Jim Eliot on the joys of merely being

"Just finished For Whom the Bell Tools. A most intriguing work and one raising some problems for a Christian. Realistic, psychological, compactly detailed, it presents a literary landmark for me in it's style alone. Would that I could get aroused about experiencing God in life as the modern writers are aroused at just experiencing life. They make no comment, draw no conclusions, point no moral, simply state things as they are in simple words in up-to-date settings. Perhaps it is for this very lucidity that they hold such grip on one. Must we always comment on life? Can it not simply be lived in the reality of Christ's terms of contact with the Father, with joy and peace, fear and love full to the fingertips in their turn, without incessant drawing of lessons and making of rules? I do not know."

-Journals of Jim Eliot
(Thanks Buff for giving me this, so long ago.)

a way of thinking about things

"What must the world be like, and what must I be like, if between me and the world the phenomenon of music can occur?"
-Victor Zuckerkandl as quoted in Jermey Begbie's Music, Theology and Time.

I like this way of thinking. Left out is 'What must God be like?'.

You can take this and run with it:

What kind of world is a world where everything has it's own smell?
What must God be like if His images spend lots of time eating, sleeping and working?
What kind of God makes millions of species of beetles?
Etc..

Flannery O'Conner on seeing and writing

"I have a friend who is taking acting classes in New York from a Russian lady who is supposed to be good at teaching actors. My friend wrote me and told me that the first month they didn't speak a line, they only learned to see. Now learning to see is the basis of all arts except music. I know a good many fiction writers who paint, not because they're any good at painting, but because it helps their writing. It forces them to look at things. Fiction writing is very seldom a matter of saying things; it is a matter of showing things."

-Flannery O'Conner in Mystery and Manners