May 2013
1 post
Meditation at the End of the School Year (Riffing...
You shall not go out with haste, … for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard —Isaiah 52:12
As the year draws to a close we look back and see places where we’ve walked with God faithfully and where we’ve blown it. For some of us, we have some real victories and some growth to look back on. For others of us, we’ve blown it more than...
April 2013
3 posts
Notes on our College Ready Series
This weekend was the fourth and final session of our College Ready series for seniors graduating out of the youth group.
The series was a good time of getting the students together, blessing them, and trying to pass on a little wisdom. For two of the sessions we tried to pull back in key college students who could connect our graduating seniors to campus ministry at a range of common university...
“It is possible to conceive of a mob shouting any central and simple sentiment,...”
– G.K. Chesterton, Twelve Types (via aristosophy)
“We are entering the age of “visualcy,” the third great transformation in the way...”
– http://www.catalystresources.org/issues/393Crouch.htm
March 2013
2 posts
“ON GOOD FRIDAY THE SPEARS WERE REAL,” Auden... →
February 2013
1 post
“Everyone, sooner or later, gets a thorough schooling in brokenness. The question...”
– Michael Chabon, up to his usual delightfulness, with a post about Wes Anderson (via wesleyhill)
January 2013
1 post
“Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)… perhaps the greatest thinker America has...”
– From a review of Sam Harris’s FREE WILL by good old Alvin Plantinga. I love that a product of Calvin College maintains, quite rightly, that determinism falls down on the control principle. If no decisions are meaningfully within our control, moral praise and blame cease to make sense.
December 2012
2 posts
“ON THE EAR-CUTTING SCENE IN RESERVOIR DOGS: “Sure, I think the scene is...”
– -From Quentin Tarantino Interviews.
This is a helpful Quentin Tarantino quote about the way his movies avoid typical statements w/r/t violence (or anything else). The violence and revenge in most of his movies has a moral dimension, but it isn’t included to make a moral statement. Tarantino...
Gungor on Christian Music →
November 2012
1 post
“TRULY, O Lord, this is the unapproachable light in which you dwell; for truly...”
– Anselm, Proslogion, ch. 16.
October 2012
4 posts
“In the last days:
the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established
as...”
– Isaiah 2: 1-3
Augustine’s Commentary: I tell you, that many will come from east and west. Where will they come? Where they believe… So they will come from east and west; not to the temple of Jerusalem, not to some central section of the earth, not to climb some mountain —-and yet...
“The Dawning
Awake sad heart, whom sorrow ever drowns;
Take up thine eyes,...”
– Throwback!: George Herbert’s “The Dawning” | antler
September 2012
6 posts
“But I think The Next Generation’s underlying appeal went beyond the image...”
– ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ turns 25 - Grantland
“The thing I can’t shake, having recently finished all 133 hours of the...”
– ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ turns 25 - Grantland
“Through parody and pastiche, allusion and homage, retelling and reimagining the...”
– Michael Chabon, Maps and Legends (via invisibleforeigner)
“theological rhetoric is intoxicating, but our task is to communicate the gospel...”
– Westminster and Writing for the Church
“The campy-listening thing, I think, is false. I don’t think that there is any...”
– The Believer - Interview with John Darnielle
“[T]he basic point of the new normative order is the mutual respect and mutual...”
– -Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries
To the degree I understand Taylor (which is somewhere between 50-75%) this seems exactly right.
August 2012
2 posts
RIDDLE: I sleep all day, then stay up all night. I live on other people’s bodily fluids. I cry out when holy water is poured on me. What am I?
CLUE: I can be killed by driving a stake through my heart.
ANSWER: A Baby!
“Now there came a man whose name was Bill, bearing a stack of books written by...”
– Peter J. Leithart » Blog Archive » Myth of Religious Violence
July 2012
10 posts
“Nolan’s entertainments, the best ones, anyway, are games. I don’t mean that they...”
– Do the Films of Christopher Nolan Owe a Debt to Video Games? : The New Yorker
“The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad...”
– Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton
“David Edelstein finds Nolan’s films to be empty, portentous drivel interrupted...”
