“Certainly, God has given a sign of Himself in the greatness and power of the cosmos, from which we may dimly perceive something of the power of the Creator. But the real sign that He chose is hiddenness, from the wretched people of Israel to the child at Bethlehem to the man who died on the Cross with the words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46). This sign of hiddenness points us toward the fact that the reality of truth and love, the actual reality of God, is not to be met within the world of quantities but can be found only if we rise above that into a new order. Pascal expressed this idea in his marvelous doctrine of the three orders. According to him, there is first of all the order of quantities—and that is enormous and infinite, the inexhaustible object of natural science. Beside that, the order of mind, the second great realm of reality, appears, on the basis of quantity, as simply nothing, since quantitatively it takes up no space whatever. And nonetheless, a single mind (Pascal mentions the mathematical mind of Archimedes as an example)—a single mind, as we were saying, is greater than the entire order of the quantitative cosmos; because mind, which has neither weight nor length nor breadth, is able to measure the entire cosmos. Yet above that, again, stands the order of love. That, too, is, in the first instance, simply nothing in the order of “mind,” of scientific intelligence, as represented by Archimedes, since it cannot be the object of scientific demonstration and itself contributes nothing to any such demonstration. And nonetheless, a single motion of love is infinitely greater than the entire order of “mind,” because only that represents what is a truly creative, life-giving, and saving power. God’s incognito is intended to lead us onward into this “nothing” of truth and love, which is nevertheless in reality the true, single, and all-embracing absolute, and that is why in this world He is the hidden One and cannot be found anywhere else but in hiddenness.”
—Pope Benedict XVI, The Hidden God (via themorningstars)
May 2012
17 posts
“In biblical terms, it is wisdom we need to live together in this world. Wisdom is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right, and noticing what happens when that practice succeeds and when it fails. Wise people do not have to be certain what they believe before they act. They are free to act, trusting that the practice itself will teach them what they need to know. If you are not sure what to think about washing feet, for instance, then the best way to find out is to practice washing a pair or two. If you are not sure what to believe about your neighbor’s faith, then the best way to find out is to practice eating supper together. Reason can only work with the experience available to it. Wisdom atrophies if it is not walked on a regular basis.”
—Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World (via recycledsoul)
“We have reduced the Gospel to an abstract message of salvation that can be believed without having any necessary consequences for how we live. In contrast, the redemption announced in the Bible is clearly understood as restoring human thriving in creation.”
—Ken Myers, Is ‘the Culture’ Really the Church’s Problem?
“It is a further sign that academia has indeed become religious when the religion of irreligion, precisely because it has lost its hegemony, does not hesitate to preach.”
—Matthew Milliner, Occupy the Optocracy! | Books and Culture
“[To indwell the gospel story] it is clear that this “indwelling” must mean being part of the community whose life is shaped by the story which the Bible tells. When we live as part of this story, constantly remembering and reenacting its crucial events, as we do in the liturgy of the Church, it becomes like our language. It provides the models and concepts through which we seek to understand and cope with the events of daily life. In a stable Christian community, we learn it the same way we learn our mother tongue.”
—Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth pp47-48 (via newbigin)
April 2012
15 posts
“In reality, subjective certitude cannot be secured, not because the world is nothing but the aleatory play of opaque signifiers, but because subjective certitude is an irreparably defective model of knowledge; it cannot correspond to or “adequate” a world that is gratuity rather than ground, poetry rather than necessity, rhetoric rather than dialectic. Every act of knowledge is, simultaneously, an act of faith (to draw on Hamann’s delightful subversion of Hume); we trust in the world, and so know it, only by entrusting ourselves to what is more than ourselves; our primordial act of faith meets a covenant that has already been made with us, before we could seek it, in the giving of the light. No one can shut his eyes to that splendor, or seal his ears against that music, except as a perverse display of will; then, naturally, knowledge can be recovered again only as an exertion of that same will. But one then has not merely lost the world momentarily, so as to receive it anew as “truth.” One has lost the world and its truth altogether, and replaced them with a phantom summoned up out of one’s need for a world conformable to the dimensions of one’s own power to establish meaning—a world that is nothing but the ceaseless repetition of otherwise meaningless instantiations of that power.”
—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 take for granted as the basis of your reasoning. It is not (as so often said) a question of reason versus revelation. It is a question of the data upon which reason has to work.”
—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 work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.”
—Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy
“Indeed, the simple truth is that the resurrection cannot be accommodated in any way of understanding the world except one of which it is the starting point… If it is true, it has to be the starting point of a wholly new way of understanding the cosmos and the human situation in the cosmos.”
—Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth p11 (via newbigin)
“Reading often means gathering information, acquiring new insight and knowledge, and mastering a new field. It can lead us to degrees, diplomas, and certificates. Spiritual reading, however, is different. It means not simply reading about spiritual things but also reading about spiritual things in a spiritual way. That requires a willingness not just to read but to be read, not just to master but to be mastered by words. As long as we read the Bible or a spiritual book simply to acquire knowledge, our reading does not help us in our spiritual lives. We can become very knowledgeable about spiritual matters without becoming truly spiritual people. As we read spiritually about spiritual things, we open our hearts to God’s voice. Sometimes we must be willing to put down the book we are reading and just listen to what God is saying to us through its words.”
—Henri Nouwen (via recycledsoul)
“There are infinite gradations of blame, a thousand fresh and pungent metaphors for detraction, the epithets of dissatisfaction seem never to stale…but the moment one finds a work which genuinely impresses and delights, there seems no article of expression other than the clichés that grin at one from every publisher’s advertisement.”
—Evelyn Waugh (qtd. here)
“Biblical faithfulness is more than just nailing down the meaning of a text. It is putting oneself in a position—by engaging the text—to recognize what God has done in the past as well as to discern what God is making possible for, and requiring of, us in the present. To that extent, we read the Scriptures not only with a rule of faith but also with a rule of hope.”
—William Stacy Johnson (via recycledsoul)
“We have a gospel to proclaim. We have to proclaim it not merely to individuals in their personal and domestic lives. We do certainly have to do that. But we have to proclaim it as part of the continuing conversation which shapes public doctrine. It must be heard in the conversation of economists, psychiatrists, educators, scientists, and politicians. We have to proclaim it not as a package of estimable values, but as the truth about what is the case, about what every human being and every human society will have to reckon with. When we are faithful in this commission we are bound to appear subversive to those who believe that the cosmos is a closed system. We may appear to threaten the achievements of those centuries in which this has been the reigning belief. In truth we shall be offering the only hope of conserving and carrying forward the good fruits of these centuries into a future which might otherwise belong to the barbarians.”
—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 and selfish religion: such are always breaking out like an eruption here and there over the body of the Church, doing their part, doubtless, in carrying off the evil humours generated by poverty of blood, or the congestion of self-preservation. It is wonderful out of what spoiled fruit some children will suck sweetness.”
—
George MacDonald, “The Gifts of the Child Christ,” chapter 1
Interesting collection of metaphors.
“
Something I constantly notice is that unembarrassed joy has become rarer. Joy today is increasingly saddled with moral and ideological burdens, so to speak. When someone rejoices, he is afraid of offending against solidarity with the many people who suffer. I don’t have any right to rejoice, people think, in a world where there is so much misery, so much injustice.
I can understand that. There is a moral attitude at work here. But this attitude is nonetheless wrong. The loss of joy does not make the world better—and, conversely, refusing joy for the sake of suffering does not help those who suffer. The contrary is true. The world needs people who discover the good, who rejoice in it and thereby derive the impetus and courage to do good. Joy, then, does not break with solidarity. When it is the right kind of joy, when it is not egotistic, when it comes from the perception of the good, then it wants to communicate itself, and it gets passed on. In this connection, it always strikes me that in the poor neighborhoods of, say, South America, one sees many more laughing happy people than among us. Obviously, despite all their misery, they still have the perception of the good to which they cling and in which they can find encouragement and strength.
In this sense we have a new need for that primordial trust which ultimately only faith can give. That the world is basically good, that God is there and is good. That it is good to live and to be a human being. This results, then, in the courage to rejoice, which in turn becomes commitment to making sure that other people, too, can rejoice and receive good news.
” —Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) in Salt of the Earth p. 36–37 (via settledthingsstrange)March 2012
32 posts
“Harris is blaming conservatives for doing simply what the space/time continuum is making them do. If you have a right view of the cosmos, Harris has been arguing, you won’t blame individuals for doing things that are completely outside their control, and then he proceeds immediately to the edifying task of blaming those who don’t think this way.
If atoms in motion are responsible for inner city crime, then atoms in motion are also responsible for the conservatives in red state, fly-over country who object to it. Not only so, for this is a liberating game, atoms in motion are also responsible for Harris objecting to the conservatives objecting to the crime. This would be great fun, but Harris keeps forgetting to apply his dogmas to his dogmas.
