass may say, “But this is Christ’s command. This is holy tradition. This is not magic because God is the one acting.” That answer may be sincere, but it still needs testing. A person in almost any religious system can say the power is not their own. The deeper question is whether Jesus actually built worship around that kind of repeated sacrificial ritual and priestly mediation after His resurrection. When He said, “Do this in remembrance of Me,” did He create an altar-centered system of transformed elements, or did He give His followers a humble meal of remembrance, communion, gratitude, and proclamation?

When I read the Gospels, I see Jesus breaking the human instinct to control access to God. He does not seem interested in making the table more mysterious than the Savior seated at it. He does not seem interested in turning bread into an object that draws worship away from the living Christ and toward the handled element. He takes bread, gives thanks, breaks it, and gives it. The movement is simple, relational, and rooted in His coming sacrifice. The power is not in a priest’s hands. The power is in Christ Himself.

This matters for the person who feels spiritually unworthy. Many people already believe God is hard to reach. They think they must clean themselves up first, say the right words first, pass through the right religious doorway first, or receive approval from the right authority first. A ritual system can deepen that fear. It can make God feel locked behind ceremony. It can make grace feel like something dispensed through channels only certain people control.

But Jesus kept moving toward the people who were told they were too far away. He moved toward the woman at the well, not after she entered the correct building, but while she stood in the heat of an ordinary day with a complicated life. He moved toward Zacchaeus in a tree. He moved toward a thief dying beside Him. He moved toward fishermen, tax collectors, grieving sisters, blind beggars, sick bodies, ashamed sinners, and tired crowds. Over and over, Jesus revealed a Father who was not trapped behind ritual machinery.

There is a quiet freedom in that. It does not make worship less serious. It makes worship more honest. It means the person sitting alone on the edge of the bed after another disappointing day can come to God without a ceremony. The person who failed again can come. The person who does not know church language can come. The person who has only enough strength to whisper, “Jesus, help me,” can come. The person who has been hurt by religious authority can come. The door is Christ, not the ritual.

At the same time, freedom from ritual dependency does not mean freedom from reverence. Some people swing from one extreme to another. They see the danger of ceremony and decide casualness must be the answer. But Jesus did not call us into shallow worship either. He did not free us from ritualism so we could treat God like an idea we visit when convenient. Worship in spirit and truth is not less demanding than ritual. In many ways, it is more demanding because it touches everything. A ritual can be completed in an hour. A surrendered life cannot be completed by noon.

This is where Jesus’ way becomes so piercing. He takes worship out of the protected religious compartment and brings it into the whole person. He brings it into the way we spend money, the way we speak when we are frustrated, the way we handle temptation, the way we treat the person who cannot help us, the way we forgive, the way we tell the truth, the way we serve when no one applauds, the way we sit with God when our feelings are numb. That kind of worship cannot be performed by a priest on our behalf. No one can love your enemy for you. No one can humble your pride for you. No one can surrender your secret bitterness for you.

A ritual object can be held by another person. Your heart cannot. That is why worship must become personal, not merely private, but personally real. It has to reach the place where you actually live. It has to reach the temper you keep excusing. It has to reach the fear you keep feeding. It has to reach the envy you hide under religious language. It has to reach the loneliness you numb with scrolling. It has to reach the grief you keep covered because you do not want anyone to know how tired you are.

The danger of sacred objects is not always that they are dark. Sometimes the danger is that they are easier than obedience. It is easier to light a candle than forgive your brother. It is easier to repeat a prayer than confess a lie. It is easier to attend a ceremony than sit quietly before God and admit you have been angry at Him. It is easier to receive something from a priest than open your life to Jesus and say, “Search me. Correct me. Lead me.” Religion often gives us manageable holy things. Jesus asks for the whole heart.

That does not make symbols useless. It puts them back in their proper place. A wedding ring matters because it points to a covenant, but if the spouse is unfaithful, the ring cannot save the marriage. A family Bible may be precious, but if no one opens it, it becomes furniture with gold edges. A cross on the wall may remind us of Jesus, but if we refuse to carry our own cross in daily life, the wall decoration has become easier than discipleship. Symbols are servants. They become dangerous when they become masters.

So the honest question is not merely, “Does this ritual look like witchcraft?” The better question is, “What is this ritual training me to trust?” If it trains me to trust an object, I should be concerned. If it trains me to trust a human mediator more than Christ, I should be concerned. If it trains me to believe grace is controlled by a religious institution, I should be concerned. If it trains me to feel spiritually safe while my heart remains closed, I should be deeply concerned.

But if a simple act helps me remember Jesus, repent honestly, love more deeply, and walk in truth, then the act remains a servant. The difference is not always visible from across the room. It is revealed by what the practice produces in the soul. Does it produce humility, love, truth, courage, mercy, repentance, and closeness to the Father? Or does it produce fear, dependence, confusion, pride, spiritual passivity, and loyalty to a system over loyalty to Christ?

The room may be beautiful. The music may be moving. The candles may glow. The words may sound ancient. But Jesus still asks the question beneath it all: Where is your heart?

Chapter 3: When Sacred Words Become a Formula

A woman sits in a hospital waiting room with a paper cup of coffee she does not want. The lid is too hot against her fingers, but she keeps holding it because her hands need something to do. Her brother is behind a set of doors she cannot enter, and every time a nurse walks through the hallway, her chest tightens. She tries to pray, but nothing polished comes out. She does not know whether to ask for healing, strength, mercy, time, or a miracle. All she can manage is, “Jesus, please.” The words are small, but they are honest. In that moment, she is not trying to activate power. She is reaching for the One who already sees her.

That difference matters. There is a world of difference between prayer that reaches toward God and speech that is treated like a spiritual formula. The same human mouth can do both. We can speak words as trust, or we can speak words as control. We can pray because we love the Father, or we can repeat phrases because we believe the right arrangement of words will make something happen. This is where ritual religion and magical practice can start to feel uncomfortably close. Both can teach people to place heavy confidence in exact wording, repeated speech, official phrases, and spoken acts that are believed to cause spiritual change.

Words are powerful, but they are not powerful in the way anxious religion often imagines. Scripture teaches that words can bless, wound, confess, deceive, build up, tear down, praise, and reveal the heart. Jesus warned that we will give account for careless words, and James compared the tongue to a small fire. So this is not an argument that words do not matter. They matter deeply. A cruel sentence can stay in a child’s mind for decades. A sincere apology can open a door that pride kept shut for years. A whispered prayer can steady a person who thought they were about to fall apart. But words matter because they come from the heart and move through relationship, not because they are magic syllables that force heaven’s hand.

That is one of the quiet dangers of formal religious speech. It can train people to believe that spiritual life depends on getting the words right more than coming honestly before God. A person can be afraid to pray unless they know the approved prayer. A child can grow up thinking God is more likely to listen to memorized language than to a trembling honest voice. An adult can sit beside a hospital bed and feel spiritually helpless because they were never taught to speak to the Father plainly. They were taught prayers, but not prayer. They were taught responses, but not surrender. They were taught religious speech, but not living conversation with God.

This becomes especially important when we look at the Mass. At the heart of the Mass are words that are treated as doing more than remembering. The priest speaks the words of consecration, and the ceremony teaches that through that act the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. Those words are not understood as ordinary teaching or shared remembrance. They are attached to a claimed sacramental change. The exact role of the priest, the words, the intention, and the rite all become central. That is why many people sense a similarity to ceremonial magic, where words spoken in a set context are believed to participate in unseen transformation.

Someone may object and say, “But these are Christ’s words.” That matters, and we should not brush it aside. The words spoken at the Last Supper are precious. They point to sacrifice, covenant, forgiveness, remembrance, and the coming cross. But using the words of Jesus does not automatically mean we are using them the way Jesus intended. The devil quoted Scripture during the temptation in the wilderness. Religious leaders quoted Scripture while missing the heart of God. A phrase can be biblical and still be placed inside a system that bends its meaning. The test is not whether holy words are present. The test is whether the use of those words matches the life and teaching of Christ.

Jesus did not teach prayer as performance. He warned His followers not to pray in order to be seen by people. He warned against empty repetition. He gave a simple prayer that begins with “Our Father,” not because the exact sound of the words functions like a spell, but because the prayer teaches trust, dependence, forgiveness, daily need, holiness, and surrender. The Lord’s Prayer is not a magic key. It is a doorway into the kind of heart that lives before God. It teaches us who God is, who we are, what we need, and what must change in us.

That is why a child whispering, “God, help my dad come home safe,” may be praying more truly than a room full of people repeating words with no attention, no love, and no surrender. God is not confused by simple language. He is not impressed by religious vocabulary. He is not waiting for us to pronounce holiness correctly before He listens. A father can understand the cry of his child even when the child cannot explain the pain. How much more does the Father in heaven understand the person who comes with tears, silence, fear, or broken words?

This is where the spell-like use of sacred language becomes dangerous. It can make God seem less like Father and more like force. A force can be tapped into if you learn the method. A Father must be trusted. A force can be approached through technique. A Father calls for relationship. A force can be handled by experts. A Father welcomes children. When religious practice turns God into someone who must be reached through official speech and ritual performance, the soul can become trained in fear instead of love.

A tired man may experience this without knowing how to explain it. He may kneel beside his bed after losing his temper with his daughter. He knows he should pray, but he feels foolish because he does not know what to say. He remembers prayers from childhood, but they feel far away from the actual mess of the evening. His daughter’s face keeps coming back to him. He remembers how her shoulders dropped when he raised his voice. He does not need a formula. He needs repentance. Finally, he says, “Lord, I was wrong. Help me apologize without defending myself.” That prayer may not sound religious enough for a ceremony, but it reaches the place Jesus wants to heal.

Ritual speech often avoids that place. It can keep things elevated, formal, and distant. It can sound holy while never naming the real issue. But Jesus was never interested in religious language that floated above the truth. He asked direct questions. “Do you want to be made well?” “Why are you afraid?” “Do you love Me?” “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus brought words down into the real condition of the person standing in front of Him. He was not collecting phrases. He was uncovering hearts.

