November 2009
1 post
Not the Idle
It’s not the idle who move us but the few Often confused with the idle, who define Their project in life in terms so ample Nothing they ever do is a digression. Each episode contributes its own rare gift As a chapter in Moby-Dick on squid or hardtack Is just as important to Ishmael as a fight with a whale. The few who refuse to live for the plot’s sake, Major or minor, but for texture...
March 2009
3 posts
Truth and beauty
The honest preachers had energy and go. They fought the devil, no holds barred, boots and eye-gouging permitted. You might get the idea that they howled truth and beauty the way a seal bites out the National Anthem on a row of circus horns. But some of the truth and beauty remained, and the anthem was recognizable.
—John Steinbeck
No line on the horizon
You know, it’s like that thing that people said about U2, that most bands start off writing about girls and end up writing about God, but we started off writing about God and ended up writing about girls. But we found the God in the girls, that would be my retort.
—Bono
Art
It seems like the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies … in be[ing] willing to sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow. Even now I’m scared about how sappy this’ll look in print, saying this. And the effort to actually to do it, not just talk about it, requires a kind of courage I don’t seem to have yet.
—David Foster Wallace
here
February 2009
2 posts
The Breath of a Wok
The first steady, sizzling beats occur when the garlic or ginger strikes the hot oil. Then the loud, thunderous bang as a big handful of vegetables is added. The metal spatula strokes the carbun-steel sides, its sharp, fast rhythms marking time against the beat of the vegetables crackling in oil. A more muted splashing bang as the sauce ingredients are swirled in. Sometimes the clang of the...
St. Francis was above all things a great giver; and he c ared chiefly for the best kind of giving which is called thanksgiving. if another great man wrote a rammar of assent, he may well be said to have written a grammar of acceptance; a grammar of gratitude. He understood down to its very depths the theory of thanks; and its depths are a bottomless abyss. He knew that the praise of God stands...
January 2009
1 post
St. Francis of Assissi
As he saw all things dramatically, so he himself was always dramatic. We have to assume throughout, needless to say, that he was a poet and can only be understood as a poet. But he had one poetic privilege denied to most poets. In that respect indeed he might be called the one happy poet among all the unhappy poets of the world. He was a poet whose whole life was a poem. He was not so much a...
September 2008
2 posts
The Meaning of Life
All true joy in life comes ultimately from knowing and being known by another. Everything else is either a means to this end or a poor substitute for it. Because the heart of reality is one who is love, the good news is that if we have the courage to pursue this mutuality, we will find it.
—Fred Gilham
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And...
August 2008
8 posts
Community
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone. Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Stand together yet not too near together. For the pillars of the temple stand apart, and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.
—Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
via Reaching Out by Henri Nouwen
Chapter 13: How the Dwarfs Refused to be Taken In
Tirian had thought—or he would have thought if he had had time to think at all—that they were inside a little thatched stable, about twelve feet long and six feet wide. In reality they stood on grass, the deep blue sky was overhead, and the air which blew gently on their faces was that of a day in early summer.
Not far away from them rose a grove of trees, thickly leaved, but under...
The Way
Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.
—Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz
God
“Honey, I’ve never placed an expectation on you or anyone else. The idea behind expectations requires that someone does not know the future or outcome and is trying to control behavior to get the desired result. Humans try to control behavior largely through expectations. I know you and everything about you. Why would I have an expectation other than what I already know? That would be...
The Shack
“Is that what it means to be a Christian?” It sounded kind of stupid as Mack said it, but it was how he was trying to sum everything up in his mind.
“Who said anything about being a Christian?” Jesus asked. “I’m not a Christian.”
The idea struck Mack as odd and unexpected and he couldn’t keep himself from grinning. “No, I suppose you...
Forgiveness
“There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used to say. You must forgive in order to understand. Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding. Her father had said this more than once, in sermons, with appropriate texts, but the real text was Jack, and those to whom he spoke were himself and the row of Boughtons in the front...
A little after the fact: Birthday song from an old...
They say that youth is wasted on the young Still it’s good that you’re not jaded And I’m glad you’re having fun.
