February 2012
39 posts
“Last night we wondered whether people who do not have the love of God in them,...”
– Christian Wiman
“We should not pass over the mysterious meaning of ‘tabret and harp’...”
– Augustine, Discourses on the Psalms, commenting on Psalm 149:3, “Let them sing praises unto him with tabret and harp.”
“Have you found ways of living as woman for man, or man for woman, outside of...”
– Eve Tushnet with a fascinating and important question
“The most privileged, comfortable person in this auditorium, from the best...”
– Mary Karr, commenting (at around 11:00) on the James Frey exposé
“One thing I’ve mentioned, off-handedly in the past, is how learning a new...”
– Ta-Nehisi Coates
“Being a broken man himself, Greene knew how to probe the pain and romance of...”
– My hero: Graham Greene | Books | The Guardian (via ayjay)
me: "Remembering for one another" →
Brett Foster, "Longing, Lenten"
The walk back, more loss. When I open the door it’s over, so I set to piddling: tidy end tables, check the mail, draw a bath. The restless energy finally settles as I pass the mirror. I peer into it. My nose touches glass. Not much left, already effaced, not even a cross to speak of. A smudge. A few black soot stains like pinpoints on the forehead. The rest of the blessed ash has vanished to a...
Wisława Szymborska, "Hard Life with Memory"
I’m a poor audience for my memory. She wants me to attend her voice nonstop, but I fidget, fuss, listen and don’t, step out, come back, then leave again. She wants all my time and attention. She’s got no problem when I sleep. The day’s a different matter, which upsets her. She thrusts old letters, snapshots at me eagerly, stirs up events both important and un-, turns my eyes to overlooked views,...
““Are you afraid of dying?” I asked my father several months before he died.
...”
– LaVonne Neff, “To Dust You Will Return” (originally published in U.S. Catholic in 1996). Please read on.
“The objective self at a given moment is largely the deposit of experience as...”
– Daniel Day Williams, The Spirit and the Forms of Love. Canon Mark McIntosh quoted this today in his Ash Wednesday address at Durham Cathedral. It resonates with me, and I want to ponder it more.
“Those who fail to honor their elders and to learn the exegetical task condemn...”
– Dale Allison
“In one scene, Mrs. O’Brien runs carrying toddler Jack away from what appears to...”
– Peter Leithart on The Tree of Life
fiction
There’s an interesting post here from Rod Dreher in which he tries to get to the bottom of why he doesn’t read much fiction.
Reading his post, I found myself thinking of a great conversation I had with my friend Nate Jones, who happens to be a writer of really acutely insightful short stories. “I think I’m not happy with fiction as a category,” Nate said. “The...
“If you look back through history, you’re not that concerned with magazines. You...”
– Mary Karr
“Earlier this month I witnessed a level of racial unity that was downright...”
– Matthew Milliner, “One Testimony About Race.” Read the whole thing.
“[I]t is not just the state or those who propose greater sexual freedom that...”
– Stanley Hauerwas (via germerian)
“A man, then, who portrays human beings excessively and extravagantly. A man who...”
– Rowan Williams (via Christopher)
“I read not that ever any man did give unto Christ so much as one groat, but the...”
– John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress. In light of the recent discussions of Christianity and “masculinity,” this quote comes to mind.
“I don’t know what I think of that. Because I think, actually, one of the...”
– Ira Glass, in response to Kurt Braunohler’s comment, “I do have a theory now. I do have a theory about if I do get married in the future. What I think I would want to do is have an agreement that at the end of seven years, we have to get remarried in order for the marriage to continue....
“Her humour was mischievous: the lavatory seat in her Cracow flat was made of...”
– from The Economist’s obituary for Wislawa Szymborska (HT: Peter Leithart)
“I think it’s far more important to write well than most people realize. Writing...”
– Paul Graham (via lukescommonplacebook)
“Nothing is more remarkable, in the Messianic writings, than the fact that...”
– Tim Gorringe (via Philip Tallon)
“If I could sum up my feelings right at the moment into one word it would be...”
– a guy named Tree, here, as quoted in this book
““Can you say,” I once inquired of a sixty-year-old cloistered nun...”
– Patricia Hampl
Mark Noll, "Scots' Form in the Suburbs"
The sedentary Presbyterians awoke, arose, and filed to tables spread with white, to humble bits that showed how God almighty had decided to embrace humanity, and why these clean, well-fed, well-dressed suburbanites might need his grace. The pious cruel, the petty gossipers and callous climbers on the make, the wives with icy tongues and husbands with their hearts of stone, the ones who battle...
“For most privileged, professional people, the experience of confinement is a...”
– from Adam Gopnik’s essay on mass incarceration and criminal justice in America
“I don’t know whether I am optimistic or pessimistic about where we are, and...”
– Tom Wright
“Browsing is the opposite of “search.” Search is precise, browsing is...”
– Leon Wieseltier
“We watch as the Driver stamps, time and again, on the skull of a villain in an...”
– Anthony Lane on Drive. I finally got around to watching Drive last night. It was riveting, the cinematography was darkly gorgeous, and Gosling and Mulligan played their roles with just the right notes of understatement. In spite of all that, though, I’m with Lane. The — repeated,...
“The supernatural vitality of hope overflows, moreover, and sheds its light also...”
– Josef Pieper. Reminds me of that marvelous passage in Chesterton that concludes with, “our Father is younger than we.”
“When I look back on my work process, and those of my friends, we seem to keep...”
– Rachel Toor