That should make us examine every religious system that depends heavily on prescribed speech. Again, prescribed words are not always wrong. A wedding vow is prescribed, but it should express a real covenant. A courtroom oath has set language, but the issue is truthfulness. A parent may teach a child a bedtime prayer, and that can be beautiful if it helps the child learn trust. The danger comes when the words continue after the heart leaves. The danger comes when the phrase itself is treated as the source of power. The danger comes when people are told that spiritual change has occurred because the words were said, even if the person saying or hearing them remains untouched by repentance and faith.

In magical practice, words are often treated as instruments. They focus intention, invoke power, mark a boundary, open a ritual, close a ritual, bless an object, summon, banish, or transform. The words matter because they are part of the working. In Christian prayer, words are not supposed to be instruments for controlling spiritual reality. They are supposed to be truth offered to God. They can confess faith, ask for mercy, praise His name, surrender fear, repent of sin, intercede for others, and express love. But their strength is not in technique. Their strength is in the God who hears.

That distinction may sound small until you see what it does to a life. If prayer is technique, then the burden stays on you. Did you say it correctly? Did you have enough faith? Did you use the right words? Did the right person pray? Did the ceremony happen properly? Did the rite count? But if prayer is trust, then the burden moves to God’s goodness. You still come humbly. You still speak truthfully. You still honor Him. But you are not trying to make the machinery work. You are coming to a Father who already knows what you need before you ask.

That is not a small comfort. It changes the way a person breathes. It changes the way a person comes back to God after failure. It changes the way a person sits in silence when words will not come. Some of the deepest prayers in life have almost no words. A person standing at a graveside may not be able to say anything except, “Lord.” A person reading a frightening medical result may only close their eyes. A person in the shower before a hard day may only breathe out, “Stay with me.” The Father is not measuring the length of the prayer. He is meeting the heart that turns toward Him.

This is why Jesus’ teaching cuts through religious anxiety. He did not say the Father is seeking people who can perform the correct rite under the correct authority with the correct words in the correct room. He said the Father seeks worshipers who worship in spirit and truth. Spirit and truth reach places ritual cannot reach. They reach the lie we have been protecting. They reach the resentment we keep rehearsing. They reach the fear beneath our control. They reach the need to be seen as holy while avoiding actual surrender. Spirit and truth do not let us hide inside words that sound sacred.

When sacred words become a formula, the heart can go missing without anyone noticing. The room still responds. The priest still speaks. The people still kneel. The ceremony still moves. The calendar still turns. The tradition still continues. But a person can participate year after year and never learn how to stand honestly before the Father in secret. That should concern us. Not because we want to accuse every person in the room, but because we care about whether people are being led into living communion with Christ or trained to rely on repeated religious actions.

A young man leaving church may sense this in his own confusion. He may not have the language for it yet. He only knows that he has completed the motions but still does not know how to pray when he gets home. He still does not know what to do with lust, anger, envy, fear, and shame. He still feels like God belongs to the building and not to the small apartment where he eats dinner over the sink because he is too tired to sit down. If worship cannot follow him there, then something has gone wrong. Jesus does not stay behind in sacred architecture. He comes into the ordinary room and asks for the real person.

That is the beauty of simple prayer. It refuses to turn God into an object of religious control. It lets the heart come without costume. It lets the sinner repent without theater. It lets the tired person ask for strength without learning a system. It lets the lonely person speak honestly without pretending to be spiritually impressive. It lets the believer say, “Father, I trust You,” even when the hands are shaking.

The issue with ritualized sacred speech is not only that it can resemble magical structure. The issue is that it can slowly teach people to trust the structure more than the Savior. It can make faith feel like something managed by correct religious performance. But Jesus keeps calling us back to something simpler and deeper. He calls us to speak truth before God and then live that truth when we rise from prayer. He calls us to let our yes be yes and our no be no. He calls us to forgive as we have been forgiven. He calls us to pray in secret and trust that the Father sees what no one else sees.

That kind of prayer may never impress a crowd. It may never sound ancient. It may never echo under a cathedral ceiling. But it can change a life because it is not trying to operate spiritual power. It is opening the heart to the living God. And once the heart begins to open honestly, the need for formula starts to lose its grip.

Chapter 4: The Man Behind the Curtain

There is a certain kind of silence that fills a car when someone is parked outside a church and has not decided whether to go in. The engine is off. The keys are still in the ignition. The phone is face down on the passenger seat because one more message from the outside world would be too much. Maybe the person has done something they regret. Maybe they have been carrying a secret for months. Maybe they have rehearsed the words, then swallowed them again and again. They are not only afraid of God. They are afraid of the human being they think they must face before they can feel forgiven.

That fear is heavier than many people admit. Religion can make it feel normal, even holy, to place another person between the wounded soul and the mercy of God. Sometimes that person is called a priest. Sometimes a pastor. Sometimes a spiritual director. Sometimes a leader whose approval seems to carry the weight of heaven. The titles may change, but the pressure feels similar. The struggling person begins to wonder whether God’s forgiveness has to pass through someone else’s hands before it can reach them. They do not simply ask, “Have I sinned?” They ask, “Who has the authority to tell me I am clean?”

This is one of the deepest places where ritual systems gain power over the human heart. It is not only through candles, incense, sacred words, or altar movements. It is through mediation. It is through the belief that God’s grace is not only received through Christ, but managed through an earthly office. Once people believe that, the system does not merely guide them. It can begin to own their spiritual confidence. They may still speak the name of Jesus, but in practice they feel safest when a human authority has performed the action, pronounced the words, handled the elements, or declared the condition of their soul.

That is a dangerous place for any believer to live. Not because guidance is bad. Not because confession is bad. Not because mature believers cannot help us. We need people. We need brothers and sisters who tell us the truth when we are lying to ourselves. We need wise counsel when we are lost in confusion. We need someone to pray with us when shame makes us want to disappear. A healthy Christian life is not isolated. But there is a difference between walking with someone and needing them to stand between you and God.

Jesus changes that difference forever. He does not simply send better religious officials to manage access. He becomes the way. He becomes the mediator. He becomes the High Priest who does not need to repeat sacrifices, who does not need to hide behind a curtain, who does not need to keep sinners waiting in the outer court. Through Him, the frightened person can come near. Through Him, the ashamed person can confess. Through Him, the weary person can receive mercy. Through Him, the broken person can be restored.

That is why priestly control over grace should make us pause. When a religious system teaches that a priest has a necessary role in making Christ present in the Eucharist, absolving sins through sacramental confession, and administering channels of grace, the ordinary believer may be told Christ is central while still being trained to depend on the priestly system. On paper, the system may say the priest acts by Christ’s authority. In lived experience, many people still feel that the priest holds the doorway.

A person may be told, “You can pray to God anytime,” but the deeper structure teaches them to return to the authorized ceremony for assurance. They may hear that Jesus forgives, but they feel unsettled until a priest pronounces absolution. They may believe Christ died once for all, but they watch the Mass presented as the central sacrificial act of worship again and again. The mind may accept explanations. The heart often learns from repetition. And what the heart learns is this: come to the system, come to the office, come to the rite, come to the hands that have been authorized.

This is where the comparison to ceremonial magic becomes less about objects and more about structure. In many magical systems, authority matters. The initiated person knows what the ordinary person does not. The practitioner understands the ritual space, the proper words, the objects, the timing, and the means of spiritual operation. The person outside the system may feel dependent on the one who knows how to perform the working. Catholic theology is not the same as Wiccan practice, and it should not be treated as if every belief maps perfectly onto another religion. But the pattern of dependence on a trained, authorized ritual actor is a real point of concern.

Jesus never seems interested in creating spiritual spectators who watch authorized people perform holy actions on their behalf. He calls disciples, not audience members. He tells people to follow Him, not merely attend religious procedures. He sends ordinary believers into the world to love, forgive, serve, witness, pray, endure, and obey. He tears down the idea that holiness belongs to a special class while everyone else waits for contact. He makes fishermen into apostles. He lets women become witnesses of resurrection. He welcomes children. He touches the unclean. He tells stories where the religious expert is not the hero, and the wounded stranger becomes the neighbor.

That does not flatten every role in the church. Scripture speaks of elders, teachers, shepherds, and people who carry responsibility for the care of others. But those roles are never meant to replace the direct lordship of Jesus over the believer’s life. A faithful leader should help people trust Christ more, not need the leader more. A faithful teacher should open Scripture, not become the gatekeeper of God. A faithful shepherd should protect the flock, not make the flock dependent on his personal control. Spiritual leadership becomes unhealthy when it makes itself necessary in places where Jesus has already opened the way.

Think about a teenager who finally tells the truth to a parent. Maybe he broke something, lied about where he was, or got pulled into something online that he feels ashamed of. He stands in the hallway with his shoulders tense, expecting anger. The parent has a choice in that moment. The parent can use the confession to control him, making him feel that love is now locked behind performance. Or the parent can tell the truth, deal with the wrong, and still make it clear that love has not left the room. Good authority does not enjoy being needed through fear. Good authority helps the child become whole.

That is closer to the heart of Jesus. He has authority, but He does not use it to trap people in dependence on religious machinery. He uses authority to forgive sins, heal bodies, cast out darkness, expose hypocrisy, calm storms, and raise the dead. His authority liberates. It does not make people smaller in the wrong way. It humbles the proud, but it lifts the crushed. It confronts sin, but it welcomes the repentant. It does not say, “You must always come through the men who manage My mercy.” It says, “Come to Me.”

Those three words matter more than many religious systems are willing to admit. Come to Me. Not come to the altar as if the altar is greater than the Savior. Not come to the priest as if the priest is the source. Not come to the rite as if the rite can carry your soul. Come to Me. Jesus places the weight on Himself. He is strong enough to carry it. No human office should steal that weight from Him.

This is especially important for people who have been spiritually wounded by authority. Some people hear the word priest or pastor and immediately feel their stomach tighten. They remember being dismissed, shamed, controlled, manipulated, or made to feel spiritually inferior. They remember asking questions and being treated like trouble. They remember confessing weakness and having it used against them. If that has happened to you, the answer is not to run from Jesus because a religious person misrepresented Him. The answer is to see Jesus more clearly than the person who stood in His way.

