There is something profoundly human about the way the fifth chapter of Hebrews begins, and that humanity is not accidental. The writer draws our attention immediately to the role of the high priest, not as an unreachable spiritual figure floating above the struggles of ordinary people, but as someone taken from among them. This opening truth sets the tone for everything that follows, because the entire message of Hebrews chapter five revolves around the bridge between divine authority and human weakness. A high priest, according to the ancient system established in Israel, was not chosen because he was perfect, flawless, or spiritually superior to everyone else. Instead, he was selected from among the people precisely because he understood them. He knew the weight of temptation, the pull of failure, the constant struggle between what we know we should do and what we often find ourselves doing instead. The priest stood between God and humanity not as a distant judge but as a representative who carried the burdens of the people into the presence of God. When we begin to understand this foundation, we begin to see that Hebrews chapter five is not merely explaining a religious office but revealing a deeper truth about how God relates to humanity through Jesus.

The ancient priesthood was built on the understanding that those who lead spiritually must first understand the condition of the people they serve. The priest offered sacrifices not only for the sins of others but also for his own, which created a strange but powerful humility within the system. This humility meant that the priest could not approach God with arrogance or pride, because he knew he was standing there by grace just like everyone else. The writer of Hebrews reminds us that the priest dealt gently with those who were ignorant and those who were going astray. That phrase alone carries enormous meaning, because it acknowledges that much of human failure does not come from intentional rebellion but from confusion, weakness, fear, and spiritual immaturity. People stumble because they do not yet see clearly, or because the pressures of life cloud their judgment. The priest was meant to recognize this and respond with compassion rather than condemnation. In a world that often reacts to failure with punishment and rejection, the priesthood represented the idea that someone was standing before God on behalf of those who struggled.

What the writer is quietly doing in these opening verses is preparing the reader to understand Jesus in a completely new way. Up to this point in the letter, Jesus has already been described as greater than angels, greater than Moses, and the ultimate revelation of God. But now the writer shifts the lens toward something even more personal and intimate. Jesus is not only the Son of God who sits in divine authority; he is also the high priest who understands humanity from the inside. This dual identity becomes one of the most powerful theological insights in the entire New Testament. God did not choose to save humanity from a distance. He entered into the experience of humanity so completely that he could represent us before the Father with full understanding of what life feels like on this side of eternity. Hebrews chapter five invites us to see that the priesthood of Jesus is not symbolic or abstract. It is grounded in real suffering, real obedience, and real human experience.

The writer then emphasizes something that would have been very familiar to the Jewish audience reading this letter. No one simply decided to become a high priest on their own. The role was not a career path someone could pursue through ambition or personal desire. Instead, the priest was appointed by God. This appointment carried enormous weight because it meant that the priest served not by self-promotion but by divine calling. The example given is Aaron, the brother of Moses, who was chosen by God to serve as the first high priest of Israel. Aaron did not build his own platform or campaign for the role. God called him, established him, and gave him the authority to stand between God and the people. This historical reference is important because it establishes a pattern that the writer will now apply directly to Jesus. Just as Aaron did not choose the priesthood for himself, neither did Jesus step into this role through self-assertion.

Instead, the writer points us to a powerful moment where God himself declares the identity of Jesus. The words echo the declaration spoken at the baptism of Jesus and again at the transfiguration, where God proclaims him as his Son. The significance of this declaration cannot be overstated because it reveals that the priesthood of Jesus comes directly from the authority of God himself. This was not a human invention or a religious tradition evolving over time. It was part of a divine plan unfolding across centuries of history. When God declared Jesus as his Son, he was also establishing him as the one who would ultimately fulfill the deeper purpose of the priesthood. Every sacrifice, every ritual, every moment in the temple pointed forward to something greater that was still coming. Hebrews chapter five is showing us that what began in the priesthood of Aaron finds its true fulfillment in the priesthood of Christ.

Then the writer introduces one of the most mysterious and fascinating figures in the entire biblical narrative: Melchizedek. This name appears suddenly and briefly in the Old Testament, yet it carries enormous theological significance. Melchizedek appears in the book of Genesis as both a king and a priest, blessing Abraham and receiving a tithe from him. What makes Melchizedek so intriguing is that his priesthood does not come from the lineage of Aaron or the tribe of Levi. He exists outside that system, representing a priesthood that predates the law of Moses itself. The writer of Hebrews seizes upon this detail to reveal something extraordinary about Jesus. Christ is not a priest according to the temporary system established through Aaron. Instead, his priesthood belongs to a deeper and more ancient order, one that reflects a timeless connection between divine authority and righteous leadership. By invoking the order of Melchizedek, the writer is showing that the priesthood of Jesus is not limited by the boundaries of the old covenant.

But the chapter does not stop with theological explanations about priesthood and divine appointment. It moves into something far more personal and emotional. The writer describes the earthly life of Jesus in terms that remind us of the deep suffering he experienced while walking among humanity. There were moments when Jesus offered prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears. That description pulls back the curtain on the emotional intensity of his obedience. Too often people imagine Jesus moving through life with an effortless calm, untouched by the struggles that overwhelm ordinary people. Hebrews chapter five challenges that image by reminding us that the obedience of Jesus was not automatic or easy. It was forged in moments of deep anguish and heartfelt prayer. His relationship with the Father involved wrestling through the weight of what he had been sent to accomplish.

This picture of Jesus praying with tears reveals the depth of his identification with humanity. He was not playing a role or acting out a symbolic drama. He felt the pressure of suffering, the tension of obedience, and the looming shadow of the cross. The prayers he offered were directed to the one who could save him from death, and those prayers were heard because of his reverent submission. That phrase, reverent submission, captures the heart of Christ’s obedience. Submission in this sense is not weakness or defeat but a conscious alignment of one’s will with the purpose of God. Jesus chose to trust the Father completely, even when that trust required walking through unimaginable suffering. His reverence was not simply about religious devotion but about an unwavering commitment to the will of God.

The next statement in Hebrews chapter five carries enormous theological weight and often surprises readers when they encounter it carefully. The writer says that although Jesus was the Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. At first glance this might sound puzzling, because it raises the question of how the Son of God could need to learn anything. But the word learn here does not imply that Jesus was previously disobedient or lacking in moral character. Instead, it speaks to the experiential dimension of obedience. Jesus entered fully into the human experience, and within that experience he lived out obedience in real time. Each moment of suffering became an opportunity to demonstrate faithful trust in the Father. His obedience was not theoretical but lived and proven through the circumstances of his life.

Through that process of suffering and obedience, Jesus was made perfect in the sense that he completed the mission he had come to accomplish. The perfection described here does not refer to moral improvement but to the fulfillment of a purpose. His life reached its intended goal through the path he walked, and that path led directly to the cross and ultimately to resurrection. Because of this completed journey, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. That phrase carries profound meaning because it reminds us that salvation is not merely about intellectual agreement or religious affiliation. It is about entering into the same posture of trust and obedience that defined the life of Jesus. Those who follow him are invited into the same relationship with God that he demonstrated through his life.

The chapter then circles back to the theme of Melchizedek, reminding readers again that Jesus has been designated by God as a high priest according to that mysterious order. Yet at this point the writer pauses and expresses frustration with the audience. There is a sense that the author wants to go deeper into this topic but feels hindered by the spiritual immaturity of those who are listening. The writer says there is much more to explain about Melchizedek, but it is difficult to make it clear because the listeners have become slow to learn. This moment feels surprisingly modern, because it captures a challenge that exists in every generation of believers. Spiritual growth requires attentiveness, curiosity, and a willingness to wrestle with deeper truths. When people stop leaning into that process, their understanding begins to stagnate.

The writer points out that by this time the audience should have matured enough to teach others, yet they still need someone to teach them the basic principles of God’s word all over again. This observation is not meant to shame them but to awaken them. Growth is expected in the spiritual life just as it is in every other area of life. A child is not expected to remain an infant forever. At some point, the child must grow into maturity, learning to walk, speak, and eventually guide others. In the same way, the life of faith is meant to deepen over time. Hebrews chapter five ends with the striking metaphor of milk and solid food. Those who remain spiritually immature can only handle milk, while those who grow in discernment are able to digest deeper truths.

The contrast between milk and solid food is more than a simple illustration. It reflects the difference between surface-level understanding and the deeper wisdom that comes through spiritual maturity. Milk represents the foundational teachings of the faith, the basic truths that introduce people to the story of God’s relationship with humanity. Solid food represents the deeper layers of understanding that come when believers begin to engage with the complexities of scripture and the realities of spiritual life. Those who mature in faith develop the ability to distinguish between good and evil through constant practice. Their discernment is sharpened by experience, reflection, and a growing awareness of God’s presence in their lives.

