The Turtle Speaks

Welcome to Jekyll!

2019-01-01T17:02:49-06:00

You’ll find this post in your _posts directory. Go ahead and edit it and re-build the site to see your changes. You can rebuild the site in many different ways, but the most common way is to run jekyll serve, which launches a web server and auto-regenerates your site when a file is updated.

To add new posts, simply add a file in the _posts directory that follows the convention YYYY-MM-DD-name-of-post.ext and includes the necessary front matter. Take a look at the source for this post to get an idea about how it works.

Jekyll also offers powerful support for code snippets:

def print_hi(name)
  puts "Hi, #{name}"
end
print_hi('Tom')
#=> prints 'Hi, Tom' to STDOUT.

Check out the Jekyll docs for more info on how to get the most out of Jekyll. File all bugs/feature requests at Jekyll’s GitHub repo. If you have questions, you can ask them on Jekyll Talk.

On Christian Commitment

2015-01-23T15:54:39-06:00

If you tell me Christian commitment is a kind of thing that has happened to you once and for all like some kind of spiritual plastic surgery, I say go to, go to, you’re either pulling the wool over your own eyes or trying to pull it over mine. Every morning you should wake up in your bed and ask yourself: “Can I believe it all again today?” No, better still, don’t ask it till after you’ve read The New York Times, till after you’ve studied that daily record of the world’s brokenness and corruption, which should always stand side by side with your Bible. Then ask yourself if you can believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ again for that particular day. If your answer’s always Yes, then you probably don’t know what believing means. At least five times out of ten the answer should be No because the No is as important as the Yes, maybe more so. The No is what proves you’re human in case you should ever doubt it. And then if some morning the answer happens to be really Yes, it should be a Yes that’s choked with confession and tears and…great laughter.

—http://m.frederickbuechner.com/content/christian-commitment

He never complained. He seemed to have no instinct for the making much of oneself that complaining requires.

2014-12-10T08:03:44-06:00

He never complained. He seemed to have no instinct for the making much of oneself that complaining requires.

—Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife

2014-10-29T11:48:50-05:00

This would seem to mean – by implication – that one should covet his own wife, no?

Beware the patriot who doesn’t have a passport.

2014-07-17T07:30:31-05:00

Beware the patriot who doesn’t have a passport.

—Kim Fabricus

when one has seen beauty all else ceases to

2014-07-11T15:12:54-05:00

When one has seen beauty, all else ceases to exist

Halldór Laxness

What’s taking you to Iceland?

2014-06-15T23:38:00-05:00

asked our minister when he saw us buying warm clothes at a sporting-goods store.

I paused trying to decide whether to say “a jumbo jet” or “Delta Airlines.”

“Luke’s always wanted to go,” replied my wife answering the intent of the question. It has been a nearly five-year thought of mine to go to Iceland. Who knows why certain thoughts and goals become lodged in our minds?

Melville¹ speaks of an island “not down in any map; true places never are.” Iceland seems a similar place. Yes, there are maps of it and GPS devices and in many ways it’s as modern a country as there is. But Iceland has a certain mystique about it; similar to Texas and Italy and Memphis. A place whose remoteness and wonder make it seem like a “true place.”

Anyone who listens to the beauty and quirkiness of Sigur Rós and Björk ought to wonder what kind of country could nurture such creativity. The countless photos of inexpressibly beautiful scenery with an other-worldliness about it, descriptions of lava fields, Hidden People, countless raging waterfalls, active glaciers and volcanos, and the beautiful desolateness of it all draw me in.

And puffins.

Puffins have captivated me years. Something about their clownish faces and squatty bodies and orange beaks. Yes, there are puffins in Newfoundland and the Faroes and Norway, but they do not compare with the prospect of seeing one in Iceland. Photographing a puffin in the wild is on my bucket list.

That’s what’s taking me to Iceland. A vision of a magical place my imagination and soul seeks.

(that and Zeppelin’s Iceland-inspired Immigrant Song)

Moby Dick, chapter 12, speaking of the fictitious Rokovoko. Melville had the good fortune to live in a time before pervasive maps and satellite images took some of the wonder from the world. ↩︎

And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists.

2014-04-28T21:54:00-05:00

And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists.

—Father Mapple

But we often have cause to regret having said too much, and we would rarely have cause for regret if we spoke less rather than more.

2014-04-03T10:02:36-05:00

But we often have cause to regret having said too much, and we would rarely have cause for regret if we spoke less rather than more.

—The Saga of Hrafnkel Frey’s Godi

Three Maxims on Knowledge, Belief, Action Don’t claim to know what you merely believe even on good evidence. Don’t claim to believe what you are not prepared to act upon. Don’t let insufficient evidence prevent you from believing what you are better off believing in the long run than not believing in the long run.

2014-03-13T07:30:06-05:00

Three Maxims on Knowledge, Belief, Action

Don’t claim to know what you merely believe even on good evidence.

Don’t claim to believe what you are not prepared to act upon.

Don’t let insufficient evidence prevent you from believing what you are better off believing in the long run than not believing in the long run.

—http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2014/03/knowledge-belief-action-three-maxims.html