This is the Baymont podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co-host, Brent, and Josh Boussay. To dive into the virtues by talking about prudence.

Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard is one of the most important books to me in my whole life. And there's an

essay in it called Expedition to the Pole, which I think just side note should be required reading

for anybody who ever thinks about going into ministry. And I'm going to share a little part

to get us started. Annie writes,

On the whole, I do not find Christians outside of the catacombs sufficiently sensible of

conditions.

Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?

Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children

playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of T&T to kill a Sunday morning.

It is madness to wear ladies, straw hats, and velvet hats to church. We should all be wearing

crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares.

They should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense,

or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return. The 18th century Hasidic Jews

had more sense and more belief.

One Hasidic slaughterer, whose work required invoking the Lord,

bade a tearful farewell to his wife and children every morning

before he set out for the slaughterhouse.

He felt every morning that he would never see any of them again.

For every day, as he himself stood with his knife in his

hand, the words of his prayer carried him into danger. After he called on God, God might notice

and destroy him before he had time to order the rest. Have mercy. Another Hasid, a rabbi,

...