“College grads are often sent out into the world amid rapturous talk of limitless possibilities. But this talk is of no help to the central business of adulthood, finding serious things to tie yourself down to.”
—Brooks again, from the same column (via wesleyhill)
May 2011
10 posts
“But facts, like telescopes and wigs for gentlemen, were a seventeenth-century invention.”
—Alasdair MacIntyre, “Whose Justice, Which Rationality?” p.357 (via)
“A little recognized benefit of taking small children to church is that it keeps incarnation present in one’s mind. These four grasping, grabbing, jostling boys of mine are fully flesh, and having them cloistered about me in the pew assures I will not drift into the spiritual ether.
[…]
This is the flesh—this grasping, rending, imposing physicality of a child. I suspect that when Christ demanded the faith of a child he had this in mind as well, the full-bodied physical presence that is faith to a child—faith he won’t be cast from my lap, turned away from the pew, forced outside the circle of his brothers.
Their faith is that when they come to me in tears or joy, I will hold them.” —Tony Woodlief - In the Flesh (via nachtseite)
[…]
This is the flesh—this grasping, rending, imposing physicality of a child. I suspect that when Christ demanded the faith of a child he had this in mind as well, the full-bodied physical presence that is faith to a child—faith he won’t be cast from my lap, turned away from the pew, forced outside the circle of his brothers.
Their faith is that when they come to me in tears or joy, I will hold them.” —Tony Woodlief - In the Flesh (via nachtseite)
“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: A scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
—Herbert Simon, 1976 (h/t MM)
“The “woman,” too, sounds strange in our ears. This last, however, is our fault: we allow words to sink from their high rank, and then put them to degraded uses. What word so full of grace and tender imagings to any true man as that one word! The Saviour did use it to his mother; and when he called her woman, the good custom of the country and the time was glorified in the word as it came from his lips fulfilled, of humanity; for those lips were the open gates of a heart full of infinite meanings. Hence whatever word he used had more of the human in it than that word had ever held before.”
—George MacDonald, Miracles of Our Lord, CH. 2 (via nachtseite)
“Sometimes I think that the principal difference between those who are in general cheerfully-inclined and those who are not is that the former know better than to even countenance their own bullshit for one instant.”
—Maria Bustillos (via portraitoftheartistasayoungman)
“
Or, to use another analogy, let’s say the Horde is going to go on the mother of all field trips (let’s say, at random, from, oh, Ulan Baator to Budapest). We’ve budgeted horses, feed, tents, apparel, tools, even a wagon train. But then, Emily, far-sighted as usual, points out that we’re probably going to need a translator (or three). But then Cynic points out that what we really need isn’t just a translator that has some kind of algorithm in their head (Leche = Milk, Dulce de Leche = Caramel and Sweet Cream) but rather an interpreter—someone who will help us assign values to what we see and hear (Leche = Don’t drink on a hot day, Dulce de Leche = Diabetes). Then Giorge and I get sassy with Sara about what to look for in a good interpreter. Giorge wants someone who shares his values of furiousness, Sara would prefer someone who doesn’t glaze over when we ask a local woman for directions just because she’s a woman, and I just want someone who will laugh at my jokes.
That argument over hiring an interpreter is hermeneutics. We’re discussing which method we should employ for assigning value to what we come across.
” —from a comment over at Ta-Nehisi Coates’ blog where there’s a great thread going about the definition of “hermeneutics” (via wesleyhill)