The Oaktree in the Snow (1829) by Caspar David Friedrich:
Memories of the Giant Mountains (c. 1835) by Caspar David Friedrich:
The spirituality of a community can be measured not merely by its doctrinal statement but by the passions that are most deeply aroused. Is our passion for worship elbowing out our passion for self? Does our passion to trust nudge aside our passion to control? Does our passion to grow make us willing to suffer whatever pain is needed? Is our passion to obey relieving the pressure to do something right? Instead, is it causing us to delight with anything we do right?
Spiritual passions, those generated by realizing the staggering provisions of the New Covenant, are the centerpiece of spiritual community. They are what we pour into one another. Truly spiritual passions communicate more truth to deeper places in people than well-presented teaching, because they can exist only if the gospel is true.
Trooper
Finished reading: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling 📚
All good things must come to an end. A satisfying end to the series. I look forward to reading these books again in the future.
It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.
W. H. Auden, with an apt description of the “consuming” mind that devours cultural artifacts rather than savoring them:
When we read more books, look at more pictures, listen to more music, than we can possibly absorb the result of such gluttony is not a cultured mind but a consuming one; what it reads, looks at, listens to, is immediately forgotten, leaving no more traces behind it than yesterday’s newspaper.
Picture of Austin earlier today
