That simply reminds us that evangelization is always an overflow of something else - the disciple’s journey to maturity in Christ, a journey not organized by the ambitious ego but the result of the prompting and drawing of the Spirit in us. In our considerations of how we are once again to make the Gospel of Christ compellingly attractive to men and women of our age, I hope we never lose sight of what makes it compelling to ourselves, to each one of us in our diverse ministries. So I wish you joy in these discussions - not simply clarity or effectiveness in planning, but joy in the promise of the vision of Christ’s face, and in the foreshadowing of that fulfillment in the joy of communion with each other here and now.
What’s needed on climate change, ultimately, is a wholesale, society-wide commitment to remaking energy, agricultural, and land-use systems along low-carbon lines. “Market mechanisms” like a carbon tax are a crucial part of that effort, especially as a source of funding, but they are in no way a substitute for that effort. We won’t get out of this that easily.
In the US, an undergraduate education used to be an option, one way to get into the middle class. Now it’s a hostage situation, required to avoid falling out of it. And if some of the hostages having trouble coming up with the ransom conclude that our current system is a completely terrible idea, then learning will come unbundled from the pursuit of a degree just as as songs came unbundled from CDs.If this happens, Harvard will be fine. Yale will be fine, and Stanford, and Swarthmore, and Duke. But Bridgerland Applied Technology College? Maybe not fine. University of Arkansas at Little Rock? Maybe not fine. And Kaplan College, a more reliable producer of debt than education? Definitely not fine.
Jacques Maritain
Dancing On and Beneath the Great Wall - 50 WattsClick through. You won’t regret it.
Matt is right. I didn’t regret it!
Autopilots on the other hand, unless integrated to your wind instruments, will force you to sail a direct course but autopilots are idiots and, since most folks using them simply dial in a compass course, you’re not going to be in sync with the wind…Not so long ago I realized that my chart plotter had a problematic effect on my sailing ability. Seeing my current course as a graphical interface, while being neat and all, had a real tendency to distract me from the course I should be steering in favor of the subliminal desire to make for a straight line on the chart plotter. Put the cover on the chart plotter and, hey presto, all of a sudden I’m going faster towards where I want to go. Take the cover off the chart plotter and I’m losing a knot or more… Kinda like Kryptonite for boat speed…
Which, I suppose, is why so many folks sailing from St Thomas to St Martin simply wind up motoring on a straight line course into the wind and swell as they’re addicted to those nice straight lines on the chart plotter.
Poster for Lynda Barry’s class, “The Unthinkable Mind”, Spring 2013 at The University of Wisconsin-Madison