“commonplacing”

From “Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation” by Steven Johnson Scholars, amateur scientists, aspiring men of letters – just about anyone with intellectual ambition in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was likely to keep a commonplace book. The great minds of the period – Milton, Bacon, Locke – were zealous believers

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Something Better and Truer

From “Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner” by Frederick Buechner THERE WAS THE DAY I signed the contract for that first novel that I had started in college, for instance. It was a major event for me, needless to say – the fulfillment of my wildest dreams of literary glory. But of

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Being Present

From “The Language of the Soul: Meeting God in the Longings of Our Hearts” by Jeff Crosby Not long ago I crossed the threshold of my sixtieth year, an age that I once looked upon as being very old – but no longer do. And yet that marker has caused me to think more deeply

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