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‎README.md‎

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@@ -40,6 +40,11 @@ Pull Requests invited, that's the point!
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Add a Clojure namespace or markdown file in the [`/src`](src) folder.
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> [!TIP]
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> If you prefer to write Markdown instead of Clojure,
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> put your markdown file in [`/site`](site) instead.
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> For a personal blog, you can put files in [`/site/blog`](site/blog).
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Add metadata on your namespace to set the title, author, and tags.
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```clojure
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The namespace should emphasize **what the narrative is about**, not how it is categorized.
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Think of it as a logical path that leads to a specific artifact or topic.
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Classification elements such as tags, author, document type, level, or publication date belong in **metadata**, not the
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namespace.
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Classification elements such as tags, author, document type, level, or publication date belong in **metadata**.
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- **Start with an organization** if the narrative is about a library or tool maintained by one.
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Examples: `scicloj`, `lambdaisland`.
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Differentiation between posts, pages, and presentations is by `type` metadata (a Quarto page type convention).
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#### Exception: Personal blog posts
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The `blog` directories (in `src` and `site`) are exceptions to the topic oriented namespacing.
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We invite personal blogs, serialized writing, or other content where organizing by author and date is more convenient than by topic or namespace.
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For example: `site/blog/myname/2025-08-28-my-post.md`
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This structure is an intentional exception to the namespace organization.
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We want it to be easy for contributors to migrate or maintain personal blogs.
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### File system organization
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| Directory | Description |
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|-----------|--------------------------------------------------------------|
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| `src` | Source root for namespaces, markdown, images, and data files |
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| `site` | Static assets of the Quarto website |
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| Directory | Description |
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|-------------|--------------------------------------------------------------|
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| `src` | Source root for namespaces, markdown, images, and data files |
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| `site` | Static assets of the Quarto website |
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| `site/blog` | Personal writings |
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Non-Clojure files in `src` will be synced to `site`.
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Shared images can go in `src/images`,

