Join The Underlines // The Best Of What I Read
A batch of the best highlights from what Joshua's read, .
It wasn’t until reading Genesis one day that I finally came to a theological understanding of what had been happening in the pottery shop all along. “And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food” (Genesis 2:9). This verse caught my eye because it explains the very metaphor that I had adopted to describe my pottery trips: sight and food. The stomach was made to hunger for food; the eye was made to hunger for beauty. We were made to consume beautiful things. Excellent music, great films, stunning performances—these are all food for the hungry soul.
The Common Rule
Justin Whitmel Earley
But those who are over others should shew themselves to be such that their subjects may not blush to disclose even their secrets to them; that the little ones, vexed with the waves of temptation, may have recourse to their pastor’s heart as to a mother’s breast, and wash away the defilement they foresee to themselves from the filth of the sin that buffets them in the solace of his exhortation and in the tears of prayer.
The Book of Pastoral Rule
Saint Gregory the Great
while both St. Augustine’s and St. Benedict’s rule have all kinds of tiny habits that we might either consider too inane to matter or too strict to be appropriate, we should notice that both of them had the same goal in mind: love. Both were obsessed with taking the small patterns of life and organizing them towards the big goal of life: to love God and neighbor. St. Augustine’s rule began with this sentence: “Before all things, most dear brothers, we must love God and after Him our neighbor; for these are the principal commands which have been given to us.” St. Benedict’s rule opens declaring that it means to establish “nothing harsh, nothing burdensome,” but goes on to describe walking in God’s commandments as being in the “ineffable sweetness of love.”
The Common Rule
Justin Whitmel Earley
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