Can't stop looking, can't stop listening
A Mesmerizing Photo
Silence
This week I had the privilege, again, of reading Shusaku Endo’s Silence with students in my First-Year Seminar. We’ve spent about three hours on the book, already, and it feels like we could go on for three more weeks.
The book doesn’t exactly “teach itself,” but a little bit of work on the big picture and a few “theses for disputation” (e.g., “Rodrigues does not apostatize”) go a long way toward starting a great discussion. By the end of Thursday’s session, one student said Silence was his new favorite book.
Quote
From Frederick Douglass:
“What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest, possible difference–so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of ‘stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.’“
The bright lines Douglass draws make some uncomfortable, but if we can’t imagine ever drawing those kinds of lines, we’re doing it wrong.
Links
- Who was displaced when Chicago’s Eisenhower Expressway was built?
- See how climate change is already changing the United States and how climate-related risks are likely to pile up between 2040 and 2060.
- Speaking of climate change. This piece may be ten years old, but I think it’s still relevant.
Events
One more reminder about this event on the future of liberal arts in higher education.
Recommendations
Can’t stop listening to these.
Diana Krall, “How Deep is the Ocean”
Rhiannon Giddens (with Francesco Turrisi), “Wayfaring Stranger” and “He Will See You Through”
Gregory Porter, Spiritual Songs… and if you like those, you’ll probably want to listen to all the remixes of “Revival,” like this one
