May 2012
16 posts
1 tag
“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...
Re: Your Brains
SCALZI: Six Sigma was, I think for me, sort of like horoscopes were for the 70s.
COULTON: Right.
SCALZI: You know, it’s just a word that people threw out there, and they thought it meant something. It’s like, “Oh, you’re doing the Six Sigma, too? We should sleep together.”
COULTON: Yeah. And it’s funny how the trappings of that kind of speech, they take over. Even because it’s a language. It’s a jargon, but it’s also quintessentially bad writing.
SCALZI: Yes.
COULTON: When you transcribe what people are saying to each other in offices, there are so many clauses that you should just cross out and throw away and never use again, and yet people continue to use them because it’s the language. It’s how we speak to one another in that environment.
SCALZI: It’s the language, it’s sort of like, here is the ritual, you know.
COULTON: Right.
SCALZI: And we’re going to through this ritual. It’s stupid, but we all know it. We all know when to stand. We all know when to sit. Let’s go ahead and “prioritize” and “think outside the box” and “work together as a team” and just, you know, yes. So, I think the whole point of you making that a setting for a zombie — it just made perfect sense for everybody, right?
1 tag
“The fullness of truth and the weight of the good cannot dwell in a heart that...”
– epiklesis: True, Good, and Beautiful
“The principle is this: that in everything worth having, even in every pleasure,...”
– What’s Wrong With the World, by G.K. Chesterton
Part of his defense of the institution of marriage.
“If your congregation sings only Hillsong choruses, then their emotional...”
– Faith and Theology: Psalms for all seasons: a contemporary psalter (via gmd)
“This is actually one psychological driver for piracy — people who have paid for...”
– More on DRM and ebooks - Charlie’s Diary This. (via timoni)
Definitely why I do not spend money on Kindle products.
“She was not an unshockable blue-stocking;
If shades remain the characters...”
– Auden, “Letter to Lord Byron” (1937). Ayjay: “I thought of this passage yesterday as I was re-reading Mansfield Park, which I take to be Austen’s greatest novel, one of the greatest novels ever written, and a terrifyingly blunt and unblinking revelation of the selfishness and cruelty that most...
“It is not power, but love that redeems us! This is God’s sign: he himself is...”
– Pope Benedict XVI, “Mass for the Inauguration of the Pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI” (via invisibleforeigner)
“If I understand the teaching of the New Testament on this matter, I understand...”
– Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth p82 (via newbigin)
1 tag
“[W]hen people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated...”
– Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (via marioalbertozambrano via hours)
“The proper freedom of the Church is inseparable from its obligation to declare...”
– Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth p71 (via newbigin)
“Certainly, God has given a sign of Himself in the greatness and power of the...”
– Pope Benedict XVI, The Hidden God (via themorningstars)
“In biblical terms, it is wisdom we need to live together in this world. Wisdom...”
– Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World (via recycledsoul)
“We have reduced the Gospel to an abstract message of salvation that can be...”
– Ken Myers, Is ‘the Culture’ Really the Church’s Problem?
“It is a further sign that academia has indeed become religious when the religion...”
– Matthew Milliner, Occupy the Optocracy! | Books and Culture
1 tag
“[To indwell the gospel story] it is clear that this “indwelling” must mean being...”
– Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth pp47-48 (via newbigin)
April 2012
15 posts
1 tag
“In reality, subjective certitude cannot be secured, not because the world is...”
– David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite, pp. 138-139. (via bluedollar)
“Everything depends upon the starting point, the arche, the assumptions which you...”
– Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth p24 (via newbigin)
“In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who...”
– Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy
“Indeed, the simple truth is that the resurrection cannot be accommodated in any...”
– Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth p11 (via newbigin)
“Reading often means gathering information, acquiring new insight and knowledge,...”
– Henri Nouwen (via recycledsoul)
1 tag
“There are infinite gradations of blame, a thousand fresh and pungent metaphors...”
– Evelyn Waugh (qtd. here)
“Biblical faithfulness is more than just nailing down the meaning of a text. It...”
– William Stacy Johnson (via recycledsoul)
“We have a gospel to proclaim. We have to proclaim it not merely to individuals...”
– Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth p64 (via newbigin)
“The book was an unhealthy one, a cup filled to the brim with a poverty-stricken...”
– George MacDonald, “The Gifts of the Child Christ,” chapter 1
Interesting collection of metaphors.
1 tag
“Something I constantly notice is that unembarrassed joy has become rarer. Joy...”
– Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) in Salt of the Earth p. 36–37 (via settledthingsstrange)
1 tag
UVA's historical database of mind metaphors →
garbandier:
Via bibliOddysey
March 2012
32 posts
1 tag
“Harris is blaming conservatives for doing simply what the space/time continuum...”
– Douglas Wilson, blogging through the latest Sam Harris book. (via sds)
“Individual growth toward love and wisdom is slow. A community’s growth is even...”
– Jean Vanier, Community and Growth (1979)
“One important way we know that we’re living life in common is that we laugh at...”
– Aaron Belz, On Satire | Comment Magazine | Cardus
“What fun is it being cool if you can’t wear a sombrero!”
– Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes (Twitter)
Lots of wisdom packed in this. So often our “growth” artificially limits us, forcing us to discard good things we once knew. Reminded of it by watching the 5yo play with the toddler this AM.
2 tags
“Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You...”
– Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
1 tag
“I have no desire to change the opinion of man or woman. Let everyone for me hold...”
– George MacDonald (1824-1905), “Justice”, in Unspoken Sermons (via veareflejos)
“To love is to stop comparing.”
– Bernard Grasset (sig of @funguyom)
1 tag
“In refusing the mimetic interpretation, in looking for the failure of Peter in...”
– Rene Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (via hulga-joy)
1 tag
“It is impossible for the divine ray to lighten us unless it is shaded by a...”
– Dionysios (CCEL via @millinerd)
“Now that there’s a mobile reading device with a print-grade color display,...”
– Review: New iPad revolutionary in its subtlety of change - Andy Ihnatko
Timeless is timeless. Now to justify getting one.
2 tags
The Neuroscience of Your Brain on Fiction (New... →
via psychotherapy:
… The way the brain handles metaphors has also received extensive study; some scientists have contended that figures of speech like “a rough day” are so familiar that they are treated simply as words and no more. Last month, however, a team of researchers from Emory University reported in Brain & Language that when subjects in their laboratory read a metaphor...
1 tag
“Since we nowadays think that all a man needs for acquisition of truth is to...”
– Josef Pieper (via settledthingsstrange)
“There is no strictly secular language that can translate religious awe, and the...”
– Marilynne Robinson: Guernica / A Common Faith
1 tag
“For we ought not to refuse to learn letters because they say that Mercury...”
– Augustine, On Christian Doctrine: Book II
I’ve heard “all truth is God’s truth” for years now, but hadn’t tracked down the source until now. (h/t poeticfaith)
“Christ has promised that we would have life “more abundant.” By this is not...”
– Worship at His Footstool « Glory to God for All Things
1 tag
“At the beginning of a new notebook I copy a quote from Simone Weil, which...”
– Anna Kamienska, from her Notebooks (via settledthingsstrange)
Interesting. Not sure I fully agree, but strikes me as healthier than many approaches.
1 tag
“For Girard, Nietzsche is very important as a great philosopher who saw quite...”
– from James G. Williams’ foreword to Rene Girard’s I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (via hulga-joy)
1 tag
“Man can live without science, he can live without bread, but without beauty he...”
– Dostoyevsky (via settledthingsstrange)