solitude and community

“Only in fellowship do we learn to be rightly alone and only in aloneness do we learn to be rightly in fellowship.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

paper and the pulpit

"I confess that I have not invariably been comfortable in front of a pulpit; I have never been comfortable behind one. To be behind a pulpit is always a forcible reminder to me that I am an essayist, and in many ways a dissenter. An essayist is, literally, a writer who attempts to tell the truth. Preachers must resign themselves to being either right or wrong; an essayist, when proved wrong, may claim to have been 'just practicing.' An essayist is privileged to speak without institutional authorization. A dissenter, of course, must speak without privilege." — Wendell Berry, "Christianity and The Survival of Creation"

love the questions

"You are so young and before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." — Letters To A Young Poet, Ranier Maria Rilke, July 16th, 1903, p. 27

living out the questions

I said, "Well," for now I was ashamed, "I had this feeling maybe I had been called."
"And you may have been right. But not to what you thought. Not to what you think. You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out—perhaps a little at a time."
"And how long is that going to take?"
"I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps."
"That could be a long time."
"I will tell you a further mystery," he said. "It may take longer."

— Jayber Crow: The Life Story of Jayber Crow, Barber, of the Port William Membership, as written by himself by Wendell Berry

too much power, too little knowledge

"But a man with a machine and inadequate culture—such as I was when I made my pond—is a pestilence. He shakes more than he can hold." — Wendell Berry, "Damage" in What Are People For?

In what ways do we have too much power and too little knowledge?

happiness and peace?

"God cannot give us happiness and peace apart from himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing." — C.S. Lewis

"The God and Father of Jesus Christ could never possibly be satisfied with less than giving himself to his own." — George McDonald

peacemakers?

"Especially among Christians in positions of great wealth and power, the idea of reading the Gospels and keeping Jesus’s commandments as stated therein has been replaced by a curious process of logic. According to this process, people first declare themselves to be followers of Christ, and then they assume that whatever they say or do merits the adjective 'Christian.'

"This process appears to have been dominant among Christian heads of state ever since Christianity became politically respectable. From this accommodation has proceeded a monstrous history of Christian violence. War after war has been prosecuted by bloodthirsty Christians, and to the profit of greedy Christians, as if Christ had never been born and the Gospels never written. I may have missed something, but I know of no Christian nation and no Christian leader from whose conduct the teachings of Christ could be inferred.

"One cannot be aware both of the history of Christian war and of the contents of the Gospels without feeling that something is amiss. One may feel that, in the name of honesty, Christians ought either to quit fighting or quit calling themselves Christians."

— Wendell Berry, Blessed are the Peacemakers: Christ's Teachings about Love, Compassion & Forgiveness

for every man in his work

"Deliver us, we beseech thee, in our several callings, from the service of mammon, that we may do the work which thou givest us to do, in truth, in beauty, and in righteousness, with singleness of heart as thy servants, and to the benefit of our fellow men." — the prayer "For Every Man in His Work" from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer

A welcome prayer as I pursue work to provide for my family... and truth, beauty, righteousness and my fellow man.

losing truth and calling

Like any other public institution so organized, the organized church is dependent on "the economy"; it cannot survive apart from those economic practices that its truth forbids and that its vocation is to correct. If it comes to a choice between the extermination of the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field and the extermination of a building fund, the organized church will elect—indeed, has already elected—to save the building fund. The irony is compounded and made harder to bear by the fact that the building fund can be preserved by crude applications of money, but fowls of the air and the lilies of the field can be preserved only by true religion, by the practice of a proper love and respect for them as creatures of God. No wonder so many sermons are devoted to exclusively "spiritual" subjects. If one is living by the tithes of history's most destructive economy, then the disembodiment of the soul becomes the chief of worldly conveniences. — Wendell Berry, "God and Country" in What Are People For?

paraphrastic vs. periphrastic

"*All* Bibles are paraphrastic (not to be confused with periphrastic, which only some Bibles are)." — Abraham Piper on Twitter

par·a·phrase (pr-frz)
n.
1. A restatement of a text or passage in another form or other words, often to clarify meaning.


periphrasis [pəˈrɪfrəsɪs]
n pl -rases [-rəˌsiːz]
1. a roundabout way of expressing something; circumlocution

Definitions from The Free Dictionary

when fields and wood agree

"...When fields and wood agree, they make a rhyme
That stirs in distant memory the whole
First Sabbath's song that no largess of time
Or hope or sorrow wholly can recall.

But harmony of earth is Heaven-made,
Heaven-making, is promise and is prayer,
A little song to keep us unafraid,
An earthly music magnified in air."

— Wendell Berry, "1979 VII" from A Timbered Choir

mmm pain

"We are not necessarily doubting God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be." — C.S. Lewis

crazy gospel

"If you're never misunderstood to mean 'Let's sin so grace may abound,' you're not preaching gospel." — Abraham Piper on Twitter

anger for wimps

"Disappointment is anger for wimps." — Gregory House M.D.

party jesus

"Do you really believe in the deity of Christ? If he came to earth tomorrow, would your God go out partying with sinners? If not, then Jesus must not be him." — Wesley Hill on 22•words

wonderful monogamy

"To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once. It was incommensurate with the terrible excitement of which one was talking. It showed not an exaggerated sensibility to sex but a curious insensibility to it. A man is a fool who complains that he cannot enter Eden by five gates at once. Polygamy is a lack of the realization of sex; it's like a man plucking five pears in mere absence of mind." — G.K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy

george is thankful

WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANKSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness":

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and assign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed;-- for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish Constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;-- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge;-- and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also, that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions;-- to enable us all, whether in publick or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us); and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

GIVEN under my hand, at the city of New-York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.

(signed) G. Washington

everyday grace

Every day of our Christian experience should be a day of relating to God on the basis of His grace alone. Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God's grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God's grace. — Jerry Bridges

fire with fire

We must fight fire with fire. The fire of lust's pleasures must be fought with the fire of God's pleasures. If we try to fight the fire of lust with prohibitions and threats alone—even the terrible warnings of Jesus—we will fail. We must fight it with the massive promise of superior happiness. We must swallow up the little flicker of lust's pleasure in the configuration of holy satisfaction. — John Piper in Future Grace

gospel test

"There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that it really amounts to this, that because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will resound all the more to the glory of grace. That is a very good test of gospel preaching. If my preaching and presentation of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding, then it is not the gospel." — Martin Lloyd-Jones