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Category Archives: Books
“When the Gods Returned to Earth”
One of the things you find on almost every copy of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring is a quote from C. S. Lewis. “Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron; here … Continue reading
Formation and What You Love
These past few weeks I’ve had the opportunity to work through the concept of formation with some of my peers. It’s been an interesting journey made even more interesting by the thoughts of James K. A. Smith. Smith’s new book, … Continue reading
Generating Hope
Every spring, I ask my students questions from an old “discussion questions for youth groups” book. This past week, one of the questions concerned what period of time students would live in if they could choose a pre-2000 life. The … Continue reading
To Market, To Market (or: we are the data)
The spring of great reading has sprung. The local Barnes & Noble had a few copies of Douglas Rushkoff’s new book, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus. In this video, he talks about markets (medieval) and marketing (way too modern). … Continue reading
Independence and Inheritance
Sometimes it feels like we’re all living in a kind of (time) bubble. Contemporary society floats above the mire of history untethered, we think. In this selection from For Common Things, Jedidiah Purdy might beg to differ: What we should … Continue reading
Maneuvering the Public/Private Divide
One of the trickier parts of being a teacher is how the work you do seeps into life beyond the classroom. It is not uncommon to hear teachers say something like “sometimes I wish I had work that I could … Continue reading
A High-Five Story
Here’s an interesting video from the folks at Laity Lodge. It involves one of my favorite writers (James K. A. Smith) and one of my favorite musicians (Andy Gullahorn). It’s a slightly awkward video, as it might seem to make … Continue reading
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Doing Good Work
From Purdy’s For Common Things: One thing that a culture does is give people ways of thinking about what they are doing. They can see the connections among their work, their talents and the needs of the world. They perceive … Continue reading
“Stable, Certain, Solid Things”
One of the things that is clear from the outset of reading For Common Things is that Purdy is a man shaped by a time (perhaps both personal and historic) that has really established his thinking in a fundamental way. … Continue reading
The Contemporary Question of the Self
One of the basic questions every worldview tries to answer (thank you, James Sire) concerns the nature of humanity. In class we often talk about whether man is good or evil by nature, how much choice we actually have in … Continue reading
Space Enough, and Time 