Heart-Shaped Box | Crack and Computers

Danny did not think coke (cocaine) and computers were anything alike. But Jude had seen the way people hunched over their screens, clicking the refresh button again and again, waiting for some crucial if meaningless hit of information, and he thought it was almost exactly the same...

Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box page 160.

For a relevant article, click here.

Typewriter Comeback | Journal Sentinel

Long consigned to the dust heap of no-longer-useful devices, typewriters are surprisingly hip again.

Some may argue they never were hip, but the quaint, archaic tools of writers, journalists and secretarial pools apparently are now...

It's partly a reaction to modern technology. People want to feel their words...

Every generation tends to fight the establishment, and the establishment right now is social media and the Internet. Typewriters are the exact opposite...

Read more of the article here!!!

Identity | Ted Dekker

There's a part of you that's shattered. You feel isolated and lost. You don't know who you are, so you try to be what they say you should be, and that leaves you incapable of coping... You've lost your true identity and are desperately looking for a new one even though that's impossible.

This book leading into Ted Dekker's new series kept making me think of a quote from the Preface of Spitz' The Renaissance and Reformation Movements:

Contemporary man is suffering from amnesia. He is drifting along in a state of mind that Søren Kierkegaard once referred to as 'a kind of world historical forgetfulness.' ... 'Western civilization has begun to doubt its own credentials.' This condition is part of the price paid for modern man's pathetic attempt to live entirely in the 'specious present,' seeking relevance only in those fleeting moments that glide so quickly into the past. The loss of history means the loss of identity. The knowledge of history gives man 'divine perspective.' 'Who I am... and where I belong, I first learned to know from the mirror of history.' ...

And, history points us back to the One who changed history itself (Christ).

Without a solid foundation, it's no wonder people go crazy.

GKC's The Everlasting Man does a great job of jogging back our historical memory.
(You can read most of it for free here)

Get Identity for free here.

Check out more about Dekker's tour here. (With a great video by the author)

Or, here's a letter from Ted himself.

***Chapter two of Identity is also a great reminded of Descartes and his Meditations. If you are unfamiliar with them, make sure to read this before/during/after reading chapter two of Identity.

Orthodoxy | Introduction

Orthodoxy:

The only possible excuse for this book is that it is an answer to a challenge.
Even a bad shot is dignified when he accepts a duel.

The Challenge:

'I will begin to worry about my philosophy,' said Mr. Street,
'when Mr. Chesterton has given us his.'

His response:

I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it.

God and humanity made it; and it made me.

Find more in Orthodoxy (for free)

Read The Everlasting Man by GKC here.

Abiding God | Oswald Chambers

... So we are to live and move and have our being in God, to look at everything in relation to God, because the abiding consciousness of God pushes itself to the front all the time...

Nothing else can get in, no cares, no tribulation, no anxieties. We see now why Our Lord so emphasized the sin of worry. How can we dare be so utterly unbelieving when God is round about us? ... Have an effective barricade against all the onslaughts of the enemy

'His soul shall dwell at ease.' In tribulation, misunderstanding, slander, in the midst of all these things, if our life is hid with Christ in God, He will keep us at ease... this abiding companionship of God... nothing can come through that shelter.

Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest a reflection for June 2nd.

Into Deep Waters | Oswald Chambers

If you believe in Jesus, you are not to spend all your time in the smooth waters just inside the harbour bar, full of delight... you have to get out through the harbour bar into the great deeps of God and begin to know for yourself... It is a dangerous thing to refuse...


Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest a reflection for June 8th.

No Ordinary People | C. S. Lewis

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.

It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.

There are no ordinary people.

You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendours...

Our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously--... no superiority, no presumption.

And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner--no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love...

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.

If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ... the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself--... truly hidden.

From C. S. Lewis' The Weight of Glory as shown on June 7 of The Business of Heaven.

American Chesterton Society Virtual Meeting 6/3

Dale Ahlquist will highlight several "must-read" Chesterton essays for our time. He'll also unveil details about our upcoming raffle to win a signed, first edition of Chesterton's book The Ball and the Cross! The raffle winner will be announced at our annual Chesterton Conference at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts (Aug. 1-3).

If you haven't registered for this year's conference CLICK HERE or contact us toll free: 1-800-343-2425.

What is right with the world? A membership to the American Chesterton Society. For a limited time only, Dale will also discuss how you can receive a free gift by subscribing to Gilbert Magazine.

As always, there will be Chesterton updates and time for Q&A.
See you Monday!

CLICK HERE to join us LIVE on Monday, June 3 at 8PM EST
CLICK HERE to join a local society or start one of your own!