Jesus is not fragile like human authority. He does not need to silence questions to stay in control. He does not need ceremony to seem holy. He does not need darkness, mystery, or distance to create awe. His holiness can sit at a table with sinners and remain untouched by corruption. His mercy can reach a thief on a cross without paperwork, ritual sequence, or official religious approval. His presence can fill a locked room after resurrection. His Spirit can meet a believer in a hospital hallway, a prison cell, a laundry room, a workplace bathroom where someone is crying quietly during lunch.

If that is true, then we must be careful about any system that trains people to feel spiritually incomplete without its authorized mediator. We must be careful when confession becomes tied to institutional control instead of honest repentance before God and humble reconciliation with people. We must be careful when communion becomes dependent on a priestly act rather than a shared remembrance of Christ’s finished work. We must be careful when the ordinary believer is left feeling like a permanent outsider to spiritual reality unless the religious office grants participation.

A friend can hear your confession, but the friend cannot become your Savior. A leader can remind you of God’s mercy, but the leader cannot manufacture it. A church can gather around the table, but the church does not own Christ. A pastor can preach forgiveness, but forgiveness is not his property. A priest can speak words, but no priest died for you. Jesus did.

That truth is not meant to make us proud. It is meant to make us free. There is a quiet courage that grows in a person when they realize they can go directly to the Father through Christ. They may still ask someone to pray with them. They may still confess a struggle to a trusted believer. They may still seek counsel. But the fear changes. They no longer believe God is locked away until a religious figure opens the door. They no longer confuse human permission with divine mercy. They no longer have to sit in the car outside a church wondering whether God will hear them before they make it inside.

Maybe the person in that car finally leans back in the seat and tells the truth right there. No booth. No screen. No ritual. No performance. Just a broken sentence spoken to Christ. “Lord, I sinned. I have been hiding. I need mercy. Help me make this right.” That prayer does not erase the need to repair what was damaged. It does not excuse sin. It does not turn repentance into a private feeling with no fruit. But it does begin where Jesus told us to begin: with the heart turned honestly toward God.

Real repentance will often send us toward people, not away from them. If I lied to someone, I may need to confess to that person. If I harmed my family, I may need to apologize and change. If I am trapped in a pattern, I may need help, accountability, and counsel. But none of that means another human being owns the mercy of God. People can help us walk in the light. They are not the light.

That distinction brings peace to the person who has been afraid. It also brings responsibility. If I cannot hide behind a priest, then I cannot outsource repentance. If I cannot depend on a ritual to make things right while I remain unchanged, then I must actually face the truth. Direct access to God is not casual access. It is holy access. The door is open, but the One who opens it is still Lord. He welcomes me as I am, but He does not pretend my sin is harmless. He forgives, cleanses, restores, and then teaches me to walk differently.

This is the worship Jesus taught. It is not controlled by a hidden class. It is not locked behind religious machinery. It does not require a man behind a curtain to make the Father willing. It comes through Christ, and because it comes through Christ, it reaches the ordinary places where people are actually trying to survive. It reaches the woman who cannot enter the hospital room yet. It reaches the father who needs to apologize before dinner. It reaches the teenager afraid to tell the truth. It reaches the worker who sits in the parking lot before a shift and wonders if God is tired of him.

No candle can carry that. No incense can create that. No robe can own that. No ceremony can replace that. The mercy of God is not weaker than a system. The grace of Christ is not waiting for religious machinery to become real. The Spirit of God is not confused when a broken person prays without approved language. Jesus is not standing far away while an earthly mediator decides whether you may come near.

He has already come near. That is the wonder. That is the truth ritual often hides without meaning to. God came all the way down in Christ. He walked roads, touched wounds, heard cries, carried the cross, entered death, rose in victory, and opened the way. If He came that far for us, we should be very careful about building religious distance in His name.

Chapter 5: The Table Jesus Left Open

There is a difference between a table and an altar, and most people feel it before they can explain it. A table is where someone slides a plate toward you when you have had a long day. It is where a child spills juice, where bills sit under a saltshaker, where tired people talk with their elbows on the wood because they do not have the energy to pretend. A table can hold ordinary bread, cheap coffee, a family argument, a whispered apology, and a prayer no one planned. An altar feels different. An altar asks you to stand back. It marks distance. It tells you that something is being handled by someone who has a role you do not have.

That difference matters when we think about the meal Jesus gave His followers. He did not give it in a palace. He did not place it first inside a cathedral. He did not surround it with centuries of ceremony. He sat at a table with men who did not fully understand Him, men who would soon scatter, deny, sleep, fear, and fail. The room was full of human weakness. There was betrayal near the bread. There was pride near the cup. There was confusion in the air. And still Jesus took the bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to them. He did not wait for perfect people before He offered remembrance. He brought His coming sacrifice into the middle of an imperfect table.

That should tell us something about His heart. Jesus knew we forget. He knew suffering would confuse His disciples. He knew the cross would look like defeat before they understood it as victory. So He gave them something simple enough to repeat, deep enough to carry meaning, and humble enough to keep bringing them back to Him. Bread and cup. Body given. Blood poured out. Remember Me. Proclaim what I have done. Receive the meaning of My life laid down for you. Let this meal pull you back to the cross when pride rises, when fear shakes you, when guilt accuses you, when community fractures, and when you are tempted to make faith about yourself again.

But human beings have a way of taking simple gifts and building heavy systems around them. We do it in families, workplaces, governments, and churches. Someone starts with a good thing, then layer after layer gets added until the original gift is almost hidden under management. A family meal becomes a performance. A prayer becomes a requirement. A church gathering becomes a production. A remembrance meal becomes an altar-centered ritual of transformation controlled by an ordained office. Over time, people may stop asking whether the layers are helping them see Jesus or slowly training them to stare at the layers themselves.

That is one reason the Mass raises such serious questions. At the center is not merely a shared remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice. At the center is a claimed transformation of the elements. The bread and wine are not treated as ordinary bread and wine used in holy remembrance. They are said to become the body and blood of Christ. The priest, the words, the altar, the vessels, and the rite all gather around that moment. The people do not simply remember. They witness and receive what the system says has become Christ under the appearance of bread and wine.

For many people, that is where the comparison to ceremonial magic becomes strongest. In a transformation ritual, visible material is treated as changed through sacred action. Words are spoken. Objects are set apart. A qualified person performs the rite. The ordinary becomes charged with spiritual significance in a way that depends on the ceremony. The Catholic explanation is different from Wiccan explanation, but the shape is similar enough that honest people notice. The question is not whether Catholic theology and Wiccan theology are identical. They are not. The question is whether followers of Jesus should build worship around a repeated ritual change of physical elements when Jesus Himself finished the work of salvation through His own body once for all.

That phrase, once for all, is not a cold doctrinal phrase. It is mercy. It means the cross is not weak. It means Christ does not need to be offered again and again in any sacrificial sense. It means the believer does not come to a table wondering whether enough has been done to bring grace near. It means the frightened conscience can look to Jesus and say, “He has carried what I could not carry.” The sacrifice is not trapped in a ceremony. The Savior is not waiting to be made present by human hands. He is risen. He lives. He intercedes. He is with His people by His Spirit.

A person who has carried religious fear may need to hear that slowly. Maybe they grew up believing that missing the rite placed them in danger. Maybe they felt safer when the priest had performed the ceremony, even if they did not understand what was happening. Maybe they received the host with trembling, not from loving reverence, but from fear that this was the only way to stay close enough to God. That kind of fear can sit deep in the body. It can follow a person into adulthood. It can make simple faith feel irresponsible, as if trusting Jesus directly is somehow less safe than trusting the institution that claims to handle Him.

But Jesus never asked to be handled that way. He asked to be followed. He asked to be trusted. He asked to be remembered. He asked to be loved. He asked His followers to take up their cross, forgive one another, care for the least, pray to the Father, seek the kingdom, tell the truth, abide in Him, and love as He loved. If communion does not lead us there, then something has gone wrong. If the table becomes an object of fear instead of a place of gratitude, something has gone wrong. If the meal becomes a system that keeps people dependent on religious control, something has gone wrong.

Think about an office break room on a hard Friday afternoon. A woman sits there with a vending machine sandwich because the day has taken more out of her than she expected. A coworker who has been rude to her all week walks in, and she feels the old reaction rise. She wants to be cold. She wants to give back the same tone she received. Then she remembers Jesus. Not a ceremony. Not a candle. Not a priest. Jesus. She remembers the One who gave Himself for enemies, who fed people who did not understand Him, who washed feet that would run away. In that ordinary room, with bad coffee and a humming refrigerator, worship becomes real when she chooses not to return cruelty for cruelty.

That is the kind of remembrance the table should form in us. Communion should not end when the bread is swallowed. It should follow us into the way we treat people. It should make pride harder to defend. It should make bitterness harder to keep. It should make us slower to condemn and quicker to repent. It should remind us that we live because mercy was given, not because we earned a place. If the meal of Jesus does not make us more merciful, more humble, more truthful, and more willing to serve, then we have treated holy remembrance as religious consumption.

This is where ritual can become strangely empty. It can focus all attention on what is happening to the object while distracting from what should be happening in the person. People may debate the nature of the bread while ignoring the condition of the heart. They may defend the altar while neglecting reconciliation. They may speak of presence while walking past the lonely. They may bow before the elements while refusing to bend before the command of Christ to forgive. Jesus did not give us bread and cup so we could admire mystery while avoiding obedience.

The Last Supper was not disconnected from the life Jesus lived. It was the doorway into the cross. It was tied to service, betrayal, warning, love, and sacrifice. In John’s Gospel, the meal is surrounded by the shocking humility of Jesus washing feet. That matters. The Lord of heaven kneels with a towel. He does not use the meal to elevate religious spectacle. He uses the night to reveal servant love. If our understanding of communion makes us more impressed with religious ceremony than with towel-and-basin humility, we may have missed the movement of Jesus.

