January 2012
2 posts
Reading some Robertson Davies. #thisismyvoice
December 2011
3 posts
“Insofar as ascetic precepts - doctrines of self-mortification and world-flight -...”
– Kirk, The Vision of God, p 48.
“The Lord’s coming is threefold. He came the first time in the flesh, the second...”
– Peter of Blois (today’s reading from the patristic lectionary)
November 2011
11 posts
The Office-Eucharist-Devotion Rule and the Trinity
Martin Thornton, in English Spirituality, explains how the Office-Eucharist-Devotion Rule, which underlies the Prayer Book, expresses our faith in the Trinity:
Acceptance of the transcendence of the Father, or in H.H. Farmer’s terms, of God as “ontologically and axiologically other”, is manifested in the objective offering of the daily Office of praise. The absolute demand made,...
The Rosary, says Martin Thornton, is a devotion meant to unite the Roman Catholic church - pope to peasant. Although its origins are unclear it is thought to have been an imitation of the daily offices created for those laypeople who wished to imitate the practice of the monks.
But Thornton argues that, although Anglicans may pray the Rosary, it will only be a private practice for them. Our...
St Thomas Aquinas defines perfection thusly: “a being is perfect in so far as he attains to his proper end, which is his highest perfection. Now it is charity which unites us to God, the last end of the human soul, since, according to St John 4.16, ‘he that abideth in charity abideth in God and God in him.’” (Summa II.II.184, i)
Thornton then draws this...
The neglected mark of orthodoxy
Not that we need any more accusations of unorthodoxy flying around, but Martin Thornton (English Spirituality) does make an interesting point about a neglected mark of orthodoxy - a neglect which, it seems to me, clearly illustrates our biases:
The greatest Benedictine achievement (from this point of view) is the final consolidation of the threefold Rule of prayer which is absolutely fundamental...
Allchin quotes F.D. Maurice on the purpose of doctrines:
In asserting the doctrine of the Atonement, we assert redemption, liberty for mankind, union with God, union with each other. … When we assert the doctrine of the Trinity, we do so because we believe it to be the grand foundation of all society, the only ground of universal fellowship, the only idea of a God of love. … All we...
I like this mainly for its purple prose:
The one God, the first and only Deity, both Creator and Lord of all, had nothing coeval with Himself, not infinite chaos, nor measureless water or solid earth, nor dense air, not warm fire, nor refined spirit, nor the azure canopy of the stupendous firmament. But He was One, alone in Himself. By an exercise of His will He created things that are, which...
“The fundamental presupposition of the fundamentalism of everyday life, then, is...”
– William Egginton, In Defense of Religious Moderation, p 26
“When frightened by catastrophe we reach for certainty, and there is something...”
– William Egginton, In Defense of Religious Moderation, p 25
“While McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin...”
– Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
“The love of our neighbor is all its fullness simply means being able to say to...”
– Simone Weil, “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God”
Two quotations for All Souls' Day
Of course I pray for the dead. The action is so spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the most compulsive theological case against it would deter me. And I hardly know how the rest of my prayers would survive if those for the dead were forbidden. At our age, the majority of those we love best are dead. What sort of intercourse with God could I have if what I love best were...
October 2011
14 posts
Thesis: Christians who get squeamish about Halloween are suffering from too much Clear religion. (This thought inspired by this post, via Fr. Edward Green, which, although it doesn’t reject Halloween, is certainly guilty of a squeamish fastidiousness.) (You have no idea the satisfaction it gives me to say that about a blog associated with Mark Driscoll.)
The notion of Clear religion comes...
“Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is...”
– Simone Weil, Waiting for God, p. 27
One of the reasons Simone Weil gives for her refusal of baptism is her fear of the social structure of the Catholic Church. She does not fear it because of a naive desire to purify the Church. She fears it because her
natural disposition is to be very easily influenced, too much influenced, and above all by anything collective. I know that if at this moment I had before me a group of twenty...
“Often these young inquirers read a book of mine - read it once, in the desperate...”