Your long year ran right by you Just another short day to me How have you been in your beautiful skin? Did you solve all life’s mysteries In your long year?
When time turns the tables You’ll be me Wearing all the tags and labels Of an ancient...
It is a strange thing not to hear of a man until...
If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent,...
July 2008
7 posts
How self-confident is that wisdom which perceives a closed compartment in things, reserved for the initiate and manipulated only with the key. O secrecy without a secret! O accumulation of information! It, always It!
—Martin Buber, I and Thou
Happiness
In 1991 Rolling Stone interviewed Bob Dylan on the occasion of his 50th birthday, and at one point the interviewer asked Dylan if he was happy. This seemed to puzzle him a bit, and he was silent for a minute. Then he said, “You know,” he said, “these are yuppie words, happiness and unhappiness. It’s not happiness or unhappiness, it’s either blessed or unblessed. As the Bible says, ‘Blessed is...
Found in, of all places, the SAT prep packet of...
On Detective Stories:
The magical satisfaction they provide (which makes them escape literature, not works of art) is the illusion of being dissociated from the murderer.
…
If one thinks of a work of art which deals with murder, Crime and Punishment for example, its effect on the reader is to compel an identification with the murderer which he would prefer not to recognize. The...
Faith
This faith is eyes to see, Not my own, but graciously. It shows me truth and what I think is happening Are not the same.
—The Allens
The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
The first disadvantage of an elite education, as I learned in my kitchen that day, is that it makes you incapable of talking to people who aren’t like you…Because these schools tend to cultivate liberal attitudes, they leave their students in the paradoxical position of wanting to advocate on behalf of the working class while being unable to hold a simple conversation with anyone in it.
...
“There is opportunity in turning down opportunity.”
– leighcia
June 2008
12 posts
This is what I'm looking for.
There is a continual process of simplification in Shakespeare’s plays. What is he up to? He is holding the mirror up to nature. In the early minor sonnets he talks about his works outlasting time. But increasingly he suggests, as Theseus does in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, that “The best in this kind are but shadows,” that art is rather a bore. He spends his life at it,...
Currently reading: Lectures on Shakespeare, by W....
Of all dramatists Shakespeare is, perhaps, the most “life-like.” His plays may be in verse and, therefore, anything but “naturalistic,” yet no one else conveys so perfectly the double truth that, while each man is a unique individual responsible for the choices he makes and not an impotent victim of circumstance, at the same time we are all members one of another, mutually...
Praise psalm.
Let this day’s air praise the Lord— Rinsed with gold, endless, walking the fields, Blue and bearing the clouds like censers, Holding the sun like a single note Running through all things, a basso profundo Rousing the birds to an endless chorus.
Let the river throw itself down before him The rapids laugh and flash with his praise, Let the lake tremble about its edges And gather itself...
Don Miller
It confuses me that Christian living is not more simple. The gospel, the very good news, is simple, but this is the gate; the trailhead. Ironing out faithless creases is toilsome labor. God bestows three blessings on man: to feed him like birds, dress him like flowers, and befriend him as a confidant. Too many take the first two and neglect the last. Most believers on the path have found that life...
“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you...”
– Jesus. Luke 12:32
Asian people teach their kids that the best thing...
And Jesus said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?
—Luke 9:23-25
Do you believe in something truer than truth?
—Charles Simic
via it loved to happen
J. K. Rowling
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.
__
Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its...
It's my first big decision
Oh but how can you know who you are Till you know what you want, Which you don’t, so then which do you pick? Where you’re safe, out of sight, and yourself, But where everything’s wrong? Or where everything’s right and you know That you’ll never belong? But whichever you pick, do it quick Cause you’re starting to stick To the steps of the palace.
...
I love Disney
When you rush around in hopeless circles Searching everywhere for something true You’re at the Age of Not Believing When all the make-believe is through
When you set aside your childhood heroes And your dreams are lost upon the shelf You’re at the Age of Not Believing And, worst of all, you doubt yourself.
You’re a castaway where no one hears you On a barren isle in a lonely...
from The Common Life
for Chester Kallman
…What draws singular lives together in the first place, loneliness, lust, ambition,
or mere convenience, is obvious, why they drop or murder one another clear enough: how they create, though, a common world between them, like Bombelli’s
impossible yet useful numbers, no one has yet explained.