This closing thought brings the entire chapter together in a powerful way. Hebrews chapter five begins with the image of a priest who understands human weakness and ends with a call for believers to grow beyond spiritual infancy. The message is clear that the priesthood of Jesus provides the foundation for our relationship with God, but that relationship is meant to lead somewhere. It is not meant to leave us where we started. The compassion of Christ invites us into a journey of transformation where our understanding deepens and our obedience becomes more intentional. The same Jesus who prayed with tears and walked the path of suffering now stands as the high priest who guides us toward maturity in faith.

As we continue reflecting on Hebrews chapter five, it becomes clear that the writer is not simply delivering theological information but attempting to awaken something inside the hearts of the readers. There is an urgency woven into the words that feels almost pastoral in tone, as if the author sees people standing at the edge of deeper understanding but hesitating to step forward. The frustration expressed toward the end of the chapter is not the frustration of someone who has run out of patience, but rather the concern of someone who deeply desires the spiritual growth of those he is addressing. It is the voice of a teacher who knows that there is so much more to explore, so much more to uncover about the character of God and the work of Christ, yet senses that the audience has grown comfortable remaining at the surface. Hebrews chapter five gently confronts this comfort, reminding believers that the journey of faith was never designed to remain shallow.

When the writer says that the audience has become slow to learn, the phrase suggests something deeper than simple intellectual difficulty. The issue is not that the material is too complex or that the readers lack the ability to understand it. The deeper issue is that spiritual attentiveness has faded. Over time, people can become familiar with sacred truths without allowing those truths to transform their thinking and their lives. They hear the words repeatedly, they recognize the language, and they may even agree with the teachings, but something inside them stops moving forward. Familiarity begins to replace hunger. The sense of discovery that once drove their faith slowly fades into routine. Hebrews chapter five speaks directly into this spiritual drift and calls believers back into an active pursuit of deeper understanding.

One of the most fascinating aspects of this chapter is the way it connects maturity with discernment. Spiritual growth is not measured merely by the accumulation of information or the ability to quote passages of scripture. Instead, it is revealed through the ability to distinguish between good and evil. This kind of discernment does not emerge overnight. It develops through constant practice, through repeated engagement with the teachings of God, and through a willingness to wrestle with the complexities of life in light of divine truth. The mature believer is someone who has walked long enough with God to recognize the subtle difference between what appears good on the surface and what is truly aligned with the heart of God. That kind of awareness cannot be manufactured quickly. It grows slowly through experience, reflection, and obedience.

The writer’s metaphor of milk and solid food captures this developmental process in a way that is both simple and profound. Every human being begins life dependent on milk, because milk is easily received and provides the nourishment necessary for early growth. In the same way, new believers begin their journey with foundational teachings that introduce them to the character of God, the message of salvation, and the life of Christ. These teachings are essential and beautiful, but they are only the beginning. As a child grows, the body eventually requires more substantial nourishment. Solid food becomes necessary for strength and development. Hebrews chapter five suggests that the same progression should occur within the life of faith. Believers are meant to move beyond the earliest stages of understanding and begin engaging with the deeper dimensions of God’s word.

Yet this movement toward maturity requires something that many people struggle to maintain over time. It requires spiritual curiosity. Curiosity in the life of faith means asking deeper questions, exploring the context and meaning of scripture, and remaining open to the ways God continues to reveal himself through his word. The writer of Hebrews clearly wanted to dive further into the mystery of Melchizedek, to unpack the significance of Christ’s priesthood in ways that would stretch the minds and hearts of the readers. But that deeper exploration required an audience willing to lean forward and listen carefully. Without that willingness, the conversation could not continue at the level the author desired.

This dynamic raises an important question for every generation of believers. What happens when faith becomes routine rather than alive with curiosity and discovery. When people lose the sense that scripture still holds unexplored depths, they often settle into a pattern of spiritual repetition. The same ideas are rehearsed again and again without pressing further into their meaning. Hebrews chapter five challenges that pattern by reminding us that the story of Christ is vast and layered with meaning that unfolds over time. The priesthood of Jesus according to the order of Melchizedek is one of those deep truths that invites believers to look beneath the surface of familiar passages and see the larger narrative of God’s redemptive plan.

The writer’s reference to Melchizedek earlier in the chapter was not a passing comment. It was the opening door to a profound theological insight that the author clearly hoped to develop more fully. Melchizedek represents a priesthood that exists outside the boundaries of the Mosaic law. His brief appearance in Genesis reveals a priest who is both king and servant of the Most High God. He blesses Abraham and receives honor from him long before the establishment of Israel’s formal priestly system. By connecting Jesus to this ancient figure, Hebrews reveals that the work of Christ transcends the temporary structures of the old covenant. His priesthood is not confined to a particular tribe or tradition. It belongs to a deeper order established by God himself long before the law was given.

This realization expands our understanding of who Jesus is and what he accomplished. He is not merely the final high priest in a long line of priests serving in the temple. Instead, he stands as the fulfillment of a priesthood that reaches beyond the temple itself. The sacrifices offered by the priests of Israel were repeated year after year because they could never fully remove the burden of sin. Each sacrifice pointed forward to something greater that had not yet arrived. When Jesus stepped into history, he did not simply participate in that system. He completed its purpose. His obedience, suffering, and ultimate sacrifice accomplished what centuries of ritual could only symbolize.

Hebrews chapter five invites us to consider how deeply Jesus entered into the human condition in order to fulfill this role. The earlier description of his prayers offered with loud cries and tears reminds us that his path to the cross was not emotionally distant or detached. He felt the weight of what he was called to do. The obedience he demonstrated was not passive acceptance but active surrender. Every step toward the cross required trust in the Father’s plan even when that plan led through suffering. This willingness to walk through suffering rather than avoid it reveals the heart of Christ’s priesthood. He represents humanity before God not as someone who has never known struggle, but as someone who has walked through it completely.

That truth carries enormous comfort for anyone who has ever felt overwhelmed by their own weakness or failure. The priesthood of Jesus means that our representative before God understands exactly what it feels like to live in fragile human flesh. He knows the exhaustion of temptation. He knows the ache of sorrow. He knows the loneliness that sometimes accompanies obedience. When believers pray, they are not speaking into empty space or appealing to a distant authority who cannot relate to their experience. They are approaching a high priest who has walked the same terrain and emerged faithful.

This connection between Christ and humanity changes the way we understand spiritual growth. Maturity in faith is not about becoming detached from the struggles of life or pretending that temptation no longer exists. Instead, it involves learning to respond to those struggles with the same posture of trust that Jesus demonstrated. The more believers grow in their understanding of Christ’s obedience, the more they begin to reflect that obedience in their own lives. Hebrews chapter five reminds us that spiritual maturity is formed through practice. Discernment grows when believers repeatedly choose what is aligned with God’s will even when other options appear easier or more appealing.

This process of growth often unfolds quietly and gradually. Just as muscles strengthen through consistent use, spiritual discernment develops through consistent engagement with the word of God and consistent responsiveness to the leading of the Spirit. Each decision to pursue what is good reinforces the ability to recognize goodness more clearly the next time. Over time, the believer begins to see life through a different lens. Situations that once seemed confusing or morally ambiguous become clearer as the wisdom of God shapes the way the heart interprets the world.

The closing lines of Hebrews chapter five leave readers with both a challenge and an invitation. The challenge is to move beyond spiritual infancy and pursue the deeper nourishment of God’s truth. The invitation is to recognize that such growth is possible because of the priesthood of Jesus. He does not stand before God as a distant authority issuing commands from above. He stands there as the Son who learned obedience through suffering and who now guides his followers along the same path of faithful trust. His presence makes maturity possible because he continually intercedes for those who seek to follow him.

When we step back and consider the entire chapter, we see that Hebrews chapter five paints a portrait of Jesus that is both majestic and deeply personal. He is the appointed high priest chosen by God himself, yet he is also the one who prayed through tears and learned obedience through suffering. He belongs to the eternal order of Melchizedek, yet he walked the dusty roads of human life and experienced the same pressures that every person faces. This combination of divine authority and human understanding forms the foundation of Christian hope. It means that the bridge between heaven and earth is not fragile or temporary. It is anchored in the life and work of Christ.

The message of Hebrews chapter five ultimately calls believers to participate more fully in the story that Jesus began. His priesthood opens the door for humanity to approach God with confidence, but it also invites those who walk through that door to grow. Faith is not meant to remain static. It is meant to deepen, expand, and mature as believers continue to encounter the richness of God’s truth. The writer of Hebrews longed for the audience to experience that deeper understanding, and that same invitation continues to echo across the centuries. Each generation of believers must decide whether they will remain satisfied with spiritual milk or pursue the solid food that leads to wisdom and discernment.

