iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

Pet peeve: when a clear and obvious typo or auto correct is mistaken for ignorance, stupidity, or spelling error.

Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

I've been watching Shaun of the Dead most Halloweens with my wife since 2012. That's 13 years. I still notice little details a dozen times in that I didn't notice before. It's such a great movie.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

I love my pentecostal friends. But also, why do they always try to sell me vitamin supplements on a pyramid scheme? Yinz know that the Holy Spirit can bring healing through the work through a medical professional, right?

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

I respect @patmcafeeshow.bsky.social even more knowing that he has a morbidly obese Corgi. My golden retriever perpetually needs to lose five pounds. Corgi bro should get in some reps with Pete Herbstreit on Saturdays. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol0t...

youtube.com

Pat McAfee's Corgi, Chuck, Competed At An NFL Game?!

YouTube video by The Pat McAfee Show

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

One of life's little joys: encountering a new word.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

For years, I was told that the torn in Paul's flesh was some unknowable mystery. Nobody ever told me that the theme of a "thorn in the flesh" is found in Judges and Numbers. It's been a fun afternoon exploring that rabbit hole.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

"It’s hard for me to take seriously economic predictions that resemble a kind of secular Rapture, in which a god-like entity descends upon the earth and makes whole categories of human activity disappear with a wave of His (Its?) hand." @dkthomp.bsky.social on the AI apocalypse.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

To be fair, the last big false rapture debacle was that one guy in 2012 with billboards in NYC and all that. I'll say now what I said then: I hope he's right but I doubt it.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

Me last week: "Dear Jesus, I don't care if WVU loses all the other games this year, just give us a win over Pitt please." ::Monkey's Paw in the corner of the room overhearing my prayer curls::

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

The James Juke: using a handful of verses from the back of the Bible to prove that your preferred social program, moral value, or good work is somehow the exception to the idea that we are saved by grace through faith.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

Let's Go Mountaineers!!! #BackyardBrawl #WVU (Wasn't sure it would happen after last week's debacle but beating Pitt means the season isn't a total loss.)

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

WVU losing today has really set me back. Unexpectedly so. I had high hopes for the RichRod era, but man, we're off to a rocky start. There goes gameday for next week in Morgantown too, which I would have loved to see.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

Not happy that sports socials are going to be posting gifs of one athlete spitting on another for the next three days. Gross.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

I'm excited for a day when we can have extended ethical conversations without resorting to Stephen A Smith levels of faux indignation. I'm also excited for a day when we can talk #NFL and not get into an extended conversation about projectile saliva.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

I can't get the Eagles/Cowboys game streaming, so I thought I'd check in on reddit and see how things are going. Penalties, punches, spitting, fighting, and a weather delay. A disappointing way to start the season, but on the bright side, GP is the Cowboy's problem now.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

Are we done pretending tiny homes are a thing yet? Lmk.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

"Despair is guilt with no place to go." DZ, The Big Relief, Pg. 94

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

Just checked in on a beloved bishop in my tradition, Fitz Allison in South Carolina. He's 98 now, a year and a half away from the honorific "centenarian." His book "Cruelty of Heresy" remains a favorite, as does his immortal quip "Jesus isn't just some catfish in the Mississippi 'rivah.'"

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 31/08/2025

"I was dumbfounded by my own judgmental uselessness. It felt like heaven put me in a dunce cap and sat me in the corner for a while." Sarah condon is one of Mockingbird's great patients, so free that she can tattle on herself in the most relatable ways. mbird.com/suffering/re...

mbird.com

Remembering Hurricane Katrina, 20 Years Later - Mockingbird

For better or worse, I always think of the storm as a kind of before/after moment in my life.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

Took the family to see the Savannah Bananas last night. In a word: exhausting. Maybe even manic. We had a great time but it was like living in a real TikTok for 3 hours, with new distractions every fifteen seconds. It's entertainment for an online world, but what if your world isn't online?

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

The only people who watch Disney's The Little Mermaid are preschoolers and parents of preschoolers. But man, it is a gorgeous film.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

::looks left, looks right:: Salvation by works is a Jean Baudrillard simulacrum.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

I played outside everyday on a playground between the ages of five and eleven. It's wild to me that I barely remember any of it.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

Like... the Christian perfectionism of Charles Finney as an expression of the same wave of thinking as the Utopian experiments of the era? Or the social movements of that era? Or the apocalyptic cults of that era? No wonder half of New York got burnt out on the idea of moral achievement!

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

I hadn't spent much time thinking about The Burned-Over District since my middle school US History course. Wild to revisit that season of American history and seeing that dynamic play itself out in the hearts of so many in 2025.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

How in the world did the original 1964 Addams Family show get made? And also, the franchise started as a New Yorker cartoon?

