Personal

  • Restarted sfc.blue pro­ject
  • Chattanooga day trip: Ruby Falls gift shop, McKay’s, Community Pie (excellent pizza)
  • Elected and or­dained as a dea­con. Joined HR com­mit­tee.
  • Tim vis­ited
  • Celebrated Amber’s birth­day
  • Day trip to Lyon Farms
  • Phillies down 5-0 in World Series Game 1, won 6-5. Most ex­cit­ing World Series game I’ve seen.

My Thoughts

  • “Inimitable” and “illimitable” make a great pair

Writing, Links, Podcasts

October 2022 Summary

Brian

Permalink

Notes

  • Jason Baxter
    • Your goal in a de­bate is not to con­vince your in­ter­locu­tor, but to make them wish you were right.
    • C. S. Lewis an­tic­i­pated Plato schol­ar­ship by 50 years with­out the col­lected edi­tions and trans­la­tions avail­able now, just read­ing man­u­scripts in the Bodleian.
    • Lewis said the Romantics Wordsworth and Coleridge were the last of the Medievals. Owen Barfield said the Inklings were the last of the Romantics.
    • The Romantics tried to re­cover a sacra­men­tal view of the ma­te­r­ial world.
    • Lewis said the ma­te­r­ial world’s re­la­tion­ship to the su­per­nat­ural world is like a sym­phony trans­posed for pi­ano.
    • Heaven was­n’t bor­ing for the me­dievals: it was the barely-glimpsed glory that could­n’t fit into our re­al­ity.
    • Freud was the epit­ome of mod­ern thinker that Lewis was against.
    • Why study the me­dieval model? Get out of our mind­set to re­cover hu­man­ity. Maybe sci­ence will even­tu­ally come around un­til the metaphors work again.
    • The di­ver­sity of the church through time: blind spots, but also strengths and trea­sures. Strengths of mod­ern so­ci­ety are in­te­ri­or­ity, in­di­vid­u­al­ity, eq­uity.
    • Aquinas only owned 200 books, but he had all of them mem­o­rized.
    • A me­dieval would not say he read a book un­til he could com­mu­ni­cate its ar­gu­ments step-by-step, chap­ter-by-chap­ter. They read with the in­tent to re­mem­ber.
  • Cindy Rollins
    • You don’t want to be the voice in your child’s head say­ing, “Read the Bible”, “Do the right thing”. If it’s your voice they hear, when it’s time for your child to leave the home they may also try to leave be­hind that voice.
    • Charlotte Mason said you only learn what you pay at­ten­tion to. You can’t make some­one pay at­ten­tion, you can only spread a feast. Respect the child and give them hard and good things.
    • Dumbing knowl­edge down to a child’s level is the op­po­site of ed­u­ca­tion.
    • Robert Farrar Capon said that in the Bible, the op­po­site of Sin is not virtue, it is Faith. Faith in a God who draws all to him­self in his res­ur­rec­tion. (via Cindy Rollins)
  • Angelina Stanford
    • Education is one per­son shar­ing what the love with an­other per­son.
    • In Celtic sto­ry­telling, when a char­ac­ters gets in an im­pos­si­ble sit­u­a­tion, the way out is to go to the one per­son you trust and con­fess every­thing. Also seen with Louisa in Hard Times, the wife in Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale.
    • At the low­est point in a com­edy there is a mirac­u­lous death and re­birth im­age be­fore the up­swing.
    • Breakfast-lunch-dinner sched­ule was in­vented for British fac­tory work­ers. Pre-Industrial Revolution, British peo­ple did morn­ing chores then ate mid-day meal to break fast.
  • Ben De Bono
    • Frames: Compared to what (realism in­stead of ide­al­ism), is it worth the cost (cost-benefit analy­sis), 80-20 rules (Pareto prin­ci­ple), crappy first draft and 10% bet­ter (iterate), what feels hu­man (intuition), di­rec­tional ac­cu­racy (don’t let the per­fect be the en­emy of the good), I might be wrong (strong opin­ions weakly held), look for two ways to win (agile)
    • Summary of Ian McGilchrist: right hemi­sphere deals with big pic­ture, in­ter­acts with re­al­ity, makes us hu­man. Left is de­tails, con­structs a vir­tual re­al­ity.
    • Music is the lan­guage of the right hemi­sphere.
    • Confront your shadow self to re­al­ize your po­ten­tial. Don’t set­tle for medi­oc­rity.
  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer
    • Jewish days be­gan in the evening. Christian days be­gin in the morn­ing be­cause of the Resurrection.
    • Community Bible read­ing should be long pas­sages; per­sonal Bible read­ing should be shorter pas­sages with med­i­ta­tion. Meditation leads to prayer. If your mind wan­ders, pray about what you wan­dered to.
  • Bennet Cerf
    • Television does­n’t take peo­ple away from books. If you smashed all the tele­vi­sions, the TV ad­dicts would not be trans­formed into read­ers.
    • Publishers aren’t cen­sors be­cause the make sug­ges­tions that the au­thor can choose to take or ig­nore, and maybe pub­lish else­where.
  • Wendell Berry: do some­thing every day that does not com­pute. (via Angelina Stanford)
  • Northrop Frye: Sacred space shrinks from Garden of Eden, to Abraham’s Promised Land, to Joshua’s Promised Land (map of 12 tribes in Bibles was land they claimed, not per­ma­nently held), to Judah, to Jerusalem, to the Temple, to the Holy of Holies, to noth­ing af­ter the Abomination of Desolation. (via Kay Pelham)
  • Heather Goodman: At the Ascension, the en­tire cos­mos be­came sa­cred space: the king­dom of Christ.
  • C. S. Lewis: The au­thor in­tends, the book means. Author can­not guar­an­tee mean­ing. “The mean­ing of a book is the se­ries or sys­tem of emo­tions, re­flec­tions, and at­ti­tudes pro­duced by read­ing it.” In his teach­ing, he em­pha­sized not au­tho­r­ial in­tent (subjective) but the “receptive imag­i­na­tion” and the ob­jec­tive text.
  • Kelly Cumbee: Irish king­doms al­ways had a king, a bishop, and a poet.
  • Stephen Greenblatt: First per­ma­nent the­aters were built in Shakespeare’s life­time. First was the Red Lion. Also had mys­tery plays (Bible story retellings); these were banned by Protestants be­cause of as­so­ci­a­tion with Roman Catholics. Hamlet’s phrase “out Herods Herod” refers to the bom­bas­tic Herod from mys­tery plays. Also trav­el­ling play­ers.
  • Joffre Swait: Don’t let chil­dren play or draw in church ser­vice be­cause we aim for par­tic­i­pa­tion. Train to par­tic­i­pate, not to sit still. Do what every­one else is do­ing. Don’t send the mes­sage that church is oner­ous for chil­dren. Don’t be too strict with stay­ing quiet and still. Father should take the dif­fi­cult chil­dren, out of ser­vice if nec­es­sary. Work up to full ser­vice. Take out be­fore ser­mon, even when be­hav­ing, to re­group.
  • Stratford Caldecott: It is the mem­ory of time that makes us old; re­mem­ber­ing eter­nity makes us young again.
  • Malcolm Guite: Chesterton and Belloc mas­tered the bal­lad form.
  • The Seven Sisters of US main­line Protestantism: United Methodists, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), PCUSA, Episcopal, Evangelical Lutheran, American Baptists, United Church of Christ.
  • Hedonism is seek­ing plea­sure for its own sake. Epicureanism is avoid­ing pain and anx­i­ety, re­al­iz­ing un­re­strained plea­sure can bring pain.
  • The sci­en­tific name of the American Robin is tur­dus mi­gra­to­rius.
  • Leprosy was com­mon in Elizabethan England.
  • In England, oaths were of­ten sworn on swords; they are shaped like a cross.
  • Charles Wesley’s hymn And Can It Be ref­er­ences Pope’s poem Eloisa to Abelard: “Thy eyes dif­fus’d a rec­on­cil­ing ray, / And gleams of glory bright­en’d all the day.” Sight was thought to re­sult from light sent out from the eye, as well as light re­ceived from the eye.
  • Powell’s City of Books in Portland, OR is world’s biggest in­de­pen­dent book­store.
  • Dutch Calvinist painters al­ways in­cluded some­thing rot­ting in their paint­ings, be­cause the world is rot­ting. Quaker cross stitch sam­plers pur­posely in­cluded a mis­take, be­cause only God is per­fect.
  • Europe and Africa cost of liv­ing is sky­rock­et­ing be­cause dol­lar is strong, be­cause Fed in­creased in­ter­est rates, be­cause US in­fla­tion was high.
    • We need to de­cou­ple these economies.