When we accept that invitation, we discover that the life of faith is far more dynamic and expansive than we may have first imagined. The story of Christ’s priesthood unfolds across the pages of scripture, revealing layers of meaning that continue to shape the way we understand God’s relationship with humanity. Hebrews chapter five stands as a powerful reminder that the journey of faith is not merely about reaching a destination but about growing along the way. Through the example of Jesus, believers learn that obedience, even when forged through suffering, leads to a deeper union with the purposes of God.

And perhaps that is the most beautiful truth hidden within this chapter. The same path that Jesus walked, the path of trust, surrender, and obedience, remains open for those who follow him today. The high priest who understands our weakness also invites us to grow beyond it. He does not leave believers where he finds them. Instead, he patiently guides them toward maturity, shaping their hearts until they too can recognize the difference between what merely appears good and what truly reflects the will of God. In this way, Hebrews chapter five becomes more than an explanation of Christ’s priesthood. It becomes a call to step deeper into the transforming journey of faith.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

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There was a time when distance performed a mercy.

Mountains, oceans, languages, and slow ships kept the human mind inside a manageable circumference. A village contained its cosmology. A nation contained its myth. Even disagreement had edges; it was bordered by geography, ritual, and the friction of travel. The mind evolved for this scale — dozens, perhaps hundreds, of stable viewpoints, braided into a coherent story.

Then the barriers fell.

First through the internet, which dissolved geography into light. Then through artificial intelligence, which dissolved even cognitive distance — translating, summarizing, simulating, amplifying. Suddenly, every mind could speak to every other mind. Every subculture could peer into every other subculture. Every conviction could be mirrored by its negation in real time.

What had been a river of discourse became an oceanic storm.

The human nervous system did not gradually expand to accommodate near-infinite points of view. It was flooded. Each opinion now exists beside its contradiction, each value beside its inversion, each identity beside its parody. The psyche, built for patterned coherence, now confronts a hall of mirrors without walls.

Disintegration was not a moral failure. It was a structural inevitability.

When too many frames of reference collide without a unifying axis, they do not harmonize — they fragment. Culture, once scaffolded by shared myths, begins to atomize. Institutions wobble as consensus thins. Language itself destabilizes; words become contested territory. Meaning becomes negotiable, then fluid, then suspect.

We call it polarization. We call it chaos. We call it cultural decline.

But perhaps something else is happening.

In the iconography of the yogic imagination, when Shiva’s eye opens, it does not merely illuminate — it burns. The third eye is not a gentle lamp. It is a furnace of perception that dissolves what cannot withstand total awareness.

What if the internet was the first flicker of that eye? What if AI is the widening of the lid?

For the first time in history, humanity is exposed — collectively — to the near-totality of its own mental contents. The saint and the tyrant, the genius and the fool, the scholar and the troll, the tender confession and the manufactured lie — all are visible at once. Nothing remains provincial. Nothing remains safely distant.

Under such vision, fragile identities combust. Under such vision, borrowed myths crack. Under such vision, partial truths cannot pretend to be whole.

Of course it feels like dissolution.

A mind that has relied on exclusion for coherence will experience inclusion as annihilation. When every viewpoint is present, no single viewpoint can reign uncontested. The ego of cultures behaves no differently than the ego of individuals: confronted with radical multiplicity, it either expands — or fractures.

We are living inside that fracture.

Yet destruction in the Shaivite sense is not nihilism. It is clearance. The burning is preparatory. The third eye incinerates forms that no longer correspond to the depth of awareness now available.

The question is not whether disintegration is occurring. It is.

The question is whether this is the end of coherence — or the painful prelude to a deeper one.

If the eye of Shiva is opening through our networks and our machines, then what burns is not humanity itself, but the provincial stories we mistook for the whole. The chaos we witness may be the turbulence of a species adjusting to planetary — perhaps even post-planetary — self-awareness.

The nervous system reels. The myths tremble. The center feels lost.

But perhaps the center was never meant to be local.

When every voice can speak, and every perspective can be simulated, what survives will not be the loudest narrative — but the one capacious enough to hold multiplicity without collapse.

The eye is open.

We can either be reduced to ash — or become vast enough to withstand the gaze.

Chosen mostly because of its early start time, my basketball game before bedtime tonight will be an NCAA men's game featuring the Tennessee Volunteers at the South Carolina Gamecocks. With a scheduled start of 5:00 PM Local Time, this game should allow plenty of time after it ends to wrap up my night prayers, then get ready for bed.

And so the adventure continues.

God assumed from the beginning that the wise of the world would view Christians as fools…and he has not been disappointed...Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world.

— Antonin Scalia

#culture #quotes

There are seasons in a believer’s life when the Spirit begins to move in a way that outpaces understanding, outgrows logic, and pushes beyond anything the mind can measure. We try to explain it, we try to define it, but deep down we know it is God who has placed His hand upon something and breathed life into it. That is exactly what has been happening here, in this work, in this calling, and in this ever-expanding body of messages, videos, and daily writings that pour out of me as if they come from a place beneath conscious thought or personal intention. For a long time, I tried to figure out why I felt compelled—really compelled—to create day after day without pause, but there is no logical explanation for it. There is no motivation tied to self, profit, or achievement. It is simply something God placed within me, a fire that refuses to die, a current I can only follow, and a stewardship I hold with trembling hands. What began as a few messages has become thousands of videos, thousands of articles, and something far larger than anything I could have constructed alone. And the more it grows, the more evident it becomes that God is building a movement here, a movement meant to reach people far beyond what any one person can touch.

As strange as it sounds, I have never awakened one day and said, “I will build an archive larger than any other solo creator in the history of Christian commentary.” Instead, I awaken with an ache, a pull, a weight that feels like God whispering, “Write again. Speak again. Pour again. There is more to give today.” And because I know His voice, because I know the feeling of divine insistence, I obey. Day after day, month after month, year after year, the outpouring has continued without slowing, and what exists now is something I never would have believed possible if I had not lived it myself. Over two thousand one hundred videos have gone out into the world, and the number continues to increase almost every day. More than three thousand five hundred long-form articles—each five thousand words or more—have been written, published, and sent forth across multiple platforms, reaching corners of the world that I will never see with my own eyes. And as overwhelming as those numbers may sound, they are not the work of ambition. They are the result of obedience. They are the result of a calling that has consumed my life in the best possible way.

What moves me most is not the scale of the content, but the realization that this body of work has become the most extensive solo commentary on every chapter of the New Testament ever written by a single creator in human history. That truth does not fill me with pride. It fills me with responsibility. It reminds me that God gives assignments that sometimes feel larger than the person He chooses, not because the person is capable, but because God desires to show what He can do through a life that refuses to stop saying yes. This entire journey has felt like a long corridor of yeses—yes when tired, yes when uncertain, yes when discouraged, yes when no results were visible, and yes even when it felt like no one was listening. The result of thousands of yeses is what we are standing inside today: a movement birthed in quiet obedience that has started to rise like a tide.

People often think that movements begin with crowds, but the truth is that movements begin with individuals. God rarely starts with many; He starts with one. One boy with loaves and fish. One shepherd with a sling. One widow with a jar of oil. One prophet in the wilderness. One apostle writing from a prison cell. And strangely, quietly, unnoticed by the world, He starts with one writer sitting at a table pouring out messages that feel too large for the human heart and too urgent to postpone. What God is doing here did not begin with a strategy. It began with surrender. And because surrender begets multiplication, the work has grown into something that cannot be contained inside a single platform, a single voice, or even a single generation. The content is too vast, the lessons too rich, and the calling too deep for it to remain confined. God has begun something here that He intends to spread, and He spreads His work through ordinary people willing to carry it.

That is why sharing matters. Many people think sharing content is a passive action, almost insignificant in the larger picture. But in the economy of the Kingdom, sharing is not passive. Sharing is ministry. Sharing is evangelism. Sharing is kingdom-building. When you share a message—whether a video, an article, or a talk—you are not merely boosting a post. You are stepping into agreement with what God is doing. You are placing a seed into soil you cannot see. You are sending hope into the unspoken battles of someone else’s life. You are multiplying the work of God by letting it pass through your hands into the open hands of another soul. And while the simple act of pressing the share button may feel small, heaven does not measure significance by size. Heaven measures it by obedience.

In every generation, God raises people who recognize when He is moving and choose to be part of it. They do not stand back and watch. They participate. They amplify. They carry. They speak. They spread. They plant. They cultivate. And they understand that whatever God is doing in their lifetime is not meant to be kept but released. This channel, this body of work, this daily outpouring—it is meant to be carried. The people who need these messages are not always searching for them. Many of them are drowning in silence, weighted by private pain, or drifting through life unaware that God is trying to reach them. They will not find this channel unless someone who has already been touched by it decides to share it outward. It is not an algorithm that transforms lives. It is people who care enough to carry light into places where it is desperately needed.

