February 2012
8 posts
“But whatever vision of the digital humanities is proclaimed, it will have little...”
– Stanley Fish, in this blog post.
“[T]he contemplative life is the heavenly life, which cannot be lived perfectly...”
– Thomas Merton, in Contemplative Prayer
“There is a strong Quaker surge which comes upon me at certain points and I think...”
– While I’m interested in what Rowan William has to say about Quakers (see previous post), here’s a quote from the Guardian a few years ago.
“For the record: I have never quite managed to see how we can make sense of the...”
– A clever quip from Rowan Williams in a 1998 response to some arguments by the liberal Anglican theologian Shelby J. Spong. It should be pointed out that Williams lives in a country where Quakerism in many ways resembles Spong’s point of view.
“For the question is easier to ask than it is to answer, and it is easier to...”
– Jaroslav Pelikan, in “The Rabbi,” chapter 1 of Jesus through the Centuries: His Place in History and Culture
“So Merlyn sent you to me,” said the badger, “to finish your...”
– Badger, speaking to Wart in the first book of The Once and Future King by T.H. White
“Few ministers and priests think theologically. Most of us have been educated in...”
– Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus
“The leaders of the future will be those who dare to claim their irrelevance in...”
– Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus
January 2012
1 post
“The real question, John [of the Cross] suggests, is about what you are really...”
– Rowan Williams, “The Dark Night” (via ayjay)
December 2011
3 posts
“The Gospel came to the Greeks and the Greeks turned it into a philosophy. The...”
– The Problem with Pastor as Rock Star (via jmvane, azspot) (via ayjay)
“Why did the scale of the Islamists’ triumph so surprise Egypt’s mainly secular...”
– The Economist
“The programmers of the commercial web have always seen their goal as the...”
– Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: About Facebook (via ayjay)
November 2011
4 posts
“The problem, I think, is that the nearly everyone has accepted the Occupiers’...”
– The core of David Mills blog post on First Things, “Occupy Wall Street’s Empty Anger”
“I’m not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so that...”
– Rev. John Ames, the narrator of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead
“[Evangelical] barriers [to productive thinking] include an immediatism that...”
– Mark Noll, in the postscript to Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind, a follow-up to his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, which discussed in depth the issues he states here.
“Some verbs need an object. Some verbs don’t. Some can go both ways. A...”
– My Lit Prof.
October 2011
3 posts
“Yesterday my wife says she read some report: six in ten kids say they don’t...”
– Todd Boss, my new favorite poet, in this blog post.
“[H]e believes in nature as that which is not ourselves, and he regards culture...”
– Denis Donoghue, on Seamus Heaney, in this 1979 review of Field Work
September 2011
4 posts
“[I] started following [my friend’s] advice [to pray] by mouthing rote...”
– Mary Karr, in her essay “Facing Altars: Poetry and Prayer”
“There are two main approaches to action: conditionally speaking, cataphatic and...”
– Arkadiy Shlykov, in this interview and photo essay
“Does it surprise me that when Christ is excluded from fellowship with His people...”
– Wayne Williams, in this blog post reporting on New York Yearly Meeting 2011
“I dreamt last night,
oh marvelous error,
that there were honeybees in my...”
– Antonio Machado
July 2011
2 posts
“To me, the most important missionary witness that we have is the Divine Liturgy,...”
– Kallistos Ware, in this interview with Christianity Today
June 2011
6 posts
“Much of the contemporary Evangelical world was initially created in reaction to...”
– James Davison Hunter, in the sixth chapter of the essay “Christianity and World-Changing ” from his recent book To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possiblity of Christianity in the Late Modern World.
“If we do not make the necessity for inner transformation clear, if friends do...”
– Loyd Lee Wilson, from his excellent essay “Quakerism and the New Creation” in the book Essays on the Quaker Vision of Gospel Order
“A final irony [in Christian faith today] has to do with the idea of political...”
– James Davison Hunter, in the sixth chapter of the essay “Rethinking Power” from his recent book To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possiblity of Christianity in the Late Modern World.
“Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and...”
– Henry David Thoreau, from the “Economy” chapter of Walden
May 2011
1 post
“It occurred to me that I had become disconnected from a lot of things that used...”
– Mike Rowe, host of TV’s Dirty Jobs, in his testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on commerce, science and transportation on May 11, 2011. Good stuff, but not without a trace of irony as he justifies the the need for skilled workers by pointing out America’s addiction to...
“You do this kind of work simply because it’s the kind of work that you...”
– Stanley Fish, quoted in this very good Chronicle of Higher Education article summarizing his career and thought. Love this guy.
April 2011
2 posts
Poetry Joke
Poet 1: I'm a poet and I didn't know it.
Poet 2: I'm a free verse poet and it never dawned on me.
“As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic...”
– Seamus Heaney, from his 1995 Nobel Lecture, “Crediting Poetry”
March 2011
6 posts
“Nihonga [Japanese style painting] materials create a cacophony of sensuality and...”
– Makoto Fujimura, in “River Grace,”
“Failure and suffering, however, are in themselves no proof of faith, because the...”
– W.H. Auden, from “The Passion of Billy Budd”
“It’s not so much that American public life is more idiotic,” Jill Lepore said,...”
– Quoted in James Fallows article in the current Atlantic, “Learning to Love the (Shallow, Divisive,Unreliable) New Media”
“God does not consider the human species in general. He sees at a single glance...”
– Alexis de Tocqueville, from Democracy in America (1840), Part 1 Chapter 3
“Indeed, the United States, with its own roots in an ideology professing fealty...”
– From the chapter “Tribal-Federal Relations” in The State of the Native Nations: Conditions under U.S. policies of Self-Determination
Gospel of the Trees →
This is a beautiful website of quotes and images about trees and their relationship to the Christian story. It is an outgrowth of the research one of my favorite bloggers, Alan Jacobs, has conducted on the subject.
February 2011
2 posts
“The great merit … of kinetic art is that it forces you to becomes aware of...”
– Stanley E. Fish, in “Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics”
“A slowly developing public sphere, where public opinion relies on both media and...”
– Clay Shirky, from the current issue of Foreign Affairs, in “The Political Powers of Social Media”
January 2011
3 posts
“When I have whatever subject to treat, it is quasi-impossible for me to read...”
– Alexis de Tocqueville, in a letter to Duvergier de Hauranne, 1 Sept. 1856.
“We have to caricature the Puritans to feel comfortable in their presence. They...”
– Edmund S. Morgan, in the preface to The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop
“In Words Upon the Word: An Ethnography of Evangelical Group Bible Study (NYU...”
– From the Chronicle of Higher Education article, Among Evangelicals: Inside a Fractured Movement
December 2010
3 posts
“Passion, and passion at its profoundest, is not a thing demanding a palatial...”
– Herman Melville, in Billy Budd
“The visions were not so much an event that had come out of her illness as they...”
– Amy Frykholm, giving a beautiful interpretation of Julian of Norwich’s visions in Julian of Norwich: A Contemplative Biography
“The very notion in America of four years of a post-high school liberal arts...”
– John McWhorter, “Not Everyone Needs French” from the New York Times (via ayjay)
November 2010
3 posts
“Whenever therefore an apparent interest or common passion unites a majority what...”
– James Madison, from “James Madison On the Vices of the Political System of the United States, 1787.”
“Identity politics provides a decisive rejoinder to the generic human thesis and...”
– Linda Alcoff, in Cultural Feminism Versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory