Jeff Berryman : Quotes

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 14:00:02 GMT

Richard Hooker

I came across a quote this morning from Richard Hooker, a 17th century Anglican Theologian whose writing "argued for a middle way (a "Via Media") between the positions of the Roman Catholics and the Puritans." I don't really know anything about Hooker, but this quote from the online Book of Common Prayer caught my eye.

"God is no captious sophister, eager to trip us up whenever we say amiss, but a courteous tutor, ready to amend what, in our weakness or our ignorance, we say ill, and to make the most of what we say aright."

I sure hope so...

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 05:07:33 GMT

Writing for Love

"Writing a book is like rearing children--willpower has very little to do with it. If you have a little baby crying in the middle of the night, and if you depend only on willpower to get you out of bed to feed the baby, that baby will starve. You do it out of love. Willpower is a weak idea; love is strong. You don't have to scourge yourself with a cat-o'-nine-tails to go to the baby. You go to the baby out of love for that particular baby. That's the same way you go to your desk. There's nothing freakish about it. Caring passionately about something isn't against nature, and it isn't against human nature. It's what we're here to do."

Annie Dillard. "To Fashion a Text." From Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir. Ed. Willaim Zinsser.

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 15:37:48 GMT

Rich Mullins: The Most Important Thing

Yesterday in our Bible class on The Call, we talked about identity, and the centrality of the call to our sense of identity. One of the guys in the class, an artist who does percussion and leather working, sent me this quote from singer-songwriter Rich Mullins. My friend said he thought I would like it. He's right. From an interview by Sheila Walsh:

SW:

RM: At any given moment it might be slightly different, but I would imagine that nothing would be more important than becoming fully who you were supposed to be. You know what I mean? For me, that's what salvation is all about.

Heart to Heart Interview
Sheila Walsh
Heart to Heart, Christian Broadcasting Network
May 20, 1992
Copyright 1992 by the Christian Broadcasting Network

Yeah, I want to be saved...

Fri, 13 Oct 2006 17:36:28 GMT

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Two great quotes for artists to wrestle with, both from Solzhenitsyn's 1970 Nobel Prize acceptance speech delivered to the Swedish Academy.

"There is no point asserting and reasserting what the heart cannot believe."

"It is useless to assert what one's heart does not believe."

"One word of truth outweighs the world."

Sun, 02 Oct 2005 07:02:46 GMT

A quote by Os Guinness

"A spinning coin cannot spin forever, nor can our minds remain undecided forever, since not to decide is itself a decision, and as the coin will come down only heads or tails, so we also have only two options, not three or more. Either we conform our desires to the truth, or we conform the truth to our desires."

--Os Guinness

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 19:08:42 GMT

Resource of Art Quotations

Check it out...this resource claims to be the biggest resource of art quotations anywhere. Might be... click the link in the title to check it out...

Wed, 17 Nov 2004 16:05:34 GMT

Quote

Liturgy and the Arts

Wed, 17 Nov 2004 03:59:05 GMT

from The Rock, by T.S. Eliot

The soul of Man must quicken to creation.
Out of the formless stone, when the artist united himself with stone,
Spring always new forms of life, from the soul of man that is joined to the soul of stone;
Out of the meaningless practical shapes of all that is living or lifeless
Joined with the artist's eye, new life, new form, new colour.
Out of the sea of sound the life of music,
Out of the slimy mud of words, out of the sleet and hail of verbal imprecisions,
Approximate thoughts and feelings, words that have taken the place of thoughts and feelings,
There spring the perfect order of speech, and the beauty of incantation.

Quoted in Christianity and the Arts, by Donald Whittle.

This was from Eliot's first play, called The Rock, a pageant play for the churches of London published in 1934. I would love to read it some time. Now that would be a Christmas play...

Thu, 11 Nov 2004 17:28:54 GMT

Indulgence, Development This may be the most succinct, profound explanation of the current Christian attempt to engage the postmodern imagination using pop culture itself.

The Imagination: Its Functions and Its Culture

The Christian Imagination

Thu, 11 Nov 2004 01:40:03 GMT

Calvin Seerveld Quote I found this in Bill Romanowski's book Eyes Wide Open.

Calvin Seerveld, Rainbows for a Fallen World

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 04:02:42 GMT

Ideas have consequences...

The Doctor and the Soul