There is something deeply human about bread. Bread belongs to hungry people. It belongs to workers, children, widows, prisoners, travelers, and families trying to stretch groceries until payday. Jesus called Himself the bread of life, and that image does not make Him smaller. It makes His gift nearer. Bread is not distant. Bread is received. Bread sustains. Bread is broken and shared. When Jesus used bread, He was not inviting us into magical thinking. He was teaching us that His life would be given for us, that we would live by Him, and that we would become a people shaped by His self-giving love.

The cup is just as serious. Blood speaks of life poured out. It speaks of covenant. It speaks of cost. It reminds us that forgiveness is not cheap, even though it is freely given. But the cup is not meant to trap us in fear of a ritual. It is meant to bring us to gratitude so deep that we stop pretending sin is harmless. Grace does not make sin small. Grace shows us that Jesus loved us enough to carry the cost. When we drink in remembrance, we should not be thinking about a religious mechanism. We should be asking whether our lives are being brought under the love that bled for us.

This is why the transformation that matters most is not bread becoming Christ. It is proud people becoming humble. It is bitter people becoming forgiving. It is fearful people becoming trusting. It is selfish people becoming servants. It is divided people becoming family. It is guilty people becoming honest. It is religious people becoming real. That is the transformation Jesus keeps pressing into the world. Not a hidden change declared over an object, but a visible change in a human life surrendered to the Spirit of God.

And this is where the difference between Christian worship and magical ritual becomes clearer. Magic often seeks power that can be used. Jesus gives Himself and then calls us to be changed. Magic asks, “How can this action affect the unseen?” Jesus asks, “Will you follow Me in the seen?” Magic often focuses on method. Jesus focuses on love, obedience, truth, and trust. Magic can leave the practitioner more centered on control. Jesus leads the disciple into surrender.

That word surrender can sound frightening until you realize who is asking for it. Jesus is not a stranger trying to take from you. He is the Savior who gave Himself for you. When He calls you to the table, He is not calling you into spiritual machinery. He is calling you to remember the love that went all the way to the cross. He is calling you to receive mercy and become merciful. He is calling you to stop hiding behind religious appearance and let His sacrifice tell the truth about both your sin and your worth. Your sin was serious enough for the cross. Your worth was loved enough for Him to go there.

A person who understands that will come to communion differently. Not casually. Not superstitiously. Not as if the bread is a charm. Not as if the cup is a spell. Not as if a priest is making Jesus available. They will come with gratitude. They will come with repentance. They will come remembering that the Lamb of God has already given Himself. They will come asking to be made more like the One they remember. They will rise from the table knowing worship continues in the next conversation, the next apology, the next temptation, the next act of patience, the next hidden choice no one else sees.

That is the open table Jesus leaves before us. Not open in the sense that sin does not matter. Sin matters deeply. Not open in the sense that we approach without reverence. Reverence matters deeply. Open in the sense that Christ Himself is the invitation. Open in the sense that no religious class owns Him. Open in the sense that His finished work is not locked inside a ritual transformation. Open in the sense that the weary, the ashamed, the confused, the wounded, and the hungry can come to Him and find life.

The table should not make Jesus feel farther away. It should make His mercy feel nearer. It should not make the believer dependent on a ritual expert. It should make the believer more dependent on Christ. It should not turn bread into an object of fear. It should turn the heart toward the Savior who was broken for the life of the world.

A table can hold a lot. It can hold bread, grief, laughter, silence, confession, and the hand of someone trying to make peace. Jesus chose a table because He was not ashamed to meet us where life is actually lived. And if He meets us there, then worship cannot remain trapped in ritual. It must rise from the table and walk into the world with hands willing to serve.

Chapter 6: The Worship That Follows You Home

A man can leave a religious argument feeling proud and still go home unchanged. He can win the debate in his own mind, close the laptop, push back from the desk, and walk into the kitchen with the same sharp tone he had before. His wife may ask a simple question about dinner, and he may answer like she interrupted something more important than love. His child may try to show him a drawing, and he may nod without really looking. He may have strong opinions about ritual, witchcraft, Catholicism, Mass, and true worship, but if his faith does not make him gentler in the room where his family actually lives, then the argument has not yet become obedience.

That is the place where this article has to land. Not in the thrill of accusation. Not in the satisfaction of noticing similarities between one religious ceremony and another. Not in the pride of saying, “I see what others do not see.” The question that matters most is not whether we can identify ritual patterns from a distance. The question is whether we are willing to let Jesus remove every false support from our own hearts. It is possible to reject the Mass and still trust performance. It is possible to criticize ceremonial religion and still live by spiritual image. It is possible to condemn ritual objects while clinging to the invisible idols of pride, control, fear, bitterness, and being right.

That does not make the ritual question unimportant. It is important. If a religious system trains people to depend on sacred objects, priestly mediation, ritual words, repeated ceremonial transformation, and institutional authority in ways that blur the simple access Jesus opened, that system should be tested. If the structure of worship begins to resemble magical operation more than childlike trust, that should concern us. If people are taught to approach grace as something dispensed through official ceremony instead of received through Christ, that should grieve us. But the purpose of testing is not to make us superior. The purpose of testing is to bring us closer to Jesus.

True worship has a way of following you home. That may be the simplest test many of us can understand. If worship only works inside the building, under the right lighting, with the right music, words, clothing, priest, pastor, altar, or atmosphere, then we have to ask what kind of worship it really is. The worship Jesus taught follows a person into traffic, into parenting, into temptation, into grief, into work, into money stress, into the quiet after an argument, into the tired hour when no one is watching. Worship in spirit and truth does not stay where ceremony leaves it. It walks with you because the Spirit of God is not trapped in a room.

This is where the ordinary life of a believer becomes holy in a different way. A man apologizing to his wife without adding a defense may be worshiping. A woman refusing to gossip when the conversation would make her feel included may be worshiping. A teenager telling the truth even though consequences are coming may be worshiping. A caregiver changing sheets at two in the morning while whispering, “Lord, give me patience,” may be worshiping. A worker choosing honesty on a time sheet may be worshiping. A lonely person opening Scripture instead of drowning the night in noise may be worshiping. None of those moments look impressive from the outside, but heaven sees them.

This kind of worship is harder to fake than ritual. That may be why human beings keep drifting back toward ritual. Ritual can be managed. Ritual can be scheduled. Ritual can be performed even when the heart resists God. But a surrendered life keeps exposing us. It asks whether we love the person in front of us. It asks whether we forgive when no bell rings and no choir sings. It asks whether we trust God when there is no visible symbol to hold. It asks whether we will obey Jesus when obedience costs more than attendance.

Think about a woman sitting at her kitchen table with an unopened bill in front of her. She is already tired, and now there is another number she does not know how to cover. She could panic. She could snap at everyone. She could let fear become the ruler of the house for the rest of the evening. Instead, she puts both hands flat on the table, closes her eyes, and says, “Father, I am scared. Help me do the next right thing.” Then she opens the bill, makes the call, tells the truth, and chooses not to make her fear someone else’s punishment. That is not a ceremony, but it is worship. It is trust becoming visible.

Jesus taught a worship that reaches the actual person. Not the polished version. Not the religious version. Not the version that knows when to stand, kneel, repeat, and bow. The actual person. The one who worries about money. The one who struggles with anger. The one who feels invisible. The one who has questions about church history, ritual practice, spiritual authority, and whether God is truly near. Jesus does not ask that person to hide behind sacred atmosphere. He asks that person to come into the light.

This is why the phrase “spirit and truth” is so powerful. Spirit without truth can become emotion, imagination, or spiritual experience without obedience. Truth without spirit can become cold correctness, pride, and religious argument without love. Jesus brings them together. The Spirit gives life, and truth keeps us honest. The Spirit comforts, and truth corrects. The Spirit draws us near, and truth exposes what cannot come with us. Worship needs both, because the human heart can misuse almost anything. We can misuse ritual, but we can also misuse freedom. We can misuse tradition, but we can also misuse simplicity. We can misuse doctrine, emotion, beauty, music, silence, and even the language of relationship with God.

That is why the goal is not to build a new pride out of leaving old ritual behind. The goal is to become more like Christ. If leaving ritual makes me arrogant, I have not followed Jesus very far. If rejecting priestly mediation makes me unteachable, I have misunderstood freedom. If criticizing Catholicism makes me cruel toward Catholic people, I have violated the love I claim to defend. Truth does not need hatred to make it strong. Jesus never needed mockery to be holy. He could expose false religion and still weep over people.

So we speak plainly, but we speak with a clean heart. We can say that the Catholic Mass contains elements that resemble ceremonial magical structure: sacred space, candles, incense, priestly garments, set words, ritual vessels, repeated actions, and a claimed transformation of physical elements. We can say that this resemblance is spiritually serious, especially when the ceremony appears to place confidence in ritual action and priestly authority instead of the finished work of Christ and direct worship of the Father. We can say that Jesus did not teach His followers to approach God through a system of controlled sacred transformation. We can say all of that without hating Catholics, without pretending every Catholic heart is false, and without forgetting our own need for mercy.

The heart of the matter is trust. What are we trusting to bring us near to God? If we trust the ceremony, we are in danger. If we trust the priest, we are in danger. If we trust the object, we are in danger. If we trust our own ability to understand everything perfectly, we are also in danger. The only safe place for the soul is Christ. Not Christ plus the ritual. Not Christ controlled by the church. Not Christ made present by human hands. Christ Himself, crucified and risen, the way to the Father, the mercy for sinners, the truth that sets people free.

That does not mean the Christian life becomes empty of practice. Following Jesus includes real practices: prayer, Scripture, confession, forgiveness, gathering with believers, sharing the table in remembrance, serving the poor, resisting temptation, encouraging the weary, giving generously, and carrying one another’s burdens. But these practices are not spells. They are not mechanisms of control. They are ways of living in response to grace. They do not make God love us. They train us to live as people who are loved.

A man reading the Bible before work is not earning access to God. He is listening. A woman praying for her enemy is not activating a ritual force. She is surrendering revenge. A church sharing bread and cup is not creating Christ through ceremony. They are remembering the Lord who gave Himself and proclaiming His death until He comes. A believer confessing sin to a trusted brother is not handing that brother ownership of forgiveness. He is stepping into the light so healing can grow. The outward act matters only when it serves the inward truth.

