March 2022 Top Ten

1.

We watched Turning Red and thought it was fine. We didn’t watch it with our kids, so we didn’t have any strong feelings about it. I thought it was a fun story about parents needing to be forgiven and children helping their parents grow.

2.

I read How (Not) to Read the Bible by Dan Kimball. The subtitle is Making Sense of the Anti-women, Anti-science, Pro-violence, Pro-slavery and Other Crazy-Sounding Parts of Scripture — he does a good job on these subjects given the limited space. Definitely a great place to start if you have questions about the God of the Christian/Hebrew Bible. My full review.

3.

I also read the poetry collection A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver. She’s the best. My full review.

4.

Discovered the Youtuber Ryan Trahan and watched his video “100 Days in the Metaverse.” It was wild. We also watched his video where he turns one penny into a house.

5.

One of my favorite musicians announced he’ll be releasing a new album in June. Here’s the title track. It’s incredible.

6.

I read the book The Intentional Father by Jon Tyson. I didn’t agree with everything in it, but it did get me thinking about how to be intentional in raising my kids, especially once we get to the teenage years. My full review.

7.

For book club we read The Genesee Diary by Henri Nouwen. He spent 7 months in a monastery and journaled about his experience. I loved it. Here are two of my favorite quotes from the book:

“Well, I prayed more this week than before but also discovered that I have not learned yet to make the work of my hands into a prayer.”

“The basis of community is not primarily our ideas, feelings, and emotions about each other but our common search for God.”

8.

This episode of The Nateland Podcast was pretty funny. It’s also available in audio only wherever you get your podcasts.

9.

We watched The First Stand-Up Comedy Special Written Entirely By Bots and it was bonkers. I think there was probably a bit more human curation than they want you to think, but still interesting (and pretty funny).

10.

I saw a wild fox on my way to work last week. It was awesome.