– Robertson Davies, “Writing” (in The Merry Heart)
“What do we do with our money? Even if we prudently tuck away a good deal of it,...”
– Robertson Davies, “Painting, Fiction, and Faking”
“In psychological terms Canada is very much an introverted country, and it lives...”
– Robertson Davies, “Literature in a Country Without a Mythology”, The Merry Heart
Dean Baker makes several important points in The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive, but one in particular is completely new to me. Free trade agreements such as NAFTA, he argues, are intentional efforts to redistribute wealth upward by exposing less-educated workers to low-cost foreign competition while retaining the protections enjoyed by highly-educated professionals.
It is...
An excerpt from one of Marx’s letters, which is in some ways applicable to the #OWS protests. Via this article by Peter Frase.
Not only has a state of general anarchy set in among the reformers, but everyone will have to admit to himself that he has no exact idea what the future ought to be. On the other hand, it is precisely the advantage of the new trend that we do not dogmatically...
Thirteen Observations made by Lemony Snicket while...
1. If you work hard, and become successful, it does not necessarily mean you are successful because you worked hard, just as if you are tall with long hair it doesn’t mean you would be a midget if you were bald.
2. “Fortune” is a word for having a lot of money and for having a lot of luck, but that does not mean the word has two definitions.
3. Money is like a child—rarely unaccompanied. When it...
manasto:
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery...
Want to know why half of Americans pay no income taxes? Keith Hennessey explains it in this excellent post. It comes down to this, in his words:
a progressive rate structure and a standard deduction;
the Earned Income Tax Credit, which significantly reduces tax liability for the lowest earners;
the per-child tax credit, which significantly reduces tax liability for low- and moderate-income...
“Alas, though necessity has driven me to read much that even Matthew Arnold would...”
– Robertson Davies, The Merry Heart, p.2
July 2011
16 posts
1 tag
“The workhouses were conducted on the assumption, widespread among the middle...”
– Richard D. Altick, Victorian People and Ideas, pp 123-124
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Carlyle, on the Malthusian hope that people would through continence keep the population level in line with resources:
Smart Sally in our alley proves all-too fascinating to brisk Tom in yours: can Tom be called on to make pause, and calculate the demand for labour in the British Empire first? … O wonderful Mathusian prophets! Millenniums are undoubtedly coming, must come one way or the...
2 tags
““There used to be a sense that unemployment was rich soil for radicalization and...”
– “The Unemployed Somehow Became Invisible”
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“The medieval craze [of the Victorian era] had its comic side. In 1839 a...”
– Richard D. Altick, Victorian People and Ideas, pp. 103-105
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“[After passage of the First Reform Bill of 1832,] bonfires of rejoicing replaced...”
– This sounds so familiar ….
Richard D. Altick, Victorian People and Ideas, pp 87-88
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“Swearing has the same soothing effect upon our angry passions that smashing the...”
– Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
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"The three fundamentalisms of the American right"... →
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“That so many people in what were then called “the middling walks of...”
– Richard D. Altick, Victorian People and Ideas, p 64
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“It is impossible to tell how much the fiction and, to a smaller extent, the...”
– Richard D. Altick, Victorian People and Ideas, pp. 47-48
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“There had been plenty of misery among peasants when they were tied to the land....”
– What? No hobbits?
Robert D. Altick, Victorian People and Ideas, pp 35-36.
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“In the England of the 1830’s the insolent luxury of the Regency was...”
– Richard D. Altick, Victorian People and Ideas: A Companion for the Modern Reader of Victorian Literature, pp. 10-11
June 2011
12 posts
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“Here there is real potential for unions outside the AFL-CIO structure to build...”
– Erik Loomis, “The I.W.W. and Alternative Unionism”, via @resnikoff
“John says (below), “Given that lesbian, gay and bisexual people exist, how...”
– I was wrong about same-sex marriage
David Frum, a forceful opponent of gay marriage for years, revisits the data, and decides he was wrong.
Amazing.
(via pwinn)
I’ve also come round in the last year or so to support same-sex marriages (having always supported civil partnerships).
In many...