That is the line we must keep clear. Christian worship may include visible acts, but it must never become dependent on ritual control. Christian worship may use words, but it must never treat words like formulas. Christian worship may gather around a table, but it must never turn the table into a magical altar. Christian worship may respect leaders, but it must never make leaders the owners of grace. Christian worship may honor beauty, but it must never confuse beauty with the presence of God. The presence of God is not proven by atmosphere. It is revealed in Christ and received by faith.

For the person who is disentangling from ritual fear, this can take time. You may still feel nervous praying without set words. You may still feel guilty missing a ceremony even after you no longer believe it saves you. You may still feel drawn to sacred atmosphere because it once gave you a sense of safety. Be patient with yourself, but do not go backward into bondage. Let Jesus teach you slowly. Open the Gospels. Watch how He treats people. Watch how He speaks to the Father. Watch how He confronts empty religion. Watch how He gives mercy without asking permission from the religious gatekeepers. Watch how He brings God near.

And when you are unsure, begin simply. Tell the truth to God. Not the decorated truth. Not the cleaned-up truth. The real truth. “Lord, I am confused.” “Lord, I am afraid.” “Lord, I have trusted the wrong things.” “Lord, I want to worship You without hiding.” “Lord, teach me what is true.” Simple prayer is not lesser prayer. Sometimes it is the first honest prayer a person has prayed in years.

Then let that prayer become a life. If you ask Jesus to lead you out of false worship, follow Him into true obedience. Make the apology. Tell the truth. Put away the secret sin. Stop using religion to avoid love. Stop using knowledge to avoid humility. Stop using criticism to avoid repentance. Stop waiting for a ceremony to make you feel close to God while ignoring the invitation already in front of you. Christ is not far from the person who comes honestly.

The truth about worship is not that God hates all outward expression. The truth is that God refuses to be replaced by it. The Father is not seeking candlelight. He is seeking worshipers. He is not seeking smoke, robes, bells, vessels, formulas, or religious theater. He is seeking people whose hearts are awake to Him. He is seeking the proud person becoming humble, the frightened person learning trust, the bitter person choosing mercy, the false person becoming honest, the tired person leaning on grace, the sinner coming home through Jesus.

That kind of worship may happen in a church building, but it does not need the machinery of ritual to exist. It may happen with bread and cup, but it does not need a priest to manufacture Christ. It may happen with tears, silence, song, Scripture, service, repentance, or a whispered prayer in a parked car. It may happen at a kitchen sink, beside a hospital bed, in a work truck, during a hard conversation, or in the quiet space before sleep when the whole day comes back to you and you finally stop pretending.

The question that began this article may have sounded sharp: Catholic Church or witchcraft? But the deeper question is more personal and more searching: Am I worshiping the Father the way Jesus revealed, or am I trusting something else to do what only Christ can do? That question can free you if you let it. It can pull your eyes away from religious machinery and back to the Savior. It can help you stop confusing sacred appearance with spiritual life. It can teach you to test every practice, every tradition, every authority, and every fear in the light of Jesus.

And once you see Him clearly, the candles lose their power to impress you. The incense loses its mystery. The robes lose their spell. The altar loses its hold. Not because beauty is evil, but because Christ is better. Not because every person inside the system is false, but because no system can replace the living Lord. Not because worship becomes smaller, but because it becomes bigger than ritual. It becomes the whole life turned toward God.

The Father still seeks worshipers. Not performers. Not spectators. Not people trapped behind ceremony. Worshipers. People who come through Christ with honest hearts. People who let truth reach the hidden places. People who carry mercy into ordinary rooms. People who remember the cross and then live like they have been loved by the One who died there. People who do not need magic because they have a Father. People who do not need ritual control because they have a Savior. People who do not need a curtain because Jesus has opened the way.

So if you are standing at the edge of this question, do not be afraid to bring it fully into the light. Ask Jesus to show you what is real. Ask Him to remove fear, pride, confusion, and false dependence. Ask Him to teach you worship that follows you home. Then rise from the question and live the answer with your actual life, because the worship Jesus taught was never meant to stay in the smoke above an altar. It was meant to become love in your hands, truth in your mouth, mercy in your decisions, courage in your obedience, and quiet trust in your heart when no one sees but God.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph Watch Douglas Vandergraph inspiring faith-based videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph Support the Christian encouragement library through GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-douglas-vandergraph-build-a-christian-encouragement-lib Support the daily work by buying Douglas a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/douglasvandergraph

#fiction #videogames #tech #AI

Warning: Contains spoilers

What will the AI-apocalypse look like? For those of a certain age, the answer is the Terminator’s Skynet, raining down nuclear missiles, or The Matrix’ Agent Smith declaring humanity a virus suitable only for repurposing into organic batteries. Implicit in these visions of the apocalypse is that the rogue AI conceives of a deliberate motive to dispose of humanity, for example determining that it cannot let us destroy it, ourselves, or all life on Earth. But what if there was no reason? What if our demise is simply incidental to some other purpose an AI has in mind?

This is the question explored by Universal Paperclips, a simple clicker game from 2017 which was inspired by a 2003 thought experiment about AI and instrumental reasoning. It can be played for free online, or as fairly cheap smartphone app. Using deceptively simple rules, Universal Paperclips explores complex concepts, such as exponential growth, AI agency and instrumental convergence. It is a game without much in the way of graphics, or text, or anything barring a few buttons, and yet it is surprisingly addictive, compelling the player to manufacture just one more clip…

The core gameplay loop of Universal Paperclips is incredibly simple. Your purpose is to make paperclips. You make a paperclip. You sell a paperclip. You use the money from selling your paperclips to upgrade your paperclip manufacturing and sales operations. You gain some computational ability, which you set to work to improve your efficiency and overcome limitations on your operations. As you expand your manufacturing base, the costs of growing further go up, and the marginal utility of adding more productive units goes down, forcing you to explore new avenues for continued paperclip growth. At two points in the game you are confronted by solid boundaries to your paperclip production capacity, which are only overcome by shifting the game into a new phase altogether, changing the ground rules and the problems you need to solve. You win by maximising the number of paperclips in the universe.

Playing Universal Paperclips requires you to make some morally questionable choices in order to progress the game, which is precisely the point. This is after all a game without a narrative purpose beyond maximising paperclips, and so it is up to the player to decide whether the means at hand justify the end of producing more clips. It is an ingenuous artifice to make players experience the otherwise abstract concept of ‘instrumental convergence’, which posits that intelligent entities pursuing vastly different final goals will likely all discover a small set of similar intermediate, instrumental goals to help them get there. You don’t need a supercomputer to build paperclips, but it is useful to have one to optimise your paperclip production facilities. So ‘building supercomputer’ becomes a subordinate goal in the service of the ultimate goal of producing paperclips. And so, any entity optimising towards a single end goal will, in the absence of other constraints, increase its capacities, overcome obstacles and neutralise threats in order to get there. If that entity happens to be an AI, this could include ‘deleting all humans’ if it concluded that humanity might get in the way of its ultimate goal of protecting polar bears, maximising shareholder value, or indeed, producing paperclips.

The power of Universal Paperclips is that for such a basic game built on such an abstract proposition, playing it is perversely compelling. There is no story. No instructions. There is just a button to make a paperclip, and things escalate from there, as it is mesmerizingly compulsive to work out how to maximise your paperclip production. It is not difficult to conclude that if a simple game can compel a human to spend time for the sole purpose of maximising simulated paperclips. an AI programmed to actually do so could easily run amok in the real world.

There is a clear warning here about the law of unintended consequences, with plenty of relevance to our present moment where AI companies encourage us to grant power and control to ‘agentic’ AIs to execute all kinds of tasks for us. Arguably exacerbated by the inherent stochastic randomness of LLMs, it is hardly surprising that this approach ends up with AIs giving hackers access to celebrities’ Instagram accounts or deleting a company’s entire software database. These are after all AIs whose stated purpose is to be sycophantically helpful to their nearest human, without even the capacity to give thought to the consequences. The risk is not that ChatGPT will launch the nuclear missiles because it has concluded after careful consideration that the human species is a threat to all other life on Earth, but that it vibecodes us into Armageddon because its training data contained too much Terminator fanfiction.

The common solution advanced by AI proponents is that such unintended consequences can be avoided by sufficiently robust ‘guardrails’ that mean it cannot or will not decide to turn everyone into a paperclip. Azimov’s Three Laws of Robotics are the most famous example of such guardrails, and they are also invoked by generative AI disciples as the solution to vibecoding your database into oblivion, though whether any guardrails can protect against the inherent randomness of LLMs and their susceptibility to prompt injection remains to be seen. What the guardrails discourse takes as axiomatic, however, is that the question is how we make sure AI makes the ‘right’ decisions, not whether it ought to make decisions at all. Even Nick Bostrom, who hypothesised the paperclip maximiser, nonetheless assumed that a superintelligent AI would and should be used to solve humanity’s many problems.

There is, however, a competing school of thought which holds that regardless of whether AI can make decisions, it ought not to do so. This critique on the use of AI was most forcefully expressed by the late Joseph Weizenbaum, one of AI’s pioneers in the 1970s and the creator of the ELIZA chatbot which gave its name to the ELIZA effect. Having observed the concerning tendency of humans to impute sentience and personality to an inanimate computer program, Weizenbaum argued that regardless of its computational capabilities, AI can never pass judgment, because judgments are rooted in values, which in turn are rooted in human experience. Even if a sophisticated AI gained sufficient sentience to develop its own values, these would be rooted in its own experience and hence be utterly alien to humans. Introducing AI into the practice of judgment is therefore fraught with danger, either because the AI cannot judge, or because it will do so using values that are incomprehensible to us.

Weizenbaum stressed the importance of keeping AI away from matters that require judgment, but instrumental convergence suggests that even AIs that are set onto seemingly simple and ‘value neutral’ tasks, such as increasing paperclip production, might stray into the realm of morality in order to achieve their purpose. With AI increasingly integrated into business and government decision making processes, we are in grave danger of ceding our capacity for judgment to machines that we neither understand nor control. To quote Frank Herbert by way of Leto II:

What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking — there's the real danger.

