In alphabetical order.
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“An explained thing, except for very resolute thinkers, is almost inevitably ‘explained away’. Speaking generally, it may be said that the demand for explanation is due to the desire to be rid of mystery.” __________, The Seventeenth Century Background, p.14
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“By his falling in love, one’s eyes are opened. He can read the riddles, he can decipher the flowers and the stars.” -Rosenstock-Huess
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Abusus non tollit usum: an abuse of something doesn’t rule out the proper use. We know that’s a long-recognized rule of logic because it has a pedantic Latin phrase. That means the rule is older than your language and mine, which makes it amazing that artists, who should be learned and nuanced enough for…
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My Antonia (Willa Cather) – Kindle Loc. 218-27 I sat down in the middle of the garden, where snakes could scarcely approach unseen, and leaned my back against a warm yellow pumpkin. There were some ground-cherry bushes growing along the furrows, full of fruit. I turned back the papery triangular sheaths that protected the berries and…
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You’d see many scribbled arguments in the margins of my copy, but in spite of that I do like the book and think him wise and honest. What maddens me is a certain pattern of thought, one that is emblematically modern, that goes like this: 1. Thought A 2. Recognition of something unproven about thought…
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It’s when we face for a moment the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know the taint in our own selves, that awe cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart: not to a flower, not to a dolphin, to no innocent form but to this creature vainly sure it and no other…
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On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings–oh, happy chance!– I went forth without being observed, My house being now at rest. In darkness and secure, By the secret ladder, disguised–oh, happy chance!– In darkness and in concealment, My house being now at rest. In the happy night, In secret, when none saw me,…
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Don’t you have to like something? Why travel? Why write about it? You should find something to like if you are going to bother to leave home. Mr. Bryson is amusing and witty in his disgust with large stretches of America. It’s probably easier to be funny than to be lyrical, but wit in the…
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Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some…
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Note: Wheelis wrote an interesting little book called “How People Change”. I don’t share his apparent rejection of the Christian faith, of course, but he is an honest and thoughtful writer, as this excerpt of another of his books shows. Be patient, the first paragraph is the slowest. I have yet to conceive the relation…
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CЯЦISIИG DOШИ ТНЕ СОДST OF THE HIGH БДЯБДЯEE “Lots of people are secure in their religious beliefs using rationale akin to, “There is a brilliantly worded explanation for this.” The problem is that mutually exclusive beliefs can all claim this. I Either every belief with such an explanation is truly a reasonable thing to believe,…
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Works and Days » Ten Random, Politically Incorrect Thoughts The K-12 public education system is essentially wrecked. No longer can any professor expect an incoming college freshman to know what Okinawa, John Quincy Adams, Shiloh, the Parthenon, the Reformation, John Locke, the Second Amendment, or the Pythagorean Theorem is. An entire American culture, the West…
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We possess singleness when we are not pulled in opposite directions and when we act without wanting. — unknown
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The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money. Alexis de Tocqueville
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You remember that book “Intellectuals”, by Paul Johnson? The one where he studied these famous ideologues to see how their private lives were so narcissistic and destructive, despite their public theories for re-arranging everyone else? (Think Karl Marx.) Well, add Alice Walker to the list. Seems like a pattern for famous artists in particular. How…
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The Kindlings Muse » Guest Blog: ALISTER McGRATH. “Do stop behaving as if you are God, Professor Dawkins.” Dawkins, Oxford University’s Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, is on a crusade. His salvo of outrage and ridicule is meant to rid the world of its greatest evil: religion. “If this book works as I…
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“To a wrongly stated question there can be no right answer. …a fundamental question stated in a certain way can hold the minds of men in bondage for centuries, not to say millenia.” Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, p.47
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Prayer is like watching for the Kingfisher. All you can do is Be there where he is likely to appear, and Wait. Often, nothing much happens; There is space, silence, and expectancy. No visible sign, only the Knowledge that he’s been there, And may come again. Seeing or not seeing cease to matter, You have…
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I taught myself to live simply and wisely, to look at the sky and pray to God, and to wander long before evening to tire my superfluous worries. When the burdocks rustle in the ravine and the yellow-red rowanberry cluster droops I compose happy verses about life’s decay, decay and beauty. I come back. The…
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Within days of my return to Christ, I also became aware of something very important: that the first temptation we face as returning Christians is to criticize another Christian and his or her way of approaching Jesus Christ. I perceived that I had to resist that temptation, that I had to seek in my faith…
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“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does any-one have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their…
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By Danny Gregory Inspiration is overrated. It’s all about discipline. There are glimmers of inspiration, when you lose touch with time and place but you can’t wait around for that. When I start working on something where I am so excited it’s like some sort of drug, I’m just alive. But the only way to…
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“Your best work may be closer than you think. You don’t need to go all the way to Africa or Italy to find subject matter worthy of painting. Your own backyard or neighborhood may be fertile ground for superior paintings. Mary Cassatt spent her career painting friends and family, and almost all of Vermeer’s paintings…
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“‘And the signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the signs and believe the signs. Nothing else matters . . .’”