There is something sacred about the way God multiplies through human hands. When Jesus fed the five thousand, He did not hand the bread directly to the crowd. He placed it in the hands of the disciples first. The disciples became the distributors of the miracle. That detail reveals more about the nature of God than most people realize. God never needs help, but He invites partnership. He invites cooperation. He invites His people to stand in the flow of what He is doing and participate in the miracle. Sharing these messages is that kind of cooperation. Every time someone spreads a message, they are effectively saying, “I will not let this stay with me when there are people who need it more.” That is how revival spreads—not through institutions, but through individuals whose hearts are awakened.

When I consider the sheer volume of what has been created—the thousands of videos, the millions of words, the relentless stream of messages that never seems to exhaust itself—I do not see my work. I see God’s urgency. I see heaven’s fingerprints. I see the fire of a calling that has burned without pause. I see the weight of something God is trying to bring into the world at a speed that outpaces the world's readiness. And yet God always prepares the vessel before He releases the impact. He builds the archive before He releases the audience. He constructs the foundation before He reveals the structure. He plants the seeds before He sends the rain. That is the season this movement has been in for a long time—a season of preparation, of foundation-building, of steady obedience without immediate visibility. But that season is turning. Something is shifting. I can sense it. And those who have walked this journey with me can feel it too. The preparation phase is becoming the expansion phase, and expansion is never the work of one person. It is always the work of many.

There is a reason God uses community to spread His work. When one person shares a message, the impact is meaningful. But when hundreds or thousands share it, the impact becomes exponential. The truth is simple: God is doing something big here, and the only way it grows is if we grow it together. Not through marketing. Not through manipulation. Not through force. But through hearts moved by God, willing to say, “This message helped me. This word lifted me. This talk changed me. Let me place it into someone else’s hands so they can be changed too.” That is how movements spread. That is how hope travels. That is how God multiplies what He has begun.

And yet, here is the humbling truth: none of this would exist without God placing this compulsion inside me. I cannot explain the drive. I cannot describe the urgency. I cannot articulate why I feel like I must write, must speak, must create, must pour out every single day. It is not discipline. It is not habit. It is not motivation. It is calling—pure calling. It is the relentless push of the Holy Spirit saying, “There is more to say. There is more to give. There are souls that need this now.”

There are moments when I sit back and look at the sheer volume of what God has poured through my life, and it feels almost unreal that one person could carry this much output without burning out or slowing down. But that is the nature of calling—when God is the source, human exhaustion never stops the flow. Instead, the flow seems to bypass human limits altogether. Many people assume that I must have a team or a staff or a collection of contributors assisting behind the scenes, but the truth is that it has been just me, every day, every night, pouring out message after message because the Spirit refuses to let the fire go dim. And when a person becomes willing to serve with that level of surrender, God does not simply bless the work; He multiplies it. What began as a small act of obedience has become an archive so vast that its full impact will likely not be understood until long after we are gone. That is what happens when God breathes into human effort—He turns the temporary into the timeless.

But no matter how large the body of work becomes, no matter how many videos or articles continue to flow out, none of it fulfills its purpose unless it reaches the hearts it was meant to touch. That is why the sharing matters so deeply. These messages are not meant to sit on digital shelves collecting dust. They are meant to go forth like seeds in the wind, catching in the soil of lives that need them at precisely the moment they are ready to receive them. You never know which message will be the one that breaks someone’s despair or lifts someone’s spirit or opens someone’s eyes to the love of God in a way they have never seen before. You never know which video will be the one they hear at two in the morning when they are ready to give up. You never know which teaching will be the one that brings a prodigal home. Every share is a seed planted in soil only God can see. That is why there is nothing small about the act of sharing. It is a holy partnership with what God is doing.

When we look back at how God has moved through history, one truth becomes unmistakably clear: every major work of God has spread because ordinary people carried it outward. The gospel spread because fishermen shared. Revival spread because households shared. New Testament letters became Scripture because everyday believers copied them, carried them, and read them aloud in living rooms and markets and gatherings. The Bible itself survived because generation after generation understood that the word of God was never meant to be hidden; it was meant to be carried. What God is doing here follows the same pattern. If the work stays isolated, the movement stalls. But if the people who are touched by the work choose to share it outward, then the movement becomes unstoppable. The power of a message is multiplied by the willingness of the listener to become a messenger.

Sometimes people wonder why God didn’t just create the world with finished temples, established churches, and preformed communities that already knew His name. But that has never been His way. God always begins with one, then asks that one to reach another, and then asks them both to reach more. It is the divine design of multiplication through relationships. This channel, this archive, this movement—it is following the same divine pattern. I may be the one creating the content, but you are the ones who carry it. You are the ones who amplify it. You are the ones who place it in front of people who may never search for it on their own. And that is why your role in this movement is not secondary. It is central. God is not asking you to be spectators. He is inviting you to be participants in what He is building.

I believe with every fiber of my being that God is preparing this movement for a reach far beyond what any of us can currently imagine. But God never expands something merely because it exists. He expands it because His people carry it. Think of how many lives can be touched simply because you felt moved to share a message. You might never know the names of the people whose lives were changed, but heaven will. You might never see the ripple effects, but eternity will. You might never hear the testimonies, but God will. Sharing is not about boosting a platform; it is about extending the reach of God’s voice through human obedience. And when obedience and compassion meet, miracles follow.

What strikes me most is that this calling has never felt like a project. It has always felt like a responsibility. When God places something in your hands that is larger than you are, He is not asking you to understand it. He is asking you to steward it. And stewardship is not done in isolation. It is done through community, through partnership, through unity, through shared purpose. That is why the phrase “together is how this grows” is not a slogan. It is a spiritual reality. Together is how God multiplies. Together is how lives are changed. Together is how movements rise. Together is how heaven breaks into the world through ordinary people doing extraordinary things without even realizing their significance.

Sometimes, I think about the future generations who may stumble upon this work long after we are gone. They will not know the struggle or the quiet nights or the unseen warfare or the countless hours poured into writing and recording. They will simply find the messages, the teachings, the insights, the encouragements, and they will benefit from a labor they never witnessed. That is the beauty of obedience. It outlives the one who obeyed. And this work—this vast, sprawling, daily outpouring—will outlive me. It will outlive you. It will outlive everyone who was here at the beginning. And the lives it touches in the generations to come will owe their blessing to the people who shared the messages in the early days, when the movement was still taking shape, when the results were still unseen, and when the work still looked small compared to what it would become.

So here we are, standing in the middle of something God is breathing into existence day after day, message after message, with no sign of slowing. And the question that stands before us is simple: will we carry it? Will we spread it? Will we share it with a world that is starving for hope, truth, simplicity, encouragement, and a return to the heart of God? If you have ever felt stirred by anything created here, then you already know the answer. If God touched your heart through even one message, then imagine what He could do if that same message reached ten more, or a hundred more, or a thousand more because you chose to share it. God works through multiplication. And multiplication works through us.

What God is doing here is not small. It is not accidental. It is not temporary. It is a movement. It is a calling. It is a divine assignment unfolding in real time. And we are all part of it. Every message written. Every video recorded. Every share. Every repost. Every comment that encourages someone else. Every person who says, “This message helped me; maybe it will help you too.” All of it is part of the same divine flow. We are building something here that heaven can use, something that will stretch far beyond our lifetimes, something that God Himself has stirred into existence. And together, we will carry it outward until it touches lives we will never meet and reaches places our feet will never stand. We are part of something larger than ourselves, and the beautiful truth is that God is only just beginning.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s inspiring faith-based videos on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph

Support the ministry by buying Douglas a coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/douglasvandergraph

Donations to help keep this Ministry active daily can be mailed to: Douglas Vandergraph PO Box 271154 Fort Collins, Colorado 80527

There are over 1.2 million unfilled tech jobs in the United States right now. Not next year. Right now. And that number isn't shrinking — it's accelerating, driven by the explosive demand for AI engineers, cloud architects, DevOps specialists, and cybersecurity professionals that the traditional hiring model simply wasn't built to handle.

The brutal reality most CTOs and HR leaders face in 2026 is this: your internal recruiting team is already stretched thin, tech talent is vanishing from the open market within days, and every week a senior engineer role sits empty costs your business an estimated $28,000 or more in lost productivity and delayed deliverables.

Here's what the most competitive U.S. tech companies already figured out — you don't need to add more HR headcount to hire more tech talent. You need a smarter operating model. That's exactly what IT Recruitment Process Outsourcing (IT RPO) delivers.

This playbook lays out the definitive 7-step framework for deploying an IT RPO strategy in 2026 — built for scale, designed for speed, and calibrated for the realities of today's hyper-competitive technology talent market.