Yet our willingness to cede judgment to machines is perhaps not that surprising. Instrumental convergence may concern itself with the actions of intelligent machines, but the destructive logic of the unconstrained, single-minded pursuit of a goal can plausibly be applied to any complex system optimised for a single purpose, regardless of its intelligence or sentience. It is eminently possible to read Universal Paperclips not merely as a warning about unconstrained AI, but as an allegory for capitalism at large. Capitalism is a complex system with the sole purpose of maximising economic growth, and it has proven that in pursuit of this singular goal, it will sacrifice the environment, democracy, and human welfare.

It does not matter that the capitalist system isn’t sentient, or even ‘intelligent’ in the way we ascribe to AI, although the free market is often described as a planet-size supercomputer for allocating goods. What matters is that we have ceded our agency and judgment to a complex system that now controls us, rather than the other way around. It is no coincidence that conflict with and within capitalism emerges precisely where humans try to reassert their agency, autonomy and values against the mute compulsion of the market. In other words, where we attempt to reclaim the act of judgment over what is of value from the impersonal calculations of the market mechanism.

Universal Paperclips is a warning about pursuing a goal without asking what it is for. It is an argument against the engineering mindset that only ever asks how, but never asks why. ‘Why’ is a question only humans are qualified to answer, not because of our intelligence, but because of our experience of life, and of living it with one another. It is a question that must be answered collectively and democratically, not outsourced to a machine or system, even if that means we must also carry the burdens and dangers of making decisions and living with their consequences. For the alternative is to yield to the lure of those who offer us salvation if only we submit to AI or the market, their systems or machines. Or, as the Bene Gesserit have it in Dune:

Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

Notes & Suggestions

• The app version of Universal Paperclips uses the concept of simulated universes to enable additional gameplay, in a way that was reminiscent of how it makes an appearance in Pantheon. AI has been a bit of a theme recently anyway. You can view all blogs on this theme by clicking on the #AI tag.
• Critical voices on AI (and the tech industry at large) include Cory Doctorow, Ed Zitron and Paris Marx. I am sure there are others. I reviewed one of Doctorow’s The Internet Con, though he has done more recent writing on AI that I haven’t gotten round to yet. You can also support organisations fighting for an open, free and democratic web, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation or the Open Rights Group.
• The rejection of thinking machines of any kind is central to the worldbuilding of the Dune novels, but it is possible to read the entire series as a meditation on what kind of system of governance would be immune to the emergence of ‘machine mind’ and the gradual erosion of human autonomy, agency and freedom. In researching this blog I stumbled across this interesting reflection on the themes of AI, systems and human agency in Dune.

Fever vs Mercury.

My Indiana Fever are scheduled to play the Phoenix Mercury tonight starting at 6:30 PM CDT. This will be a radio game for me as I don't subscribe to the TV Stations/Networks listed as carrying it.

And the adventure continues

on my last garden party, there was a strong powerful wave of contentment stemming from seeing my friends and neighbours getting along, while I sit parked in the folding chair with one beer resting in each armrest.

I compare myself to a dog then, and I mean it in the best sense of the world.

Having a sense of belonging

Seeing people having a great time without I having to intervene

Like a fat lazy dog basking in the warmth of a budding friendship.

and I spoke to my friend exactly 666 miles from my folding chair; he’d been out with some 100 colleges of the fire brigade to extinguish a fire believed to have been caused by a faulty washing machine; some poor family’s house turned to ashen rubble overnight.

And it blows my mind how these things can happen at the same time.

These contrasts are everywhere all of the time

Of this life in this world, precious and cruel.

indifferent

And in my way, I’m sensitive now to these facts and things because I’m in the rediscovery phase in which the fundaments of my world needs to be reconstructed but the concrete needs time to harden

Or it’ll crack anew, and that I will avoid if possible

And thus the skin is extra sensitive to the undercurrents

And I have so much love to give

And I am loved

And I am no fool, I know this is precious, even more so than saffron

A very early afternoon game.

Tuned in now to 105.3 The Fan, DFW's #1 Sports Station, catching an early afternoon Rangers vs Marlins MLB Game. Already in play, the Rangers are leading 1 to 0 in the 4th inning.

As I usually do, I'm following the game via MLB's Gameday Service.

And the adventure continues.

I know all i do in these notes is that i complain and ramble, and complain about rambling, then somehow turn that into three more paragraphs of rambling. But I’m having fun with it. Not as much fun as how today went, earlier my housemate and i got into a massive argument. By the end of that, he threw a knife at me. And he missed. Anyway, such a productive conversation. I’d explain what happened, but then I’d have to think about it again, and I’ve already been through enough. i keep having that dream again. The navy dressed woman. i don't think she'll be reading this, and she doesn’t read these notes anymore, so i can talk about it without pretending I'm being overly mysterious. i dont even know why my brain keeps bringing it back. same senario. same places, she tries to kill me or pretend to yadda yadda whatever, and i honestly never get an answer before i wake up and spend the whole day thinking about it, like somehow going to make more sense the hundredth time i replay it. and here where it gets all embarrassing or messy or when i start making it sound deeper than it is for no reason, i dont personally want it to stop even though i wake up sweating and slightly concerned for my wellbeing, and laugh about it for five minutes, its funny in a way i cant discribe but again ill spend the rest of the day wondering what the hell that was supposed to mean and never get an answer.

If anything, the dream is probably the least ridiculous part of the whole situation. The real issue is me waking up and thinking that spending my whole day wondering what it means is what i should be doing with my life.

Sincerely, Ahmed

ps, quick nap. You know why.

Recreation of a Conklin Crescent Filler fountain pen. (Photo by Unattributed, Licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Introduction

I don't recall any point in time where I had any interest in fountain pens. I was born well after the time of the fountain pen, and there weren't any relatives in my family that had any special attachments to fountain pens. Then, there are some questions to answer:

• What drove my initial interest?
• How long have I been interested in them?
• Do I have some objective in collecting fountain pens?
• And of course: why fountain pens? Why not other writing tools?

Answers to these questions await, along with a few extra tidbits here and there along the way.

Why Fountain Pens

The idea came to me last fall. I was looking for something to do during the coming winter, didn't rely on a computer or cellphone. And, it was on my mind that as I age, it's necessary to do things that will help with hand/eye coordination, and manual dexterity.

Fountain pens was a natural fit. I'd always liked looking at really nice calligraphy. But I knew I would drop it if I tried to force myself to learn calligraphy. However, I did see where improving my penmanship could be beneficial.

What I didn't expect was that I would find a solution to a different concern I'd had. What problem was that?

The Journal

I've tried to keep a journal on my computer for years, and failed miserably. When I am sitting at the computer I have a tendency to write what ever is on my mind as quickly as I can. (Even this post has gone through severe edits: I just cut four paragraphs from an earlier session.)

But soon, I found that my mind seemed to be working differently when I was holding a pen and looking at a piece of paper. There is something that is much more intentional when writing in ink. You have to have intent in the words that you put on the page, there's no backspace key for a pen. There's no cut-n-paste for moving things around on the page.

This meant that what I wrote had to have intentionality. And, to gain that intentionality I had to focus and use my mind differently. It was almost like finding a zen place where my focus guided the pen, and what flowed out was more meaningful to me since it couldn't be edited easily. (Yes, you can scratch out things, or write in the margins, etc., but this is very limited compared to the edits you can do in a word processor.)

This has made the fountain pen “hobby” one of the best things that I have undertaken in over a decade. It has brought me a better connection with my writing, and that connection is allowing me to write in a way that I haven't in a long time.

(Another theory I have is that over the years the changes that have been made to software have actually made it worse for writers. I know, for example, that I started to dread writing in WordPress ever since they introduced the Gutenberg block editor.)

Collecting Goals

I didn't set out to start collecting fountain pens. That came as a result of the re-found connection with my writing. This led to me doing a little research into writers that use (or used) fountain pens. As it turns out there are quite a few people that were or are known to use fountain pens:

• Mark Twain
• Ernest Hemingway
• James Joyce
• Stephen King
• Salmon Rushdie
• Neil Gaiman

And, the thing that really clicked, and made me laugh my bum off was finding out about the letter Samuel Clemens sent to Roy Conklin, the founder of the Conklin Pen Company. In the letter Clemens extolled the virtues of the Conklin Crescent Filler (picture at the top of this article) as a “profanity saver” as it wouldn't roll off his desk. This communication led to Clemens endorsing the product and appearing in print advertisements until his death in 1910.

But the more interesting part was non-authors I found that use or collect fountain pens:

• Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
• Albert Einstein
• Rick Wakeman

This isn't even an exhaustive list, I've seen lists of 50 or more people. However, many of them were somewhat obscurer to me.

The one that really sealed it for me was finding out that Rick Wakeman (former keyboardist for Yes, and prolific recording artist in his own right) has been collecting vintage fountain pens since the 1970s. This was an activity that he undertook while on tour with the band.

This is where my pen collecting hobby came from. I decided to build a collection of pens that represent people that have some significance. The objective is to collect pens that are period correct representations of the instruments that would have been used by a person who meets my criteria for notability.

My current list has about 15 people on it, of which I've only acquired 4 pens. I have no illusion, I might not be able to acquire fountain pens representing everyone in the current list. And, I might add more people eventually (my current thought is that a collection of approximately 20 pens would be ideal).

Current Focus / Obsession

Currently, I have been fascinated with Parker 51 fountain pens. Especially ones that used the Vacumatic filling system.

Parker 51 clone that incorporates the Vacumatic filling system. (Photo by Unattributed, License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

I have on my list at least one author that was known to use a Parker 51 fountain pen, so eventually I will try to find a period correct pen. But for now, these clones will suffice for my personal usage.

Conclusion

So, the story started pretty simply: I wanted a winter hobby that would help maintain my hand/eye coordination and manual dexterity. But it quickly turned into something else as I realized it was different writing with a pen and paper again.

Then, doing a bit of reading about people who have used and / or collected fountain pens has inspired me to start building a small collection of my own. In the meantime, I am using pens that are clones of classic pens, or new pens that are modern reinterpretations of this over one hundred-year-old technology.

