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Logos2Go

Daily thoughts on aesthetics and theology, and the entire world in between.

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C.S. Lewis on the learned life

This is from The Weight of Glory:


... The work of a Beethoven and the work of a charwoman become spiritual on precisely the same condition, that of being offered to God, of being done humbly "as to the Lord." This does not, of course, mean that it is for anyone a mere toss-up whether he should sweep rooms or compose symphonies …

A man's upbringing, his talents, his circumstances, are usually a tolerable index of his vocation. If our parents have sent us to Oxford, if our country allows us to remain there, this is prima facie evidence that the life which we, at any rate, can best lead to the glory of God at present is the learned life. By leading that life to the glory of God I do not, of course, mean any attempt to make our intellectual inquiries work out to edifying conclusions. That would be, as Bacon says, to offer the author of truth the unclean sacrifice of a lie. I mean the pursuit of knowledge and beauty, in a sense, for their own sake, but in a sense which does not exclude their being for God's sake. An appetite for these things exists in the human mind, and God makes no appetite in vain. We can therefore pursue knowledge as such, and beauty as such, in the sure confidence that by so doing we are either advancing to the vision of God ourselves or indirectly helping others to do so. Humility, no less than appetite, encourages us to concentrate simply on the knowledge or the beauty, not too much concerning ourselves with their ultimate relevance to the vision of God. That relevance may not be intended for us but for our betters -- for men who come after and find the spiritual significance of what we dug out in blind and humble obedience to our vocation. This is the teleological argument that the existence of the impulse and the faculty prove that they must have a proper function in God's scheme …

The intellectual life is not the only road to God, nor the safest, but we find it to be a road, and it may be the appointed road for us. Of course, it will be so only so long as we keep the impulse pure and disinterested. That is the great difficulty…: we may come to love knowledge -- our knowing -- more than the thing known: to delight not in the exercise of our talents but in the fact that they are ours, or even in the reputation they bring us. Every success in the scholar's life increases this danger. If it becomes irresistible, he must give up his scholarly work. The time for plucking out the right eye has arrived.


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"The Weight of Glory" in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 56-57.

A thought about constructive criticism

When someone asks you to review something he wrote, here is a thought for you.

Do you see that sunset over there?

Constructive criticism is both of you trying to describe that sunset. The first response is the joy of the opportunity to see the view. The other person has made an attempt at describing it and has asked you to help in that description.

First, stop and enjoy his description; you were doing something else; you might have missed the view unless he drew your attention to it.


Now, what do you see that can perhaps add to what the other is seeing, so that the celebration might even be greater?

This is especially true if you know the other person. You know him or her, so when you read something that you think might mean this-or-that, but you know that person could not possibly mean such a thing, than your response ought to be a question, not a disagreement.

This is why I find papers written by my students at the end of a semester easier to grade, because by then I know them better than I knew them at first. Criticism then becomes a suggestion of how to word things better, rather than warning them that, hey, that sunset they think they see over there is really a hallucination.

That would be destructive criticism, not constructive criticism.

There always must be humility, because we do not make the sunsets, we only learn to describe them better.

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Matthew 17.24-27 When they came to Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma tax went up to Peter and said, “Does your teacher not pay the tax?” He said, “Yes.” And when he came into the house, Jesus spoke to him first, saying, “What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tax? From their sons or from others?” And when he said, “From others,” Jesus said to him, “Then the sons are free. However, not to give offense to them, go to the sea and cast a hook and take the first fish that comes up, and when you open its mouth you will find a shekel. Take that and give it to them for me and for yourself.”

The first women's movement in the Church

In 1243 ... Matthew Paris -- surveying the European scene from his English monastery -- made an entry in his Chronicle to which he attached great importance:

"At this time and especially in Germany, certain people -- men and women, but especially women -- have adopted a religious profession, though it is a light one. They call themselves 'religious', and they take a private vow of continence and simplicity of life, though they do not follow the Rule of any saint, nor are they as yet confined to a cloister. They have so multiplied within a short time that two thousand have been reported in Cologne and neighboring cities ..."

We know that (Matthew Paris) was greatly impressed by the news of this new movement because in 1250, when he summarized the main events of the previous half century, he repeated his information ..."

