‘It is finished.’ May those words land on your bones for the nights when fear tells you the cross was a beginning & you must finish grace.
— Jon Acuff (via awelltraveledwoman)
(Source: heartbeatofatwentysomething, via awelltraveledwoman)
carry books
Beautifully said, my friend.
Social media is a vague and nebulous concept. Generally speaking, it offers new ways to connect and communicate, all of which include visual and written digital media, networking via the internet, and - let’s be real - a touch of self-promotion. There are one hundred and one great uses for social media in this culture, but one of its dangers is, as one wise pastor put it, “the ability to glamorize our real lives.”
Glamorizing my life is certainly a tendency when I reach for my phone or log into Pinterest, Instagram, etc. But an even more insidious temptation I’ve noticed in my own habits is a subtle one. Social media robs me of stillness. I have forgotten how to sit still, to read, to watch the movements around me. I’ve become uncomfortable with short moments of quiet. Waiting to meet a friend? Check Facebook. Sitting at a traffic light? Open Instagram. (I’m not kidding).
Social media provides something enticing: assisted creation. And I don’t say this cynically, it really is an elegant tool in many ways. Online outlets allow us to create something. Though they’re only virtual, they fulfill a part of us that craves creativity. Social media helps us make something of the world we experience. We intake information and then look for an orderly, structured, and immediate way of processing it.
We are created in the image of a beautifully creative being, and - thanks be to God - we’re able to make something of the world in His image. But this assisted creation can’t serve as a replacement for fuller, more holistic creative outlets. No one wants to look up from a glowing screen and realize that it’s gone dark outside, where previously late afternoon light and clean air had been breezing through the window. Are we missing out on life-giving moments in favor of something a little less real? Isn’t it better to be outside, enjoying legs and lungs and pens and cameras and books? Isn’t it good to allow thoughts to wander and return the way they tend to do during rest?
So what I’ve started doing is a small resistance move against getting lost in an online world. I’m starting to carry books. Everywhere I go, I want to bring something printed to read. An iPhone is easy to reach for because it’s always there, but what if the novel I’m paging through was also within reach? Or an issue of the New Yorker, or a poetry collection, or the Bible? (Don’t tell me there’s an app for that.) This is my exhortation for moments of stillness and waiting. Don’t reach for the phone, or the laptop. Reach for the book, the words, the slow turn of pages, and the power that print has to help us sit still.
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View of Orvieto from the Porano hills. End of fall hike to Monastery Cappuccini (at Porano, Italy)
Posted December 1, 2012 at 9:49am
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilites, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - These are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
Posted November 7, 2012 at 5:24am
Photos from the vendemia (grape harvest) that took place about 3 weeks ago. We spent the morning picking San Giovese and Merlot grapes, sampling for sweetness as we went along. It was a beautiful, warm early fall day and La Volpara, the winery, had amazing views of the surrounding valley. La Volpara is owned by Albert and Ike, an unbelievably welcoming Dutch couple; he worked as the international scientist for Heineken and once he retired they decided to move to Italy and start their own vineyard. They run it with amazing care and truly welcomed us in their work. Not only did they make us a delicious lunch, we also got to do a wine tasting afterwards and they sent us each home with a bottle of their Christmas wine. The best news: in about two weeks we go back for the olive harvest!
Posted October 28, 2012 at 7:57am
Posted October 22, 2012 at 2:01pm
“It’s a fairly wild or brave or vulnerable thing to confess to believing in a God that you can’t rationally comprehend, a God that is beyond understanding. The writers of the Bible seem to be quite aware of the insufficiency of the words to speak of him/her/it, though they give it a good go…”
“Faith in the God of life isn’t a way out of the wild and profane, scary and inscrutable. It’s a way in, into the depths, where there might be spiders and broken glass and decay and rage and fur and feathers, trash and dirt and the love of God.”
from Debbie Blue, Making it Strange
