Hamilton. I am intrigued.
Grateful For:
Having everyone home for the summer. Though life is crazier in some ways (and everyone tends to stay up too late at night!), the interactions and shared activities, stories, ideas, etc. are really wonderful. For example, we've had a little retro-tech theme going on around here lately. Gus and I have been scanning old family photos and the oldest and youngest kids both got typewriters...
Everything Keeps Coming Up...
Balance. This concept has been on my mind and heart a lot lately. It is really an answer to many problems, including perfectionism, the need to be controlling of everything, and counteracting the effects of consumerism.
The problem of perfectionism, especially has come up in a lot of my reading lately, especially the book on eugenics I'm still working my way through (an important look at history as well as a perspective on many modern issues!) and the solution as presented by Pope Francis: "The world does not become better because only apparently 'perfect' people live there."
I think is also a great perspective:
Most people tend to allow the truth they possess so to dominate their thinking that they see few others truths that place their one truth in perspective and balance it out. There is probably no heresy in the history of the Church that did not have its truth. The problem invariably is that the one truth so took over the heretic’s mind that he was committed to cast out any number of other doctrines that clashed with his interpretation of it. – Fr. Thomas Dubay, Authenticity
Playing:
Nothing new to report here, but I've been spending a lot of time in the garden lately.
Reading:
Still plodding through the same books at the moment. :)
Watching:
I saw Captain America: Civil War a few weeks ago (I went in with a little trepidation, because of the conflict between characters that I like!). It exceeded my expectations, but there was a lot going on that I needed some time to process. Last week I got a chance to watch it a second time (Hurray for Marcus Theaters' $5 Tuesdays!) and was really glad that I did. It's a thoughtful and even important movie and very entertaining too. While movies about good guys fighting bad guys can be inspiring, oftentimes it's the battles we have to fight with ourselves that are the most important.
It is kind of nice to be at a stage where everyone in the family is old enough to watch this kind of movie. It's another fun piece that all of the "kids" (half of whom are adults now!) get to process movies like this together.
Quote I'm Pondering:
One of my favorite essays ever is one by C.S. Lewis on the importance of old books. In it he talks about the blindness everone tends to have to the errors of their own age (I was thinking of this especially in terms of the concept of balance mentioned above:
The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them. (emphasis mine)
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