Coming to Terms: Archive

“I would say that those men are beasts rather than human beings who declare that a man ought to live in such a way as to be to no one a source of consolation, to no one a source even of grief or burden; to take no delight in the good fortune of another, or impart to others no bitterness because of their own misfortune, caring to cherish no one and to be cherished by no one.” —

Aelred (the character) in St. Aelred, Spiritual Friendship.

Cited on EveTushnet.com, who comments, wisely, “I have been thinking about the spiritual harm done when I am too proud to be a burden on others.”

Nov 26, 20114 notes

“The metaphor is perhaps one of man’s most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him. All our other faculties keep us within the realm of the real, of what is already there. The most we can do is to combine things or to break them up. The metaphor alone furnishes an escape; between the real things, it lets emerge imaginary reefs, a crop of floating islands.” —José Ortega y Gasset

Nov 26, 20115 notes

#metaphor

“

A philosophy professor I had in college once commented on how the dominant technology of the day becomes the dominant image we have of our mind and rationality and the workings of our bodies. If gears and pulleys run our machines, we tend to think of ourselves in terms of gears and pulleys.

If planting, harvest, and weather make up our way of life, elements like air and fire and water will suffice to explain the mystery of the human body. If computers or chemicals dominate our work and study, we frame our thinking about our bodies in terms of chemistry and computing. We are so sure that this is indeed the way our bodies work, and then the next age giggles at our simplicity and replaces the image.

” —Paul Gregory Alms, “Death Unplugged” (via settledthingsstrange)

Nov 25, 20114 notes

#metaphor #language

“

“It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.” James was saying: We’ve got a whole world out there to win, and we’ve got to do our best to make sure that people outside the pale of the cross, who are different than we are, are made to feel as welcomed as possible. While we’re going to adhere to the key convictions of what the gospel is, we are not going to add one scintilla more to the gospel than is necessary, so people will feel welcome whether they are Jews or Gentiles.

As we move into the 21st century, we have to memorize verse 19. In too many places today, the church is making it harder and harder for people outside the faith to come in and hear the gospel. We don’t mean to do it, but we make it difficult for the young to make commitments. We make it difficult for the person who has a postmodern mind to hear the gospel. We don’t hear ourselves, but all too often we violate James’ proposal, and we inadvertently make it difficult for people to hear the gospel.

” —

Gordon MacDonald, The Right Way to Handle Church Conflict, on Acts 15.19

Christian subculture is problematic

Nov 24, 2011

“I am the 100%. (Screwed-up, fully implicated, complicit, and responsible.)” —Gregory Wolfe (on Facebook)

Nov 23, 20112 notes

“

It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

” —Wendell Berry (via chary)

Nov 19, 2011275 notes

“A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death—the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders, we are not going to be judged.” —Czeslaw Milosz (via invicemsunt)

Nov 19, 2011104 notes

“

“Isn’t Mrs. Parry efficient?”

“Extremely,” he answered. “And God redeem her. But nicely.”

” —Charles Williams, Descent into Hell

Nov 18, 2011

“Moderns believe in genetics only because it is not fashionable to believe in astrology.” —

Prolegomena to Any Future Metapsychics | John C. Wright

This can be profitably extrapolated any number of ways.

Nov 18, 20116 notes

#scientism

“The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, we do not collectively fail, but every one says something true about the nature of things. While individually we contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed.” —Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book II

Nov 18, 20113 notes

#truth #reality

“Let us not forget that the Divine Spirit has its own manner of speaking and its own figures of speech. Learn these from the very outset. The Divine Wisdom speaks to us and, like an attentive mother, adjusts Her language to our infancy. For the tiny infants She provides milk and for the sick, herbs. To receive solid food you must grow up spiritually. She lowers Herself to your humility. You must raise yourself to Her sublimity. To remain like an infant is unfortunate. Unending illness is reprehensible. Pluck the marrow from the broken bone: meditation upon a single verse gives more nourishment, brings more wisdom, than continued verbal repetition of the whole psalm.” —Erasmus, The Handbook of the Militant Christian (1503)

Nov 16, 201130 notes

#Obedience #mystery #language #humility #responsibility

“In the Arabian Nights everything has a story to tell. Three men come together; one is leading a gazelle, another a dog, another a mule. But the gazelle is an enchanted human being, the dog is a transformed brother, the mule is a man in unhuman shape. There is no traveller so dusty and commonplace that he may not have stories to tell of the terrible continents that lie upon the borderland of the world. There is no beggar so bent and abject that he may not have possession of a talisman which gives him power over the palaces and temples of princes. The possibilities of life are not to be counted. That is the profoundly practical moral buried in the Arabian Nights.” —G.K. Chesterton, “The Everlasting Nights” via Settled Things Strange

Nov 16, 20111 note

#reality #mystery

“The language of metaphor makes audible the secret kinship of things.” —Twitter / @tejucole

Nov 12, 201113 notes

#language #metaphor

“Metaphor: a resonant node of likeness within two dissimilar fields.” —Twitter / @tejucole

Nov 12, 20118 notes

#language

“

What we are left to surmise, then, is that the doctrine of randomness has simply been projected onto the phenomena of organic life as a matter of pre-existing philosophical commitment.