"In Germany there has arisen an innumerable multitude of celibate women who call themselves beguines: a thousand or more of them live in Cologne alone..."

[Here is also Robert Grosseteste, the great bishop of Lincoln]: one day he preached a sermon to the Franciscans in which he extolled ... the highest kind of poverty: this was to live by one's own labor "like the beguines."

Between them, Grosseteste and Paris surveyed a very large slice of European life, and they were both impressed by the new and strange phenomenon. The beguine movement differed substantially from all earlier important movements within the western church. It was basically a women's movement, not simply a feminine appendix to a movement which owed its impetus, direction, and main support to men. It had no definite Rule of life; it claimed the authority of no saintly founder; it sought no authorization from the Holy See; it had no organization or constitution; it promised no benefits and sought no patrons; its vows were a statement of intention, not an irreversible commitment to a discipline enforced by authority; and its adherents could continue their ordinary work in the world ...

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Quoted from: R.W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Penguin Book, 1970) 319-321

Polanyi on art and mastery

Michael Polanyi is the thinker who gave us the term "tacit knowledge." He said so many insightful things, like this:

"An art which cannot be specified in detail cannot be transmitted by prescription, since no prescription for it exists. It can be passed on only by example from master to apprentice...

... It follows that an art which has fallen into disuse for the period of a generation is altogether lost. There are hundreds of examples of this to which the process of mechanization is continuously adding new ones. These losses are usually irretrievable.

It is pathetic to watch the endless efforts -- equipped with microscopy and chemistry, with mathematics and electronics -- to reproduce a single violin of the kind the half-literate Stradivarius turned out as a matter of routine more than 200 years ago ...


To learn by example is to submit to authority. You follow your master because you trust his manner of doing things even when you cannot analyze and account in detail for its effectiveness. By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art ...

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Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, University of Chicago Press, 1974, 51

Psalm 122: where fellowship is complete


One of my desires is to pictorially interpret the Songs of Degrees (Psalms 120-134); one composition per psalm. Psalm 120 and 121 are here and here.

I've been stuck on Psalm 122 for about 4 weeks; none of my sketches have been satisfying. There's so much in this psalm. Here is the first complete effort for 122, although it doesn't satisfy me either.


In this psalm, the wanderer finds himself already in the precincts of Jerusalem, the City of God and, in verse 3, he notices something.


This something is translated in our English versions as "Jerusalem is a city that is compact together," or "... is bound firmly together," or variations thereof.
But I like the English translation of the Septuagint, which is the Greek version of the Old Testament. Here, verse 3 is translated this way:

"Jerusalem is built as a city whose fellowship is complete ..."

A city whose fellowship is complete.

I've been wondering and wandering over this for days.


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Psalm 122
, ESV (121 in the Septuagint)

1 I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
2 Our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem!
3 Jerusalem—built as a city that is bound firmly together,

(3 Jerusalem is built as a city whose fellowship is complete),

4 to which the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the Lord.
5 There thrones for judgment were set, the thrones of the house of David.
6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! “May they be secure who love you!
7 Peace be within your walls and security within your towers!”
8 For my brothers and companions' sake I will say, “Peace be within you!”
9 For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.

Somewhere over the rainbow

Upon seeing the above painting, my friend Joshua Gilstrap was reminded of Psalm 97. I think it is an appropriate passage to post with this image.

I had titled the painting "somewhere over the rainbow."

Oil pastels and color pencil on paper.

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Psalm 97.1 The Lord reigns, let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad! 2 Clouds and thick darkness are all around him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. 3 Fire goes before him and burns up his adversaries all around. 4 His lightnings light up the world; the earth sees and trembles.

Psalm 121

Oil pastels on paper.

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121:1-8 I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? / My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. / He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. / Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. / The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand. / The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. / The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. / The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.

Psalm 120


Oil pastels on paper

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Psalm 120.1-7 In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. Deliver me, O LORD, from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue. What shall be given to you, and what more shall be done to you, you deceitful tongue? A warrior's sharp arrows, with glowing coals of the broom tree! Woe to me, that I sojourn in Meshech, that I dwell among the tents of Kedar! Too long have I had my dwelling among those who hate peace. I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war!

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