“Perhaps the experience had been so complete that repetition would be a vulgarity—like asking to hear the same symphony twice in a day.”
— C.S. Lewis • Perelandra •
[edit, 1/23/26: Clearly, this sentiment predates the advent of music streaming services. In the past year I have heard the same symphony twice in one day on multiple days. And I didn’t even need to ask.]
…was the fact that we had only one kind of hnau: they thought this must have far-reaching effects in the narrowing of sympathies and even of thought.
“Your thought must be at the mercy of your blood,” said the old sorn. “For you cannot compare it with thought that floats on a different blood.”
That was C.S. Lewis preaching on the virtues of diversity well before any around here was doing it.
“Be silent,” said the voice of Oyarsa. “You, thick one, have told me nothing of yourself, so I will tell it to you. In your own world you have attained great wisdom concerning bodies, and by this you have been able to make a ship that can cross the heaven; but in all other things you have the mind of an animal.”
It sometimes seems parts of our society are in the same state as Weston. And it sometimes seems I am, too. May I be fully alive in thought and morals and healthy relationships.
I exist to serve.
“To get” has replaced all instances of “to give” at Christmastime:
The change has removed all generosity from the concept of gifts. Strange.
Live whimsically, especially from dinnertime through the kids’ bedtime. That will make it more likely that you make time for things like calling your mother-in-law.
I feel a certain reorientation in my reading life these past two days, and it has to do with love. If I am to do everything in love, then I am to:
Also, when I switch to reading articles, I should be selective enough with my Instapaper queue that I find it easy to pay close attention to each article I do read and I get through it all in a timely manner. Basically a miniature version of the above rules.
With movies, it is easier:
Our own present culture has harnessed [fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self] in ways that have yielded…freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. […] But…the really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.
— David Foster Wallace, This Is Water
Flow, Scott. Have your agenda, yes. It is important. But go with the flow. Inevitably, life happens in the flow.
love noun 1 fondness and esteem that leads one to act toward the good of and the enjoyment of relationship with
“I no longer spend most of my time with college professors like myself. I’ve traded in the PhDs for Kristi and my friends at Highland.”
“The dark paradox, then, is this: the more we seek to alleviate our loneliness through digital connectivity, the more lonely we will feel. Along the way, we will forsake solitude as a matter of course. Curiously, it may not even be loneliness as a desire for companionship that the design of social media fosters in us. Rather, it is a counterfeit longing that is generated: for stimulation rather than companionship. In the end, we will be left with the most profound loneliness: perpetually feeling a need for connection that we cannot satisfy and finding that we have not even our own company. To recap: no abiding sense of companionship, no solitude, no place for thought.”
— Michael Sacasas, “Solitude and Loneliness”
“I’m not Atlas, on any conceivable level.”
— Tom Belt, in a pithy, poetic expression of our dependency of God and others
“It’s almost as if sex is not just a meaningless commodity traded between the consenting but, in fact, is an act so deeply powerful that we should consider wrapping it in an institution of personal commitment and public accountability.”
— Matt Popovits
In the next chapter Jesus seems to switch from Salvation by “what they do” to belief in Him. In chapter 5 he indicates that he’ll raise people who did good deeds up to life and those who did bad deeds to judgement, and then in Chapter 6 it’s those who behold and believe in him that he’ll raise up….
A bit conflicting…How do I get raised up to life!?
Also while I was in the US, one of our leaders here gave a passionate talk about the evils of homosexuality and how the bible “clearly” states this is sin. So that is causing some waves…
Fun fun.
Hi Ethan –
I find my eleventh-grade math-class logic lessons useful here. First of all, there is no p → q statement in John 6:40. It does not say, “If you see the Son and believe in him, then you will have eternal life and I will raise you up on the last day.” So no need to worry about that one. But, you’ll say, at least two other verses in the chapter can be formulated as such:
So, the point is granted. But neither of these statements are “if and only if” statements. The only other thing you can say for sure from these statements is their contrapositives ('q → 'p):
You can’t say the original statements’ converses:
So nothing Jesus says here contradicts his earlier statement. Given this subset of verses, at least, there may be other ways to eternal life—indeed, as you’ve noted, in the earlier, John-5 statement, Jesus says so explicitly, insofar as “the resurrection of life” (ch. 5) and “eternal life” or “living forever” (ch. 6) are synonymous: He says, in effect, that if you do good, then you will come out of your grave to the resurrection of life.
So, assuming being raised up to life is synonymous with having eternal life, how do you get raised up to life? We have two ways that Jesus gives us here: Believe (eat this bread), and do good. Both appear to “work.”
All of the logical analysis above may be moot, however, if we observe that faith without works is dead and that it does no good to call Jesus Lord but not do what He says. Given those two additional data, it may be best to simply conflate the concepts of “believing” and “doing good." In other words, John, like many places in the New Testament, may be a great place to translate pisteuo as “to give allegiance.” Mere belief is no good.