One understands why he keeps forgetting to do this, of course. If he remembered, he would realize there is no such thing as remembering. He would realize that sawing off the branch you are sitting on is an activity with consequences, by which I mean consequences that might affect sales.” —Douglas Wilson, blogging through the latest Sam Harris book. (via sds)
If atoms in motion are responsible for inner city crime, then atoms in motion are also responsible for the conservatives in red state, fly-over country who object to it. Not only so, for this is a liberating game, atoms in motion are also responsible for Harris objecting to the conservatives objecting to the crime. This would be great fun, but Harris keeps forgetting to apply his dogmas to his dogmas.
One understands why he keeps forgetting to do this, of course. If he remembered, he would realize there is no such thing as remembering. He would realize that sawing off the branch you are sitting on is an activity with consequences, by which I mean consequences that might affect sales.” —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 slower. Members of a community have to be great friends of time.”
—Jean Vanier, Community and Growth (1979)
“One important way we know that we’re living life in common is that we laugh at the same things. We also recognize error together. The joke itself, the thing that causes laughter, is incongruous, but its very existence suggests deeper congruity and agreement.”
—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.
“
Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it? …
Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave—that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.”
” —Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
“I have no desire to change the opinion of man or woman. Let everyone for me hold what he pleases. But I would do my utmost to disable such as think correct opinion essential to salvation from laying any other burden on the shoulders of true men and women than the yoke of their Master; and such burden, if already oppressing any, I would gladly lift. Let the Lord himself teach them, I say. A man who has not the mind of Christ—and no man has the mind of Christ except him who makes it his business to obey him—cannot have correct opinions concerning him; neither, if he could, would they be of any value to him: he would be nothing the better, he would be the worse for having them. Our business is not to think correctly, but to live truly; then first will there be a possibility of our thinking correctly.”
—George MacDonald (1824-1905), “Justice”, in Unspoken Sermons (via veareflejos)
“To love is to stop comparing.”
—Bernard Grasset (sig of @funguyom)
“
In refusing the mimetic interpretation, in looking for the failure of Peter in purely individual causes, we attempt to demonstrate, unconsciously of course, that in Peter’s place we would have responded differently; we would not have denied Jesus. Jesus reproaches the Pharisees for an older version of the same ploy when he sees them build tombs for the prophets that their fathers killed. The spectacular demonstrations of piety toward the victims of our predecessors frequently conceal wish to justify ourselves at their expense: “If we had lived in the time of our fathers,” the Pharisees say, “we would not have joined them in spilling the blood of the prophets.”
The children repeat the crimes of their fathers precisely because they believe they are morally superior to them. This false difference is already the mimetic illusion of modern individualism, which represents the greatest resistance to the mimetic truth that is reenacted again and again in human relations. The paradox is that the resistance itself brings about the reenactment.
” —Rene Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (via hulga-joy)
“It is impossible for the divine ray to lighten us unless it is shaded by a variety of sacred veils.”
—Dionysios (CCEL via @millinerd)
“Now that there’s a mobile reading device with a print-grade color display, there’s the need to return to the technology and vocabulary of classical printing.”
—
Review: New iPad revolutionary in its subtlety of change - Andy Ihnatko
Timeless is timeless. Now to justify getting one.
The Neuroscience of Your Brain on Fiction (New York Times) →
nytimes.com
… 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 involving texture, the sensory cortex, responsible for perceiving texture through touch, became active. Metaphors like “The singer had a velvet voice” and “He had leathery hands” roused the sensory cortex, while phrases matched for meaning, like “The singer had a pleasing voice” and “He had strong hands,” did not.
…
The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated. Keith Oatley, an emeritus professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto (and a published novelist), has proposed that reading produces a vivid simulation of reality, one that “runs on minds of readers just as computer simulations run on computers.” Fiction — with its redolent details, imaginative metaphors and attentive descriptions of people and their actions — offers an especially rich replica. Indeed, in one respect novels go beyond simulating reality to give readers an experience unavailable off the page: the opportunity to enter fully into other people’s thoughts and feelings.
Nice of science to catch up.
“Since we nowadays think that all a man needs for acquisition of truth is to exert his brain more or less vigorously, and since we consider an ascetic approach to knowledge hardly sensible, we have lost the awareness of the close bond that links the knowing of truth to the condition of purity. Thomas says that unchastity’s first-born daughter is blindness of the spirit. Only he who wants nothing for himself, who not subjectively “interested,” can know the truth. On the other hand, an impure, selfishly corrupted will-to-pleasure destroys both resoluteness of spirit and the ability of the psyche to listen in silent attention to the language of reality.”
