Tag: Quotables

Kathleen Norris

> Mystics and poets … get to play, but although much lip service is paid to both traditions in our culture, it is largely condescension. No partent really wants his or her child to grow up and become a poet; no one in a religious house really wants to live next door to a mystic.

Also…

> It was in the play of writing a poem that I first became aware that the demands of laundry might have something to do with God’s command that we worship, that we sing praise on a regular basis. Both laundry adn worship are repetitive activities with a potential for tedium, and I hate to admit it, but laundry often seems liek the more useful of the tasks. But both are the work that God has given us to do.

From Devotional Classics: the Sacramental Life

Puritan Prayer

Move over Pentecostals:

> After the people had gathered in the meetinghouse, “men with their heads uncovered the women covered,” the pastor opened worship with prayer, wh ich lasted “about a quarter of an hour.” …

>The major prayer wa alwo about equal to the sermon in length. Thacher wrote on one occasion that he “stood about three hours in prayer and preaching.” On another: “God was pleased graciously to assist me much beyond my expectation. Blessed be his holy name for it. I was near an hour and half in my first prayer and my heart much drawn out in it and an hour in the sermon.”

>Jasper Danckaerts likewise attested to the length of the prayers. “We went to church, but there was only one minister in the pulpit, who made a prayer an hour long, and preached the same length of time, when some verses were sung. We expected something particular in the afternoon, but there was nothing more than usual.” On a fast day he even reported that “a minister made a prayer in the pulpit, of full two hours in length.”

> In the afternoon “three of four hours were consumed with nothing except prayers, three ministers relieving each other alternately.” THe norm on a common Sabbath seems to have been a major prayer of sixty to ninety minutes, with the sermon about the same.”

This is from Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe’s classic on New England Puritan devotional life, [The Practice of Piety](http://www.amazon.com/Practice-Piety-Devotional-Disciplines-Seventeenth/dp/0807841455). I’d heard of the Puritan practice of 3-5 hour church services, complete with ushers armed with hot pokers to keep the parishoners awake. Even as somebody who *loves* long services, it was a little unnerving for me. I never realized though, that approximately half of the service was consumed with a single public prayer. I know it probably aims to high for today’s culture, but honestly, this is something I could really get behind. Continue reading “Puritan Prayer”

First Principles

The central story of scripture is the issue of first, how we know something is true, and then second, what does one does about it. Placed as prominently as possible in the key narratives of both the first and Second Adam is the same temptation: to ignore the direct and immediate voice of God and to act independently according to some other principle.

–Jon Ruthven, [Between Two Worlds](http://home.regent.edu/ruthven/2Worlds.htm)

An Interesting Set of Alternatives

Theologically speaking, and forced to make a choice, between Luther and Zwinglii, I’d side with Luther. But between Luther and Calvin, I’d go with Calvin. But then, forced to choose between Calvin and myself, I choose me.

I guess that makes me an evangelical.

Valerie: *What if you were forced to choose between you and your wife?*
Me: *There is no choice to make.*
Valerie: *Right. So you’d choose me, huh?*

On the Media

[S. M. Hutchens](http://merecomments.typepad.com/merecomments/) on [Television](http://merecomments.typepad.com/merecomments/2005/03/the_other_catho.html):

> “If you are thinking that very, very few people do not watch television, you are right—that also has been our experience. But almost every household we have known that does not have a television is presided over by at least one Ph. D.—and invariably the doctorate is in a field that requires hard, skilled mental work in mastering languages other than one’s own, like the languages of math, physics, or ancient Mesopotamia. Not all doctor’s degrees are like this, you know.”

> “I have found that many people who have to maintain their minds at top form have an intuitive dislike of having them manipulated by the organs of the mass media, which they find not only stupid, but having a drug-like quality that does something they don’t like to the efficiency and quality of their own thinking. It’s hard to explain, but it’s an opinion I have found that people like us share.”

He also describes their decision not to have a TV in the house. Looks like [My mom](http://mingobird.blogspot.com) forgot to get the memo about the PhD. This guy just described my house growing up, motivations and reasoning included. Valerie and I will just have to make up the difference.

Hat tip: [TruePravda](http://www.jaredbridges.net/)

It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow

The front page of your paper is bound to make you sad
Especially if you’re the worrying sort
So turn the front page over where the news is not so bad
There’s consolation in the weather report

It’s a lovely day tomorrow
Tomorrow is a lovely day
Come and feast your tear dimmed eyes
On tomorrow’s clear blue skies

If today your heart is weary
If ev’ry little thing looks gray
Just forget your troubles and learn to say
[Tomorrow is a lovely day](http://www.weather.com/activities/other/other/weather/tenday-details.html?locid=28209&dayNum=1&from=weekend).

(Iriving Berlin)