Also, I’m sorry to hear about the waves! I hope your one gal there is OK. Hopefully your leader guy at least made a distinction between same-sex attraction and same-sex sexual activity.
Much love.
“Being incarnate was an embarrassment, a design-fault that God may have intended in the Italians but surely not in the English.”
On the English supposed “quiet suspicion of sensuality” that he saw in the old English. It made me laugh out loud.
“Sexual puritanism is an attempt to safeguard possessions more valuable than pleasure. The good that it does outweighs the evil, the English knew this. They were seriously repressed, largely because repression prevented them from carelessly throwing away those things—chastity, marriage and the family—which slip so easily from the grasp of people whose natural tendency is to keep each other at a distance.”
This captures why my sexual ethics.
“Much as we should be grateful for the language and liturgy of the Anglican Church, we must deplore the weird interdiction which killed of polyphony at the very moment when Tallis and Byrd…had learned to rival Palestrina and Victoria in this supremely religious art form.”
The Anglicans outlawed polyphony?
“Jesus, the first and last, On thee my soul is cast: Thou didst the work begin By blotting out my sin; Thou wilt the root remove, And perfect me in love.
“Yet when the work is done The work is but begun: Partaker of thy grace, I long to see thy face; The first I prove below, The last I die to know” (105, from the Book of Common Prayer).
It’s the last couplet that excites me most.
“…we belted out this famous hymn…to the music of Mendelssohn, that gentle fellow-traveller of the Christian faith whom Queen Victoria, then head of the Anglican Church, took to her heart, as the Church did also, despite the fact, and also because of the fact, that he was a Jew.”
Mendelssohn was a Jew!? He has written some of the strongest Christian sacred music of all time!
“…and the very irrelevance to the surrounding world of everything he knew made the learning of it all the more rewarding” (167).
Is this true?
“By devoting their formative years to useless things, they made themselves supremely useful” (170).
A rhetorically fun point that Scruton makes about English Liberal Arts education. I do wonder if it’s true.
“How, for example, can you represent the interests of dead and unborn Englishmen, merely by counting the votes of the living? And how, in a system where important issues are determined by majority voting, do we protect the dissident minority, the individual eccentric, the person who will not or cannot conform?” (174)
I love the idea of thinking in terms of representing future, unborn compatriots in one’s government. And I appreciate Scruton’s praise for the common law in England which enables such lawmaking.
“Without what Freud call the ‘work of mourning’ we are diminished by our losses, and unable to live to the full beyond them” (244).
I know this to be true. I wonder whether I’m doing it for my mom. I want to make sure I make plenty space for others to mourn when I die.
“For dead civilizations can speak to living people, and the more conscious they are while dying, the more fertile is their influence thereafter” (244).
The same is true of dead people. I wish to be conscious while I’m dying.
Scruton, Roger. England : an elegy. London: Chatto & Windus, 2000. Print.
“Next time, before you proclaim that ‘we never talk about X’—remember this only unveils how small your ‘we’ is.
love verb 1 to esteem someone or something as to be gladly willing to donate of one’s self (e.g., attention, energy, time, material resources, money) for the their good 2 to esteem someone or something as to prioritize their needs
“Sexual puritanism is an attempt to safeguard possessions more valuable than pleasure. The good that it does outweighs the evil, the English knew this. They were seriously repressed, largely because repression prevented them from carelessly throwing away those things—chastity, marriage and the family—which slip so easily from the grasp of people whose natural tendency is to keep each other at a distance.”
— Roger Scruton, “English Character” in England: an Elegy
“I often think our broken church/social structures reflect our homes. Families teach us that even when are different and disagree, we are one.”
For us who are heterosexual, the task as it regards the sexual behavior of our brethren who are homosexual or bisexual is to support their clean conscience. If I am open and affirming of chaste homosexual expression but my gay friend is not, I will not try to persuade my gay friend toward my point of view. I will support him in his efforts to keep to the ethic he thinks is right. See Romans 14.
The bulk of the New Testament is not about how to get to heaven.
Regarding the temptation to read everything there is to know about the state of our government and then make public comment—and anything really: Do nothing out of mimetic desire. Do it only if it is truly self-donation for the benefit of another or others. Not merely virtue signaling and group belonging. Not merely imitation. I’m glad Jason is writing what he is writing and that it’s helping folks. But I don’t need to.
I am worried that I am playing the part of a quietist. But I strongly believe in the importance of building our kingdom-establishing institutions (e.g., blood donations, churches, relationships) in stable ways. I do not need to comment on current events unless love compels me.
I’m through with performing music for only the bourgeoisie. It’s time to visit prisoners and sick folks and sing for them.
Reading Twitter will ruin my life.
“May we” is a way to say prayer, blessing, and exhortation all rolled into one.
“Your faith has saved you” (Luke 7:50). I realized the other night that there is a sensical way of summarizing faith’s role in healings and miracles: It’s not always necessary (cf. Acts 12:12-16), and it’s not always sufficient (cf. life), but sometimes, it’s definitely the clincher.