Well worth reading: writer and runner Haruki Murakami’s short reflections on the Boston marathon—the marathon itself, and what it means to runners—in the New Yorker: Emotional scars may be similar. In a sense, the real pain begins only after some time has passed, after you’ve overcome the initial shock and things have begun to settle. Only once you’ve climbed the steep slope and emerged onto level ground do you begin to feel how much you’ve been hurting up till then. The... Read more
One of my favorite poets is Luci Shaw, and one of my favorite writers/people (and alumnus of the MFA program I’m currently finishing at Seattle Pacific University) is my friend Allison Backous Troy, who recently wrote about Luci’s work for the Good Letters blog. Luci’s poetry has taught me this: paying attention is hard, holy work, and we must do it all the time. And we must bring others to see what we see, make them stare a little longer... Read more
Well, this is just flat-out cool: you can now listen to the actual voice of Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone. Read more
Over at The High Calling last week, Bob Robinson offered some simple, foundational thoughts on finding your calling. This one stuck out to me: The primary calling does not change, but it manifests itself in different ways in different times and places in which God places us. God knew you’d be employed where you are now employed. He knows that this is not your ultimate destination to fulfill your calling. He also knows that there are things he is calling... Read more
This popped up on my Facebook feed this week and made me smile enough that I wanted to pass it along: Tough economic times and growing poverty in much of Europe are reviving a humble tradition that began some one-hundred years ago in the Italian city of Naples. It’s called caffè sospeso — “suspended coffee”: A customer pays in advance for a person who cannot afford a cup of coffee. The article goes on to explain that the barista keeps... Read more
Be sure to check out the video over at The High Calling about avoiding complacency—a short discussion with Andy Crouch: So we need to ask what could we add here, what could we change here that would open up again the possibility for people to really flourish as they do this part of the work that we do. Read more
Recently, over at Christianity Today, Tim Keller (pastor of New York City’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church) talked with Andy Crouch about work and faith and lots of other things. It’s well worth a read. One piece stood out to me: One thing emerging adults say sometimes is a further step from what we’re talking about: “I hate my job. It’s not just like I don’t have a lot of power—I really can’t stand what I have to do every day.” How would you... Read more
This semester, I’ve been teaching a class on postmodern theory and culture to my undergraduates, and so we spend a lot of time talking about irony and whether we ought to engage in it quite as much as we do. So it was with interest that I read Russ Ramsey’s piece on “the beautiful flaw in liking things ironically.” I believe the phenomenon of liking things ironically is cynical, disingenuous, and self-protective. It comes across to me as more of a... Read more
My friend Shannon Huffman Polson is a talented writer and a great mother, and her beautiful post on the Eucharist at the Good Letters blog combines both of these. The word eucharist comes from the Greek eucharistos, meaning grateful. At first I did not know enough to be grateful. I came to the table to be reminded that God was in me, that maybe this meant I was still alive. Then I came to be grateful for God in my life, even if some... Read more
Mark D. Roberts
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Learning a New Language
There’s an interesting piece in The Curator about our new brains—new, that is, because of technology—and some of the positive possibilities inherent in technologies we usually decry: It is too easy to play doomsday prophet and long for a day of Luddite purity. Von Ahn and people like him hope to use the advance of technology as a kind of corrective force for itself and the destructive parts of human nature. Gamification has been adopted by many in the education world;... Read more