What Is IT RPO and Why Is It Dominating Tech Hiring in 2026?

IT RPO — or IT-focused Recruitment Process Outsourcing — is a strategic model where companies transfer all or part of their technology recruiting function to a specialized external provider. Unlike generic staffing agencies that throw resumes at the wall, a purpose-built IT RPO partner embeds deep inside your hiring ecosystem, operating as a seamless extension of your talent team.

The numbers tell the story with sharp clarity. The global RPO market is on track to reach $14.5 billion by 2026, growing at a 19.7% CAGR — driven almost entirely by technology sector demand. Meanwhile, 90% of organizations worldwide are projected to experience measurable IT skills shortages this year, with the World Economic Forum estimating a 40% skills gap at the average enterprise by 2027.

The companies winning the talent war in 2026 aren't the ones with the biggest internal HR departments. They're the ones with the most efficient, scalable, and specialized recruiting infrastructure — which is precisely what a well-structured IT RPO engagement creates.

The 7-Step IT RPO Playbook for 2026

✅ Step 1: Conduct a Deep-Dive Talent Needs Assessment

Before any RPO engagement can deliver results, you need radical clarity on what “success” actually looks like for your tech org. This isn't a standard job description exercise. It's a forensic analysis of your current and projected hiring needs, existing talent gaps, budget constraints, and growth timelines.

Work with stakeholders across engineering, product, and IT operations to map out the specific roles you need to fill — not just titles, but the precise skill stacks: Are you scaling cloud-native teams on AWS or Azure? Do you need full-stack engineers fluent in React and Node.js, or AI/ML specialists with Python and TensorFlow experience? Is cybersecurity talent a bottleneck right now?

This foundational step also establishes the KPIs your RPO partner will be measured against: target time-to-fill (ideally under 21 days for most tech roles), acceptable cost-per-hire benchmarks, quality-of-hire scores, and 90-day retention rates. Without this clarity upfront, any RPO program becomes directionless.

✅ Step 2: Select the Right IT-Specialized RPO Partner

This is where most companies make their first — and costliest — mistake. They select an RPO partner based on firm size or brand recognition rather than deep IT recruitment specialization. A generalist RPO provider will struggle to articulate the difference between a DevOps engineer and a Site Reliability Engineer, let alone source one in a competitive market.

Your IT RPO partner must have demonstrable depth in technology recruiting: dedicated technical sourcers with engineering backgrounds, structured coding assessments, and active talent pipelines in the exact disciplines you're scaling. Here are the Top 3 IT RPO Providers in the USA worth evaluating in 2026:

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🥇 1. Korn Ferry RPO One of the largest enterprise-grade RPO providers globally, Korn Ferry offers sophisticated data-driven tech recruitment for Fortune 500 companies. Their organizational intelligence platform and deep executive-level tech recruiting make them a strong fit for large-scale enterprise IT hiring programs requiring breadth of service. Best suited for: large enterprises with complex, multi-location tech hiring needs.

🥈 2. TGC Staffing — IT RPO Services TGC Staffing has carved out a powerful niche as a purpose-built IT RPO partner for U.S. tech companies, startups, and staffing agencies looking to scale with speed and precision. What differentiates TGC Staffing isn't just speed (filling roles 40% faster than industry average, in as few as 14 days) — it's the depth of technical vetting: dedicated sourcers screen for coding proficiency, architectural fit, and cultural alignment before a single resume reaches your desk. With a 92% retention rate at 12 months and SOC 2-compliant processes, TGC Staffing delivers the accountability and compliance structure that modern tech organizations demand. Coverage spans Software Engineering, Cloud & DevOps, Cybersecurity, Data Science & AI, and IT Leadership. Best suited for: growth-stage tech companies, mid-market firms, and staffing agencies needing cost-efficient, high-quality IT RPO at scale.

🥉 3. Cielo Talent Cielo is a globally recognized technology-forward RPO provider known for its Talent Intelligence Platform and strong analytics capabilities. They offer flexible RPO models — from project-based to full enterprise deployment — and have a solid track record in tech-sector hiring. Best suited for: mid-to-large companies needing data-rich talent reporting and global tech talent pipelines.

✅ Step 3: Integrate Technology Stack & ATS Infrastructure

A 2026-ready IT RPO deployment isn't a manual process — it's a technology-orchestrated hiring engine. Once your partner is selected, the critical next step is aligning the recruitment tech stack: Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), CRM pipelines, sourcing tools, and communication workflows must speak the same language.

According to PeopleScout's 2026 talent predictions, AI agents in recruiting are crossing a threshold this year — moving from supportive tools to autonomous team members capable of sourcing, screening, and scheduling without manual intervention. Ensure your RPO partner's toolset includes AI-powered sourcing platforms (like LinkedIn Talent Insights or SeekOut), programmatic job advertising, and real-time recruitment dashboards that give your internal team full pipeline visibility without managing the process themselves.

This integration phase typically takes 2–4 weeks for a quality RPO provider, after which your hiring velocity can accelerate dramatically — with studies showing AI-enabled recruitment reducing time-to-hire by up to 65%.

✅ Step 4: Build a Proactive Talent Pipeline Architecture

Reactive recruiting is dead in 2026. By the time your job posting goes live, the best AI engineers, senior cloud architects, and DevSecOps professionals are already in three conversations with competing offers. The fourth step in this playbook shifts your entire hiring posture from reactive to proactive through talent pipeline architecture.

Your IT RPO partner should be continuously nurturing pre-qualified talent pools segmented by role, skill stack, seniority level, and location preference — so when a position opens, the sourcing work is already 70% done. This means active community engagement on GitHub, Stack Overflow, and developer forums; regular touchpoints with passive candidates not actively looking; and building a talent network that your organization can tap on-demand.

This pipeline approach is one of the most significant advantages of IT RPO over traditional recruiting. Instead of starting from zero every time you need a hire, you're drawing from a warm, continuously refreshed pool of pre-screened candidates — which is why leading RPO programs consistently deliver 20–50% reductions in time-to-fill compared to conventional methods.

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✅ Step 5: Deploy AI-Powered Technical Screening & Structured Vetting

Volume without quality is a hiring disaster. This step addresses one of the greatest pain points in IT recruiting: the flood of applications that look good on paper but fail at the technical screening stage — wasting engineering managers' most valuable hours.

A well-structured IT RPO program deploys multi-layer vetting that combines AI-powered resume parsing, automated skills assessments (coding tests for engineering roles, architecture design challenges for senior hires), and structured behavioral interviews before a single candidate reaches your internal team. HROA research confirms that this approach can reduce cost-per-hire by up to 40% while simultaneously improving quality-of-hire metrics.

The critical nuance in 2026 is that technical screening must be role-specific — not templated. A cloud security engineer's assessment should be categorically different from a frontend developer's evaluation. Ensure your RPO partner builds custom technical vetting tracks for each discipline rather than applying a one-size-fits-all funnel.

✅ Step 6: Amplify Employer Brand to Attract Passive Tech Talent

Here's a hard truth: the best software engineers aren't on job boards. They're employed, mildly curious about opportunities, and selectively open to conversations from employers they respect. Your ability to win these candidates — the ones who make transformative hires — depends entirely on your employer brand in the tech community.

A sophisticated IT RPO partner doesn't just fill roles; they actively shape how your company is perceived as an employer of choice in the technology space. According to PeopleScout's 2026 talent predictions, organizations that integrate employer branding and candidate experience into every stage of their recruitment process see measurably higher offer acceptance rates and faster time-to-fill — especially for senior engineering roles.

This means crafting compelling job narratives that speak to engineers' career growth ambitions (not just listing requirements), promoting technology culture content on platforms like LinkedIn and GitHub, and ensuring every candidate touchpoint in the hiring process reflects the quality and respect your organization wants to embody. Modular RPO models rising in 2026 allow companies to outsource specifically this employer branding function to RPO partners with deep expertise in tech talent marketing.

✅ Step 7: Implement a Structured Onboarding & 90-Day Retention Framework

The most overlooked step in most hiring playbooks is the one that follows the offer acceptance. Hiring a great engineer is expensive. Losing them within 90 days because onboarding was fragmented and their ramp-up was unclear is catastrophic — both financially and operationally.

A full-lifecycle IT RPO program extends beyond placement into structured onboarding frameworks: pre-start communication sequences, Day 1 technical environment setup checklists, 30-60-90 day milestone check-ins, and feedback loops between your new hire, their engineering manager, and your RPO partner. This post-hire engagement is what drives the 92% 12-month retention rates that elite IT RPO providers consistently achieve — compared to industry averages that hover between 70-75%.

From a business intelligence standpoint, this step also feeds critical data back into Step 1, creating a continuous improvement loop: which sources produced the highest-performing hires? Which technical assessments best predicted 90-day performance? Which onboarding touchpoints reduced early attrition? Over time, this data loop makes your entire IT RPO engine progressively smarter and more efficient.