– What Is Christopher Nolan’s Big Idea Behind The Dark Knight Rises? — Vulture
“Now man exists only in dialogue with his neighbor. The infant is brought to...”
– “A Resume of My Thought,” Hans Urs von Balthasar
“PROTEUS
To leave my Julia, shall I be forsworn;
To love fair Silvia, shall I...”
– Love, having been made a god by Proteus, becomes a demon: “Love bade me swear and Love bids me forswear.”
And behind all idolatry, the worship of self: “I to myself am dearer than a friend.”
Two Gentlemen of Verona, 2.7
“PROTEUS
My tales of love were wont to weary you;
I know you joy not in a love...”
– Two Gentlemen of Verona, 2.4
“Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens, Penn Jillette, Richard Dawkins, etc,...”
– They Don’t Believe Because Your God Isn’t Desirable (via ayjay)
“Enter PROTEUS
VALENTINE
Welcome, dear Proteus! Mistress, I beseech you,...”
– Two Gentlemen of Verona, 2.4
“[Northrop] Frye distinguishes here, as he does in other places, Shakespearean...”
– “Northrop Frye‘s Shakespearean Criticism”
On Frye’s very Northropian take on Shakespeare.
“Between God and man there stands the person of Jesus Christ, Himself God and...”
– K. Barth, CD II/2, p. 94.
June 2012
4 posts
“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among...”
– W. H. Auden, “Notes on the Comic”
“Q: Was there ever a satirical purpose to the character? Or was the purpose just...”
– -Ali G and Borat writer Dan Mazer, in And Here’s the Kicker
Translated: the non-public figures deserved mockery because they believed Sacha Baron Cohen’s acting or, failing that, because they agreed to be on the TV show. Pace Mazer, agreeing to be on Da Ali G Show is grounds for being...
“Archbishop Patrick O’Boyle of Washington began the desegregation of the Catholic...”
– America Magazine’s Election Blog: Are Catholics Racist?
“Thou hast heard an insult, it is the wind; thou art angry, it is a wave. When...”
– Augustine, Sermon 63 http://www.ewtn.com/library/PATRISTC/PNI6-6.TXT
May 2012
7 posts
“And it is this joy of expectation and this expectation of joy that are expressed...”
– For the Life of the World, Alexander Schmemann
Anyone with an interest in aesthetics could quibble with Schmemann a bit here over the utility and necessity of beauty. It IS necessary for life as we want to live it. It IS useful for a host of things, not least breaking us out of our...
“[F]rom its very beginning Christianity has been the proclamation of joy, of the...”
– For the Life of the World, Alexander Schmemann
“With no serious opposition left, former Massachusetts Gov. Robmey easily won...”
– Ky. sends message with Presidential primary vote
“If your congregation sings only Hillsong choruses, then their emotional...”
– Faith and Theology: Psalms for all seasons: a contemporary psalter (via gmd)
“Homer, for example, makes men better than they are; Cleophon as they are;...”
– Poetics by Aristotle
“…the beauty of of the evolution of the inanimate world from the Big Bang...”
– Is There a God? Richard Swinburne
I like it when Swinburne lets out the teeny tiny little bit of poetry inside him (normally with regard to the natural world). Wish he did more of this in his writing.
“ON ‘GODSPELL’: The first act appears almost totally random....”
– Godspell: Notes for Directors
April 2012
17 posts
“NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack...”
– 40. (Carrion Comfort). Hopkins, Gerard Manley. 1918. Poems
“If that which has been said of her so far
were all contained within a single...”
– Dante, Paradiso Canto 30
(via @mattfrost)
“…the whole weird premise of Savage’s claim is that eros is so...”
– MarriageDebate.com: A FEW COMMENTS ON THAT NYT MAGAZINE COVER STORY: Eve
“Our own epoch is the epoch of nothing positive, only of transition. Since we...”
– The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction - Frank Kermode
“This is the modern apotheosis of Joachism: the belief that one’s own age...”
– The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (with a New Epilogue) - Frank Kermode
“ASTRONAUT’S VOICE (o.s.)
But according to Dr. Hasslein theory of time...”
– Planet of the Apes - Shooting Script 