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Hi. I'm a 38 year old man who just realized that NBA players wearing slip ons and socks is not a fashion statement of comfort, but of utility to keep their actual shoes nice for the basketball court. It's just something to wear around before the good shoes are required.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 17/08/2025

What's the statute of limitations for reusing a sermon illustration? 3 years so you don't use it twice on the same lectionary reading? 5 years just to give it more time to be forgotten?

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

When the weather related post on your social feeds is four days old but you don't see it and you think you're getting rain, followed by disappointment and an adjustment to your garden's auto watering device. 👎

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

Parks and Rec proving prophetic...

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

Something I've noticed using an open source podcast player, and not a player like Spotify, Apple Music, or Youtube - none of the major advert algorithms understand my specific wants and needs and feed me relevant adverts and suggestions.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

I have changed my mind about something recently. It wasn't that long ago that I said "nobody ever changed their mind by getting into an argument online." It's not that people are necessarily changing their mind, but they are changing the intensity of their established convictions.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

I agree with this to a degree, but spirituality and sociology make me think that it will be the condemnation of the righteous that eventually turns society around. Fewer things elicit the wrath of tyrants like good men because integrity is the mirror that shows a despot what they lack.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

Looking for a word that describes the sort of totalizing alarmism that demands moral attention. The sort of person who declares "if you're not alarmed by what I am alarmed about, then you're either stupid, ignorant, or morally deficient."

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

Sick to my stomach reading this. What a terrifying and loveless and sadistic and gutless practice. We owe each other better. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

theatlantic.com

Canada Is Killing Itself

The country gave its citizens the right to die. Doctors are struggling to keep up with demand.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

Celebrate with me! I am no longer making payments on my MDiv.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

"If only all funerals were unhappy and filled with tears, we might intuit that there was actually more love in the world than meets the eye." mbird.com/the-magazine...

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

The conscientiousness article in the FT is fascinating. I 100% belive it and disbelieve it at the same time.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

This little segnment from this week's @theresthistory.bsky.social podcast shook me to the core. No joke, I've been thinking about it all day. Lincoln as a man of genuine character, unimpeachable to the modern ethical deconstruction project, immune to mythical revision, the absolute real deal.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

Just throwing it out there that Tony Hale would be a great SNL host for this fall. He could be a blast to write sketches for!

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

"Why were the humanities the first thing the AI evangelists came for? If they had cured diseases, ended poverty, solved the housing crisis or food deserts or mental illness … But they started their world-changing project with the things that make us most human." mbird.com/film/sketche...

mbird.com

Sketches of Sadness in Seth Worley’s Restorative SKETCH - Mockingbird

A film that forces a crayon into our clenched fists: draw me a picture, tell me about it.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

Fun game! Had to pull up a map and think about it. N: Vancouver, BC. E: Boston, MA. W: Quinghai, China S: Big Island, HI

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

Seeing bad discourse across the internet hating on the 2010's Stomp, Clap, Hey genre of music, and I will not stand for it. It's not just great, but we need more of it.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

This was a fun episode to record with my co-host Cali, whose ghosting text message is brilliance in Gen-Z packaging. Come for the assurance that you're probably not grieving the Holy Spirit. Stay for the confessions of teenage romantic shenanigans.

terribleparables.fireside.fm

There Are No Divine Landmines

Cali, Bryan and Todd discuss the Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit in Mark 3:22-30.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

My current spiritual discipline is praying through my anger that my local grocery store already has Halloween Candy for sale. It's August 1. Halloween is literally three months away. School is still out. People are still on vacation. Why must a market economy insist upon itself so much?

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

I want to congratulate the Evangelical think-piece industrial complex for not taking the bait and writing about Ozzy or Hulk Hogan these past weeks. I am pleasantly surprised that nobody had some sort of vauge "Christ and culture" essay to share about them.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

Confession: as an act of digital hygiene, when Facebook tells me it's someone's birthday, and if I don't recognize the person, or if I know I won't see that person again this side of the Jordan, I will unfriend them.

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

I watched the first 15 minutes of The Bear and was so anxious and sick to my stomach I had to turn it off. Too real, I guess? Not enough escapism for someone trying to pay the bills in real life?

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Bryan Jarrell @spiritualangle.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

Drove down Monument Ave in Richmond for the first time in years today. The monuments are all officially gone. That's good and for the best, but it's also odd to call it Monument Ave if there aren't any monuments anymore. mbird.com/religion/chu...

mbird.com

Under Robert E. Lee's Shadow - Mockingbird

Growing Up in The Lost Cause

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