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“The Paschal season has never ceased to be the impregnable citadel of the classic idea of the atonement.” Gustaf Aulen: Christus Victor, p.133
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Stunning visuals, tired old plot. With one sneaky twist. By now this cartoon plot should be as familiar to everyone as, say, the roadrunner and the coyote. It is becoming the cultural air we breathe. This Dances With Wolves myth, (in Avatar the indians are tall and blue) is the new founding myth of America, and indeed of the whole world.…
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“…in his life is a haiku poet. Anyone who can write ten is a Master.” From: “Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing”, by Frederick Franck
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Imprimis Archive – Hillsdale College This is the September 2006 edition, “Freedom and Justice in Islam”, by Bernard Lewis. This illuminative paragraph is about 1/3 of the way through the essay: In the year 1940, the government of France surrendered to the Axis and formed a collaborationist government in a place called Vichy. The French…
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BLOG and MABLOG Bland Leading the Bland Topic: Chrestomathy “The churches today are effeminate because effeminate men with wireless mikes and cardigan sweaters stroll around a platform chatting with the congregants in a nonthreatening and relational way. The churches are leaderless because we are nervous about prophetic preaching, and settle instead for bland and balanced…
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For me, the value of the book is new, useful terms: “myo” = the mystery of each art-form (Japanese “Tat Twam Asi” = “That Art Thou” (from Upanishad) …. is this the long-lost source for Charles Williams’ “This also is Thou”? (The companion saying is “Neither is This Thou”.) Williams understands better than most the…
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[I’ve stolen the entire post.] “This assertion is based on my experience, as well as my understanding of history. In my brief time as a Christian I have tried – at times – to give my allegiance to a bottom line – whether scripture, reason, tradition etc – and found it almost immediately impossible. It…
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“It took me as long to acquire inhibitions as others (they say) have taken to get rid of them. That is why I often find myself at such cross-purposes with the modern world: I have been a converted Pagan living among apostate Puritans.”⏤ C.S. Lewis Surprised By Joy #CSLI
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“For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are.” C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew
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..[W]e remain conscious of a desire which no natural happiness will satisfy. But is there any reason to suppose that reality offers any satisfaction to it? ‘Nor does the being hungry prove that we have bread.’ But I think it may be urged that this misses the point. A man’s physical hunger does not prove…
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The scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the nonsense that pours from the press of his own age. – C.S. Lewis
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“Those who say that children must not be frightened may mean two things. They may mean (1) that we must not do anything likely to give the child those haunting, disabling, pathological fears against which ordinary courage is helpless: in fact, phobias. His mind must, if possible, be kept clear of things he can’t bear…
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No, I’m not Catholic, but I love the spirit of this speech. Emphasis mine in the final paragraph. Edmund Campion CAMPION’S “BRAG”—1540-1581 Edmund Campion Enemies of Edmund Campion (1540-1581) disparagingly referred to his apologia as “Campion’s Brag,” the title by which his “Challenge to the Privy Council” is most commonly known today. It is perhaps…
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But what is it that we have learned that is truly new about human nature in the 20th century? I submit that the body of even the best work consists overwhelmingly of commentary on insights first expressed centuries ago. Indeed, if I were to characterize the role of the behavioral sciences in the 20th century—and…
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“So it is not altogether surprising that this attempt to bring Christ to the world, the lay world, the previously unhallowed world, should inspire a new focus on this world. On one side, this involved a new vision of nature, as we see in the rich Franciscan spirituality of the life of God in the…
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“Civilization is in a sense a matter of feeling shame in the appropriate places.” – A Secular Age, p. 142.
TimothyOne 