A brief overview of Daniel Dennett’s approach to offering critique. Can we make this a mandatory required reading selection for all politicians? lol
Category Archives: Quotable
Some words are worth remembering (more than others)
Link: Why Shakespeare always says something new – Telegraph
What Shakespeare always demands, though, is our sympathy, because, to put it simply, he writes about people like us. Offhand, I can think of only one character he wrote – Iago in Othello – that slips through the safety-net of his concern. Shakespeare might not agree with Lear’s sweeping and anarchic assertion that “none does offend”, but he sensed, I think, the danger of easy judgement. He recognises that self-worth and dignity are hard-won and that our lives cannot but be inconsistent, unpredictable, and confused. The only sane response for all of us, perhaps, is to emulate him – to look carefully, to withhold quick judgment and to try to understand.
via Why Shakespeare always says something new – Telegraph.
Ah! Good read!! Read the whole article!!
Link: Photoshopped Goddesses: How the Gospel Frees Women – Sometimes a Light
My friend Hannah has a blog and now a book where she examines daily life in the light of the Gospel. I love it, and it always leaves me thinking.
Like today’s post about how our media-drenched culture isn’t the first to crush women under unrealistic expectations of beauty and womanhood:
I used to think that civilizations that worshiped goddesses would have a stronger view of women. After all, deifying women seems like a natural way to elevate their status in society. Turns out it doesn’t. It just sets the standard higher for us mortals.
Today we don’t have temples to Athene and Aphrodite, but we do have Sheryl Sandberg telling us that we’re not savvy enough; we do have Pinterest telling us that we’re not domestic enough; we do have religious leaders telling us we’re not feminine enough, and we do have Target telling us that we’re not beautiful enough. It was into this very same context that Paul spoke the gospel. And it was in this very same context that women embraced it and found it to be a balm for their tired, worn out souls.
via Photoshopped Goddesses: How the Gospel Frees Women – Sometimes a Light.
Link: Just another day at the coffee shop
Short piece. I enjoyed reading it.
Just another day at the coffee shop
I don’t know much about the blog hosting the piece, but I’ve found some really interesting reads there over the past week.
Link: The Promise You Cant Keep in Marriage | RELEVANT Magazine
The point of marriage isn’t to find our missing half. It’s to help each other become all God intended. Our future, real selves. In marriage, two people partner to that end. They see the best in each other—the person God created them to be—and they push and pull each other toward that goal.
Don’t get married because you think he or she is “the one.” Trust me, they’re not. There’s no such thing! But do get married when you see who God is making somebody to be, and it lights you up. When you want to be a part of that story of transformation, that journey to the future. When you are well aware it will be a long and bumpy ride, but you don’t want to miss one mile. Because you believe in God’s calling on them, and you want in.
via The Promise You Cant Keep in Marriage | RELEVANT Magazine.
Must read: Listening to Nirvana with a Two-Year-Old : The New Yorker
One of the best things I’ve read in a long time. Here’s an excerpt; don’t skip reading the whole article. (link follows the quote)
Listening to the song with my son, I noticed an abandon that was childish in its total commitment. You can hear it in the force with which Grohl hits the drums, in Krist Novoselic’s playing, and, most of all, in the release in Cobain’s voice, which is a somewhere between a wail of despair and a delighted squandering of the moment.
Everything was going along fine in our living room until the song got to the break—the low, murky part—at which point Alexander called out to me, “Daddy! It’s scary!”
Nirvana’s music, in its anguish and energy, is scary. “Nevermind” is scary. But the break in “Drain You” is especially scary. I either had to turn it off or find a way to make this work. I didn’t want to turn it off. Instead, I turned it down an infinitesimal amount and addressed my son’s concerns.
“Alexander,” I said, bending over to talk near his face. “This is the part where they are in the swamp. The water is dark and murky, and the trees are low. They’re walking through the wet mud in the dark underbrush of the swamp.”
via Listening to Nirvana with a Two-Year-Old : The New Yorker.
Here’s The Thing About That Bakery That Won’t Serve A Gay Couple…. | The American Jesus
Which is why this story of a bakery that won’t serve gay couples is really just symptomatic of a deeper problem that nearly all of us in the church suffer from – a lack of real, genuine, embodied love.
More often than not, love for enemies has become something we merely affirm intellectually, not something we actually incarnate with our lives.
Worse yet, many of us in the church are embracing this sort of us vs. them mentality as a bizarre form of persecution in which the response of the faithful must be to fight the enemy so the church can remain pure.
via Here’s The Thing About That Bakery That Won’t Serve A Gay Couple…. | The American Jesus.
