Scott Stilson

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If I’m ever going to become a successful scientist, I’m going to need less hair.

— Sullivan

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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.

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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.

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Morsels from C.S. Lewis’ _Perelandra_

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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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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.”

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“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

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“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.]

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“Sleep came like a fruit which falls into the hand almost before you have touched the stem.”

— C.S. Lewis • Perelandra

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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.

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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.

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It’s time to reverse the connotative polarity of “parochial”: It’s a good thing, not a bad thing.

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I no longer care so much how You do it, God. It seems apparent that You do [answer prayers].

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Did you ever think the reason your life has become somewhat more pedestrian is that your prayers have become so, too? The thought occurred to me while on my prayer walk this evening, and it excited me.

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upon seeing Neighbor Dave at his retirement party at The Tavern…

Scott: Do you know what retirement means?
Ea: Yeah! It means giving up.

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I exist to serve.

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“God speaks to us. Our answers are our prayers.”

— Eugene Peterson

Let it be true that my prayers are always answers to God’s speaking. But when I first read the quotation, which I found in a Krista Tippett interview, I read it as: “The answers we seek from God are the prayers we pray,” as if He is the one providing the food for prayer.

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“We cannot be too careful about the words we use. We start out using them, and they end up using us.”

– Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

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“To get” has replaced all instances of “to give” at Christmastime:

The change has removed all generosity from the concept of gifts. Strange.

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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.

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Instead of God taking responsibility for creating, what would happen if we view God as taking responsibility for being created? That is, in Christ, God the human being fulfills humanity’s responsibility before God to present itself humbly, obedient and trusting in the face of all the vicissitudes inherent in that nature, and fulfills human nature’s calling and purpose. In this case Jesus’ death fulfills created nature, loving and trusting God within the constraints of created finitude. Christ, the God-Man, represents creation to God, takes responsibility for being creatED (not for creatING), unites creation to God, and in so doing reconciles the world to God, not God to the world.

— Tom Belt, “God takes responsibility for sin – or not.”

Now there’s a thought.

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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:

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