Happy Easter, Substack Updates, Prayer Requests, and "Name That College"

I'm taking your prayer requests and your suggestions for highly affordable colleges.

Happy Easter, He is risen indeed!

Open Combox today because I am taking your prayer requests for the Easter Season and also your suggestions for highly affordable colleges. More on that below, but first a few notes about this platform.

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Welcome New Subscribers!

I’ve had quite a few people sign up in the past few days, and I’m grateful you’re here. A significant portion of the readership are personally known to me, so I can attest you have fallen in with a good crowd.

Who should be paying for all this?

Shout out again to the financial supporters of this newsletter. This is a ministry not a money-making scheme, but your sponsorship takes the edge off and keeps me going, so I am grateful.

We are reaching a lot of people who need a low-stress, non-political, Just-the-Catholic evangelization and discipleship blog, so I can assure you your contribution is being felt and appreciated. Thank you.

Here’s a “subscribe” button in case you have felt the call to join those ranks:

HOWEVER, STORY TIME:

Substack glitched on me the other week and so if you subscribe here, or were trying to, you should know:

Don’t panic if you tried to subscribe for free and . . . something happened.

I had the experience of attempting to subscribe (for free) to a new newsletter, and somehow ended up being billed $80. Maybe it was me, but I think it was them. ANYWAY: I went to the dashboard and Substack’s help function, found the instructions for how to request a refund, and the Substack people promptly cleared it up and refunded me.

So. In the unlikely event that should happen to you, just ask for the refund. I am not, at all, offended that you aren’t made of money and can’t financially support every single writer who crosses your desk. Believe me I know.

Kindly ignore Substack if it pesters you.

Obviously Substack can’t function if it doesn’t get paid subscriptions, someone has to keep the servers running, but in the event you are being randomly prompted by the platform to be more involved (time, reputation, or moneywise) with this newsletter than you would like, just ignore.

They have to ask, you have my 100% approval if you set healthy boundaries around your internet life. So do that.

What about this new Substack Notes function?

I checked it out yesterday, and it looks like a Twitter clone within the world of Substack. So if you are a regular Twitter user, it’ll be familiar and comfortable and maybe you should seek therapy about that. (Joking! Kinda.)

I do not commit to be on Notes.

I may or may not be, I don’t know.

I was already on track to pare back further my minimal social media presence; I’m really not looking to be found by anybody for much of anything, because God has amply filled my plate at this time. My life is not boring.

What I can promise you is this: If you try to use Notes to reach out to me, there is a decent chance you’ll be talking to air. It’s maybe not the best way.

Subscribers at any level can still e-mail me.

What I do commit to until further notice is reading all subscriber e-mails. You can reach me by replying to any edition of this newsletter in your e-mail inbox. I don’t promise to reply, but I will pray for your prayer intentions and I will take your comments and topic requests to heart.

—> Every now and then, such as today, I do an open combox for prayer requests, but usually the combox is a thank-you perk for financial supporters. This approach keeps the trolls out of the comments and also encourages you to get off the internet and take what you receive here and use it to open up the conversation out there in your own circles of real-life friends and fellow workers in the vineyard.

A word of caution about what you’ll find on Notes:

Many of you know that I am not, at all, shy about engaging in debate on highly controversial topics. I created this newsletter because Substack as a platform is ideal for those who want to follow a few carefully-chosen blogs without having to deal with the hype and rage-baiting of social media culture.

Some of you are carefully stewarding your tranquility, and that is a good decision. I will happily make very pointed comments about the reality of evangelization and discipleship, but I am not here to wreck your peace generally.

So. You should be forewarned before you venture onto Notes that I subscribe to quite a wide variety of Substack newsletters, many of them written by people who are just plain wrong about some very important topics. This affects you because if you are not careful about your settings, you will end up seeing a feed on that platform of everyone I read (or at least keep on hand in case I wish to read them now and again), and some of those people are not there to buttress your fortress of serenity.

So please do not get on Notes, discover that my wider circle of Substack reading is quite spicy, and feel betrayed by my pledge to keep this space strictly on-topic.

Also please do not attempt to make any inferences whatsoever about my personal leanings and opinions based on who I subscribe to on Substack. Hilarity will ensue.

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Open Combox: Prayer Requests and College Suggestions

Okay and with that, dear readers, onto the open comment box. Anyone can leave a note today, regardless of whether you subscribe.

Please share:

• How I and your fellow readers can pray for you through the Easter season.

• Which low-budget colleges you particularly recommend my high school junior give a serious look.

By low budget we mean: Tuition is low enough that a hard-working, academically gifted child can get enough scholarships that she can graduate debt-free with just working summers and that’s it. Her plans post-undergrad are contingent on having zero loans to pay off, so affordable is the only viable option.

She and I have been touring colleges this spring break, and have a few very good options already identified, but I figure it never hurts to ask for more ideas.

We can’t be the only ones looking for suggestions in this vein, so even if your favorite affordable college is not a fit for my child, others will no doubt benefit from your suggestions.

And yes, I know many, many colleges (including, ahem, some wonderful Catholic colleges I do indeed recommend to others, because they bring some real value to the game) think that “affordable” means “graduating with just a small mortgage and we’re such a great school that you’ll get a job to pay all that off no problem.” This is not that child.

She needs to graduate with zero debt in order to pursue her post-college vocation, and we are grateful that God has on offer some ways to do that without skipping college altogether. I’m just looking today for any specific colleges you know of that we should also consider in addition to the several already on our short list.

Thanks!

Photo from Natural Bridge Park, Haleyville, Alabama. Don’t cheat yourself. Add it to your touring itinerary if able. FYI reaching the arch does require a short trail walk up a slight slope, and no I didn’t really assess it for accessibility, sorry. Can’t remember just how rough the basic entry-trail is. It’s privately-owned woods with lots of rocks.