Archive for the ‘Community’ Category

January 5, 2010 0

Big Changes for The Veil Away!

By Robert Minto in Blogging, Community, Prospects

The Veil Away is about to become a group blog. While maintaining its focus upon theology, philosophy, and cultural studies it will be expanded in several unique directions due to the expertise of its new co-contributors. Subjects like hermeneutics, science fiction, and linguistics, among others, will become more prominent. I will of course continue posting [...]

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November 25, 2009 0

“Programming” As a Pedagogy of Desire

By Robert Minto in Community, Desire, Learning, Pedagogy

This evening I borrowed and perused the first half of James K.A. Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom. His thesis involves the notion that because humans are not simply cognitive beings but actual desiring animals (embodied, and carrying in every action an implicit telos) Christian education needs to be about the forming of desires as well as [...]

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November 23, 2009 5

Re: Blogging c. 2010

By Robert Minto in Blogging, Community, Responses

Interesting post on the state of the art of blogging by millinerd. One thing I would take issue with, and one I would add:
1. Site-design still does matter, as do blogrolls. And this is because there are still newcomers to the blogosphere, and for these newbies nothing is more attractive than a good site-design and [...]

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September 8, 2009 0

Disintegration and Meditation

By Robert Minto in Community, Devotion, Motivation

This morning was the first instance of our experiment in communal prayer and meditation. I almost forgot! But one of the brotherhood stopped by my room a little before 10:00 to ask if we could do it together. Already the value of accountability is making itself known.
It was strange feeling our way toward an appropriate [...]

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September 7, 2009 1

Monastic Devotion In a Dorm? (Pt. 2)

By Robert Minto in Community, Devotion

Blowing me away with their enthusiasm, my guys agreed to the devotional experiment. We talked about the regularity a community of practice will help us maintain in our spiritual discipline, and we talked about the difficult, sometimes dry, task of meditation. Then we watched the Can I Have Your Number? clip as an example of [...]

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September 7, 2009 1

Monastic Devotion In a Dorm?

By Robert Minto in Community

Here in the Dutch Reformed atmosphere of Dordt College, my ecclessially ambiguous self has been given the job of Resident Assistant to about 30 guys. Part of my job is leading a “wing bible study.” Tonight we’ll meet for the first time—myself and the ten or so guys who wanted to participate—and we’ll discuss how [...]

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July 28, 2009 1

From Marcus Aurelius (1): To Thank My Friends

By Robert Minto in Books, Community, Education

This is the first part of a series about Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. The series is introduced here.
I first encountered Meditations in a film called The Corn Is Green. Katherine Hepburn plays an altruistic school-mistress who moves to the Welsh country-side to educate miner’s children. She discovers one young miner who turns out to be brilliant. [...]

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July 1, 2009 0

One of the Intellectual Downsides to Freedom

By Robert Minto in Books, Community, Politics

“I wonder what a poet and novelist would have in common to talk about nowadays. After all, a shared knowledge of old books was probably the largest part of the ‘loving friendship’ between Etienne and Montaigne. Today they would share—what? Robert Altman’s films?” — Gore Vidal
In most circles, canons of literature (and canons of art [...]

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June 1, 2009 0

The Eschatological Themes of Up!

By Robert Minto in Community, Eschatology, Film

When on Saturday I found myself ensconced between two rows of bawling children to watch the newest Pixar animation, a small moleskin open on my knee for notes, and a delicious tingle of anticipation all out of proportion to my age causing me to shift my weight back and forth, I suddenly wondered if there [...]

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