In any case, it is startling to realize that the entire brief for demoting human beings, and organisms in general, to meaningless scraps of molecular machinery — a demotion that fuels the long-running science-religion wars and that, as “shocking” revelation, supposedly stands on a par with Copernicus’ heliocentric proposal — rests on the vague conjunction of two scarcely creditable concepts: the randomness of mutations and the fitness of organisms. And, strangely, this shocking revelation has been sold to us in the context of a descriptive biological literature that, from the molecular level on up, remains almost nothing but a documentation of the meaningfully organized, goal-directed stories of living creatures.

” —

Steve Talbott, Evolution and the Randomness of Life

Mr. Talbott is not, so far as I can yet see, a Christian, but his discussion here, as he finally turns his attention to the question of neo-Darwinism, is as cutting as anything in David Bentley Hart’s Atheist Delusions.

Nov 11, 20112 notes

“Eric Cohen observed that “From the beginning, science was driven both by democratic pity and aristocratic guile, by the promise to help humanity and the desire to be free from the constraints of the common man, with his many myths and superstitions and taboos.” In other words, scientists too often have a divided heart: a sincere desire to serve man’s knowledge, and a sincere disdain for what they see as the moral and religious delusions of real men and women. If this doesn’t make us just a little bit uneasy, it should.” —Abp Chaput, Being Human in an Age of Unbelief « Public Discourse

Nov 11, 2011

“One of the great surprises of the human life is that complete autonomy makes you miserable, and it’s only when you give yourself fully in the service of others that you’ll find lasting happiness.” —Jennifer Fulwiler

Nov 11, 20118 notes

“In a world where everything is a click away, and in a world where everyone can have their own YouTube channel, ten blogs and a thousand email accounts… the only thing that’s scarce is attention.” —Seth’s Blog: The extraordinary revolution of media choice (h/t Shawn Blanc)

Nov 9, 20111 note

“Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.” —David McCullough (He continues: “We all know the old expression, “I’ll work my thoughts out on paper.” There’s something about the pen that focuses the brain in a way that nothing else does.”)

Nov 8, 2011238 notes

“Duties of religion performed by whole societies of men, ought to have in them according to our power a sensible excellency, correspondent to the majesty of him whom we worship.” —Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1597) (via David Taylor & co.)

Nov 7, 2011

“Running aside, I think this is what makes a lot of people uncomfortable about science. It’s uncomfortable to acknowledge how little we know, how often we are wrong, and still act in confidence. What so many of us crave is an absolute authority.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates (via alaina) —Even when science is explicitly not confident, we often impart absolute authority to it anyway.

Nov 7, 20119 notes

“Whose work is it but your own to open your eyes? But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool out of you that you will know yourself for one, and begin to be wise.” —from George MacDonald’s Lilith (via settledthingsstrange)

Nov 7, 20114 notes

“Indeed, beauty is one of mankind’s greatest needs; it is the root from which the branches of our peace and the fruits of our hope come forth. Beauty also reveals God because, like him, a work of beauty is pure gratuity; it calls us to freedom and draws us away from selfishness.” —Benedict XVI

Nov 7, 201113 notes

“When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.” —A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

Nov 4, 20118 notes

“Sometimes we do find the words to express an idea, and only then realize what a stupid idea it is. This experience would suggest that our thoughts are not as clean and beautiful as we would like to believe. Instead of blaming language for failing to capture our thoughts, maybe we should thank it for giving some shape to the muddle in our heads.” —Arika Okrent, In the Land of Invented Languages (via ayjay)

Nov 4, 20118 notes

#language

Nov 3, 2011

“It is one of the most mysterious penalties of men that they should be forced to confide the most precious of their possessions to things so unstable and ever changing, alas, as words.” —Georges Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest

Nov 3, 2011

“Those unto whom we shall seem tedious are in no wise injured by us, seeing that it lies in their own hands to spare themselves the labor they are unwilling to endure.” —Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, chapter 1, first page

Nov 3, 20111 note

“We go out from the known to the unknown, we advance from light into darkness. We do not simply proceed from the darkness of ignorance into the light of knowledge, but we go forward from the light of partial knowledge into a greater knowledge which is so much more profound that it can only be described as the ‘darkness of unknowing.’ Like Socrates we begin to realize how little we understand. We see that it is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery.” —Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (via redviena)

Nov 2, 201164 notes

“On the subject of the feminist business, I just never think … of qualities which are specifically feminine or masculine. I suppose I divide people into two classes: the Irksome and the Non-Irksome without regard to sex. Yes and there are the Medium Irksome and the Rare Irksome.” —Flannery O’Connor (via dailyflanneryoc)

Nov 1, 201129 notes

“Brevity is another basic principle. For it is boorish, also, to waste your reader’s time. …. [B]revity is often more effective; the half can say more than the whole, and to imply things may strike far deeper than to state them at length.” —

via Bobulate: Rewriting in Style

Nov 1, 201137 notes

#language #pointer

“Attempts to construct a “historical Jesus” or “real Jesus” apart from the faith-based witness of Scripture end in failure because such attempts are grounded, not in the text, but in the bias of those who undertake them.” —Fleming Rutledge, Generous Orthodoxy - Ruminations: Marcus Borg’s message

Nov 1, 2011

Coming to Terms

November 2011

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