Luke's Commonplace Book

Joshua Scott, via

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:03:04 -0600

"Not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap."

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:42:44 -0600

“Not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap.”

- Ira Glass

"Since the world began, we have gone about our work quietly, resisting the urge to generalize,..."

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:34:00 -0600

“Since the world began, we have gone about our work quietly, resisting the urge to generalize, valuing the individual over the group, the actual over the conceptual, the inherent sweetness of the present moment over the theoretically peaceful future to be obtained via murder. Many of us have trouble sleeping and lie awake at night, worrying about something catastrophic befalling someone we love. We rise in the morning with no plans to convert anyone via beating, humiliation, or invasion. To tell the truth, we are tired. We work. We would just like some peace and quiet. When wrong, we think about it awhile, then apologize. We stand under awnings during urban thunderstorms, moved to thoughtfulness by the troubled, umbrella-tinged faces rushing by. In moments of crisis, we pat one another awkwardly on the back, mumbling shy truisms. Rushing to an appointment, remembering a friend who has passed away, our eyes well with tears and we think: Well, my God, he could be a pain, but still I’m lucky to have known him.”

- Manifesto: People Reluctant to Kill for an Abstraction, George Saunders

"… those of us who have the nerve to call ourselves Christians will do well to be extremely..."

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:54:21 -0600

“… those of us who have the nerve to call ourselves Christians will do well to be extremely reticent on the subject. Indeed, it is almost the definition of a Christian that he is somebody who knows he isn’t one, either in faith or morals. Where faith is concerned, very few of us have the right to say more than—to vary a saying of Simone Weil’s—“I believe in a God who is like the True God in everything except that he does not exist, for I have not yet reached the point where God exists.” As for loving and forgiving our enemies, the less we say about that the better. Our lack of faith and love are facts we have to acknowledge, but we shall not improve either by a morbid and essentially narcissistic moaning over our deficiencies. Let us rather ask, with caution and humour—given our time and place and talents, what, if our faith and love were perfect, would we be glad to find it obvious to do?”

- W.H. Auden

Sam Weber does Lord of the Flies, high school English teachers...

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:33:05 -0500

Sam Weber does Lord of the Flies, high school English teachers rejoice. (via this isn’t happiness)

Manual Espresso Maker by Presso, via Apartment Therapy

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:10:49 -0500

Manual Espresso Maker by Presso, via Apartment Therapy

"But it is possible to achieve momentary harmony through creative work. Max has all his Wild Things..."

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:17:17 -0500

“But it is possible to achieve momentary harmony through creative work. Max has all his Wild Things at peace when he is immersed in building a fort or when he is giving another his complete attention. This isn’t the good life through heroic self-analysis but through mundane, self-forgetting effort, and through everyday routines.”

- David Brooks

"It makes me very happy to see that, in the last three years of his life, he took to writing poems,..."

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 20:06:10 -0500

“It makes me very happy to see that, in the last three years of his life, he took to writing poems, for it is proof to me that he had at last acquired a serenity of mind for which he had long prayed. When a man can occupy himself with counting syllables, either he has not yet attempted any spiritual climb, or he is over the hump.”

- W.H. Auden on Dag Hammarskjöld (via portraitoftheartistasayoungman)

"His heart bumped like a dryer with shoes in it."

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 16:04:40 -0500

“His heart bumped like a dryer with shoes in it.”

- DFW, IJ

"What if education wasn’t first and foremost about what we know, but about what we love?"

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 16:02:14 -0500

“What if education wasn’t first and foremost about what we know, but about what we love?”

- James K.A. Smith

one year ago

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 15:54:35 -0500

one year ago

a DFW quote, via Kottke

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:28:00 -0500

a DFW quote, via Kottke:

“The really important kind of freedom,’ said Wallace, ‘involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom… The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.’”

This kid is awesome in so many ways

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 12:22:00 -0500

This kid is awesome in so many ways:

make sure you watch the video all the way to the end

"[The fact that early Christians were completely unlike us in terms of world view and cultural..."

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:14:42 -0500

“[The fact that early Christians were completely unlike us in terms of world view and cultural context] is an unsettling result, to be sure, for those accustomed to read these writings as sacred Scripture, and in particular for Protestants who traditionally emphasize that anyone at all can read and interpret that Bible. The truth of the matter, for those readers without knowledge of ancient languages, ancient cultures, and other such subjects, the meaning of the Bible is at times not all clear, while at other times it can seem to clearly mean things that it is unlikely to have meant in its original context. The possibility of misunderstanding a reader today in a Western cultural setting is at least as great as the chances that the same individual will experience a cultural or linguistic misunderstanding if traveling to a foreign culture. By emphasizing these points, I do not wish to discourage interested individuals from reading the Bible in English translation – far from it. it is important, however, for all readers to understand that they are having the Bible interpreted for them by those who have translated it into their native language and are then engaging in interpretation themselves through the act of reading. The books they are reading derive from a very different world, and therefore one should not cease reading but should utilize the multitude of books and other resources that scholars have made available, expressly with the aim of helping readers make sense of these ancient texts. Having done that, one should then go on to express one’s conclusions about what these writings mean with an appropriate humility and tentativeness, aware that what seems obvious to a reader today may not have been what seemed obvious to a first-century reader.”

- James McGrath (via azspot)

"The eyes open to a cry of pulleys, And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul Hangs for a moment..."

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:39:00 -0500

“The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.”

- Richard Wilbur, “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World” (via viz)

"Unfortunately for infertile Serbs, Dabic’s arrest ended the testicle experiments."

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:54:43 -0500

“Unfortunately for infertile Serbs, Dabic’s arrest ended the testicle experiments.”

- NYT

"It was like one of those dreams where you’re filled with some extravagant feeling you might never..."

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:40:59 -0500

“It was like one of those dreams where you’re filled with some extravagant feeling you might never have in life, it doesn’t matter what it is, even guilt or dread, and you learn from it what an amazing instrument you are, so to speak, what a power you have to experience beyond anything you might ever actually need.”

- Reverend John Ames (in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead) (via wesleyhill)

"That most Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive..."

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:46:25 -0500

“That most Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking.”

- David Foster Wallace in Infinite Jest

"You know when you’re a kid and you get crayons and papers and just draw whatever you want and..."

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:28:21 -0500

“You know when you’re a kid and you get crayons and papers and just draw whatever you want and it’s just a bunch of messy lines, but to you it makes sense, and then they put it on the fridge? From that point on, you’re always trying to get back on the fridge, you start drawing things that look like something, like, the more it looks like a horse, the more chance you have of getting it on the fridge. We wanted to get back to that place before we were trying to make the fridge. We wanted to work with people who hadn’t been affected in that way yet.”

- Ryan Gosling

"what we’re reading or listening to, or rather, what we are getting into lately is in some sense the..."

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:21:00 -0500

“what we’re reading or listening to, or rather, what we are getting into lately is in some sense the most profound question we can ask each other”

- David Dark, qtd. in this enjoyable post (via wesleyhill)