February 2012
1 post
4 tags
December 2011
2 posts
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Shepards, why this jubilee?
Immensity, cloister’d in thy dear womb, Now leaves His well-beloved imprisonment. There he hath made himself to his intent Weak enough, now into our world to come. But O ! for thee, for Him, hath th’ inn no room ? Yet lay Him in this stall, and from th’ orient, Stars, and wise men will travel to prevent The effects of Herod’s jealous general...
3 tags
(Not) All Who Wander Are Lost
ayjay:
“I really enjoyed doing this interview with Sarah Green at Harvard Business Review for their podcasting series. The title “The Myth of Monotasking” is based on the idea that the brain doesn’t know how to monotask, in fact the term “multitasking” doesn’t really mean much of anything when you think about it carefully since virtually everything we do as humans involves coordinating multiple...
November 2011
1 post
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Lincoln Inaugurates Thanksgiving
It was President Lincoln who inaugurated Thanksgiving Day, in 1863, during the Civil War:
A Proclamation. The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a...
October 2011
1 post
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September 2011
1 post
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“I don’t really think it’s possible for humans to be at the same time conscious...”
– Christian Wiman, Gazing into the Abyss
August 2011
2 posts
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Yet Always Rejoicing
Lykee Li - Sadness is a Blessing
Warning: this is chalk full of awkward tension. To say nothing of the videography itself (Lykke Li’s dancing, Stellan’s facial expressions, or the overall rampant Swedishness) this is piece leaves a strange indent.
Sadness is a blessing Sadness is a pearl Sadness is my boyfriend Oh sadness I’m your girl.
Pretty good chorus there Lykke Li. ...
July 2011
4 posts
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“Great is this force of memory, exceedingly great, O my God; a large and...”
– St. Augustine
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June 2011
2 posts
1 tag
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This poem is, among other things, a bit of whimsy...
May 2011
5 posts
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Vocation and Another
“It comes from the goodness that is the wood of the pipe, when the pipe is truly made,” said Felimid, “and that goodness is revealed when the pipe is blown by someone who has a similar goodness in his soul, as well as patience to seek out the secrets that lie hidden within the pipe. But there must be no wood in his soul.” Faste’s scribe ran forward...
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“We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in...”
– Hans Urs von Balthasar
April 2011
2 posts
2 tags
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Julianna Barwick - Keep Up The Good Work
...
March 2011
2 posts
3 tags
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Happy Is England
Happy is England! I could be content To see no other verdure than its own; To feel no other breezes than are blown Through its tall woods with high romances blent; Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment For skies Italian, and an inward groan To sit upon an Alp as on a throne, And half forget what world or worldling meant. Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters: Enough...
January 2011
5 posts
4 tags
Disrespect for the Future
Came across this bit of nice perception:
“Every time we postpone some necessary event—whether we put off doing the dishes till morning or defer an operation or some difficult labor or study—we do so with the implication that present time is more important than future time (for if we wished the future to be as free and comfortable as we wish the present to be, we would perform the necessary actions...
4 tags
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Martin Luther King Jr. on Loving Your Enemies
This is a transcription of a speech Martin Luther King Jr. gave in 1957 on the subject of loving your enemies, and the link is posted here, along with a few excerpts, in the spirit of his holiday (though a few days late). It is a beautiful speech, and one that was given six years prior to the famous “I Have a Dream” speech. It is nice to read a different kind of speech from this...
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December 2010
4 posts
3 tags
1 tag
Is It Christmas? →
YES
…venite adoremus
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“Bold urbanist projects proved to be one thing, while life turned out to be...”
– Vaclav Havel
2 tags
November 2010
4 posts
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who are you,little i (five or six years old) peering from some high window;at the gold of november sunset (and feeling:that if day has to become night this is a beautiful way)
-E. E. Cummings
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“100th Post! That is, 100 messages home from the bottom of the sea.”
– Esteban
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Saint Francis Has a Nightmare
from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History collection.
I, Esteban, am a corpse myself, so this picture hits especially close to home. Look at that diversity millions of years of evolution has produced, and how neatly we have it - in drawers! You can read about the collection on the Smithsonian website. No doubt it is a great treasure. Part of me is very grateful, and indeed even...
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“Honor is like an island, rugged and without shores; once we have left it, we can...”
– Boileau
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October 2010
3 posts
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September 2010
4 posts
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Mogwai - The Sun Smells Too Loud
So indeed it...
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On the Miserableness of Modern English
Here are two great writers, both from England, who addressed the state of modern English in a way that is still helpful and relevant.
George Orwell writes in 1946 in “Politics and the English Language”
Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything...
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August 2010
1 post
July 2010
5 posts
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“Two hundred years ago, the London shop boys yelled at people going by, What do...”
– Jack Gilbert, The Great Fires
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WatchUn Concert A Emporter / A Take Away Show
You may know about this already but go here now and watch these amazing videos. There are over a hundred! The site is in French so that makes things a little difficult for some of us to know for sure what is actually happening. But one thing is clear, these francophones manage by some sort of noir magic to trick these poor famous musicians into doing...
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Have a Hobby
Blessed, therefore, is the man or woman with a hobby, with some big, strong, intellectual or artistic interest aside from the main line of work. In the arithmetic of the spirit two things may be less than one. If your life is very much over-burdened with routine work, then add another task, and the strain of the whole is less than that of the part. This cannot be shown in a sum upon the...
1 tag
June 2010
2 posts
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“The soul is like a wild animal-tough, resilient, savvy, self-sufficient, and yet...”
– Parker Palmer