The Wittenberg Door

I recently learned the most effective cure ever for blisters: iodine. I had no idea; and I bet your mother, like mine, told you to bandage a blister and never, ever drain…

The furniture of the old churches and chapels formed the habitus of those who worshipped there regularly.

This is Goethe’s experience. And mine.

Colby said the two men settled their dispute like men, but they looked more like buffoons than men to me.

While Thoreau was by no means a Puritan, I think that similarities regarding the human occupation and the goodness of creation are evident in both.

Her heartfelt lament may sound like despair, and in a way it is, save for a crucial difference.

Without the Incarnation, the philosopher’s death remains incomplete.

There is something life-giving about rooting oneself in a single community—about investing ourselves in a mutual fund, so to speak.

A happy life is not something out there in the future. It’s not something you make, even.

He decides to write about his experience. Two earlier novels were dismal affairs. But now in 1927, over the course of a few months, he fills each page with pain and sorrow

His hands remind me of a topographical map. Even now with their nail scars, do Jesus’ hands bear also the marks that come with age and years as a craftsman?

The laughter of a faithless culture is bitter, derisive. It no longer springs from a merry heart but from dry bones. A culture of faith is a culture that can truly laugh.