Coming to Terms

Wendell Berry: Jayber Crow: A Novel (Audiobook)

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:35:14 -0400

Wendell Berry: Jayber Crow: A Novel (Audiobook):

nathanschock:

NoiseTrade has a free audiobook from Wendell Berry.

Cool.

"To my mind, conservatism is gratitude. Conservatives tend to begin from gratitude for what is good..."

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 18:00:42 -0400

“

To my mind, conservatism is gratitude. Conservatives tend to begin from gratitude for what is good and what works in our society and then strive to build on it, while liberals tend to begin from outrage at what is bad and broken and seek to uproot it.

You need both, because some of what is good about our world is irreplaceable and has to be guarded, while some of what is bad is unacceptable and has to be changed. We should never forget that the people who oppose our various endeavors and argue for another way are well intentioned too, even when they’re wrong, and that they’re not always wrong.

But we can also never forget what moves us to gratitude, and so what we stand for and defend: the extraordinary cultural inheritance we have; the amazing country built for us by others and defended by our best and bravest; America’s unmatched potential for lifting the poor and the weak; the legacy of freedom—of ordered liberty—built up over centuries of hard work.

We value these things not because they are triumphant and invincible but because they are precious and vulnerable, because they weren’t fated to happen, and they’re not certain to survive. They need us—and our gratitude for them should move us to defend them and to build on them.

”

- Yuval Levin’s Bradley Prize Remarks | Ethics & Public Policy Center (via ayjay)

"Linebarger’s interest in psychological warfare was closely related to his Christian views of..."

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 23:37:00 -0400

“

Linebarger’s interest in psychological warfare was closely related to his Christian views of ethics and history. Essentially, the purpose of psywar is winning without killing. The goal is to get an opportunity to speak to the mind of the enemy, and convince him that there are other ways to settle differences than killing people.

In Psychological Warfare, Linebarger focuses on the use of propaganda to weaken the resolve of the enemy and persuade him to give up. In his fiction, Linebarger matches the use of words with acts of kindness. This twin approach, “true words and kind actions,” becomes the essence of psychological warfare, both the military kind and the evangelistic kind.

Under the pseudonym Felix Forrest, Linebarger wrote two psychological novels: Ria (1947) and Carola (1949). Ria has been reprinted and is available in hardcover. In this novel we see portrayed something of Linebarger’s understanding of the world between the two great wars. Ria is a young American girl, and she typifies America: young, naive, kind, and rich. She is visiting Europe and encounters several people, who typify (a) the older Christian order in decline, (b) the new European occultism permeating Germany, and (c) the vigorous materialistic atheism of the new orient of Japan. There are many levels in this novel, but the most interesting may be its portrayal of these cultures as they meet and interact with each other.

In 1949, Linebarger’s novel Atomsk was published under the pseudonym Carmichael Smith. Atomsk is a spy thriller, and in it Linebarger openly sets forth his ideal of a Christian warrior. The main character explains early on that in order to defeat an enemy you have to love him. You have to want what is best for him, and if possible get close to him, win his confidence, and persuade him to change his ways. The novel shows the outworking of this Christian principle in international affairs.

”

- Christianity In the Science Fiction of “Cordwainer Smith” by James B. Jordan (Contra Mundum 1992)

"My process is thinking…thinking…and thinking. If you have a better way, please let me know."

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 19:33:50 -0400

“My process is thinking…thinking…and thinking. If you have a better way, please let me know.”

- Hayao Miyazaki (via gmd)

ayjay: Now, remember that according to [Richard] Dawkins the...

Fri, 31 May 2013 18:42:15 -0400

ayjay:

Now, remember that according to [Richard] Dawkins the story is told so that we should admire not Thomas, but the other disciples, “whose faith was so strong that they did not need evidence.” What is wrong with that? Well, first of all, the other disciples believed in the resurrection not through blind faith, but because they saw the risen Jesus with their own eyes.

Dawkins is right that we are not supposed to admire Thomas’s refusal to believe, but he is wrong about the reason. Thomas’s behaviour really is a little irrational. What better basis for belief could he have had than the testimony of his most trusted friends? We all have to rely on testimony rather than first-hand experience for the vast majority of our knowledge.

Thomas’s sin was the refusal to believe reliable testimony. The English natural philosopher and theologian John Wilkins wrote about the Doubting Thomas story in the seventeenth century. Jesus’s saying ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe’ signified, for Wilkins, that it was ‘a more excellent, commendable and blessed thing for a man to yield his assent, upon such evidence as is in itself sufficient, without insisting upon more.’ The testimony of the other disciples should have been in itself sufficient for Thomas; and yet he insisted upon more.

