David Nelson

I am just a pilgrim like everyone else. These are my notes to myself. Feel welcome to peruse.

[Sarah Salviander @sarahsalviander]

Of all the loves C.S. Lewis identified

Storge - affectionate love
Philia - friendship love
Eros - romantic love
Agape - charitable love

he said that the least interesting in and of itself is eros.

Eros is the most exclusive, the most selfish, has the shortest shelf-life, and leads to way more problems than the others.

In my completely un-expert opinion, I think the reason a lot of marriages struggle is because people have a hard time accepting that eros naturally fades (or comes and goes at long intervals).*

Again, in my utterly non-professional opinion, I believe that over the years storge, philia, and agape are supposed to increase between a married couple while eros takes a back seat.

Eros seems like the force that draws people in and initially bonds them, but, man, the other loves better take over or the marriage won't last. In my flea-bitten opinion as a scientist who studies non-human things.

[*This isn't to say that spouses should neglect this part. Eros is a God-given feature of marriage. But after the first couple of years, and particularly after kids, it can't be focused on as the dominant feature. Says your friendly quasar specialist.]

[The Figen @TheFigen_]

To relieve shoulder pain.

[C. S. Lewis @CSLewisDaily]

“God has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. You are as much alone with him as if you were the only being he had ever created.” - C.S. Lewis

[Nabeel S. Qureshi @nabeelqu]

Nothing feels more foolish than when you do something that was on your todo list for 3 months and it takes you ~8 minutes

[Ramblings @ramblingsloa]

In nature, nothing is perfect.
Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways and they're still beautiful.

Alice Walker

[Nick Freiling @NickFreiling]

David Bentley Hart on the oft-neglected semicolon 👇

"A writer who disdains the semicolon is a fool. In fact, hostility to this most delicate and lyrical of punctuation marks is a sure sign of a deformed soul and a savage sensibility.

Conscious life is not a brute concatenation of discrete units of experience; it is often fluid, resistant to strict divisions and impermeable partitions, punctuated by moments of transition that are neither exactly terminal nor exactly continuous in character. Meaning, moreover, is often held together by elusive connections, ambiguous shifts of reference, mysterious coherences. And art should use whatever instruments it has at its disposal to express these ambiguous eventualities and perplexing alternations.

To master the semicolon is to master prose. To master the semicolon is to master language's miraculous capacity for capturing the shape of reality."

[Jonathan Jakubowski @jonjakubowski]

Jesus urges us to fix ourselves first, before we criticize anyone else. Social media trains us to do the opposite. It encourages us to make rapid public judgments with little concern for the humanity of those we criticize, no knowledge of the context in which they acted, and no awareness that we have often done the very thing for which we are shaming them.
-Anxious Generation
@JonHaidt

[George MacDonald @MacDonald_daily]

Today we celebrate the 200th birthday of George MacDonald (1824–1905), the “father of modern fantasy” and the “grandfather of the Inklings.” His words have inspired countless hearts and minds—C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Madeleine L’Engle, G.K. Chesterton, W.H. Auden, Oswald Chambers, Lewis Carroll, William Paul Young, and even the editor of this page: a young man who was once broken and burnt out on religion but found MacDonald when he needed a friend.

Happy Birthday, George, and thank you!

🧵 Thread of His Greatest Quotes

[CoffeeWithTheClassics @CoffeewClassics]

Dostoevsky didn’t have to go this hard, but he did.

from The Brothers Karamazov

[David Rowe @mrdavidrowe]

'Hopefulness is not a neutral position. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like – such as reading to your little boy... keeps the Devil down in the hole.'
Nick Cave.

[George MacDonald @MacDonald_daily]

Forgiveness can never be indifference. Forgiveness is love towards the unlovely.

[Scot McKnight @scotmcknight]

This new wave of deconstruction is not, as many religious leaders have suggested, something born of evil that must be denounced. The work of deconstruction is often born of the Spirit, a movement of God attempting to bring the church back to Jesus. #invisiblejesus

[Ramblings @ramblingsloa]

Love is the bridge between you and everything ❤️

Rumi

[Kontemplation @j_spirit]

"What we know about ourselves, including our mistakes and transgressions, is only the exposed surface. The depth from which they come is largely hidden even from ourselves. #God knows it and can cleanse it."
#Edith #Stein

[Jonathan R. Bailey @jonathanrbailey]

When we begin practicing spiritual disciplines, God begins our transformation by altering the way we perceive ourselves, gently correcting our self-deception. As this happens, we slowly trade illusions for reality, and the more we live in reality, the more transformation can occur. READ THE FULL POST: https://t.co/v8p6SS2yDg

[Kontemplation @j_spirit]

„#Jesus does not just praise good moral behavior or criticize immoral behavior, as we might expect. Instead, he talks about something caught in the eye. He knows that if we see rightly, the actions and behavior will eventually take care of themselves.“
#Richard #Rohr

[CoffeeWithTheClassics @CoffeewClassics]

I think about this G.K. Chesterton passage a lot.

[George MacDonald @MacDonald_daily]

Enduring evil, without returning evil, was the Saviour’s way. I fancy there would be more Christians, and of a better stamp, in the world, if that had been the mode of resistance always adopted.

[Jonathan R. Bailey @jonathanrbailey]

The sovereignty of God does not come in the form of inflicting evil actions and bad things on people. It comes in His capacity to bring things out for good no matter what happens. That is how the sovereignty of God relates to difficult things in our lives. – Dallas Willard

[David Nelson @NelsonExdrdave]

Teresa of Avila
The important thing is not to know much but to love much so...