‎site/blog/kirahowe/2019-12-10-searching-for-sunday.md‎

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---
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author:
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- name: Kira Howe
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url: https://kiramclean.com
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type: post
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title: Searching for Sunday
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date: 2019-12-10
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site/group: Reading
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site/tags:
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- faith
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- church
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---
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What is the point of going to church? I ask myself this question weekly. I
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didn't grow up going to any sort of regular religious services, but I'm becoming
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increasingly religious as an adult. I'm inclined to think that church should be
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a part of my faith journey, but mostly because going to church is just what
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religious people do. I've never understood the point, and have experienced quite
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a mixed bag of emotions venturing in and out of a handful of different faith
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communities over the past couple of years.
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This is the subject of Rachel Held Evans' book "Searching for Sunday". It's a
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story of her own faith journey and a call to the rest of us on a similar path to
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keep searching. I struggle to find the motivation to continue exploring religion
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and spending time on faith-related ventures. In a season where I'm wondering
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whether religion has any purpose at all, I found this book inspiring.
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## Diversity in the church
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One of the most refreshing things about this book was her sincere exploration of
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the diversity of faith traditions. This resonated with me. I've spent the most
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time with a Reform Jewish community, but have also been involved to varying
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degrees with Baptist, Presbyterian, United, Anglican, generic non-denominational
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evangelical, Unitarian, Jesuit, Roman Catholic, and Quaker communities over the
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past couple of years, and I'm deeply confused about how we got here.
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When I read about the life of Jesus and what he taught, I hear a call to unity.
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And it's not just an empty plea. He teaches us how to get there; we're called to
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love the outcast and welcome the stranger. I don't understand how we ever got to
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a place where churches have literal rules about who's allowed in and who's not.
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It seems to me that there's no bigger obstacle to achieving Jesus' vision for
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humanity than the Church itself. He came to condemn legalistic Jews, but instead
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of taking that message to heart and focusing on the substance of his teachings,
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his followers have just replaced one set of rules for another.
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Rachel observes this phenomenon, too, and calls us to understand what grace
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really is.
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> Perhaps we’re afraid that if we move, God might use people and methods we
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> don’t approve of, that rules will be broken and theologies questioned. Perhaps
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> we’re afraid that if we get out of the way, this grace thing might get out of
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> hand. Well, guess what? It already has.
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It's inevitable that we will have differences. But in a community that claims to
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revere a man who came here to love and befriend those who were excluded for
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their differences, homogeneity should be a warning sign that we're doing it
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wrong. I don't just mean ethnic homogeneity, although there's no doubt you'll
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have a hard time finding a church with members from more than a couple of
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different ethnic backgrounds. I mean that we should find was to embrace
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diversity of opinion. Isolating ourselves into sheltered communities divided
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along doctrinal lines cannot be the point of spirituality.
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## What is spirit like?
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This is another question that fuels my faith journey. I believe there are things
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we can experience that aren't attributable to our normal sensory inputs. I call
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these spiritual or mystical experiences. Other people use more religious
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language, but however you to describe it, spirituality appears to be a
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persistent and ubiquitous part of the human experience.
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I experience it as a sense of relentless forward progress, a source of strength
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in my darkest moments, a seemingly source-less inspiration to be more generous
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and loving, and an outlet for my gratitude when I'm amazed at how beautiful life
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can be. Some people call this force/source/motivator God, but there are
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literally thousands of traditions and cultures from every corner of the earth
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that have similar and genuine descriptions of experiencing something bigger than
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themselves. I call it spirit. I find the idea that this phenomenon can be boiled
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down to a list of faith statements and church doctrines repulsive. Seeking is
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worthwhile. Encoding the results of any one community's search in law is exactly
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what Jesus insisted we _stop_ doing.
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Many religions have claimed a monopoly on this phenomenon of spirituality. Some
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Christian denominations today insist they know what spirit is like and that it
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_really_ matters that everyone else agrees with them. They are so keen on this
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that they have been willing to trample the core values of the gospel in order to
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spread their ideas about what God is like. From Rachel:
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> It seems those most likely to miss God’s work in the world are those most
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> convinced they know exactly what to look for, the ones who expect God to play
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> by the rules.
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In the meantime, spirit is at work in the world every day, but we cling to the
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past like our lives depend on it for the sake of preserving an approach to
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spirituality that Jesus told us is all wrong. In their desperate attempts to
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hang on to rules and social constructs that are fundamentally incompatible with
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our ever evolving reality, religious communities forsake the very God of love
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and mercy who they claim to worship.
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## Overcoming cynicism
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It's probably already transparent, but I'm extremely cynical about religion.
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Part of the reason is because I know its truth claims are bullshit and its smug
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moral superiority is a sham. Yet something keeps me seeking. For all the
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failings of its followers, I think the Jesus movement has a lot to teach us
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about things that our world desperately needs to know. Things like love and
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reconciliation, acceptance and friendship, grief and pain.
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Rachel talks about what keeps her seeking, and I found this insight inspiring:
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> Cynicism is a powerful anesthetic we use to numb ourselves to pain, but which
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> also, by its nature, numbs us to truth and joy. Grief is healthy. Even anger
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> can be healthy. But numbing ourselves with cynicism in an effort to avoid
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> feeling those things is not.
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For most of my life this was my approach to religion -- complete rejection as a
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result of pure cynicism. It allowed me to get over the anger and frustration I
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felt toward religious communities, but it also prevented me from seeing anything
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positive at all in them. Letting down that guard has been very hard, and it
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still doesn't take much to send me spiralling back to my former indifferent and
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contemptuous approach to the whole thing.
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On most days even approaching these topics with an open mind requires me to tap
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into my deepest reserves of empathy and mercy. Getting over the cynicism is
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hard, but I believe it's the first step toward spiritual growth.
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## Continuing the journey
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I grew up as an outsider to faith and religious communities. Most of the people
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I know are atheists, but they are more Christ-like than any Christian I've met
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so far. Their love is sincere and unprejudiced. Strangers and outcasts are
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always welcome at their tables. From my perspective, religion has nothing to
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offer them, but could definitely learn a bit about love from them.
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I wonder sometimes if this just points to a triumph of those progressive values
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Jesus espoused. Maybe our culture has been so steeped in Christian tradition for
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so long that some of it has finally started to sink in. Not that we don't have a
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long way to go, but I see examples daily of strangers being welcomed with open
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arms and communities coming together to lift up the least among them. Isn't that
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kind of the whole point?
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It's hard for a newcomer to understand what the point of church is. All of the
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ceremony and expense of running a church just seems obscene most of the time,
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not to mention hypocritical. As an outsider, it appears to be nothing more than
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a relic of a bygone era -- the last bastion of misogyny and homophobia in a
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society that is finally growing out of those harmful attitudes, a stronghold for
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regressive politics, a cash cow for manipulative and greedy men to line their
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own pockets.
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Then I realize that these issues have always plagued human institutions. I
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wonder how many people before us have had the same struggles with organized
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religion but, like me, were incapable of shaking the feeling that there's
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_something_ worth paying attention to there.
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The church as we know it is dying, and I can't help but have any feeling about
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it other than "good riddance". But I don't think our desire for connection with
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something beyond ourselves is going anywhere. When I'm honest with myself, I
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have to admit that I'm pretty excited to see what emerges from these ruins.

‎site/blog/kirahowe/2020-08-03-why-is-web-development-so-complicated.md‎

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---
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author:
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- name: Kira Howe
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url: https://kiramclean.com
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type: post
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slug: blog/why-are-websites-so-complicated-now
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title: Why Are Websites So Complicated Now?
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date: 2020-08-03
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site/group: Tech
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site/tags:
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- static websites
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- software
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---
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I first got into programming because I wanted to make my own websites. Back then
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all it took was two files, an `index.html` and a style sheet. I recently decided
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to take up blogging again and started looking around for a simple static site
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generator. There are a couple of reasons why I avoided some other approaches.
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- I have had negative experiences with Wordpress that make me not want to use it
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again. Plus it is way more sophisticated than I need for a simple place to
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publish some thoughts.
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- I want unambiguous ownership of my blog. Less important but also relevant, I
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want to easily be able to control how it looks. This rules out quite a few
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popular batteries-included blogging platforms.
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- I do not want to setup (or pay for) a server somewhere to serve a simple
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website with only static pages.
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I've been writing software for the internet for some years now, but it's been a
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while since I worked on anything like what we think of as a normal website. When
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I started looking into how those are made these days, I was surprised to find
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mostly complicated, bloated frameworks that nearly completely abstract away the
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basic task of generating HTML.
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It doesn't take multiple new languages, frameworks, or build tools to make a
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really simple website.
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## Content is not software
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Frameworks are for people building sophisticated software that happens to run in
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a browser. There is no need for them if all you want to do is put some content
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on the internet. I will argue that if your main goal is publishing content you
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don't even need JavaScript at all.
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JavaScript frameworks mostly help by allowing us to write non-trivial software
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in a language less terrible than JavaScript itself. They can also help with
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things like managing state, reacting to user input, and communicating
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asynchronously with a server to get new information onto a page without needing
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to refresh the whole thing. None of these challenges are present when the main
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purpose of a website is to display static information.
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For that, all we should need is a language to markup our plain words into
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something a browser can render, like HTML.
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## A simple static site generator
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I prefer writing software over configuring software, and I resent things that
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are more complicated than they need to be. I'm a minimalist by nature and I am
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against the direction our industry is currently headed -- shipping bloated and
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buggy software by the ton -- but that's a topic for another day.
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After some investigation and frustration trying to do simple things, like edit
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canned templates or change the source and structure of my content, I of course
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decided to write my own static site generator, like any sane developer would do.
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For now all it does is convert my posts (which I write in markdown) into HTML
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and insert that HTML into a template, then put those files in the right place.
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As my blog grows I'll add more features, and maybe even make it useful enough
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for someone else to use someday. For now it's a simple solution that works on my
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machine, and was definitely more enjoyable for me to write than was faffing with
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configuring the other tools I tried.
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## A plea for simplicity
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I get that a lot of people are not making simple websites anymore. There is some
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seriously sophisticated software running in browsers now, which I understand is
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the reason for the proliferation of JavaScript frameworks and build tools
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currently plaguing our work lives.
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A lot of people are still simply publishing content to the internet, though, and
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we seem to have forgotten what a website is really made of. It's just HTML
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(which is supposed to semantically mark up content to describe its <em>meaning
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and structure</em>), and optional styling with CSS (to describe it's
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<em>appearance</em>). These languages are not so complicated to write that we
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need complex frameworks that add a dozen more layers between the content and the
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final static pages. If all you want is to put some information on the internet,
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see if an old fashioned HTML file might be all you need.

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