Archive for the ‘Quotables’ Category
1July2008
Exactly!
Posted by Convallaria under: Quotables.
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be. - Douglas Adams
And God’s fingerprints are all over the map and itinerary.
2April2008
Not Dead Yet
Posted by Puretext under: Poetry; Quotables.
I’ve just learned (via Orson Scott Card) that the National Endowment of the Arts is suffering a remarkable renewal. It seems that, since 2001, the head of the NEA has been a businessman and a professional poet who has never been positioned on the authoritarian side of the professor’s podium, a man named Dana Gioia.
I’m now in the process of reading his article from the Atlantic Monthly, Can Poetry Matter?, which discusses the fact that much poetry written today isn’t even intended to matter. A key quote:
Most editors run poems and poetry reviews the way a prosperous Montana rancher might keep a few buffalo around—not to eat the endangered creatures but to display them for tradition’s sake.
This is essentially the reason that I’ve given up poetry for the most part - I was trained in the art of saying nothing, and saying it well. But it was no way to make a living without a lot of long shots.
At any rate, I see a glimmer of hope that Gioia may play a part in a revival of poetry that actually means something, and may be transforming the NEA into an organization that decent people admire, rather than revile
1April2008
A Single Line
Posted by Puretext under: Quotables; Science; Theology.
that caught my attention:
“If death is to be approached as martyrdom” he says, in the context of dying of old age, as if that were an assumption that everyone had already thought of. We proceed from there:
If death is to be approached as martyrdom, i.e., as an opportunity to witness to our faith, what do services do we require or request of our healthcare especially at end-of-life? how can that goal be realized in the greater Chrisitian community, i.e., the Church. For example, individuals lifetime spending on healthcare is concentrated to an astounding degree on the final decade of life. Is that a Christian response to healthcare?
One could say that this single perspective could change your whole view on medicine at the end of life…
6June2007
Jesus, Really
Posted by Puretext under: Quotables; Theology.
But as for me, I do not place my hopes in one who died for me in appearance, but in reality. For that which is false is quite abhorrent to the truth. Mary then did truly conceive a body which had God inhabiting it. And God the Word was truly born of a Virgin, having clothed Himself with a body of like passions with our own. He who forms all men in the womb was Himself really in the womb, and made for Himself a body of the seed of the Virgin, but without any intercourse of man. He was carried in the womb even as we are, for the usual period of time; and was really born, as we also are; and was in reality nourished with milk, and partook of common meat and drink, even as we do.And when He had lived among men for thirty years, He was baptized by .John, really and not in appearance; and when He had preached the Gospel three years, and done signs and wonders, He who was Himself the Judge was judged by the Jews (falsely so called), and by Pilate the governor; was scourged, was smitten on the cheek, was spit upon. He wore a crown of thorns and a purple robe; He was condemned: He was crucified in reality and not in appearance, not in imagination, not in deceit.
He really died, and was buried, and rose from the dead, even as he prayed in a certain place, saying, “But do Thou, O Lord, raise me up again, and I shall recompense them.” And the Father, who always hears Him, answered and said, “Arise, O God, and judge the earth; for Thou shalt receive all the heathen for Thine inheritance.”
The Father therefore, who raised Him up, will also raise us up through Him, apart from whom no one will attain to true life. For says He, “I am the life; he that believeth in me, even though he die, shall live: and every one that liveth and believeth in me, even though he die, shall live for ever.” Do ye therefore flee from these ungodly heresies; for they are the inventions of the devil, that serpent who was the author of evil, and who by means of the woman deceived Adam, the father of our race.
–Ignatius of Antioch, letter to the Trallians
15March2007
Must Needs Keep Pedaling
Posted by Puretext under: Quotables.
…. The lie can be never over-exposed.
….the truth can never be over-promulgated
….propaganda spreads faster than percipience so percipience must needs keep pedaling
-Diana French
1November2006
Kathleen Norris
Posted by Puretext under: Quotables.
Mystics and poets … get to play, but although much lip service is paid to both traditions in our culture, it is largely condescension. No partent really wants his or her child to grow up and become a poet; no one in a religious house really wants to live next door to a mystic.
Also…
It was in the play of writing a poem that I first became aware that the demands of laundry might have something to do with God’s command that we worship, that we sing praise on a regular basis. Both laundry adn worship are repetitive activities with a potential for tedium, and I hate to admit it, but laundry often seems liek the more useful of the tasks. But both are the work that God has given us to do.
From Devotional Classics: the Sacramental Life
14September2006
Puritan Prayer
Posted by Puretext under: Quotables; That Vision Thing; Theology.
Move over Pentecostals:
After the people had gathered in the meetinghouse, “men with their heads uncovered the women covered,” the pastor opened worship with prayer, wh ich lasted “about a quarter of an hour.” …
The major prayer wa alwo about equal to the sermon in length. Thacher wrote on one occasion that he “stood about three hours in prayer and preaching.” On another: “God was pleased graciously to assist me much beyond my expectation. Blessed be his holy name for it. I was near an hour and half in my first prayer and my heart much drawn out in it and an hour in the sermon.”
Jasper Danckaerts likewise attested to the length of the prayers. “We went to church, but there was only one minister in the pulpit, who made a prayer an hour long, and preached the same length of time, when some verses were sung. We expected something particular in the afternoon, but there was nothing more than usual.” On a fast day he even reported that “a minister made a prayer in the pulpit, of full two hours in length.”
In the afternoon “three of four hours were consumed with nothing except prayers, three ministers relieving each other alternately.” THe norm on a common Sabbath seems to have been a major prayer of sixty to ninety minutes, with the sermon about the same.”
This is from Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe’s classic on New England Puritan devotional life, The Practice of Piety. I’d heard of the Puritan practice of 3-5 hour church services, complete with ushers armed with hot pokers to keep the parishoners awake. Even as somebody who loves long services, it was a little unnerving for me. I never realized though, that approximately half of the service was consumed with a single public prayer. I know it probably aims to high for today’s culture, but honestly, this is something I could really get behind.
Read on, MacDuff!
22March2006
First Principles
Posted by Puretext under: Quotables.
The central story of scripture is the issue of first, how we know something is true, and then second, what does one does about it. Placed as prominently as possible in the key narratives of both the first and Second Adam is the same temptation: to ignore the direct and immediate voice of God and to act independently according to some other principle.
–Jon Ruthven, Between Two Worlds
4March2006
Genius
Posted by Puretext under: Quotables.
What the world needs is more geniuses with humility. There are so few of us left.
20February2006
An Interesting Set of Alternatives
Posted by Puretext under: It's Supposed to Be Funny; Quotables; Theology.
Theologically speaking, and forced to make a choice, between Luther and Zwinglii, I’d side with Luther. But between Luther and Calvin, I’d go with Calvin. But then, forced to choose between Calvin and myself, I choose me.
I guess that makes me an evangelical.
Valerie: What if you were forced to choose between you and your wife?
Me: There is no choice to make.
Valerie: Right. So you’d choose me, huh?
