Tsundoku

The Japanese have a word for this affliction: tsundoku. It means those piles of books that you buy, but haven’t yet found time to read; those books that you know you simply can’t live without, which then just stack up, month after month.

-Huw Lewis-Jones, “Mapping Memories” from The Writer’s Map

Alien Abduction

Alien abduction is part of the American poetry of loneliness.

-M. T. Anderson, He Laughed With His Other Mouths, 50.

Man Up

If the only way around distress is to stop loving, well, then, let us be men about it and settle for distress.

-Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb, 183.

Two Types of People

It is probably possible to divide the human race into butter-eaters and non-butter-eaters. I’m not sure what the division really says about us (and no wise man should go around looking for more divisions than we already have), but I am sure where my sympathies lie. I find cold butter simply irresistible.

-Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb, 151.

Living with Achish

David is more or less doing what he has to do: surviving as best he can under conditions that are decidedly uncongenial to what we’re apt to call “the spiritual life.” He doesn’t stand up in indignation against Achish, confront his Philistine culture of brutality and idolatry. He doesn’t get on his moral high horse and announce to Achish that the only way he can in good conscience serve him is as a noncombatant and offer his company’s good Samaritan experience and expertise in his service. None of that. He lives not only on the money economy of Philistine Gath but also on the moral economy.

The storyteller doesn’t say that this is the right thing to do, simply that this is what David does. And in precisely these conditions, God works out his purposes. God protects David from violating the covenant; he guards David’s faithfulness to his anointing; he works out his salvation. The primary concern of the spiritual life isn’t what we do for God but what God does for us.

...What I want to say is this: God is perfectly capable of working out his purposes in our lives even when we can’t lift a finger to help. Better yet, God is faithfully working out our salvation even when every time we lift a finger it seems to contribute to the wrong side, the Philistine side.

-Eugene Peterson, Leap Over a Wall, 98-99.

Vocation

Man’s real work is to look at the things of the world and to love them for what they are. That is, after all, what God does, and man was not made in God’s image for nothing.

-Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb, 19.

Peel an Orange

...Peel an orange. Do it lovingly—in perfect quarters like little boats, or in staggered exfoliations like a flat map of the round world, or in one long spiral, as my grandfather used to do. Nothing is more likely to become garbage than orange rind; but for as long as anyone looks at it in delight, it stands a million triumphant miles from the trash heap. That, you know, is why the world exists at all. It remains outside the cosmic garbage can of nothingness, not because it is such a solemn necessity that nobody can get rid of it, but because it is the orange peel hung on God’s chandelier, the wishbone in His kitchen closet. He likes it; therefore it stays. The whole marvelous collection of stones, skins, feathers, and string exists because at least one lover has never quite taken His eye off it, because the Dominus vivificans has his delight with the sons of men.

-Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb, 4-5.

Amateur Lovers

The world may or may not need another cookbook, but it needs all the lovers—amateurs—it can get. It is a gorgeous old place, full of clownish graces and beautiful drolleries, and it has enough textures, tastes, and smells to keep us intrigued for more time than we have. Unfortunately, however, our response to its loveliness is not always delight: It is, far more than it should be, boredom. And that is not only odd, it is tragic; for boredom is not neutral—it is the fertilizing principal of unloveliness.

-Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb, 3-4.

Exasperation

At [exasperation's] heart is a self-exaltation over others, and a dissatisfaction with the way God is ordering and orchestrating the events of our lives.

-Sinclair Ferguson, Devoted to God

Morning Prayer

Oh God, the Author of all good,
     I come to thee for the grace another day will require for its duties and events.

I step out into a wicked world,
I carry about with me a wicked heart,
I know that without thee I can do nothing,
     that everything with which I shall be concerned,
     however harmless in itself,
     may prove an occasion of sin or folly,
     unless I am kept by thy power.
Hold me thou up and I shall be safe.

Preserve my understanding from subtlety of error,
     my affections from love of idols,
     my character from stain of vice,
     my profession from every form of evil.

May I engage in nothing in which I cannot implore thy blessing,
     and in which I cannot invite thy inspection.

Prosper me in lawful undertakings,
     or prepare me for disappointments.

Give me neither poverty nor riches;
     feed me with food convenient for me,
     lest I be full and deny thee and say, Who is the Lord?
     or be poor, and steal, and take thy name in vain.

May every creature be made good to me by prayer and thy will;
Teach me how to use the world, and not abuse it,
     to improve my talents,
     to redeem my time,
     to walk in wisdom toward those without, and in kindness to those within,
     to do good to all men, and especially my fellow Christians

And to thee be the glory.

-The Valley of Vision