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…

Currently listening:

Peter Leithart, on the Eucharist and the way things really ought to be:

The Eucharist is one aspect of the church’s paideia, the formation of the church into the body of Christ that she is. Though the Eucharist does not bypass the mind and conscious reflection, the effect it has is more in the realm of acquiring a skill than in the realm of learning a new set of facts; the effect is more a matter of “training” than “teaching.” At the Supper, we eat bread and drink wine together with thanksgiving not merely to show the way things really ought to be but to practice the way things really ought to be. […]

The Eucharist does not shape the church and its members by ceremonial manipulation, as if repetition of the rite, by putting words in our mouths and making us go through the motions of ecclesiastical unity, performs a kind of sacred brainwashing. The Eucharist shapes the church because Christ is present at the meal by his Spirit, and therefore she is, like the apostles (Acts 4:13), changed by communion with her husband. The Supper makes the church the church because the communion that takes place at the Supper makes the church like Christ. It would be foolish to presume we can explain this communion in anything close to a comprehensive way but the fact that the encounter takes the specific form of a feast offers hints and clues about the specific ways we are remade into the image of Christ. […]

The Eucharist is not merely a “sign” to be examined, dissected, and analyzed but a rite whose enactment disciplines the church in the virtues of Christian living and forms the church and thereby the world into something more like the kingdom it signifies. As with music or drama, the interpretation of the Eucharist lies chiefly in its performance, and its performance should fill not only the few minutes of worship but all of life. The operative command in connection with the Supper is not “Reflect on this” but “Do this.”