— Thomas Dixon

Bas bleu: "Who the Meek Are Not" - MARY KARR

Thu, 30 May 2013 21:55:03 -0400

Bas bleu: "Who the Meek Are Not" - MARY KARR:

alaina:

Not the bristle-bearded Igors bent
under burlap sacks, not peasants knee-deep
in the rice paddy muck,
nor the serfs whose quarter-moon sickles
make the wheat fall in waves
they don’t get to eat. My friend the Franciscan
nun says we misread
that word meek in the Bible verse that blesses them.
To understand the meek

"Of all places, the Church should surely be the most realistic. The Church knows how far humanity has..."

Wed, 29 May 2013 12:40:46 -0400

“

Of all places, the Church should surely be the most realistic. The Church knows how far humanity has fallen, understands the cost of that fall in both the incarnate death of Christ and the inevitable death of every single believer. In the psalms of lament, the Church has a poetic language for giving expression to the deepest longings of a humanity looking to find rest not in this world but the next. In the great liturgies of the Church, death casts a long, creative, cathartic shadow. Our worship should reflect the realities of a life that must face death before experiencing resurrection.

It is therefore an irony of the most perverse kind that churches have become places where Pascalian distraction and a notion of entertainment that eschews the tragic seem to dominate just as comprehensively as they do in the wider world. I am sure that the separation of church buildings from graveyards was not the intentional start of this process, but it certainly helped to lessen the presence of death. The present generation does not have the inconvenience of passing by the graves of loved ones as it gathers for worship. Nowadays, death has all but vanished from the inside of churches as well.

In my own tradition, the historic Scottish Presbyterian tradition, the somber tempos of the psalter, the haunting calls of lament, and the mortal frailty of the unaccompanied human voice helped to connect Sunday worship to the realities of life. There are indeed psalms of joy and triumph. The parents rejoicing in the birth of a child could find words of gratitude to sing to the Lord, but there are also psalms which allow bereaved parents to express their grief and their sorrow in words of praise to their God.

The psalms as the staple of Christian worship, with their elements of lament, confusion, and the intrusion of death into life, have been too often replaced not by songs that capture the same sensibilities—as the many great hymns of the past did so well—but by those that assert triumph over death while never really giving death its due. The tomb is certainly empty; but we are not sure why it would ever have been occupied in the first place.

Only the dead can be resurrected. As the second thief on the cross saw so clearly, Christ’s kingdom is entered through death, not by escape from it. Traditional Protestantism saw this, connecting baptism not to washing so much as to death and resurrection. Protestant liturgies made sure that the law was read each service in order to remind the people that death was the penalty for their sin. Only then, after the law had pronounced the death sentence, would the gospel be read, calling them from their graves to faith and to resurrection life in Christ. The congregants thereby became vicarious participants in the great drama of salvation.

There was surely catharsis in such worship: The congregants left each week having faced the deepest reality of their own destinies. Perhaps it is ironic, but the church that confronts people with the reality of the shortness of life lived under the shadow of death prepares them for resurrection better than the church that goes straight to resurrection triumphalism without that awkward mortality bit.

Bonhoeffer once asked, “Why did it come about that the cinema really is often more interesting, more exciting, more human and gripping than the church?” Why, indeed. Maybe the situation is even worse than I have described; perhaps the churches are even more trivial than the entertainment industry. After all, in popular entertainment one does occasionally find the tragic clearly articulated, as in the movies of a Coppola or a Scorsese.

A church with a less realistic view of life than one can find in a movie theater? For some, that might be an amusing, even entertaining, thought; for me, it is a tragedy.

”

- Carl Trueman, “Tragic Worship” (via wesleyhill)

"At some point you have to believe that the inadequacies of the words you use will be transcended by..."

Tue, 28 May 2013 07:08:10 -0400

“At some point you have to believe that the inadequacies of the words you use will be transcended by the faith with which you use them. You have to believe that poetry has some reach into reality itself, or you have to go silent.”

- Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss, p. 141 (via recycledsoul)

"May the mind of Christ, my Savior, Live in me from day to day, By His love and power controlling All..."

Sat, 25 May 2013 15:13:58 -0400

“

May the mind of Christ, my Savior,
Live in me from day to day,
By His love and power controlling
All I do and say.

May the Word of God dwell richly
In my heart from hour to hour,
So that all may see I triumph
Only through His power.

May the peace of God my Father
Rule my life in everything,
That I may be calm to comfort
Sick and sorrowing.

May the love of Jesus fill me
As the waters fill the sea;
Him exalting, self abasing,
This is victory.

