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Paul Graham, in Taste for Makers said:
Strangely enough, if you want to make something that will appeal to future generations, one way to do it is to try to appeal to past generations. It’s hard to guess what the future will be like, but we can be sure it will be like the past in caring nothing for present fashions. So if you can make something that appeals to people today and would also have appealed to people in 1500, there is a good chance it will appeal to people in 2500.
[via Psybertron]
“Love for God that does not result in Christian education for Christian children is not love for Him at all”
– Douglas Wilson, The Case For Classical Christian Education
Aaron and I went to Richie’s CS Lewis lecture this afternoon. Today Harry Ricketts focused on The Last Battle. Very stimulating again. I was particularly struck (between the eyes, even) when he read a quotation featuring the stable which is bigger on the inside, and Lucy mentions a stable in our world that once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world. That bit had always seemd a bit trite and obvious to me in the past, but today it hit me that we are living in the Narnia world, everything that’s true in the books is at least as true here. So the books are bigger on the inside too.
This site, although not on the same deep philosophical level as many of the other links referred to on this blog, is nevertheless good for understanding a few of the Psalms. In fact, for my tired brain it was refreshingly simple.
Woot! all food poisioning or whatever it was is gone and I am going to work SO HARD today.
Suzuki RAN, ’90, 50cc, just had exhaust system cleaned and choke fixed, red, cool ‘retro’ shape. “A real goer”. Offers welcome.
I saw the second half of Troy a couple of weeks ago on pirated DVD. I really liked it. The fight between Achilles and that other guy outside the city walls was choice. I even liked Achilles’ wee speech (“the gods envy us”) to his really pretty girlfriend.
I’ve just finished the Archbishop of Canterbury‘s book Lost Icons. It was worthwhile. Quite esoteric language, but perhaps that is necessary when making the kind of sytem-wide critiques of ‘North Atlantic society’ that he does. He concludes the book with the following:
The ‘lost icons’ of this book have been clusters of convention and imagination, images of possible lives or modes of life, possible positions to occupy in a world that is inexorably one of time and loss. But as the discussion has developed, it has hinted more and more at a single, focal area of lost imagination, what I have called the lost soul. And this loss, I’ve suggested is inextricably linked with the loss of what is encoded in actual icons of Christian tradition and usage – the Other who does not compete, with whom I don’t have to and can’t bargain; the Other beyond violence, the regard that will not be evaded or deflected, yet has and seeks no advantage. What has been culturally lost, the sense of being educated into adult choice, the possibility (tantalisingly both political and more political) of social miracle, active appropriation of a common good, the possibility of letting go of a possessed and defended image of the moral self, abstractly free, self-nuturing – all this will remain lost without a recovered confidence in the therapeutic Other, not ‘there’ for examination, for contest, even for simple consolation; so hard to say anything about without risking the corruption of the consolatory voice. But sometimes, whatever the risk, we have to force ourselves to talk, not of consolation but of hope, of what is not or cannot be lost. We can choose death, but we don’t have to. What we are present to is neither created nor extinguished by our will. The iconic eye remains wakeful.
I can’t find my notebook. This is distressing as approximately 40% of life is in there, my vegetal memory.
Doves song Far From Grace by itself is worth the $24.95 for the Lost Sides b-sides & remixes 2-CD set.
The notebook came back by some anonymous angel’s efforts, huzzah!
Said Fyodor Dostoevsky:
At some thoughts one stands perplexed—especially at the sight of men’s sin—and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that, once and for all, you may subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.
Every day and every hour, every minute, walk around yourself and watch yourself, and see that your image is a seemly one. If you pass by a little child, and pass by spitefully, with ugly words or wrathful heart, you may not notice the child, but he will see you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You may not know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him, and it may grow, all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself an active, benevolent love.
Brothers, love is a teacher, but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire; it is dearly bought; it is won by slow, long labor. We must love not only occasionally, or for a moment, but for ever. Everyone, even the wicked can love occasionally…
[via dd]
