By now Penelope, Icarius' wise daughter,
Had set her chair across from the suitors
And heard the words of each man in the hall.
During all their laughter they had been busy
Preparing their dinner, a tasty meal
For which they had slaughtered many animals.
But no meal could be more graceless than the one
A goddess and a hero would serve to them soon.
After all, they started the whole ugly business.

“Perfect you are, beyond all change, and today does not reach its end in you, yet it does end in you, since all days are in you, nor could they have a course of transit not defined by you.  But your years never run out, your years are a single today; and our days, no matter how many–not only our own but those of all before us–run their course through it, with their own being and identity, while you alone are identical with yourself, so every tomorrow to come, every yesterday gone, is made in your today."

Augustine, Confessions, 1.II (Garry Wills, trans.)

“The Missionary Church is a fascinating blend of five traditions–Anabaptism, Pietism, the Weslyan-holiness movement, the Keswickian-holiness movement, and evangelicalism.  It could be argued that the fifth one, evangelicalism, entails the other four.  But evangelicalism also includes many other traditions, some of which were historically opposed to the first four.  For example, if other evangelical traditions going back to the Reformation no longer persecute Anabaptists or burn them at the stake, they may still be antithetically opposed to Anabaptist viewpoints.  So evangelicalism both includes the four traditions, and yet also affirms other traditions that would strongly oppose them and, at a minimum, push them to the margins of the evangelical life and thought, if they could.

Within the United States, the evangelical movement faces a particular danger, that of confusing national identity with political interests with the Christian faith.  Traditions such as Anabaptism and Pietism have resources to illumine such matters and bring evangelical responses into line with biblical teachings on church and state.  But if other, self-proclaimed evangelicals effectively silence voices from their Anabaptist and Pietist wings, they risk an enormous loss of biblical insight.

So several questions remain for the Missionary Church.  Will she genuinely affirm those traditions which gave birth to her and shaped her for many decades?  Will the richness and insights of each tradition be celebrated?  Or will she cut herself off from her own roots in exchange for new ties with alien traditions from within the larger evangelical family?  Will the Missionary Church be driven primarily by biblical categories, or by the social, political, and cultural ones that have sometimes overtaken the evangelical movement in the United States?  The temptation may be to exchange the hard teachings of the first four traditions for a softer, generic evangelicalism.  The suggestion here is that it would be a tragic mistake for the Missionary Church to exchange her birthright, which is a richly flavored stew of thoroughly biblical traditions, for a bowl of bland baby pablum that bears the consumer-oriented “Made in America” brand of generic evangelicalism.”

(Timothy Paul Erdel, “The Evangelical Tradition int he Missionary Church: Enduring Debts and Unresolved Dilemmas” in Reflections, Vol 13-14, 2011-2012).

"If you understand your own place and its intricacy and the possibility of affection and good care of it, then imaginatively you recognize that possibility for other places and other people, so that if you wish well to your own place, and you recognize that your own place is a part of the world, then this requires a well-wishing toward the whole world. 

In return you hope for the world’s well-wishing toward your place. 

And this is a different impulse from the impulse of nationalism. This is what I would call patriotism: the love of a home country that’s usually much smaller than a nation." (Wendell Berry)

"His mother decides that she wants a dog.  Alsations are the best--the most intelligent, the most faithful--but they cannot find an Alsatian for sale.  So they settle for a pup half doberman, half something else.  He insists on being the one to name it.  He would like to call it Borzoi because he wants it to be a Russian dog, but since it is not in fact a borzoi he calls it Cossack.  No one understands.  People think the name is kos-sak, food-bag, which they find funny.

Happy birthday, Jorge Luis Borges.

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."

"Nothing has any value but the love of God and doing His will.  There is no happiness outside of Him.  The joy born from giving yourself totally to Him no man can take from you.  My only desire is to completely give myself up into the hands of God without any idea of turning back or of fear of what may happen to me."  (Jeanne Guyon, Intimacy With Christ, p. 13)

“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.”

― Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

“For when she was hardly more than a girl, Miss Minnie had gone away to teacher’s college and prepared herself to teach by learning many cunning methods that she never afterward used.  For Miss Minnie loved children and she loved books, and she taught merely by introducing the one to the other.”

-Wendell Berry, “A Consent”