—Josef Pieper (via settledthingsstrange)
“There is no strictly secular language that can translate religious awe, and the usual response to this fact among those who reject religion is that awe is misdirected, an effect of ignorance or superstition or the power of suggestion and association. Still, to say that the universe is extremely large, and that the forces that eventuate in star clusters and galaxies are very formidable indeed, seems deficient—qualitatively and aesthetically inadequate to its subject.”
—Marilynne Robinson: Guernica / A Common Faith
“For we ought not to refuse to learn letters because they say that Mercury discovered them; nor because they have dedicated temples to Justice and Virtue, and prefer to worship in the form of stones things that ought to have their place in the heart, ought we on that account to forsake justice and virtue. Nay, but let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master; and while he recognizes and acknowledges the truth, even in their religious literature, let him reject the figments of superstition …”
—
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 meant that we will be rich or have more material things (for these are not the true life). But the Kingdom is an endless abundance that enters our heart and world, shattering the narrowness of opaque minds and opening to us the fullness of life in Christ.
The Reality presented to us in the Cross (as with all things of God) is never comprehended in rational theory. It pushes us beyond the limits of our own poorly defined rationality and towards the greater rationality of the Truth of things. As noted by St. Gregory of Nyssa, “only wonder grasps anything.” To approach the Cross with wonder is to begin the journey that it makes possible. The life that we refer to as salvation belongs to this world of wonder—despite the banalities of much Christian conversation on the topic.
It is not surprising that silence is among the most important tools in our spiritual life. O, sweet wonder!
” —Worship at His Footstool « Glory to God for All Things
“
At the beginning of a new notebook I copy a quote from Simone Weil, which captures me completely: “Don’t insist on understanding new things, but try with your whole self, with patience, effort and method, to comprehend obvious truths.”
This quote conducts a polemic with the ceaseless, barbaric pursuit of novelty and disdain for obvious, primary truths.
And so all my notes, all these snail’s traces, are the realization of Simone’s one thought. I won’t and can’t discover anything, I want only with my whole self to reach the heart of obvious truths.
” —Anna Kamienska, from her Notebooks (via settledthingsstrange)
Interesting. Not sure I fully agree, but strikes me as healthier than many approaches.
“
For Girard, Nietzsche is very important as a great philosopher who saw quite clearly the new absolute value that Christianity had injected into Western culture. He acutely perceived that it was associated with democracy, a political form he held in contempt. This absolute value—concern for the victim—was already becoming secularized, torn from its religious and theological moorings, in Nietzsche’s time. But an absolute value is not proven by logic or metaphysical arguments; it is accepted, believed (even when not discussed), and hedged about with taboos to protect it.
One of the proofs that the concern for victims is the absolute value of the modern Western world, and the absolute value wherever Western influence has had a deep impact, is a negative one: Nietzsche’s interpreters avoid the subject. They circumvent Nietzsche’s actual position on this subject. They revere Nietzsche; they look to him as the source of wisdom and his writings as a kind of holy scripture. However, it is extremely rare to find a “postmodern” follower of Nietzsche who raises a question about the very thing that Nietzsche railed against: the concern for victims that stems from Judaism and Christianity.
The concern for victims has become such an absolute value that not only do those Nietzsche influenced not attack it, but it has become the unspoken dogma of “political correctness” and “victimism.” Political correctness surrounds most of our public institutions, including above all colleges and universities, with an aura that prohibits using any word or allowing any discussion that might offend some minority group or victim or potential victim. It tends to stifle public discussion and debate of ideas and issues. Victimism uses the ideology of concern for victims to gain political or economic or spiritual power. One claims victim status as a way of gaining an advantage or justifying one’s behavior.
Both political correctness and victimism stem from an authentic reality from the standpoint of the Christian faith. That reality is God’s revelation through Jesus Christ of the victim mechanism and the way into God’s new community of love and nonviolence. But Satan has a tremendous ability to adapt to what God does and to imitate God, and so Satan—the ancient and tremendous power of the victim mechanism that expels violence through violence—is able to disguise himself and pose even as concern for victims.
” —from James G. Williams’ foreword to Rene Girard’s I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (via hulga-joy)
“Man can live without science, he can live without bread, but without beauty he could no longer live, because there would no longer be anything to do to the world. The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here.”
—Dostoyevsky (via settledthingsstrange)
“In all that awakens within us the pure and authentic sentiment of beauty, there, truly, is the presence of God. There is a kind of incarnation of God in the world, of which beauty is the sign. Beauty is the experimental proof that incarnation is possible. For this reason all art of the first order is, by its nature, religious.”
