A Right State of Heart: Part Three On Curiosity and Studiousness

“Studious people, however, don’t want to master the whole world. They want to steward what they love.”

open.substack.com/pub/peterbla...

Yumi Matsutoya - Rouge no Dengon YouTube video by minjipop

Good afternoon www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJwt...

A Right State of Heart: Part Two Some reflections on intellectual patience

Part two: looking at intellectual patience with the help of Augustine, Newman, Julian, Aquinas, and others

open.substack.com/pub/peterbla...

Saw this on Twitter but hadn’t dug in yet; listening to the ‘92 Uncle Tupelo recording now

“Ramble On” - Robert Plant with Saving Grace (LIVE on The Late Show) YouTube video by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

On loop today. Ramble on. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca3V...

A Right State of Heart: Part One A five-part series sharing a recent talk

"For Newman, then, it is when we let our particular biggest temptations or vices fester that we risk corrupting 'our whole spirit and judgement in all things.’”

peterblair.substack.com/p/a-right-st...

“The book of Genesis is framed by two stories of remarkable forgiveness, of Cain by the Lord, and of his ten brothers by Joseph”

-Marilynne Robinson, “Reading Genesis”

Recalls this from Alter bsky.app/profile/pete...

“The book of Genesis begins with the emergence of Being in a burst of light and ends with the death and burial of a bitter, homesick man”

-Marilynne Robinson, “Reading Genesis”

“Now that we have split the atom and spliced the gene and sent a kind of emissary into interstellar space we may have some idea of the possibilities the Lord saw adumbrated in the aspirations of early humankind.”

-Marilynne Robinson on the Tower of Babel (“Reading Genesis”)

3:59 AM

"I got the guiltiest conscience/ Listening for a savior on a Saturday night/ I got my ear to the ground/You got Easter Sunday in your eyes"

open.spotify.com/track/3OySUz...

Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor

“The loyalty of both [the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament] to the setting of human experience against and within cosmic history…when they are seen to occur together, much may be apprehended, but nothing is explained.” (Ibid)

Robinson making a similar point to Calasso

“To assign causes to events is clearly not the method or intention of biblical narrative. We don’t know why Abel’s offering was acceptable and Cain’s was not, why Jacob was favored over Esau or Israel over the nations” (“Reading Genesis”)

“It is striking how the scale of thought has contracted with the loss of serious theology. A contemporary Kant or Hegel would find little purchase in the vocabulary of thought allowed to us now”

-Marilynne Robinson, “Reading Genesis”

“This narrative sequence [of the early chapters of Genesis] establishes a profiling & essential assertion of the sacred good, making pangs and toil a secondary reality, likewise the punitive taking of life”

-Robinson channeling the privatio boni at the start of Reading Genesis

"Love Hides All Faults" - The Holy Light Jrs [Full Recording] YouTube video by Nicholas

Good afternoon www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKEQ...

Bookhaven in Fairmount closes after a nearly 40-year ‘labor of love’ Beloved used bookstore Bookhaven, located in Fairmount, has closed after almost 40 years in business and the building is for sale.

Really sad to hear this, both of the closing and Rolf's cancer diagnosis. One of my favorite stores in Philly

share.inquirer.com/SzazEj

"He'd not liked the peacetime army and it was understandable, there was no place in it for a man with a paperback edition of Kierkegaard in his pocket"

-Len Deighton, the Ipcress File

Good start

Ring Them Bells

Happy opening day to those who celebrate

open.spotify.com/track/1Y3VFY...

In and around the Shawangunks (including New Paltz haulz)

I need to check those out next. I also have his book “Bomber”

“He had the advantage of both a good brain and a family rich enough to save him using it”

-Len Deighton, The Ipcress File

High on Tulsa Heat

Good evening open.spotify.com/album/1NvW80...

Len Deighton, spy novelist and author of The Ipcress File, dies aged 97 British writer brought wit, realism and class consciousness to cold war espionage fiction, reshaping the genre in the 1960s * Len Deighton obituary Len Deighton, the British author whose subversive spy novels helped redefine the genre in the 1960s, has died aged 97. Best known for his debut, The Ipcress File, Deighton went on to write more than 30 books over a career spanning four decades, establishing himself as one of the most distinctive voices in postwar fiction. His work, often compared to that of John le Carré, combined meticulous research with wit and sharp observations about class and bureaucracy. Continue reading...

Len Deighton, spy novelist and author of The Ipcress File, dies aged 97

John Moreland

Jürgen Habermas, influential German philosopher, dies at 96 German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has died at age 96. Habermas' work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figur...

(apnews.com/article/juer...)

“All did not go well with this democratic approach: division arose between the Americans and the British over the name for God.”

-Bruce Gordon on a 19th century attempt to translate the Bible into Chinese (The Bible: A Global History)