Weekly Links - All Saints' Day Edition!

My weekly* round-up of interesting reading from around the web:

-As a Christian who appreciates science (and science fiction!), I enjoyed reading this interview with the Pope's astronomer.  A highlight of it:

Rather than learning something theologically new, what I take from my discoveries is a more general sense of the “personality” of the creator. It might be compared to discovering a trove of old manuscripts where you think one of them might be some unpublished play of Shakespeare. You’d be excited because it might be a wonderful new work, or even just a window into what he was thinking while he was writing. But you also need to be sure it really is Shakespeare that you’re reading, not some other writer.

- Our family loves the show "Mythbusters", and so I enjoyed this article: "The Craziest Myths the Mythbusters Have Tackled, According to the Mythbusters".


- Now onto religion and society: "This Is Your Wake-up Call" is a sober reflection on abortion and one of the hardest stories in the book of Judges.


- Simcha Fisher on "Rogue Laughter in a Flippant Society" - I especially liked this paragraph:

. . . think of the difference between an eleven-year-old boy laughing about sex, and a forty-year-old married man laughing about sex. The grown man has probably earned his laughter; the boy can't have done so, and is laughing partly because he wants to look more experienced than he really is. True laughter, and the best jokes, come when we have some experience with the subject matter -- when we've faced something big and have survived.

- Anne Kennedy on "Celebrating the Reformation". Good, timely stuff:

The church cannot go beyond the gospel. The Christian doesn’t graduate from a saving knowledge of Jesus into something better later on. So also, the Christian cannot ascend to something higher, cannot move on to some better, fancier doctrine. From the moment of Jesus’ first infant cry, to his sorrowful and painful death, to his rising again, to his crushing of his enemies under his feet those who love him can never cry out someone else’s name for help, they can never give glory to themselves or to another, they can never be sustained by some other grace, they can never lean on and be ruled over by some other authority than Jesus’ own Word, they can never be tethered by some other faith.

-Reformation Day yesterday, All Saints Day today - and yet it's still Ordinary Time!  So, here's Anna Gissing on "Living in Ordinary Time":

. . . many Protestant Christians have been re-learning the rituals and habits of living into these churchy seasons as a way to inhabit the gospel and to structure our lives in a way that helps us remember that God is the author of time.

-Speaking of Reformation Day, I enjoyed this dense bio on "Katherine Parr: Reformation Queen of England and Ireland".


-AND, speaking of All Saints' Day, here's a lovely sonnet by Malcolm Guite for All Hallow's Eve.


- Tim Challies is Canadian, but I think his wise words are a comfort in any political climate: "I Went Away for Just 6 Days":

The temptation is not only to put my hope in politicians but to put my despair in them as well. I will be tempted not only to find too much joy in the election of the person I voted for, but also to sink too far into despair in the election of the person I did not. Either way, whether I soar too high or sink too low, I am declaring that I have put my trust in a man more than in God. I have forgotten that, ultimately, it is God who rules over and through earthly rulers.

-Finally, my friends and family and I found this article on "The Things that Drain Each Personality Type Most" scarily accurate.



Happy All Saints' Day, folks!
-Jessica Snell



*Or, if we're honest, biweekly.

Managing Your Email: a Primer for INFJs

If you're an INFJ, there's one thing about email you already know: it's so much better than a telephone call.

Emails give you a chance to think about your answers before you have to give them.

But the other truth is that a crowded email box can feel just as suffocating as a crowded party, and every little line in your inbox represents a person you have to interact with and . . . and you find yourself shying away from even clicking on the tab in your browser that holds your inbox, because just the idea of looking at all those people makes you feel overwhelmed and exhausted.

How to Manage
But if you don't answer your email, well, you're being rude. And we INFJs 1) actually like people and 2) have very clear ideas about right and wrong, and ignoring people with a legitimate claim on our attention is wrong. So how to manage?


1) Give yourself a day. You don't have to answer email the instant you receive it. Read it as soon as you get it, so your brain can start mulling over your response, but don't pressure yourself to respond instantly. You'll feel better about an answer you've had time to think about.