—Simone Weil, quoted in Benedict XVI’s address to artists (via settledthingsstrange)
“In short, it is much easier to see a thing through from the point of view of abstract principle than from that of concrete responsibility.”
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “After Ten Years,” Letters & Papers from Prison
“The stranger’s eyes are wide open, but he does not see anything.”
—Supyiré proverb, quoted in “The stranger’s eyes”
“Those who have no absolute values cannot let the relative remain merely relative; they are always raising it to the level of the absolute.”
—Flannery O’Connor (via dailyflanneryoc)
“
As ‘After-birth Abortion’ spread around the world and gained wide publicity — that damned Internet — non-ethicists greeted it with derision or shock or worse. The authors and the editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics were themselves shocked at the response. As their inboxes flooded with hate mail, the authors composed an apology of sorts that non-ethicists will find more revealing even than the original paper.
‘We are really sorry that many people, who do not share the background of the intended audience for this article, felt offended, outraged, or even threatened,’ they wrote. ‘The article was supposed to be read by other fellow bioethicists who were already familiar with this topic and our arguments.’ It was a thought experiment. After all, among medical ethicists ‘this debate’ — about when it’s proper to kill babies — ‘has been going on for 40 years.’
” —Andrew Ferguson. I think Ferguson might make even more of this than he does. The editors are saying, quite straightforwardly, We do not expect or want the people who could be affected by our recommendations to see those recommendations, or how we arrive at them. This is the classic behavior of what Coleridge called the “clerisy,” the self-appointed intellectual custodians of society: Run along, now, little ones, while your betters make decisions on your behalf. To call this attitude “contemptible” would be too kind by half. (via ayjay)
“I put up with this church, in the hope that one day it will become better, just as it is constrained to put up with me in the hope that I will become better.”
—Erasmus (h/t: GR)
“But I think it was in fact peculiarly Western to feel no tie of particularity to any single past or history, to experience that much underrated thing called deracination, the meditative, free appreciation of what ever comes under one’s eye, without any need to make such tedious judgments as “mine” and “not mine.”
—When I Was a Child I Read Books : Marilynne Robinson
“The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce variety and uncompromising divergences of men…In a large community, we can choose our companions. In a small community, our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized society groups come into existence founded upon sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique.”
—G.K Chesterton (via katamariroller)
“
• More action, more details, less rumination. Don’t be afraid of implicitness. And the old Thom Yorke line: “Don’t get sentimental. It always ends up drivel.”
• If it reads like it would make for a Hallmark TV episode, don’t submit it.
• Meaning (or humor, or interestingness) is in specific details, not in broad statements.
• Write a piece in which something actually happens, even if it’s something small.
…
• Embrace your own strangeness.
More at How to Write a ‘Lives’ Essay
Interesting when paired with the writing advice from Annie Dillard that’s going around.
“Francesca Murphy gives a rigorous defence of analogy through the thought of Jacques Maritain. Artistic objects are symbolical, she argues, and this very fact suggests a distinction between transcendental beauty and immanent or aesthetic beauty. The two meet only by the mediation of analogy, the chaperone who ensures that things do not get too univocal in the heat of aesthetic passion.”
—Steve Wright - “The Bloom of Time” (via poeticfaith)
“
Remember, O my soul,
It is thy duty and privilege to rejoice in God:
He requires it of thee for all His favours of grace.
Rejoice then in the Giver and His goodness,
Be happy in Him, O my heart, and in nothing
but God,
for whatever a man trusts in,
from that He expects happiness.
He who is the ground of thy faith
should be the substance of thy joy.
Whence then comes heaviness and dejection,
when joy is sown in thee,
promised by the Father,
bestowed by the Son,
inwrought by the Holy Spirit,
thine by grace,
thy birthright in believing?
Art thou seeking to rejoice in thyself
from an evil motive of pride and self-reputation?
Thou hast nothing of thine own but sin,
nothing to move God to be gracious
or to continue His grace towards thee.
If thou forget this thou wilt lose thy joy.
Art thou grieving under a sense of indwelling sin?
Let godly sorrow work repentance,
as the true spirit which the Lord blesses,
and which creates fullest joy;
Sorrow for self opens rejoicing in God,
Self-loathing draws down divine delights.
Hast thou sought joys in some creature comfort?
Look not below God for happiness;
fall not asleep in Delilah’s lap.
Let God be all in all to thee,
and joy in the fountain that is always full.
“Even the striving for great things is something great.”
—Longinus (h/t JJ)
