Currently Reading:
Flickr Photos
Category Archives: Commonplace Book
The Joy of Teaching
What started out as a quote about the particular love of teaching turned into a call for something more from pastors. From VanHoozer and Strachan’s The Pastor as Public Theologian: Stanley Woodworth, my high school French teacher, once described the … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Commonplace Book, Faith, Teaching
Leave a comment
A Sort Of Wizards Duel
This week some of my students will start to read C. S. Lewis’s “The Weight of Glory.” Every year I read it with my students, I seem to find something new or just askew enough to strike me deeply. The … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Commonplace Book, Faith, Teaching
Leave a comment
Up Through the First Joke
From The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis: The Lion, whose eyes never blinked, stared at the animals as hard as if he was going to burn them up with his mere stare. And gradually a change came over them. The smaller … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Commonplace Book
Leave a comment
The Professional Necessity of Others
From Matthew B. Crawford’s The World Beyond Your Head: For experiences to become part of the secure, sedimented foundation of a skill, they must be criticized. Otherwise people (and the resources of language) are indispensable. Without them, your experiences are … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Commonplace Book, Teaching
Leave a comment
Having Your Attention (and eating it, too?)
Yesterday’s classic Calvin and Hobbes also reminded me of something Andy Crouch recently said about technology and the attention our screens demand from us (connected to Calvin and his appliances). From “Small Screens, Big World”: Our screens, increasingly, pay a … Continue reading
Posted in Commonplace Book, Faith, Internet
Leave a comment
Life as It Buffers
From Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island (upon seeing the dreaded swirling circle on his computer screen): But on this thought’s outer reaches lay a much less reassuring counter-thought: what if it were just a circle spinning on my screen, and nothing … Continue reading
Posted in Commonplace Book
Leave a comment
In But Not Of, Teaching and Learning Edition
Reading Alan Jacobs’ biography of C. S. Lewis, I couldn’t help but imagine what it must have been like to listen to the man lecture. Then I couldn’t help but remember how far most academic institutions have moved from a … Continue reading
The Difference Between Temporal and Eternal Things
From Augustine’s On Christian Teaching: So there are these three things which all knowledge and prophecy serve: faith, hope, and love. But faith will be replaced by the sight of visible reality, and hope by the real happiness which we shall … Continue reading
Posted in Commonplace Book
Leave a comment
Thirty-Eight Years and Never First
From the Gospel of John (English Standard Version from biblegateway.com): After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has … Continue reading
Posted in Commonplace Book
Leave a comment
Young Lewis Worried
From Alan Jacobs’ The Narnian, a biography of C. S. Lewis: I have already noted that [Lewis’s] education and his experience had combined to stifle his imaginative side; he seems to have been determined, at this stage of his life, … Continue reading
Posted in Commonplace Book
Leave a comment
Space Enough, and Time 