2) Answer the easy ones first. A corollary to the above rule: do answer the easy ones quickly. Some emails are easy, and you know what you want to say. If you know what you want to say: just say it. That'll keep the crowding in your inbox down, which will keep your stress down.

3) Clear your inbox regularly. Depending on your life and responsibilities, this could be a once-a-week chore or a once-a-day chore. But do clear your inbox on a regular basis. Just sit yourself down and make yourself answer every single email (that's a day old or older) before you let yourself get up again. Pretend someone will kill you if you don't do it, and you'll find that you actually can come up with the words when you're forced.

4) It doesn't have to be perfect. Yes, this is probably the hardest rule. You don't want to answer unless you're sure you have the right answer. I understand. I'm there with you. But it's unkind not to answer just because your pride demands perfection. Be kind, and be willing to use less-than-perfect verbage and unideal answers. Just answer. It's the right thing to do.

5) Clear your inbox completely. Your email system surely has a filing system: use it. After you've answered something, file it and get it out of your inbox. The goal is to have a completely clear inbox at least once a week. The empty space will make you feel so good.


I'd love to hear both from other INFJs, to know if any of these tricks are ones they use, and to hear from other personality types, to hear what works for them!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Type Tests and Writing

Well, I just took a Myers-Briggs test (again), in preparation for type-testing my characters. I found (again) that I’m an INFJ. I always forget what my middle two letters are, though I’m sure about that I and that J! but it’s been pretty consistently INFJ, and when I read the description, it fits. It’s almost a relief: oh, okay, that’s who I am. It’s okay that I prefer time alone, it’s normal that I think very, very hard about all the people I know, and try to make sense of why they do what they do. It’s okay that I have a few very close friends, and am not attracted to the social butterfly stuff people tell me I should be attracted to. It’s okay that I think that every. thing. matters. And matters gloriously.

(Also explains why I'm so very interested in the whole world, but so very reluctant to share myself with it.)

I was taking the type test today, though, not to find out so much about myself, but to find out more about the main characters in my work-in-progress.

And, after taking the type test myself, I realized that the best thing to do would be to take it again, twice, once answering the way my hero would answer, and once answering the way my heroine would answer.

I’d thought that I’d just scan through the 16 type descriptions, and see which ones looked most like my characters. But I think I might find it better by actually going through the test as Thomas, and then as Eve.

It does sound like a lot of work, to go through all those questions as somebody else. I want to say, McCoy-style, "I'm a writer, not an actor, Jim!" But I think it'll be worth it.


By the way, it’s interesting to see that people who are my type, INFJ, are often writers. The other things they often are? Psychologists, religious leaders, or librarians. Which I thought was kind of cool, because when I’ve contemplated grad school, the two things I often thought about doing were going for either my Psy.D. or a Masters of Library Science.

It used to be that whenever I attended a college graduation, I felt sad, because I wasn’t graduating. I love school. Love it. But at the last graduation I attended – my brother’s – I didn’t feel sad. I finally realized that I was going after my advanced degree. That pursuing a career as a novelist – all the work and research and networking I’ve been doing – is the equivalent of working on a grad degree in my chosen field. The only thing is that my degree isn’t going to come in the form of a hood and diploma; my degree is going to be my name on the spine of a book.

It’s scary, because there’s no guarantee I’ll get there. And I’ve always thought of myself as the type who goes for the sure thing. But the truth is, for me, if I’m going to spend the time on really going after advanced studies, it’s going to be in writing, and not in psychology or library studies. So the reason I'm doing it is because it’s the only way to get what I want. Despite the chance-y nature of the thing.

It’s weird to be surprised by the fact that you’re a risk-taker. I never thought I was.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

p.s. The other really weird thing about the Myers-Briggs test is that my husband is my exact opposite: an ESTP. Moreover, where my I and J are my strongest categories, his strongest are those middle two letters: the S and the T. Where I'm middling on my N and F, he's middling on his E and P. I think that's very funny.