Food for Thought ~ Birthday Edition

Yes, it’s my birthday. [No, there is no 3 in my age. Ha!]

I’ll pause the Oregon Coast pictures to post links and quotes and videos from the past month.

Enjoy the buffet!

Living a Good Life

:: This Could Be the Difference Between a Life of Suffering or Joy @ UnTangled [I adore this one. Go read it.]

Suffering is resistance to what is.

Suffering is opposition to the present moment and demand for the next moment. Suffering is having this but wanting that. Suffering is the search for the next thing. Suffering is the mental roaming we do for what might be.

Suffering, for instance, is trying to read something brilliant, while wondering about something better.

:: Forty Days | Forty Sacraments @ CIVA [So gorgeous. Click on the link to see her paintings.]

I find myself in a time of waiting right now in certain facets of my life, and this project was birthed out of that—being present with waiting, present with solitude. These paintings are marking time, and they are also calling out beauty where you might not expect it—in the extremely ordinary.

Politics

:: On Jane Austen in the General Election by G.K. Chesterton [Relevant. And hilarious. And a tiny bit terrifying.] 

"A dictator has to be a demagogue; a man like Mussolini cannot be ashamed to shout. He cannot afford to be a mere gentleman. His whole power depends on convincing the populace that he knows what he wants, and wants it badly."

Books, Education, and Family Culture

:: As Soon As He Returns by my friend Nicole Mulhausen @ Book Riot

The human voice is my favorite instrument, and reading aloud is important in ways that I can hardly express. Ordinary and ancient magic: breath and sound and time, weaving a narrative. And whether it’s a story of return, Mole to his home, or a story of grand adventure, Marie-Laure and her Uncle Etienne with Jules Verne on the Nautilus, to begin aloud together, especially a longer work, always involves both risk and promise—the risk of interruption, broken narrative, and the promise that the reading will always be shared, requiring patience and fidelity, when, like Marie-Laure, we are tempted to read on alone.

:: Loving the Lost Boys: Some Thoughts on Boyhood and Reading by Zach Franzen @ Story Warren

Let me add one more point on this score: The failure to recognize male distinctness leads to a marginalization of femininity. I just read a sample reading from a 2011, fourth grade National literacy test about a girl wrestler named Daisy. A story for fourth grade boys about a girl wrestler? Why don’t boys enjoy reading?

:: For Useless Learning by Peter J. Leithart @ First Things

"Lewis points out that there is always some crisis, some alarm that demands our attention; there are always a million and one things more important than reading Homer. Yet we continue to read Homer because we are not creatures whose behavior is solely guided by a crabbed criterion of usefulness. We are creatures made in the image of a Creator who makes things that He does not need, things that are not of use to Him. As we imitate His excess, we play music and recite poetry and tell stories... We should not be ashamed of the uselessness of the liberal arts, for making what we do not need, and doing what we have no ordinary use for, is part of the glory of being made in the image of the infinitely creative God."

Constraints and Creativity

:: Two teenagers started a street school to educate poor and homeless children in Pakistan

:: Edible Spoons

 

:: Richard Turere: My invention that made peace with lions [This reminds me so much of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.]

 

Art [Movies and Music]

:: I’m a Christian and I Hate Christian Movies by Alissa Wilkinson @ Thrillist

Christian theology is rich and creative and full of imagination, that's broad enough to take up residence among all kinds of human cultures. It contains within itself the idea that art exists as a good unto itself, not just a utilitarian vehicle for messages. (In the Greek, the Bible calls humans "poems" -- I love that.) There is no reason Christian movies can't take the time to become good art. Each one that fails leaves me furious.

:: J.S. Bach - Crab Canon on a Möbius Strip

Looking for the Helpers

:: Walking The Beat In Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, Where A New Day Began Together @ npr [Sob. This one is exquisite.]

"Yes, I have been talking to you for years," Rogers said, as Clemmons recalls. "But you heard me today."

:: It was a touching sight at a Dutch Bros Coffee stand in Vancouver, where workers comforted and prayed with a woman who just lost her husband. [FOX 12 Oregon]

"We're going to do what we do every time we get someone who’s in pain or hurt. We're going to give them our love."

:: 'If We Left, They Wouldn't Have Nobody' @ npr

"I just couldn't see myself going home — next thing you know, they're in the kitchen trying to cook their own food and burn the place down," Rowland says. "Even though they wasn't our family, they were kind of like our family for this short period of time."