Dear friends,

I’m excited to write to you about my weekly newsletter I’m calling Stop & Think.

I write to help people stop and think, and thus to restart and live more thoughtful, loving, deeply human lives with others.

In her brilliant book The Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt argued that genuine thinking is only truly possible when we are willing to interrupt our drive toward easy answers, simple solutions, and satisfied desires. The good life requires this paradoxical pause that opens fresh room for new questions, creative imagination, deep gratitude, and radical responsibility. Thus Arendt judged,

“All thinking demands a stop-and-think.”

Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind

Martin Luther King, Jr. anticipated Arendt’s vision of thinking in his classic book Strength to Love. Dr. King asked, “Who doubts that…toughness of mind is one of humanity’s greatest needs?” And yet he observed “an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions.” According to King,

“Nothing pains some people more than having to think. But the shape of the world today does not permit us the luxury of soft-mindedness. A nation or a civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men and women purchases its own spiritual death.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

A life of sacred presence, endless learning, and practical service begins in this courageous willingness to stop and think.  When we do so, we can begin again in the gifts of spiritual honesty, moral integrity, and daily inspiration.

My writing grows out of a deep immersion in the history of theology, philosophy, and ethics with a passion for contemporary issues and everyday life. As you stop and think with me, I hope you discover new beginnings that enrich and enlarge your love.

^I’ll also be including personal sketches to bring to life the ideas thanks to a friend^

Next week you will receive the introduction to my first series called “Was Jesus Political?” I’m excited for this series of short essays, which I think will shed fresh light on Jesus, politics, and what it means to be more human in our polarized times. The first essay will take a new look at Mary, Jesus’s young mother, and her profound influence on Jesus’s politics.

In hoping to turn my writing into a career, I would deeply appreciate anyone becoming a patron supporter of Stop & Think.

Yours,
Andrew