Finished reading: Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls 📚

Currently reading: Renovation of the Heart by Dallas Willard 📚

Me and the girls had some fun on Saturday scootering/boarding while Kristyn was off at a women’s retreat. (All three of us took pretty good spills, so I’m especially proud of our resilience.)

Currently reading: Evangelism as a Lifestyle by Jim Petersen 📚

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, describing Benjamin Franklin’s quest for self-improvement and, in the process, revealing how deeply ingrained in the American psyche are notions of self-optimization and moral perfectionism:

But of all of Franklin’s intellectual projects, the one he perfected the most was himself. Franklin both championed and embodied the Enlightenment’s premium on human plasticity and improvement. Having come from a modest family of soap and candlemakers, he did not want to wait for a higher power to bestow him with good fortune or condemn him to a life of modest means. So he took his life into his own hands. In his Autobiography (1791), he explained his “bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection,” suggesting these were technologies of the self any reader could employ. Perfection meant turning the twelve virtues he wanted to cultivate into second nature: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, and chastity. When a Quaker friend gently reminded him that he had left out one virtue he could use a little more of—humility—Franklin conceded and added it to the list to bring it up to thirteen.

Currently reading: The Ideas That Made America: A Brief History by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen 📚

On the Lake of Como (1781) by Francis Towne:

Finished reading: Center Church by Timothy Keller 📚

I’m frankly in awe of what Keller achieved with this book. I genuinely feel bad for people who don’t like him; the wisdom in these pages would serve anyone in ministry, whether urban context or not. My plan (as of now) is to go back through Center Church and write up summary reflections for each of the eight sections of the book. We’ll see…