Join The Underlines // The Best Of What I Read
A batch of the best highlights from what Joshua's read, .
All we have to do when reading Bleak House is to relax and let our spines take over. Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle. Let us be proud of our being vertebrates, for we are vertebrates tipped at the head with a divine flame. The brain only continues the spine: the wick really goes through the whole length of the candle. If we are not capable of enjoying that shiver, if we cannot enjoy literature, then let us give up the whole thing and concentrate on our comics, our videos, our books-of-the-week. But I think Dickens will prove stronger. (Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature [New York: Harvest, 2002], 56)
Desiring the Kingdom
James K. A. Smith
It is common today to hear Christians talk of their “brokenness.” But when you listen closely, you may discover that they are talking about their wounds, the things they have suffered, not about the evil that is in them.
Renovation of the Heart
Dallas Willard
Notice how similar the definition of liturgy is to the definition of habit. They’re both something repeated over and over, which forms you; the only difference is that a liturgy admits that it’s an act of worship. Calling habits liturgies may seem odd, but we need language to emphasize the non-neutrality of our day-to-day routines.
The Common Rule
Justin Whitmel Earley
...catch up on these, and many more highlights