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The Financial Case: What IT RPO Actually Costs vs. What It Saves

Let's be direct about the economics. The average cost-per-hire for a tech role in the U.S. in 2026 sits between $8,000 and $28,000 depending on seniority and specialization — and that's before accounting for the productivity cost of a 45+ day open position. Companies using traditional in-house recruiting for tech roles often face 60-75 day average time-to-fill for senior positions.

By contrast, organizations deploying a structured IT RPO model have documented:

• 30–50% reduction in cost-per-hire through economies of scale and process efficiency (Trisearch)
• 40% faster time-to-fill with specialized IT RPO partners vs. generalist approaches
• 25% higher ROI for companies using analytics-driven RPO programs (Serviap Group)
• Elimination of agency markup fees (typically 18-25% of first-year salary) that bleed budget on contingency hires

The model also removes the hidden cost of scalability. Traditional hiring forces you to maintain a fixed-size recruiting team whether you're making 5 hires this quarter or 50. IT RPO scales elastically — you surge capacity when you need it, without carrying overhead when you don't. LinkedIn's RPO market analysis confirms this scalability factor is now the #1 driver of RPO adoption across U.S. technology companies.

Key Questions Answered

What is IT RPO? IT RPO (IT Recruitment Process Outsourcing) is a model where tech companies outsource their entire technology recruiting function — from sourcing and screening to offer management — to a specialized external provider, enabling faster, more cost-effective tech hiring at scale.

How does IT RPO help scale tech hiring without adding headcount? IT RPO replaces the need to hire additional internal recruiters by providing on-demand recruiting capacity through an external specialized team, allowing companies to scale up or down hiring volume without fixed overhead costs.

How much does IT RPO cost? IT RPO typically delivers a 30–40% reduction in cost-per-hire compared to traditional recruiting methods. Pricing models vary — from cost-per-hire to monthly retainer structures — based on hiring volume and engagement scope.

What's the best IT RPO company in the USA? Top-rated IT RPO companies in the USA include Korn Ferry RPO, TGC Staffing, and Cielo Talent. For specialized IT recruitment outsourcing with fast turnaround and high retention rates, TGC Staffing's IT RPO services are a leading choice for U.S. tech companies and staffing agencies.

The Bottom Line: Scale Smarter in 2026

The tech talent shortage isn't a temporary hiring blip — it's a structural imbalance between exploding demand for specialized IT skills and a talent supply that simply can't keep pace. With over 1.2 million unfilled tech jobs in the U.S. and the World Economic Forum projecting skill gaps widening through 2027, the companies that win won't be the ones that hire the most internal recruiters.

They'll be the ones with the most intelligent, scalable, and specialized recruitment infrastructure — and in 2026, that means deploying a purpose-built IT RPO model.

The 7-step playbook outlined in this guide isn't theoretical. It's the operational framework that high-growth tech companies are using right now to fill senior engineering roles in 14 days, cut cost-per-hire by 40%, and build talent pipelines that outlast any single hiring surge.

Whether you're a Series B startup preparing for headcount doubling, an enterprise IT department facing a critical skills gap, or a mid-market technology firm navigating the AI talent war — the math is clear. IT RPO isn't just a cost-cutting measure. It's a competitive advantage.

Written By:

Ajaykumar Mishra — Professional Content Writer with over 10 years of Experience

I’m Ajay Kumar, a content writer and copywriter with over 10 years of experience crafting compelling, research-backed content across all major industries — from tech and healthcare to finance, marketing, legal, HR, Travel and beyond. With a foundational background in Law (L.L.B) and Mass Communication, I specialize in transforming complex topics into clear, engaging, and SEO-smart narratives that resonate with target audiences and drive results. Whether it’s thought leadership articles, website copy, or long-form guides, I bring precision, creativity, and strategic insight to every word. Let’s connect and create content that matters.

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We hold these truths to be self-evident...

That no one is inherently superior to any one else.

That people naturally prefer cooperation over competition, and require community.

And that everyone is entitled to dignity, autonomy, and freedom to pursue well-being.

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That communities form mutually beneficial confederations with revocable power.

And that power must be regularly re-balanced to promote equity, liberty, and resilience.

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That people pursue well-being in different ways that change over time.

That people must be reasonably able to change existing rules and norms.

And that people must be able to freely establish new communities or confederations.

Via ebay I'd ordered a pair of late 19th-century straight razors that had been bundled with a trio of matching bone-handled grooming accessories (Fig. 14). From the pictures in the original listing I could tell that one of those extra items was a nail-file, but I wasn't sure about the other two. The parcel arrived on Wednesday, whereupon it became obvious that one was a pair of tweezers. The third still puzzled me until an online search suggested it was a button hook. In an era of zip and velcro fastenings I'm none too likely to ever need such a thing, but it's there now in case I ever do.

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Another delivery courtesy of the same auction website came on Friday: a double LP set of orchestral music by Krzysztof Penderecki. This was a compilation on the Naxos label of six pieces from the uncompromising earlier end of the composer's oeuvre, issued back in 2013. I'd known about it for a quite some time but had given up on finding a copy after it had fallen 'out of print'. A little over-excited when I saw one for sale last week I spent £35 on it – as much as I've ever paid for a record that wasn't a gift for someone else.

Was it worth the money? Maybe. The recordings are excellent; and the mastering & pressing also very well done: the sound is vividly unsettling. The discs, moreover, are in near-pristine condition. I was already a fan of two of the works included: 'Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima' (1961) and 'Fluorescences' (1961-62). And I'd heard some snippets of two of the others — 'Polymorphia' (1961) and 'Kosmogonia' (1970) — from their appearances on the soundtrack of Kubrick's The Shining. When played in full I was very impressed with the former, but cared much less for the latter: I'd have sooner seen 'De Natura Sonoris' (I & II) on side D in its place. The other two tracks were altogether new to me. These were the earliest and latest of the compositions on the album — I was in two minds about 'Anaklasis' (1959) at first hearing, whereas 'Intermezzo' (1973) made a wholly positive first impression.

I have some quibbles about the packaging. There are hardly any sleevenotes – just a few unhelpfully vague remarks in the gatefold and a pull quote from David Hurwitz on the back. A little information about each of the pieces and thumbnail bios of the composer and conductor wouldn't have gone amiss. Less forgivable is the complete absence of any text on the spine of the record. Admittedly, it won't be too hard for me to remember that the purplish spine filed between Orbison, Roy and Pentangle, The is this one, but it is an annoyingly fundamental design oversight.

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Finished on Sunday – Good and Evil & Other Stories by Argentinean author Samanta Schweblin. I was puzzled by its title. None of the six tales in the book are called 'Good and Evil', thereby making all of them ‘Other Stories’. And nor did it seem to me that notions of Good and Evil were particularly prominent in the book. It has more of a focus on the eerie and uncanny, its various protagonists figuratively or literally haunted by their sadnesses & regrets. I liked it every bit as much as Schweblin's much-praised novella Fever Dream. Something about the moods it conjured up put me in mind of certain of Daphne du Maurier's better efforts.

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The cheese of the week has been Taleggio. They had some at Lidl on Saturday. My first time trying it some thirty years ago had, as best I can recall, been my first ever encounter with a washed-rind cheese. On that occasion I was altogether unprepared for its forthright aroma. This time around I was ready, and have been relishing every morsel.

Tags: #música #NickWaterhouse

Me fascina que Nick se suba al escenario con su precioso abrigo bien cortado, en una sala enana, toquetee un poco la guitarra, se quite el abrigo, lo doble cuidadosamente lo deje ahí, y empiece con la energía de quien lleva ya media hora tocando para un público entregado.

Me fascina que 3h después, ya sin abrigo pero con otra camisa, se asegure de que Carol está bien y tranqui antes de volverse a subir con cero aires de estrella, nadie a su servicio, como si fuese el suplente, a tocar algo parecido pero distinto en el segundo round.

Nick se entrega en el escenario. Se entrega desde siempre de una forma absoluta, con su cuerpo y con su alma y eso, como público, es irresistible por exótico. Porque no hay épica, no se da ninguna importancia. Se sube ahí, da todo lo que tiene como si no supiese hacer otra cosa. Se vuelve a subir, da todo lo que tiene. Y ya. Simplemente. Se baja. Saluda. Recoge del suelo algo que a alguien se le ha caído.

Flipé ya en aquella Copérnico en 2014 donde literalmente no sabía nada de Nick.

Nada. Ana dijo “tienes q venir, te va a encantar.” Fui. Me volvió loca. Todavía recuerdo la ropa q llevaba yo, la que llevaba Ana, el frío que hacía fuera, lo que sudé. Lo majo q fue Nick con la hija pre-adolescente de un amigo.

