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A Story Culture
A Story Culture ➔ Interesting article about attention to the hierarchy of information, data, knowledge, and wisdom at Rands in Repose titled, A Story Culture. The point: people like stories, and synthesis-ability (wisdom) produces the best stories.
The construction of a story has very little to do with writing. It has to do with the semi-magical process of you taking disparate pieces of information, combining them into something new, which includes your experience and understanding, and then giving them to someone else.
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Showing Up Early
If 80% of success is just showing up, 90% is showing up early.
—Jeffrey Zeldman, Free Advice: Show Up Early
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Stop the World
Stop the World ➔ Last week, George Packer wrote an article titled, Stop the World, for The New Yorker. Though I use Twitter, I still enjoyed his old-media world cynicism, as well as his unwritten call to consider how much we imbibe.
The notion of sending and getting brief updates to and from dozens or thousands of people every few minutes is an image from information hell. I’m told that Twitter is a river into which I can dip my cup whenever I want.
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Omnivorous Attentiveness
[C. S. Lewis had] omnivorous attentiveness.
—Alan Jacobs on C. S. Lewis in The Narnian, quoted by Piper in Lessons from an Inconsolable Soul
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treacle
trea•cle noun – [tree-k*uh*l]
definition: lit-British word for “molasses”; the syrup remaining after sugar is crystallized out of cane or beet juice . fig-contrived or unrestrained sentimentality, cloying speech or flattery.
example usage:
Multitudes of children raised on a treacly diet of seeker-sensitive religion have grown up to associate the label evangelical with superficiality.
Phil Johnson, The Neo-Liberal Stealth Offensive
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Behind His Back
Gossip involves saying behind a person’s back what you would never say to his or her face. Flattery means saying to a person’s face what you would never say behind his or her back.
—R. Kent Hughes, Disciplines of a Godly Man, 139
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Ends up as a Racket
Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.
—Eric Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time, quoted by Carl Trueman, The Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
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First, Care
Own your distractions, resist fiddly half-measures, and never for a minute allow yourself to believe that productivity systems, space pens, or a writing app that plays new age music while you stare at a blank page in full-screen mode can ever teach you anything about how to care.
—Merlin Mann, First, Care
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Fantastic but Subordinate
A Really Fantastic End, but Still Subordinate Doug Wilson responded to Derek Thomas’ recent article in Tabletalk regarding where evangelism rates on the ladder of importance.
One of the glories of the Reformation was that it restored the glory of God as the foundation of all things. It is infinitely more important that God be glorified than that I be saved. Fortunately for us, He is glorified in the salvation of sinners, but for us to put evangelism front and center is one of the best and surest ways to dilute the gospel itself.
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A Less Busy Heart
Learning to pray doesn’t offer you a less busy life; it offers you a less busy heart.
—Paul Miller, A Praying Life, 23
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Bad Christian Writing
Bad Christian writing is usually bad because it is derivative and workmanlike. No new insights. No panache.
—Kevin DeYoung, On Writing, Pt 3
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Running to Heaven
What would they judge of thee if they knew thy heart began to fail thee in thy journey, or thy sins began to allure thee, and to persuade thee to stop thy race? would they not call thee a thousand fools? and say, O, that he did but see what we see, feel what we feel, and taste of the dainties that we taste of! O, if he were here one quarter of an hour, to behold, to see, to feel, to taste and enjoy but the thousandth part of what we enjoy, what would he do?
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Dangerous Calling
Dangerous Calling Two messages by Paul Tripp at the 2010 Desiring God Pastor’s pre-conference seminar.
The Pastor: Who Do We Think He Is Anyway?
Ministry is war. That war is not fought in programs or finances. It is fought on the turf of your heart.
The greatest danger to the church of Christ…rests in the heart of the person that stands in the pulpit.
The Pastor: Not Yet Perfect, Still Under Attack.
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Totally Like Whatever, You Know?
Typography of “Totally like whatever, you know?” a poem by Taylor Mali.
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The Breech and Muzzle
Persecution is a weapon that kills both at the breech and at the muzzle, that, though it may strike and wound those against whom it is directed, it yet more certainly debases and degrades those who use it.
—John Brown, John Bunyan—His Life, Times and Work, 215, regarding the failure of religious suppression by force in Bunyan’s day.
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Wearing Out Hammers
It is the part of the Church to suffer rather than to strike, but it is an anvil that has worn out a good many hammers.
—John Brown, John Bunyan—His Life, Times and Work, 196, in reference to Buynan’s submission to the state.
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Communion with God
[To the Puritans], communion with God was a great thing, to evangelicals today it is a comparatively small thing. The Puritans were concerned about communion with God in a way that we are not. The measure of our concern is the little that we say about it. When Christians meet, they talk to each other about their Christian work and Christian interests, their Christian acquaintances, the state of the churches, and the problems of theology—but rarely of their daily experience with God.
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In Us and From Us
A man preacheth that sermon only well unto others which preacheth itself in his own soul. And he that doth not feed on and thrive in the digestion of the food which he provides for others will scarce make it savory unto them; yea, he knows not but the food he has provided may be poison, unless he have really tasted of it himself. If the word do not dwell with power in us, it will not pass with power from us.