May I run the race before me,
Strong and brave to face the foe,
Looking only unto Jesus
As I onward go.

May His beauty rest upon me,
As I seek the lost to win,
And may they forget the channel,
Seeing only Him.

”

-
Words: Kate B. Wilkinson, before 1913; appeared in Golden Bells (London: Children’s Special Service Mission, 1925).

Poppies 2013, à la Monet

Sat, 18 May 2013 16:41:48 -0400

Poppies 2013, à la Monet

Sunset Gate Montpelier

Thu, 16 May 2013 22:09:36 -0400

Sunset Gate

Montpelier

A better view of the Potomac.

Wed, 15 May 2013 23:48:58 -0400

A better view of the Potomac.

"Beauty is goodness made manifest to the senses."

Wed, 08 May 2013 19:28:44 -0400

“Beauty is goodness made manifest to the senses.”

- Dallas Willard, a Man from Another ‘Time Zone’ | Christianity Today

"As Dallas taught so many, the Sabbath and Sabbath moments like the ones he described are ways of..."

Wed, 08 May 2013 13:25:53 -0400

“

As Dallas taught so many, the Sabbath and Sabbath moments like the ones he described are ways of acknowledging who is in charge of the world and who is not. It reminds us that we are dependent on God and not ourselves. Our activity, our work, our intensity are not god. And by resting from those things, we acknowledge who is.

By giving away money we at once blaspheme the god of Mammon and worship the true God. By giving away time we at once blaspheme the god of Activity and worship the true One.

”

- IVP - Andy Unedited - Remembering Dallas Willard

RIP, Dallas. I am honored to have known you.

"Just what sort of animal is pictured when contemporary philosophy of religion talks about..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 10:21:04 -0400

“Just what sort of animal is pictured when contemporary philosophy of religion talks about “believers”? Do the believers countenanced in contemporary philosophy of religion ever kneel or sing? Do they ever pray the Rosary? Do they ever respond to an altar call, weeping on their knees? In fact, do believers ever really make an appearance in philosophy of religion? Is it not most often taken up instead with beliefs? Judging from the shape of the conversation in contemporary philosophy of religion, one would guess that “religion” is a feature of brains-in-a-vat, lingering in a particularly spiritual ether but never really bumping into the grittiness of practices and community. Indeed, one wonders whether such “believers” really even need to go through the hassle of getting up on Sunday morning. Once the beliefs are “deposited,” it is hard to see what more is needed to be faithful.”

- James K.A. Smith, Epistemology for the Rest of Us, Philosophia Christi, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2008. (via nathanschock)

"E.O. Wilson recently complained that the humanities offer an “incomplete” account of culture, ethics..."

Sat, 04 May 2013 11:50:44 -0400

“E.O. Wilson recently complained that the humanities offer an “incomplete” account of culture, ethics and consciousness (and kindly offered to complete the account by removing the humanities from the picture completely). What Wilson sees as a bug is in fact a feature. The humanities are and should be incomplete by design—that is, there should be no technology or methodology which we might imagine as a future possibility that would permit complete knowledge achieved via humane inquiry nor should we ever want such a thing to begin with.”

- More from Timothy Burke.

This whole post is gold, really.

(via giftsoutright)

A natural seat in Muja village, DRC (by nivalis)

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:45:18 -0400

A natural seat in Muja village, DRC (by nivalis)

A prayer by the widows of Goma (by nivalis) This lady prayed for...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 23:24:05 -0400

A prayer by the widows of Goma (by nivalis)

This lady prayed for me and my colleagues.

"Liberals are right that the language we use as Christians is not “literally” true; rather, it is..."

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:11:00 -0400

“Liberals are right that the language we use as Christians is not “literally” true; rather, it is figurative, poetic, imaginative language. But the orthodox are right in a more profound way: for the language of imagination – which is to say, biblical language – is the only language we have for thinking and speaking of God, and we receive it as the gift of the Holy Spirit. Theology deceives itself if it conceives of its task as translating the figurative language of scripture and piety into some more nearly literal discourse about God. The theologian’s job is not to tell fellow believers what they really mean; rather, it is to help the church speak more faithfully the language of the Christian imagination. The theologian is not a translator but a grammarian.”

- Richard Bauckham and Trevor Hart, ‘The Shape of Time’ in The Future as God’s Gift: Explorations in Christian Eschatology (ed. David Fergusson and Marcel Sarot; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 86.

The theologian as grammarian | Per Crucem ad Lucem (via mshedden)

"The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a creative mind to spot wrong questions."

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 20:49:55 -0400

“The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a creative mind to spot wrong questions.”

- Antony Jay (via thefearsarepapertigers)