Congratulations to contributor Daniel Den Boer (who blogs on his own as well at To A More Dangerous Conversation), for his acceptance to Duke Divinity School!
Tags: contributor, dangerous conversation, den boer, duke divinity school
Archive for the ‘Appreciation’ Category
January 4, 2010
3
Mary Daly
By Robert Minto in Appreciation, DeathThe strangest thing happened today. I heard the name of the great feminist theologian Mary Daly for the first time, googled her, and discovered that she had just died. There’s something sad about the timing of that sequence. Anyway, I think I’ll read something by her in the near future, in memory of our new [...]
Tags: acquaintance, feminist theologian, levi strauss, mary daly, memory
December 27, 2009
0
Why Zizek Is Worth Reading…
By Robert Minto in Appreciation, PoliticsApart from the example of his tumbling ideas, the invigoration of his rhetoric, the penetrating asides, the humor, and his elucidations of Lacan, Hegel, Marx and Hitchcock, I think the following quotation from this old interview with Zizek best summarizes why I think he’s worth reading:
Today, whenever somebody tries to risk something politically, you immediately [...]
Tags: ethics, hegel, hegel marx, History, hitchcock, holocaust, humor, interview, lacan, Marx, mass murder, pragmatism, twentieth century, worth reading, Zizek
December 27, 2009
2
A Christmas Meditation on “Avatar”
By Robert Minto in Appreciation, Film, Incarnation, ResponsesI couldn’t agree more with Adam Kotsko’s thought re: the film Avatar in which he observes that critiques like that of Ross Douthat, which simply locate the film as one more instance of Hollywood pantheism, have little value either as commentaries on the text of the film or as cultural critique. Rather, the primary religious [...]
Tags: adam kotsko, allusion, avatar, cradles, dead human body, duality, Incarnation, painters, pieta, religious theme, ross douthat, sully
December 8, 2009
0
Window Geology
By Robert Minto in Appreciation, ArtThis is what the wind and snow has been laying down in front of me all day…
Tags: window geology
December 5, 2009
2
An Example of Intentional Design
By Robert Minto in Appreciation, Art, Blogging, DesignWhilst googling recipes for bacon-wrapped sirloin and listening to Leonard Cohen’s “Democracy,” I took a break (out of frustration that I have no mustard on hand…) and did some blog-design browsing. (Blog-design browsing involves surfing around one’s favorite blogs and the blogs they link to, mainly ignoring content in order to examine their layout, color, [...]
Tags: 1930s, 1950s, Aesthetic, Blog-design, colophon, current design, Desoeuvre, grid layout, hawley, leonard cohen, modernism, mustard, Pete Hawley, plan59, sans serif font
November 26, 2009
1
The Spine as the “Seat of Artistic Delight”
By Robert Minto in Appreciation, Art, MusicAnother gem from Desiring the Kingdom. Smith quotes Vladimir Nabokov on reading Bleak House, for the purpose of demonstrating how embodied our imaginations are:
All we have to do when reading Bleak House is to relax and let our spines take over. Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the [...]
Tags: allusive, chromaticism, clementines, leonard cohen, melodic style, record player, shiver, shivers, shoulder blades, spines, vertebrates, vladimir nabokov
November 6, 2009
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St. Francis and the Manger
By Robert Minto in Appreciation, Books, IncarnationToday I was reading Thomas of Celano’s First and Second Lives of Saint Francis, when I came across a strangely moving section.
Trucking along in his typically hagiographic style, Thomas asserts that “the humility of the incarnation and the love of the passion so occupied” Francis’s memory that “he scarcely wished to think of anything else. [...]
Tags: celano, christmas celebrations, Francis, glittering star, glorious death, Greccio, holy man, humility, Incarnation, lord jesus christ, man of god, Mystery, nativity, nativity scene, new bethlehem, praise to the lord, present tense, Saint, Thomas
October 24, 2009
0
Thielicke On Conservatism
By Robert Minto in Appreciation, ConservatismI do not claim to be a conservative, but I think that Thielicke’s positive characterization of conservatism is the best and most succinct I have ever encountered:
It must [...] be pointed out that in origin the term “conservative” has nothing to do with reaction. When it became a slogan for opposition to the French Revolution [...]
Tags: characterization, conscience, Conservatism, evangelical faith, french revolution, living history, maturity, ossification, sloth
