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“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
― The Writing Life
― The Writing Life
“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.”
― Infinite Jest
― Infinite Jest
“...we need other people to achieve individuality. For others to play this role for me, they have to be available to me in an unmediated way, not via a representation that is tailored to my psychic comfort. And conversely, I would have to make myself available to them in a way that puts myself at risk, not shying from a confrontation between different evaluative outlooks. For it is through such confrontations that we are pulled out of our own heads and forced to justify ourselves. In doing so, we may revise our take on things. The deepening of our understanding, and our affections, requires partners in triangulation: other people as other people, in relation to whom we may achieve an earned individuality of outlook.
Absent such differentiation, there is a certain flattening of the human landscape. When [our shared spaces] are saturated with mass media, our attention is appropriated in such a way that the Public—an abstraction—comes to stand in for concrete others, and it becomes harder for us to show up for one another as individuals.”
― The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction
Absent such differentiation, there is a certain flattening of the human landscape. When [our shared spaces] are saturated with mass media, our attention is appropriated in such a way that the Public—an abstraction—comes to stand in for concrete others, and it becomes harder for us to show up for one another as individuals.”
― The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction
“At such moments the collapse of their courage, willpower, and endurance was so abrupt that they felt they could never drag themselves out of the pit of despond into which they had fallen. Therefore they forced themselves never to think about the problematic day of escape, to cease looking to the future, and always to keep, so to speak, their eyes fixed on the ground at their feet. But, naturally enough, this prudence, this habit of feinting with their predicament and refusing to put up a fight, was ill rewarded. For, while averting that revulsion which they found so unbearable, they also deprived themselves of those redeeming moments, frequent enough when all is told, when by conjuring up pictures of a reunion to be, they could forget about the plague. Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress.”
― The Plague
― The Plague
“I’ll suggest that the kingdom Jesus came to establish is “not from this world” (John 18:36), for it operates differently than the governments of the world do. While all the versions of the kingdom of the world acquire and exercise power over others, the kingdom of God, incarnated and modeled in the person of Jesus Christ, advances only by exercising power under others.5 It expands by manifesting the power of self-sacrificial, Calvary-like love. To put it differently, the governments of the world seek to establish, protect, and advance their ideals and agendas. It’s in the fallen nature of all those governments to want to “win.” By contrast, the kingdom Jesus established and modeled with his life, death, and resurrection doesn’t seek to “win” by any criteria the world would use. Rather, it seeks to be faithful. It demonstrates the reign of God by manifesting the sacrificial character of God, and in the process, it reveals the most beautiful, dynamic, and transformative power in the universe. It testifies that this power alone—the power to transform people from the inside out by coming under them—holds the hope of the world. Everything the church is about, I argue, hangs on preserving the radical uniqueness of this kingdom in contrast to the kingdom of the world.”
― The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church
― The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church
GodReads
— 143 members
— last activity Sep 12, 2018 07:59AM
For those who know there's more out there than "Left Behind". ...more
The New & Noteworthy Book Club
— 122 members
— last activity Apr 05, 2025 11:18AM
This club meets in real life at BookPeople on the corner of 6th and Lamar, in Austin, TX. We meet on the last Monday of every month at 7pm. The book ...more
BookPeople Readers
— 4 members
— last activity Jan 11, 2011 06:46AM
This a group for BookPeople employees who are interested in reading the numerous galleys that come into the store every day and helping me, the buyer, ...more
Theology Book Club
— 5 members
— last activity Mar 27, 2010 05:09PM
Fact and Fiction are both fair game, so long as the book has the potential to spark a conversation on Faith.
Kester’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Kester’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
2,086 books
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415 friends
825 books
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152 friends
431 books
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2,093 books
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111 friends
3,243 books
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483 friends
649 books
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180 friends
462 books
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229 friends
568 books
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242 friends
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