dual personalities

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.”

― T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

I do not as a rule make resolutions. However, this year I do resolve to read through the Bible. I am also going to commit to memorizing bible verses. I think this will be good for my flagging memory. My brain needs the exercise.

Remember resolution #28 of Jonathan Edwards’s list of resolutions:

28. Resolved, to study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly and frequently, as that I may find, and plainly perceive myself to grow in the knowledge of the same.

In case you have misplaced your copy of the aforementioned list of resolutions, here it is.

Alain de Botton is correct when he writes, “It is one of the unexpected disasters of the modern age that our new unparalleled access to information has come at the price of our capacity to concentrate on anything much. The deep, immersive thinking which produced many of civilization’s most important achievements has come under unprecedented assault. We are almost never far from a machine that guarantees us a mesmerizing and libidinous escape from reality. The feelings and thoughts which we have omitted to experience while looking at our screens are left to find their revenge in involuntary twitches and our ever-decreasing ability to fall asleep when we should.” (Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion)

I am going to fight that this year. 

The painting is “Looking at the Sea” by Winslow Homer