Quotes

  • “I have ar­gued that Scripture is mu­si­cal, and part of the sig­nif­i­cance of mu­si­cal pat­terns is that it is not just a fun­da­men­tal tem­plate that is ly­ing be­hind all these dif­fer­ent ex­pres­sions of a theme. It is not that you have to get to that un­der­ly­ing theme and sweep away the par­tic­u­lar­i­ties as re­main­der, rather, the sig­nif­i­cance is found in the vari­a­tions and the union.” –Alastair Roberts, re­view of Mathieu Pageau’s The Language of Creation
  • “To me the great­ness of the story, the hor­ror of the story, and the threat to hu­man­ity the story por­trays lie in the fact that Frankenstein has usurped the power, not of God, but of women. He has made a man with­out a mother. His sci­ence has elim­i­nated the prin­ci­ple of fem­i­nin­ity from the cre­ation of hu­man life.” –Andrew Klavan (via Cindy Rollins)
  • “Tradition is not the wor­ship of ashes, but the preser­va­tion of fire.” –Gustav Mahler
  • “If you raise your chil­dren right, they will grow up to rob your li­brary.” –Thomas Banks
  • “Words are like Leaves; and where the most abound, / Much Fruit of Sense be­neath is rarely found.” –Alexander Pope

Words

  • Addle: pu­trid, bar­ren (Heb. to fail)
  • Arrant: com­plete
  • Bewilder: to lose in path­less places (wilder: “wander”; from “wild”)
  • Bourn: bor­der
  • Garret: at­tic, tur­ret, watch­tower
  • Garreteer: in­hab­i­tant of a gar­ret, a poor au­thor
  • John-a-dreams: a sleepy idler
  • Orthodox: or­tho (“right”) + dox (“opinion”)
  • Pith: soft cen­ter of plants, spinal mar­row of an­i­mals, en­ergy, im­por­tance, quin­tes­sence
  • Quintessence: fifth and high­est essence of power (alchemy), ex­tract which con­tains the virtue (most es­sen­tial part)
  • Winkle: gleam in­ter­mit­tently; dis­place (“winkle out an an­swer”)