…Howbeit, fasting or feasting, we both know this: without ...
Much odder than we thought
Some say that Love’s a little boy And some say he’s a bird, Some say he makes the world go round And some say that’s absurd: But when I asked the man next door Who looked as if he knew, His wife was very cross indeed And said it wouldn’t do.
Does it look like a pair of pyjamas Or the ham in a temperance hotel, Does its odour remind one of llamas Or has it a...
May 2008
16 posts
Dying
… How does one go about dying? Who on earth is going to teach me— The world is filled with people who have never died —Franz Wright, Walking to Martha’s Vineyard, Poems
Reference point
Everything we refer to, moves. —Geoff Manaugh via BLDGBLOG
Feel with me.
Dorothea smiled, and Celia looked rather meditative. Presently she said, “I cannot think how it all came about.” Celia thought it would be pleasant to hear the story. “I daresay not,” said Dorothea, pinching her sister’s chin. “If you knew how it came about, it would not seem wonderful to you.” “Can’t you tell me?” said Celia, settling...
On Loneliness
Like one who has lost his way and is weary, she sat and saw as in one glance all the paths of her young hope which she should never find again. And just as clearly in the miserable light she saw her own and her husband’s solitude—how they walked apart so that she was obliged to survey him. If he had drawn her towards him, she would never have surveyed him—never have said,...
The Best Piety
The best piety is to enjoy—when you can. You are doing the most then to save the earth’s character as an agreeable planet. And enjoyment radiates. It is of no use to try and take care of all the world; that is being taken care of when you feel delight—in art or in anything else. —George Eliot, Middlemarch
On Kierkegaard
“One does not feel in his writings the sense that, whatever sorrows and sufferings a man may have to endure, it is nevertheless a miraculous blessing to be alive. Like all heretics, conscious or unconscious, he is a monodist, who can hear with particular acuteness one theme in the new Testament—in his case, the theme of suffering and self-sacrifice—but is deaf to its rich...
“If men would behave decently the world would be decent.”
– Orwell summarizing Dickens
The Hermeneutics of Love: Quotable Snippets (the...
Lovelessness fails to account either for plurality or unity, whereas loving attention always recognizes the “manifoldness”—that is, the irreducibly complex wholeness of a work (or a person, or an event). — Perichoresis: the eternal loving dance in which the persons of the Trinity are intertwined…To imitate Christ is to learn to practice with our neighbors the...
Might as well start here...get ready for more...
“We cannot force someone to love us. We cannot claim love as a human right.” But this does not diminish the importance of love; rather, it indicates that the case for love cannot be made using the vocabulary of rights—nor, perhaps, any other argumentative vocabulary. —Dr. Alan Jacobs, A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love
One Way
Many Christians believe that Scripture is rightly understood just one way, and that it is important to learn and teach that one right way. That’s how best to understand God, they believe. The long Jewish tradition on Scripture is the opposite. It holds that if we do not argue, then how do we give God a chance to reveal Himself to us? If we do not wrestle with what is in Scripture and how it...
To Flossie
who showed me a bunch of garden roses she was keeping on ice against an appointment with friends for supper day after tomorrow aren’t they beautiful you can’t smell them because they’re so cold but aren’t they in wax paper for the moment beautiful —William Carlos Williams
Music in Church...that old gripe
Corporate worship requires others. We need to choose and write and sing those hymns and songs that make us require one another. We need to get less interested in Christian karaoke, or trying to imitate the worship CD we play in the car. Four-part harmonies (or even two-part harmonies), call and response, canons (or rounds) cannot be sung alone. And simple, ancient melodies (like those of folk...
Cliches
The one thing that is true is love. —Gerhard Ebeling
On Greatness and Mediocrity
XXIV No, not their names. It was the tohers who built Each great coercive avenue and square, Where men can only recollect and stare, the really lonely with the sense of guilt Who wanted to persist like that for ever; The unloved had to leave material traces: But these need nothing but our bettter faces, And dwell in them, and know that weshall never Remember who we are nor why we’re needed....