The Commonplace Book is a specific kind of literary journal-meets-scrapbook. It's a place to record and remember those passages that you've highlighted in your favorite books, thinking "this is good, I'll want to return to this someday." The Commonplace Book is a method for compiling what the ancient rhetors called a copia. The word copia … Continue reading The Commonplace Book
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My wife and I are a bit behind when it comes to TV. We have recently become enamored with Madame Secretary. We are on season three of six, and we just finished episode 18, entitled "Good Bones." It gets its name from a poem that Jay reads at the end of the episode. I loved … Continue reading Good Bones
The mountain spruce teaches us to cast off whatever is dead: things that are not right, internal intrigues that hide from the light, the retreat to dark places devoid of honesty, truth, righteousness, forgiveness, mercy, and reconciliation. A resonant, sounding life has learned to sacrifice what is dead and unjust.
"There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very … Continue reading C.S. Lewis On Firsthand Knowledge
"...Is not bloodshed a great sin?" "No," said MacIan, speaking for the first time. "Well, really, really!" said the peacemaker. "Murder is a sin," said the immovable Highlander. "There is no sin of bloodshed." "Well, we won't quarrel about a word," said the other, pleasantly. "Why on earth not?" said MacIan, with a sudden asperity. … Continue reading Quarrel About a Word
1 Peter 2:9–17 (ESV) "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had … Continue reading A Strange Liberty
"If I hate you it is because you have hated goodness. And if I like you...it is because you are good." –Evan MacIan, character in The Ball & the Cross by G. K. Chesterton
"Adoption...is the highest priviledge that the gospel offers: higher even than justification.... Adoption is higher, because of the richer relationship with God that it involves...Justification is a forensic idea, conceived in terms of law and viewing God as judge. In justification, God declares of penitent believers that they are not, and never will be, liable … Continue reading Adoption: The Highest Privilege
"A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of … Continue reading The Contemplation of Love in Suffering
From Reading Augustine On Education Formation, Citizenship, and the Lost Purpose of Learning by Joseph Clair "Ordered love within the context of liberal arts education moves in three directions. First is the inward ordering of the soul that happens as one acquires the moral and intellectual virtues necessary for disciplined study. Second is the upward … Continue reading Education and the Order of Love