Mike Tumbles

CS Lewis quote

“Is it not frightfully unfair that this new life should be confined to people who have heard of Christ and been able to believe in Him? But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved by Him. But in the meantime, if you are worried about the people outside, the most unreasonable thing you can do is remain outside yourself. Christians are Christ’s body, the organism through which He works. Every addition to that body enables Him to do more. If you want to help those outside you must add your little cell to the body of Christ who alone can help them. Cutting off a man’s fingers would be an odd way of getting him to do more.”

“The determinists come to bind, not to loose. They may well call their law the “chain” of causation. It is the worst chain that ever fettered a human being. You may use the language of liberty, if you like, about materialistic teaching, but it is obvious that this is just as inapplicable to it as a whole as the same language when applied to a man locked up in a mad-house. You may say, if you like, that the man is free to think himself a poached egg. But it is surely a more massive and important fact that if he is a poached egg he is not free to eat, drink, sleep, walk, or smoke a cigarette. Similarly you may say, if you like, that the bold determinist speculator is free to disbelieve in the reality of the will. But it is a much more massive and important fact that he is not free to praise, to curse, to thank, to justify, to urge, to punish, to resist temptations, to incite mobs, to make New Year resolutions, to pardon sinners, to rebuke tyrants, or even to say “thank you” for the mustard.”

GK Chesterton - Orthodoxy chapter 2, The Maniac

thejoel:

medwardsmusic:

then I shall try for a better smile
remember one hand shakes while the other feels for life for life
the feeling of something inside, hidden and disguised
for life for life
somewhere behind suit and tie hidden, disguised

— Strange Flowers by Luxury

I love this song.

These lyrics in particular remind me of some of Enigk’s better lyrics.

then I shall try for a better smile
remember one hand shakes while the other feels for life for life
the feeling of something inside, hidden and disguised
for life for life
somewhere behind suit and tie hidden, disguised

— Strange Flowers by Luxury

Ebert responds to a comment. As usual, Ebert is a fantastic writer.

Commenter:

The average non-celebrity sees stars as being drowned in money, freebies, luxuries, and attention solely because they were born with good bone structure. Stars (the perception goes) don’t work hard, don’t work much, don’t need to be good at what they do, and don’t even have to try: all they have to do is show up and look right. And for that they earn more in one year than a firefighter or a police officer could earn in forty lifetimes.

There’s also the perception that stars rarely have to accept responsibility for their actions. A star can kill; a star can rape; a star can drive drunk; a star can abuse their children; a star can do almost anything (other than steal memorabilia) and get 100% away with it with no repercussions whatsoever.

The perception of utter unfairness and entitlement makes people hunger for stories where the tin gods are pulled off their pedestals and the sordid underside exposed. It’s hard to accept that a decent man could make $80 million a year just for standing in front of a camera; it’s much easier to accept that he may be making that $80 million specifically because he is not a decent man, or because he’s had to figuratively make a pact with the devil.

Ebert: That makes perfect sense, and I understand it. But let me just observe: Once you have enough money to live comfortably (which most people in the world do not, but that’s a different subject), or even to live in what, growing up, we imagined as luxury, then additional money buys nothing except for additional money translated into material terms.

You can only sleep in one house a night, drive one car at a time, eat one meal at a sitting, and send your kids to one school, however good it may be. You can only be happy inside your own body right here and now. Having been on a lot of movie sets, I have observed that movie actors work harder than you might think for a living. That includes physical work. It also includes waiting (Jack Lemmon: “My career consists of thousands of crossword puzzles, interrupted from time to time by acting”). When we hear that an actor had to rise at 3 a.m. for five hours of makeup every day for two months, do we reflect that it would drive us mad? And movie actors (who these days have to be at least good, if not great) earn their money with what they actually do, and it brings us pleasure and sometimes important experiences.

If you see the Vanity Fair with Tina Fey on the cover, read the article about the meltdown of the new Gilded Age. There you will learn about obscene wealth. Wall Street CEOs who always order the $2,000 wine, who like the $36 an ounce Kobe beef, who even this year thought they deserved $100 million bonuses for making people’s savings evaporate and driving their companies into bankruptcy by insane leveraging. Who use a private jet to commute every three or four days among six vast homes. It gets a lot worse. I actually wouldn’t mind seeing them given the gossip treatment.

Lots of people have good cheekbones. But the Kate Winslets and Sean Penns, the Meryl Streeps and Robert Duvalls, the Woody Harrelsons and Jeanne Moreaus, are rare. You want to see a movie star working? See “The Wrestler.”

From: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/01/gossips_as_birds_of_prey.html

Santa Claus

“What has happened to me has been the very reverse of what appears to be the experience of most of my friends. Instead of dwindling to a point, Santa Claus has grown larger and larger in my life until he fills almost the whole of it. It happened in this way.

As a child I was faced with a phenomenon requiring explanation. I hung up at the end of my bed an empty stocking, which in the morning became a full stocking. I had done nothing to produce the things that filled it. I had not worked for them, or made them or helped to make them. I had not even been good - far from it.

And the explanation was that a certain being whom people called Santa Claus was benevolently disposed toward me… . What we believed was that a certain benevolent agency did give us those toys for nothing. And, as I say, I believe it still. I have merely extended the idea.

Then I only wondered who put the toys in the stocking; now I wonder who put the stocking by the bed, and the bed in the room, and the room in the house, and the house on the planet, and the great planet in the void.

Once I only thanked Santa Claus for a few dollars and crackers. Now, I thank him for stars and street faces, and wine and the great sea. Once I thought it delightful and astonishing to find a present so big that it only went halfway into the stocking. Now I am delighted and astonished every morning to find a present so big that it takes two stockings to hold it, and then leaves a great deal outside; it is the large and preposterous present of myself, as to the origin of which I can offer no suggestion except that Santa Claus gave it to me in a fit of peculiarly fantastic goodwill.”

G.K. Chesterton

Hugh

Some friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise the funds.

Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, the rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. He asked his mother to go and ask the friars to get out of business. They ignored her, too.

So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town, to “persuade” them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he’d be back if they didn’t close shop. Terrified, the friars did so, thereby proving that Hugh, and only Hugh, can prevent florist friars.