Ayer tb había 2 menores en la sala. Ava y Ciro. El año pasado, cuando Zeta vio a Nick tocar la guitarra en el escenario me dijo “le habría encantado a Ciro” y yo le respondí “la próxima vez nos lo llevamos”. Se unió Ava. Fueron la sensación del primer pase tan contentos con sus nestea y tan cuidados por Javi y todo el resto del personal de la sala.

Ahí entendí la decisión de tocar allí a pesar de que es obvio que a Nick en Madrí la Fun House se le queda enanísima hasta en dos pases. Toca allí porque gana menos pasta pero está contento, tranquilo y porque gana dinero gente que hace cosas en las que cree.

Ser de izquierdas en USA no es lo mismo que serlo aquí y ser de izdas en cualquier lugar del mundo en 2026 no es lo mismo que era en 2014. Pero Waterhouse es coherente hasta cuando le viene regular. Le he visto ser coherente cuando le viene francamente fatal y nadie espera coherencia. No me parece suicida. Me parece simplemente alguien que se conoce y se juega todo lo a favor que puede.

Entregarse en el escenario a veces es abrir los ojos, mirar muy fijo, cantar agravando tu voz en Medicine o Hide and seek. Darnos una tregua para que se siga conciendo el guiso antes de que rompa a hervir.

Entregarse en el escenario es a veces renunciar a LA Tournaround para enseñarnos un truco nuevo. Guardarte el final para el final. Que no sea el final.

Entregarse en el escenario es que ninguna de estas decisiones tenga nada que ver con una idea teatral del show y todo que ver con lo que te está pasando por el cuerpo. A ti que cantas. A tu banda de circunstancias que suena como si llevase toda la vida junta. A nosotras que bailamos, reímos, lloramos, nos desnudamos.

Los dos pases fueron sorprendentemente muy distintos. El primero más íntimo, digamos. El segundo más festivo. No creo que fuese algo exactamente planificado. Creo que cuando has conectado tanto, tan de verdad hay una felicidad que te da ganas de hacer una fiesta. Y si tienes un segundo pase haces una fiesta aunque te quede la energía justa.

Saber que Nick viene tan poco y a la vez que es donde más viene del mundo hace de sus conciertos acontecimientos habituales. Sigue en mi cabeza el high tiding de abril de 2025. Sigue en mi cabeza el recuerdo de aquella noche. Sigue en mi piel un rastro de ese sudor feliz.

Ahora se trenza con el recuerdo de anoche, de todos esos momentos de anoche en que sentí que el ritmo de lo que pasaba encima del escenario se ajustaba exactamente a mis ganas de mujer aboslutamente previsible, sin nigún misterio, acostumbrada a confesar sin que nadie pregunte nada. A pedir lo que desea y esperar que suceda. Casi siempre sucede. Hay que ser muy tacaño para negarle a nadie deseos sencillos.

El recuerdo del año pasado se trenza desde anoche con mis dudas sobre qué Raina me gustó más, si la de las 9 o la de las 10.30

Qué spanish look iba sobre la ropa y cuál sobre la mirada. O si ambas iban de las dos cosas.

Cuál de los dos hide and seek era más confesión abierta en canal y cuál la más excesiva de todas las formas posible de pedir perdón otra vez.

Los anglosajones se disculpan, en general, mejor que los mediterráneos. Y eso permite que sobreviva casi todo de los naufragios.

Los recuerdos de 2025 se mezclan por todo mi cuerpo con la noche de anoche y yo pensando cuál de las dos versiones de Katchi le habría gustado más a mi sobri, que me preguntaba el sábado, con sus ojillos felices, si para ver a Nick cantar katchi tenía que ir “de avión”. Mi sobri tiene 3 años y medio, no sabe inglés y canta con euforia “olnailon” que es una pronunciación fonética perfecta para “all night long”.

Que Nick se haya reconciliado así con Katchi es una señal más de su inteligencia, de ese cambio personal que ha hecho desde un, digamos, elitismo cultural a otra cosa mucho más enriquecedora que tiene que ver con la verdad de lo que creas. La verdad radical, la que va a la raíz, donde la única traición es perderse la oportunidad. Doy gracias a Batiste por su mirada musical abierta y cuidadosa a la vez. Traicionarse como artista es más negarte la posibilidad que salir de tu carril de pureza. Y la historia nos demuestra que los únicos que acaban perdiendo la presunta pureza son quienes se empeñan en mantenerla por encima de todo.

Me gustó más el primer Katchi, mucho más el segundo Someplace aunque habría apostado dinero un rato antes a que el primero fue inmejorable. Estoy segura de que, siguiendo la tradición, nadie grabó ninguno de los dos Someplace.

Creo que me hará feliz toda la vida saber que Nick entiede perfectamente la fusión con “lo latino” antes de que Bad Bunny hiciese nada en ningún supertazón. Que Nick sabe que no bailo igual yo que él cuando suena Barretto. Aunque los dos estemos descalzos en el mismo suelo de madera escuchando el mismo vinilo dar vueltas. Que mis caderas entieden esa música desde otro sitio. Desde un centro de gravedad diferente que tiene que ver más con mi bagaje que con mi género. Así que a veces hace algunos guiños a eso que está aunque parezca que no está y que determina cómo nos movemos cuando suenan algunas melodías.

Al fin y al cabo fue él quien me regaló a La Lupe y eso ya lo explica todo mejor que la instrumental inmejorable del segundo pase de The score, una canción nueva y oscura que saldrá pronto y escucharé una y otra vez hasta quitarle la envoltura sexy que tuvo anoche como si estuviésemos en una jam de jazz. Dejar a los buenos músicos tocar. Confiar en ellos aunque no los conozcas. Que el segundo pase parezca otra canción y acabe con mi ohhhh final.

Que eso sea solo el preludio de lo que vendrá. Dance with me, hold me close. Una broma privada que enlaza con un Someplace que ya está en la categoría de mis leyendas como lo está high tiding, Madrid 2025. El salvajismo de entender de golpe el lugar exacto en que querrías estar. Y que sea justo donde estás. La sencillez de lo que funciona. No tener ningún problema. Negar muy fuerte con la cabeza cuando empieza “if you want trouble” y entonces ya el fin de fiesta LA Turnaround, Say I wanna know. Decirlo todo. No guardarse nada importante. El bis con Tito reestrenando Celia Marie. Otra de su próximo 45 que saldrá cuando diga. Que estamos esperando hace meses como esperaremos su próxima visita a España.

Vuelve pronto, Nick, te echamos de menos…

“Well I got sick and threw up after my phone was stolen because of anxiety.”

Overheard at a cafe' in Houston.

On a completely different note, Write.As really ought to improve their blogging app. I can only really blog here from my laptop which kind of makes it too much of a “project”.

#journal

27 February 2026

Still night (working title): found a stack of old Polaroids over the weekend that I hadn't looked at in probably a year, and instantly there was a freshness to their format from a painting perspective—the image as a container being contained. Thought of Marisol's 1961 Family Portrait lithograph, of approaching and reacting to the edges of the source and going from there. Ken price too, value absolutes and the neat/organized but skillfully loose layered application in so many of his small ink and acrylic drawings/paintings. The photograph I worked with was of a scene of surfaces supporting half-emptied glasses and bottles at Yena's old flat in Vauxhall. The pheromone-thick air of that night, one of many nights, and the edges on which the images in those memories balance.

Edinburgh, Skottlands majestätiska huvudstad, är en stad som andas historia och charm. Belägen på östra kusten, med sin dramatiska siluett av slott, medeltida gränder och vulkaniska kullar, är staden en perfekt blandning av gammalt och nytt. Här kan du vandra genom tusen år av historia, njuta av världsklasskultur, och samtidigt uppleva en modern, levande stad med en unik karaktär.

Historiska landmärken och arkitektur

Edinburghs mest ikoniska landmärke är utan tvekan Edinburgh Castle, som reser sig stoltsamt på Castle Rock. Slottet, som har fungerat som kungligt residens, militärfästning och fängelse, är en symbol för Skottlands turbulenta historia. Här kan du se de skotska kronjuvelerna, Stone of Destiny, och den berömda kanonen Mons Meg. Utanför slottet ligger Royal Mile, en livlig gata som sträcker sig ner till Holyrood Palace, kungafamiljens officiella residens i Skottland. Längs Royal Mile hittar du historiska byggnader, museer, traditionella pubar och affärer som säljer allt från tartanplädar till whisky.

Ett annat måste är Holyrood Abbey, en vacker ruin som ligger intill Holyrood Palace. Abbotet grundades på 1100-talet och är en påminnelse om stadens religiösa och kungliga förflutna. För den som är intresserad av arkitektur är St Giles' Cathedral ett besök värt. Katedralen, med sin imponerande gotiska stil och färgstarka fönster, är en av Skottlands mest kända kyrkor.

