Éa [doing math]: Mom, is two minus six plus ten six?
Carla: Umm…wait a minute…
Éa: Also known as twelve minus six equals six.
Scott: Umm…wait…
Scott: Sometimes I wish I were the smaller one.
Carla: Why, so you could beat me up?
Carla, after a long evening trimming the hedges: Whew, that was a lot of work. Éa, when you grow up, do you want to be the man of the house?
Éa, matter of factly: I hope so.
Oh my gosh. Jesus.
— Carla
“It’s disturbing how many people bring knives on dates.”
— Sullivan, reflecting on romantic carvings in the wooden observatory deck on the Bog Trail at Black Moshannon
“I also have some lead. I want to mail it to my Aunt Joanna in California and see how she reacts.”
— Sullivan, showing off his elements collection
Sullivan: Mom, can you snuggle me?
Carla: I already snuggled you.
Sullivan: But that one didn’t take.
Mom, why is mama’s milk discontinued?
— Éa
“Emotional support feels terrible.”
— Carla
Don’t worry: The water on the floor is tears.
— Éa
Sullivan: Yeah, even Mimi’s inflatable balls are giant! [LAUGHTER] Put that on Familypants, Dad!
Scott: I’m not sure that I will…
If I’m ever going to become a successful scientist, I’m going to need less hair.
— Sullivan
Jesus said to him, “Today, salvation has come to this household because he too is a son of Abraham. The Human One came to seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:9-10).
What prompted Jesus to announce that Zacchaeus was saved? Zacchaeus’ change of mind to no longer do wrong by people and to do right by them with his money. Not the empty sinner’s prayer or anything like it. Who are the lost? Not those who don’t believe in Him. It’s those who don’t follow Him in His ways. Salvation is right behavior. Or something.
Since Carla keeps the house, I should keep the things in the house where she keeps them. Moving papers or whatever of hers or the kids away from where she put it would be like her moving my digital files for, say, tax records, around on my computer.
Morsels from C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra
- “But now it seems that good is not the same in all worlds; that Maleldil has forbidden in one what He allows in another“ (Tinidril).
- “…the vast astronomical distances which are God’s quarantine regulations…”
- “Ransom felt himself more and more in the presence of a monomaniac.”
- “The fatal touch of invited grandeur, of enjoyed pathos—the assumption, however slight, of a rôle—seemed a hateful vulgarity“ ( of Tinidril under the influence of the Un-man).
- “Not for the first time he found himself questioning Divine Justice. He could not understand why Maleldil should remain absent when the Enemy was there in person.”
- “He writhed and ground his teeth, but could not help seeing. Thus, and not otherwise, the world was made. Either something or nothing must depend on individual choices. And if something, who could set bounds to it?
- “Then came blessed relief. He suddenly realised that he did not know what he could do. He almost laughed with joy. All this horror...
He picked one and broke it in two. The flesh was dryish and bread-like, something of the same kind as a banana. It turned out to be good to eat. It did not give the orgiastic and almost alarming pleasure of the gourds, but rather the specific pleasure of plain food—the delight of munching and being nourished, a “Sober certainty of waking bliss.” A man, or at least a man like Ransom, felt he ought to say grace over it; and so he present did. The gourds would have required rather an oratorio or a mystical meditation.”
— C.S. Lewis • Perelandra
I laughed out loud at the last line.
The blind man on the roadside to Jericho (Luke 18:35-43) was so desperate for help from Jesus that he was willing to stand up to people who were trying to shout him down.
The violent take it by force, indeed.
“Absolutes don’t make us unloving, it’s which absolutes we believe in.”
— Sam Chan
I lift this quotation with the same thing in mind that Mr. Chan does: that love be the absolute absolute.
A pass at the raison d’être for the churches website:
This website exists to help those who wish to follow Jesus find like-minded people to eat with in remembrance of Him to provoke one another to love and good deeds, thus enacting the good news that Jesus is lord.
Loving someone as yourself means relinquishing all claim to private property. It also means exercising as much effort for the good of those around you as you do for your own good.
And here’s a better-than-usual back-and-forth that resulted from posting this assertion to Facebook. Among the highlights:
The rub is to apply this theological definition of ownership to the things I “own” in the material world (and to the immaterial things, such as my time and energy). The way I propose to do this is to realize and act on the fact that loving someone as myself entails using what is “mine” as much for the benefit of others as I do myself. The more I contemplate the “as myself” part of Jesus' quotation of Leviticus, the more radical it seems.
and this one: “Wisdom, as your example of the woman with the alabaster jar illustrates, is emphatically not to be taken as synonymous with restraint.”
“Do you feel quite happy out it?” said I, for a sort of horror was beginning once more to creep over me.
“If you mean, Does my reason accept the view that he will (accidents apart) deliver me safe on the surface of Perelandra?—the answer is Yes,” said Ransom. “If you mean, Do my nerves and my imagination respond to this view?—I’m afraid the answer is No. One can believe in anesthetics and yet feel in a panic when they actually put the mask over your face. I think I feel as a man who believes in the future life when he is taken out to face a firing party. Perhaps it’s good practice.”
— C.S. Lewis • Perelandra
“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.]
“Sleep came like a fruit which falls into the hand almost before you have touched the stem.”
— C.S. Lewis • Perelandra
My marginalia from Out of the Silent Planet (1938) by C.S. Lewis
…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.
What is Christianity? “A Jesus-looking God raising up a Jesus-looking people to change the world in a Jesus kind of way.” At least, that’s the fetchingly simple way Greg Boyd put it in a podcast episode released back in late November.