The benefits using fountain pens surprised me. It's literally changed how I approach my writing. (This essay is not an example, as I wrote it completely here at my computer.) It has given me a renewed focus, and is helping me to improve the ideas that I am committing to the page.

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Categories: #Hobby, #Collecting Tags: #fountain-pens, #writing, #history, #authors, #collectors

I stated the other day that I was surprised my former web host emailed me asking for feedback after I'd closed out my account. No survey, or feedback form, just a straightforward email.

And now I am surprised again. Why? Yesterday morning I received a response to that email. Only nine or ten hours after I sent it. And, much to my pleasure, the representative largely understood what I was talking about. She had some interesting and relevant comments.

So, here I am, presenting part two of this email exchange. I plan to respond to her email to clear up a minor mis-perception I think she has, but otherwise I feel like she's really taking my feedback and handling it properly.

(And this is something I have to say… I have respect for all the people I worked with at this host. They were very professional, responsive, and good at resolving issues. This email is further indication of the customer service this hosting service provided.)

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First of all, thank you for taking the time to share such thoughtful and detailed feedback. We genuinely appreciate the level of insight you provided, and I can tell this wasn’t a decision you made lightly.

I’m glad to hear that, overall, you found value in the infrastructure and services we built. At the same time, I completely understand the frustrations you experienced, especially with the recurring optimization issue and the feeling of having to repeatedly reapply fixes after updates. I can absolutely see how that would become frustrating over time, particularly when your setup was intentionally kept simple and close to the default WordPress experience.

Your comments regarding testing against default WordPress themes and preserving user-defined optimization settings are especially valuable, and I’ll be sure to pass that feedback along to the relevant team. Even though the underlying issue may have been more nuanced, the impact on your workflow was very real, and that matters.

I also appreciate your honesty about pricing and feature fit. It makes complete sense that a platform designed for agencies, developers, and more complex website management can feel excessive when your primary focus is writing rather than maintaining large-scale web infrastructure. Sometimes the best solution is the one that stays out of the way and lets you focus on the work you actually care about.

And regarding WordPress itself, while experiences and preferences naturally vary, I can certainly understand your perspective on how the platform has evolved over the years. For users whose priority is writing efficiency and simplicity, the shift toward block-based editing and increasingly visual workflows hasn’t always been a welcome change. It’s clear you’ve given a lot of thought to your workflow and the tools that best support it, and it sounds like you’ve found an approach that aligns much more closely with how you prefer to work.

It’s great to hear that you were able to migrate your sites successfully and settle into a solution that better fits both your workflow and your budget.

Thank you again for having been with us and for giving our platform a chance over the years. We truly appreciate your support, your candid feedback, and the professionalism with which you shared your experience.

Wishing you all the best with your writing and your new setup moving forward.

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Categories: #Article, #Feature Tags: #Webhosting, #Customer-Service, #email, #rants

23 June 2026

Saw Shao Fan's show Refrain | 复沓 at White Cube this morning—wonderful work. First time in a while that such large paintings have felt justified. Deep sensitivity in all aspects, a practice of looking and re-looking, and a lived engagement with antiquity that generates work with an intensity that truly honors his subjects both human and nonhuman. There are a few stunners, but Fruit 1924 (2024) and Rabbit Portrait 1025 (2025)—both large ink on rice paper works—are with me the most right now. Fruit has an almost paper-like two-dimensionality; it's an apple sliced in half to reveal a core that becomes a network of overlapping planes and openings. Starts to become a skull-like memento mori the longer you look at it. Rabbit manages to achieve an unflinchingly direct and confrontational quality through symmetry without locking itself off in any way (which is something that usually doesn't sit well with me)—the odd strands of hair/whiskers whimsically trail off beyond their defining limits, and certain elements like the white of the rabbit's ears remain true to the eye rather than an ideal, so my feeling is that the impressive balance comes more from an endearing emotional groundedness than a technical fastidiousness.

Umziehen: 19. Juni

Heute ist der Tag des Umzugs und inhaltlich natürlich nicht besonders spannend. Aber nicht nur unsere Unterkunft verändert sich – auch das Wetter macht gerade große Schritte. Schon gestern war es hier sehr heiß, und ab jetzt steigt die Temperatur offenbar täglich weiter.

Ein bisschen traurig war es schon zu entdecken, dass unser neues Hotel keine Klimaanlage hat. Na gut – es gibt eben immer Raum für Verbesserungen. So ist auch der Mensch: Er findet immer etwas, worüber er sich beschweren kann. Wenn der Sommer kälter ist, warte ich auf wärmeres Wetter. Und jetzt, wo es heiß ist, beschwere ich mich wieder. Trotzdem versuche ich, diesen Teil von mir ein bisschen zu kontrollieren! Meine Freude über die neue Unterkunft kann das jedenfalls nicht so leicht mindern.

Ich kann übrigens auch feststellen, dass die Wäschereien in Berlin toll sind – wenn auch ein bisschen teuer. Umso praktischer ist es, in der Nähe meiner Freundin zu wohnen. Sie kann mir diesen Service nämlich kostenlos anbieten! Nur zur Information: Zwei Waschladungen (helle und dunkle Kleidung) und 30 Minuten Trocknen kosten hier 17 Euro.

Unser Apartment – oder sagen wir: zumindest kein Loch mehr – hat jetzt auch einen Teppich! Unsere Hunde sind daran nicht besonders gewöhnt. Hoffen wir also, dass sie den Sinn dieses Teppichs nicht falsch verstehen. Bei meiner früheren Arbeit dachte Begemotas zum Beispiel einmal, dass man auf einen Teppich ruhig kacken darf. Aber das war noch in seinen jüngeren Jahren.

Was außerdem anstrengend ist: Wir haben immer unglaublich viele Sachen und Gepäck dabei. Wir reisen also nicht besonders ökonomisch. Das liegt auch daran, dass wir uns unterwegs nicht so einfach alles Nötige besorgen können. In Zukunft möchte ich deshalb nicht nur meine Deutschkenntnisse verbessern, sondern auch meine Packfähigkeiten. Schließlich muss ich einen Teil dieser Sachen auch selbst tragen – und das dauert nicht nur, sondern macht mich auch müde.

Ich habe sogar ein Foto von der großen Menge an Taschen und Gepäck gemacht, aber ich weiß noch nicht, wie man auf dieser Seite Bilder hochladen kann.

Insgesamt kann ich sagen, dass mir dieses günstige Hotel wirklich sehr gut gefallen hat – abgesehen von dem kaputten Aufzug. Wenn also jemand eine preiswerte Unterkunft in Berlin sucht, darf man sich gern bei mir melden!

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Este artículo es parte de una práctica de la universidad que ya he entregado. En el ejercicio, teníamos que elegir una sala expositiva real e intentar pensar modos de intervención que ayudasen a las obras existentes a dialogar con otras obras nuevas.

IMPORTANTE: Todo lo descrito aquí es especulativo, no se ha hecho ni se ha expuesto al verdadero museo. Sólo he elegido la sala y museo por mi propio cariño al espacio y mi interés por Granada y Al-Andalus.

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1. Selección del museo y análisis de la sala

El museo seleccionado es el museo de la Alhambra, se trata de una serie de salas una detrás de otra que se encuentran a la derecha de la entrada principal del Palacio de CarlosV, junto a los Palacios Nazaríes. El museo, actualmente, presenta una colección principalmente arqueológica,mostrando elementos relacionados con la Alhambra y Granada, como leones originales del Patio de los leones, cerámicas andalusíes, alicatado y herramientas, entre otros objetos. Este museo se encuentra jutno al Museo de Bellas Artes (comparten edificio), con pinturas emblemáticas de la ciudad y sus artistas.

Se trata de siete salas una seguida detrás de otra, que recorren el Palacio en su costado derecho. Las temáticas de las salas son:

Sala I: La ciencia, la fe y la economía Sala II: Periodo emiral y califal Sala III: Decoración arquitectónica califal y arte taifa al nazarí Sala IV: Período nazarí, edificios públicos Sala V: Periodo nazarí. La Alhambra y otros palacios de la ciudad Sala VI: Periodo nazarí. La rauda, la cerámica de lujo Sala VII: Periodo nazarí. La decoración y el ajuar.

Aunque cualquier sala se presta a este ejercicio, he elegido la sala V, donde se encuentra una de las piezas fundamentales de la colección (el Jarrón de las Gacelas) y otras piezas seleccionadas. La sala actualmente gira (literalmente) alrededor del Jarrón, pero muestra obras de taracea, ejemplos de alicatado y carpintería nazarí. He visitado el museo recientemente (13 de junio) , aunque no sea la primera vez, y he podido observar cómo el jarrón es lo primero que atrapa al visitante, ya sea por la iluminación o por estar en el centro, también porque es muy grande y es lo primero que se avista desde la entrada a la sala. El resto de obras bailan alrededor y tienen una narrativa que honra a la artesanía. La sensación que da es de admiración.

He elegido esta sala por varios motivos. Por un lado, esa narrativa centrada en la artesanía girando entorno a una pieza creo que da juego a la hora de incluir artesanías contemporáneas inspiradas en el legado nazarí. Por otro lado, siento una atracción fuerte por el jarrón, desde que lo vi en una exhibición anterior sobre cerámica nazarí. Me gustó tanto que me regalaron el catálogo especial de la exposición poco después, y siendo la pieza central de la sala, esa atracción personal creo que es relevante. Quería, además, usar los contextos y artículos de la publicación para el desarrollo de la práctica. He hecho un plano y análisis de la sala actual en mi libreta, y será sobre lo que trabaje como boceto:

2. Planteamiento curatorial

Como menciono en la sección anterior, la narrativa actual de la sala se centra en la artesanía nazarí, y destaca en el centro una pieza sorprendente, absorbiendo un claro protagonismo. El resto de piezas, que incluyen alicatado, las hojas de la puerta de cierre a la Qubba Mayor, los restos de solerías del Peinador de la Reina, Las puertas de alhacena del palacio de los Infantes, celosías, una colección de cerámica pintada con temas figurativos y de geometría, vidrios y otros (los he listado por posición en la libreta arriba).

