Creatively Advancing into Novelty
Jesus was one of a long line of people who submitted to God. So did Adam, so did Abraham, so did Moses, so did David. They each demonstrated submission to God in their own context. What follows is an excerpt from an online correspondence I had with a friend–who is a member of the Eastern…
I remember sitting with my wise old Rabbi once and hearing a baby scream. He looked at me and said, “Did you ever notice how babies come into the world with their tiny fists clenched?” “Yes,” I said. “Do you know how our sages explain that? They say that babies, not knowing any better, clench…
How else can one write but of those things which one doesn’t know, or knows badly? It is precisely here that we imagine having something to say. We write only at the frontiers of our knowledge, at the border which separates our knowledge from our ignorance and transforms the one into the other. Only in…
Perhaps, as Borges concludes in his story, “It is forgetting, not remembering, that is the essence of what makes us human. To make sense of the world we must filter it. To think,” Borgese writes, “is to forget.” I am currently enjoying Joshua Foer’s book Moonwalking with Einstein. It is a book about memory, specifically…
In general, Loquacity (rambling talk) opens the doors of the soul, and the devout warmth of the heart at once escapes. Empty talk does the same, but even more so… Empty talk is the door to criticism and slander, the spreader of false rumors and opinions, the sower of discord and strife. It stifles the…
“…even if I were to possess all knowledge, without love I would be nothing, is not simple that with love, I am ‘something’—in love, I am also nothing but, as it were, a Nothing humbly aware of itself, a Nothing paradoxically made rich through the very awareness of its lack. Only a lacking, vulnerable being…
My friend Michael and I were talking a bit about education the other night. He posted some thoughts on a book he read by Robert Adams that asks if art can indeed be taught in a college/academic setting. As far as teaching art goes, I tended to agree with this quote from Adams: “Can Photography…
Like many students who had to take an intro philosophy class in college, I was forced read Plato’s Five Dialogues. For those who don’t know, These five dialogues focus primarily on the historical character of Socrates, Plato’s teacher. In them, Socrates discusses or debates a subject, often an ethical one (friendship, piety) with a friend…