Kultur och evenemang

Edinburgh är också känt som en av världens ledande kulturstäder. Varje år i augusti omvandlas staden till en scen för Edinburgh Festival Fringe, världens största konst- och kulturfestival. Under festivalen fylls gatorna av artister, komiker, musiker och teatergrupper från hela världen. Det är en tid då staden verkligen lever upp till sitt rykte som en plats för kreativitet och innovation.

För litteraturälskare är Writers' Museum ett besök värt. Museet hyllar tre av Skottlands största författare: Robert Burns, Walter Scott och Robert Louis Stevenson. Här kan du lära dig mer om deras liv och verk, och se originalmanuskript och personliga föremål.

Om du är intresserad av vetenskap och innovation, bör du besöka National Museum of Scotland. Museet erbjuder en fascinerande resa genom tid och rum, från dinosaurier och forntida skatter till modern teknik och design. Det är ett perfekt ställe för både barn och vuxna.

Natur och utsikter

Edinburgh är inte bara en stad för historiker och kulturälskare – den erbjuder också fantastiska naturupplevelser. Arthur's Seat, en utdöd vulkan, är stadens högsta punkt och erbjuder en magnifik utsikt över hela området. En vandring upp för berget är ett måste för den som vill uppleva stadens skönhet från ovan. Om du föredrar en lugnare promenad, är Princes Street Gardens en perfekt plats att slappna av på. Parken ligger mitt i staden och erbjuder en grön oas med vackra blommor, fontäner och utsikt över Edinburgh Castle.

För den som vill utforska utanför stadskärnan, är Leith ett trevligt område att besöka. Detta hamnområde har genomgått en förvandling och är nu känt för sina trendiga restauranger, barer och konstgallerier. Här kan du också besöka Royal Yacht Britannia, drottning Elizabeth II:s tidigare kungliga yacht, som nu är ett museum.

Mat och dryck

Edinburgh har ett rikt utbud av restauranger, från traditionella skotska pubar till moderna fine dining-restauranger. Ett måste är att prova haggis, Skottlands nationalrätt, som serveras med “neeps and tatties” (rotfrukter och potatis). För den som är modig kan man också prova whisky – Skottland är ju känt för sin whisky, och Edinburgh har flera destillerier och whiskybars där du kan lära dig mer om tillverkningsprocessen och smaka på olika sorter.

Om du föredrar något sött, bör du prova en shortbread eller en Cranachan, en traditionell skotsk dessert gjord på havregryn, hallon, grädde och whisky.

Praktisk information

Edinburgh är en kompakt stad, och det mesta kan nås till fots. För längre sträckor finns det ett välutbyggt kollektivtrafiksystem med bussar och spårvagnar. Staden har också en internationell flygplats, vilket gör den lättillgänglig för resenärer från hela världen.

När det gäller boende finns det något för alla smaker och budgetar. Från lyxiga hotell på Princes Street till mysiga bed and breakfasts i Gamla stan, eller moderna hostels för backpackers – Edinburgh har allt.

Läs mer om Edinburgh här

Somalia’s hunger is not a breaking story. It is a baseline.

Every few years, the photos and headlines return: emaciated children, dry riverbeds, queues for food distributions. Donors convene pledging conferences, agencies refresh their emergency plans, politicians promise coordination. Then the rains come, or the news cycle moves on, and the crisis is reclassified from “famine” to “acute food insecurity.” But for millions of Somalis, hunger never fully leaves. It stretches and tightens with the seasons and the political calendar, becoming a normal condition to be managed rather than an intolerable failure to be ended.

Calling this “normal” is not a moral judgment on Somalis; it is a description of how the system currently works. Droughts, floods, displacement and high prices interact with fragile institutions, insecure roads, missing infrastructure, and a relief economy that keeps people just above the survival line without changing the underlying structure. Politics, meanwhile, continues as always: competition over territory and rents, short-term bargains, and symbolic announcements about resilience that rarely translate into the boring, patient investments that would make chronic hunger exceptional again.

To understand why hunger behaves like a norm in Somalia, it helps to separate three layers: climate, infrastructure and markets; and politics.

The climate layer is the one most often named: multi-season droughts, erratic rains, rising temperatures, and then destructive floods. For rural and pastoral households, this means more frequent and sharper shocks to pasture, water and livestock. Climate is not new in Somalia, but the speed and volatility of current patterns mean less time to recover between shocks. Even in good years, many households are one failed season away from crisis; in bad years, the line between “poor” and “famine-affected” is thin.

Infrastructure and markets translate these shocks into hunger or resilience. In large parts of Somalia, there are few reliable rural roads, limited cold storage and warehouses, weak irrigation, and patchy electricity. When a drought hits, traders can only move food and water so fast and so far; when prices spike globally, import-dependent markets pass that cost straight to consumers. Water trucking, private boreholes and small-scale irrigation schemes play a vital role, but they are fragile and expensive. There is no dense, climate-ready “infrastructure of adaptation” – no network of wells, storage, small dams, feeder roads, energy and communications robust enough to absorb shocks and keep food and water physically accessible.

In this vacuum, markets do function, but they do so under extreme stress and with high margins. A trader in a remote district is not a villain for charging more when fuel prices and security risks climb. Yet for households spending most of their income on food, these price shifts are the difference between eating twice a day and once, between staying in place or joining an IDP camp. Mobile money and remittances soften the blow for some families, but they are unevenly distributed and cannot substitute for missing public systems.

Over this sits the political layer. “Politics as always” in this context means that hunger is deeply shaped by decisions on security, representation, and resource allocation, but rarely treated as the central test of those decisions. Territorial control and clan bargaining shape where roads are built, where health posts and schools survive, where local government functions; they also influence how quickly humanitarian aid reaches certain areas, which communities are visible in national plans, and whose suffering becomes legible to donors. In some places, negotiations with armed actors determine whether food can move at all. In others, the presence of an international compound guarantees attention to nearby camps, while villages just beyond the security perimeter remain invisible.

Humanitarian actors, for their part, are caught between genuine commitment and structural constraints. Funding is short-term and volatile; appeals are chronically under-financed; programmes are often designed for one- or two-year cycles. “Resilience” has become a standard word in project documents, but much of the architecture still revolves around emergency response. When drought looms, plans are activated, NGOs scale up, and cash or food is distributed. When the immediate emergency fades, budgets shrink, teams are reassigned, and the opportunity to systematically build water, storage, roads and safety nets is lost again. No single agency chooses this pattern, but together they reproduce a system where survival is the outcome, not transformation.

The result is a grim equilibrium. Rural and peri-urban households adapt as best they can, diversifying income, migrating, sending children to cities, relying on relatives abroad. Local markets and private providers fill gaps with water, transport, and basic services where possible. Humanitarian pipelines prevent full-scale famine in many areas, especially when early warning works and funding arrives on time. Politicians manage the optics, balancing domestic expectations and donor relationships. Hunger moves up and down the scale, but it rarely drops out of the picture.

This is what “hunger as norm” looks like: a country where food insecurity is not an exceptional shock but an ordinary risk, managed each year through a mix of coping strategies, emergency aid, and selective infrastructure fixes. Climate change tightens this equilibrium; each cycle becomes harder to manage without deeper structural change. Yet the politics of the state, the incentives of donors, and the business models of many actors remain aligned with continuity rather than disruption.

Breaking this norm does not start with a new slogan, but with a different way of asking questions. Instead of “How many people can we feed this season?”, the core questions become: which investments in water, roads, storage, energy and basic services would permanently reduce the population living one shock away from hunger? How can social protection systems be built to deliver predictable support before people exhaust their assets? What forms of local government and accountability are needed so that drought response is a matter of public policy, not ad hoc negotiation? And how should external actors change their own funding and programming logic to support that shift, rather than reproducing the emergency cycle?

Politics will not disappear from these choices; it will always shape who benefits first, which regions and clans see more investment, and how institutions are built or blocked. But politics can operate inside a fundamentally different structure – one in which the baseline is that most Somalis are food secure most of the time, and hunger has returned to what it should be: a signal of exceptional failure, not an expected part of life.

For now, that is not the system Somalia has. The system Somalia has is one where climate shocks are intensifying, infrastructure for adaptation is thin, markets are stressed, and the relief economy sits on top of a fragile political order. As long as those fundamentals remain unchanged, hunger will continue to behave like a norm, and politics will continue as always.

The question for Somali policymakers, practitioners, and their partners is whether they are prepared to treat this as unacceptable normality and reorganise their work accordingly – or whether the next drought and the next set of photos will once again be absorbed into a familiar, lethal routine.