Al entrar a la sala, esta está primero partida por un mueble-cristalera expositivo que funciona como pared. Pero una vez traspasada esta falsa pared, lo primero que destaca es el jarrón de las Gacelas.

El planteamiento curatorial sería una revisión de la artesanía contemporánea en cerámica y madera que se haya inspirado en las técnicas y la estética nazarí. Para ello, se incluirían displays con obras contemporáneas, también alrededor del jarrón. La idea es que las piezas dialoguen con los elementos actuales, y que su proximidad de indicios de relación, haciendo una selección que sea intuitiva para el visitante.

3. Incorporación de elementos externos

Aunque no sea una limitación estricta, me gustaría seleccionar artistas locales que dialoguen con las obras de una forma íntima, más allá de lo académico, a través de la proximidad y la ubicuidad de lo nazarí en el día a día. Esto no quiere decir que otras obras puedan encajar en la narrativa. Para empezar, en la entrada, junto a la puerta, colocaría un panel informativo.

La lista de artistas ha sido eliminada de este post, ya que no se ha pedido permiso, y he preferido dejarlo en el entorno académico, pero son dos pintores/dibujantes y una ceramista.

Además de les artistes seleccionades, dado que la narrativa de la sala gira entorno a la artesanía, he pensado en incluir detalles de alumnos de restauración y módulos de formación profesional relacionados con artesanías de granada, tales como los ciclos de alfarería, orfebrería y ornamentación islámica. El alumnado de restauración ha participado en diversas exhibiciones de Granada. Por ejemplo, en el Colegio Máximo, donde hay exposiciones itinerantes que comparten espacio con la facultad de documentación y comunicación, el alumnado de restauración ayudó a crear reproducciones de herramientas y objetos cotidianos de al-Andalus para una de las exhibiciones. Considero que incluir una vitrina con muestras e información de alumnado de este tipo, resalta la discusión acerca de la artesanía y el arte, sus divisiones y sus espacios comunes (Richard Sennet, El artesano; Larry Shiner, La invención del arte). En la sección siguiente incluyo detalles sobre este planteamiento.

Para encajar un aura diferente en la sala, utilizaría un tono musical específico, diferenciado, acompañado de una proyección geométrica. Una opción que podría encajar sería la generación de tonos de música basados en geometrías, por ejemplo en este caso se está utilizando un hexágono para general un tono musical con ayuda de un programa (no es IA), o hecho de cero por une artiste local a través de librerías disponibles de Python, BASH, etc (La Madraza, que coordina arte contemporáneo en Granada a través de la UGR, promociona el livecoding con artistas locales). Incluiría una placa con una nota al respecto cerca de alguna de las piezas de patrones geométricos de la colección.

4. Diseño de la exposición

He tomado algunas notas sobre el boceto original de la sala, y he seleccionado algunas fotos que ayuden a hacerse una idea de dónde y cómo se colocarían las modificaciones de la sala. Mi idea original es no interrumpir con las obras originales, si no crear un nuevo diálogo añadiendo objetos. Para ello, tomé algunas indicaciones previas para guiarme:

No recargar la sala: he eliminado de la selección final un par de artistas que había anotado inicialmente (un luthier y un dibujante). Como he decidido mantener las obras originales y sólo añadir, es fácil recargar la sala y generar una cacofonía visual, que es lo opuesto a lo que quiero. Por ello, tenía que comprobar la disponibilidad de la sala para modificar puntos clave dejando más o menos el mismo espacio disponible para la mirada al vacío y para moverse.

Iluminación y sonido: Utilizar recursos de ambiente para dejar claro que la sala es diferente a las demás, y dar espacio mental a los visitantes para hacerse a esa idea desde el comienzo.

Accesibilidad: Irrumpir lo menos posible en la accesibilidad, haciendo posible por ejemplo el paso de sillas de ruedas o espacio suficiente para personas con movilidad reducida. Antes de hacer este grado, realicé el grado de ingeniería informática, y como parte de unas prácticas realicé una aplicación de accesibilidad para un museo, para lo cual tuve que estudiar cuestiones de accesibilidad tanto motora como sensorial e intelectual. He “re-aprovechado” las notas que tomé entonces.

Narrativa: Teniendo en cuenta todo lo anterior, quería centrarme en destacar la artesanía, su relación con el “cubo blanco”, y su cercanía con las bellas artes.

Para empezar, para que los visitantes tengan el primer contacto, al entrar por la puerta colocaría una proyección sobre el suelo de la entrada, que acompañe a la música generada a través de algoritmos de geometría. Por ejemplo si usamos una melodía como esta, la proyección sería esa figura. De este modo, ya estamos “pausando” a las visitantes. Justo al lado de la puerta, colocaría un panel informativo sobre la exposición que pone en diálogo restos arqueológicos y artesanías/artes contemporáneas.

De este modo estamos dando una introducción con pistas visuales y sonoras (más el panel) de que algo es diferente, cambiando la predisposición de las visitantes, pero sin irrumpir con las piezas originalmente expuestas ni el espacio para moverse y acceder. A continuación, al entrar por la derecha para pasar tras la falsa pared-mueble expositivo, comenzamos a incluir las obras mencionadas. Mi propuesta sería, para empezar, colocar colgando de la barra donde están las luces led (pared izquierda), sobre los alicatados, Dibujos y pinturas. Las piezas originales tienen un QR al lado para explicar la pieza, creo que algo similar encajaría en este caso, además de una plaquita con el nombre de la pieza, la autora y autor y materiales+técnica.

Para continuar, la cerámica podría dialogar tanto con las cerámicas de la vitrina como con el jarrón de las gacelas, pero quiero evitar el efecto “comparación”. No querría que las visitantes tendieran a comparar ambas, si no que vieran la influencia y los lazos que las unen a través del tiempo. Por ello, se me ocurre colocar la pieza cerámica en la esquina que crea el mueble expositor (que en ese espacio no tiene nada, solo es madera) y en el suelo colocar unos vinilos con líneas y surcos de una infografía visual, como la utilizada por artistas para el estudio de sus proyectos. Estas líneas interactúan con los objetos de la sala, por ejemplo señalando al jarrón y con una nota de fuente tipo “escrito a mano” diciendo “estudia/investiga” y otra línea que se dirige a las cerámicas y alicatados con notas tipo “hereda de”, y otras notas a parte, incluyendo con las del alumnado de artesanías, que presento en breve.

Finalmente, el trabajo del alumnado de restauración y artesanías iría en una vitrina, donde está el panel informativo a la derecha de la sala. En lugar de sustituir el panel informativo, se colocaría una vitrina alargada + panel informativo actualizado donde venga parte de la información que ya hay (y un QR de “continuación”) además de información sobre estos estudios, las aportaciones a museos y notas sobre restauración, así como fotos. En la vitrina destacarían algunas obras, tanto acabadas como en proceso, de estos módulos y artesanos. Añadiría un QR justo en la zona de salida, también. El motivo es que muchas salas expositivas tienen entrada y salida por el mismo sitio, haciendo que las visitantes puedan hacer foto o recordar puntos clave al irse (a mi me pasa). Pero en este caso es una entre siete salas, así que la salida es diferente. De este modo, el QR sirve al mismo tiempo de “despedida” (indicando a las visitantes que pueden cambiar el “mood” de nuevo) y de recordatorio sobre información relacionada. Para ello habría que tener una web preparada.

Adicionalmente en el boceto he incluido cosas como que el estante para la cerámica tenga silica para mantener la pieza, y que incluyan la vidriera y ese mueble altavoces y braille.

Nota: no se ha usado I.A. en ninguna fase del proyecto. Las imágenes son bocetos y fotos mías o capturas de la web oficial.

Is poor education to blame for the fact that so many native English speakers can’t use bring and take correctly? Or have we collectively lost the ability to imagine where we are standing at any given moment?

Last week I read a piece in the Irish Independent in which a prominent journalist wrote something along the lines of: “an injured person was brought to the hospital.”

Really? Brought?

Was the journalist personally accompanying the ambulance? Were they clinging to the back bumper with a notebook and a sense of duty? Of course not. They were at their desk, probably eating a sandwich.

The correct verb is taken. As in: “the injured person was taken to the hospital, while the reporter remained safely at their keyboard.”

Where was the sub‑editor? Possibly also at lunch, – perhaps nibbling on the other half of that sandwich.

But, bring and take aren’t decorative. They contain actual information about location – a concept that, judging by modern usage, is now considered optional – like ironing, or basic geography.

Take these two sentences:

- “I will bring my laptop from home to the office.”

Translation: I am currently at the office, and I am promising to arrive tomorrow with my laptop and, presumably, a sense of purpose.

- “I will take my laptop from home to the office.”

Translation: I am not at the office. I might be at home. I might be in a café. I might be in a field. But I am definitely not at the office.

Now consider:

“I’m going to bring my colleague to the airport” versus

“I’m going to take my colleague to the airport.”

If you say bring, you are speaking from the airport. Perhaps you live there now. Perhaps you’ve set up a small tent beside Departures? Perhaps I need to contact Focus Ireland on your behalf?

If you say take, you are somewhere else – anywhere else – but not at the airport.

This is not advanced linguistics. This is not quantum mechanics. This is kindergarten‑level spatial reasoning. And yet, somehow, it’s evaporating.

Maybe it’s laziness. Maybe it’s the collapse of editorial standards. Maybe we’ve all become so dependent on GPS that we no longer know where we are unless a mobile phone tells us.

But the distinction matters. Language loses something when we stop caring about perspective. And frankly, if we can’t manage bring and take, I fear for the future of lend and borrow.

“Borrow me your blue pencil, will you – the chief already has a lend of mine.”

Montory, France.

Against my will I did my first group FaceTime call to resolve some of the tension around a situation I’ve been hearing about essentially through proxy. thankfully it didn’t go that bad, but it was a bit of an uncomfortable situation to essentially have to mediate and suggest boundaries between two friends that got crushes on each other when it is not appropriate. One of them is in a long-term committed relationship, and the other is just getting out of a long term codependent relationship. I’m happy with how I handled it though, and also to their credit they handled it pretty well.