Category: Seven Quick Takes

Seven things to do for Thanksgiving and Black Friday: 7QT VIII, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • November 28, 2013 • Seven Quick Takes

 

Every Thanks­giv­ing it has been a rit­u­al in my fam­i­ly not to say a tra­di­tion­al prayer before the meal, but instead to have every­one at the table name one thing they are thank­ful for. There is far too much com­plain­ing. We live in chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic times, but for all of that we are the wealth­i­est and luck­i­est peo­ple in the his­to­ry of the world. What­ev­er chal­lenges we have faced, we have come around to the end of anoth­er year. God has sus­tained us, for He is the cre­ator and the sus­tain­er of all things. Keep in mind how He has sus­tained you.

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Seven epiphanies that made me Catholic: 7QT VII, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • November 23, 2013 • Apologetics; Personal Narrative; Seven Quick Takes

 

My con­ver­sion to the Catholic Church entailed a series of epipha­nies, where­by a man who once under­stood the world look­ing west turned around and faced east. If you’ve stood on your head your whole life, things look very dif­fer­ent when you final­ly stand upright. That can be a dis­con­cert­ing expe­ri­ence; it can also car­ry a great deal of won­der and joy. I am Catholic today because I once under­stood real­i­ty that way, and now I under­stand it this way. I come at life from a very dif­fer­ent set of assump­tions about the way things are.

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Seven more books that changed my life: 7QT VI, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • November 16, 2013 • Literature; Seven Quick Takes

 

As I am work­ing on some posts that are tak­ing a very long time to write, and since my last post on books turned out to be very pop­u­lar, I thought I would fol­low it up with a sequel — though this will end up being the only such. This list was much hard­er to come up with than the pre­vi­ous one. When you’re talk­ing about books that changed your life, that’s a strict stan­dard; and a total of four­teen — even after half a life­time of read­ing — is dif­fi­cult to con­ceive. But here the oth­er sev­en are. They run the gamut from Dante to G.K. Chester­ton to Philip Roth.

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Seven books that changed my life: 7QT V, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • November 9, 2013 • Literature; Seven Quick Takes

 

The French nov­el­ist Jean Malaquais once said, “The only time I know some­thing is true is the moment I dis­cov­er it in the act of writ­ing.” As it hap­pens, Malaquais was a Com­mu­nist; which makes me ques­tion the truth of the obser­va­tion. I don’t know whether the state­ment becomes any more or less accu­rate if I change it this way: “The only time I know some­thing is true is the moment I dis­cov­er it in the act of read­ing.” I like the thought, even if the truth may be less than pris­tine. I sus­pect — or at least I hope very earnest­ly — that there will be libraries in heav­en.

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A fulcrum and a lever; chiefly on Eucharistic adoration. 7QT IV, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • November 2, 2013 • Seven Quick Takes

 

I can tell that it has been some time since I’ve been to Ado­ra­tion. The rea­son I know this is because I am tired. I have lacked patience, which nor­mal­ly is one of my rare — exceed­ing­ly rare — virtues. I am out of tem­pera­ment, and morose. As water seeks its own lev­el, so my less fre­quent vis­its to the ado­ra­tion chapel can be gauged by my more fre­quent vis­its to the con­fes­sion­al. I can tell that I have not been to Ado­ra­tion because even the word “water” sounds dry. But I can­not han­dle myself, or my life, as in my male­ness I do oft imag­ine I can. I need Christ; I need to be with Christ.

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The best writing advice I ever got & other quick takes: 7QT III, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 26, 2013 • Blogging & Writing; Literature; Seven Quick Takes

 

The only thing I know about writ­ing is this: that you have to work hard at writ­ing the kind of stuff you want to write. It does no good, if you want to write 700 page nov­els, to lis­ten to oth­ers tell you that peo­ple only read short sto­ries any­more. Don’t lis­ten to them; if you’re not com­ing up with short sto­ries, you’re not a short sto­ry writer, and the quick­est way to stop writ­ing is to spend years try­ing to learn how to write some­thing you don’t have it in you to write in the first place. Write the 700 page nov­el. Learn how to do that. Read 700-page nov­els and learn how they work.

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The apologist’s anathema against Twitter, and other quick takes: 7QT II, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 19, 2013 • Seven Quick Takes

 

Twit­ter has its uses, I guess. And note that by “I guess” I mean some­thing along the lines of: A wild and blind shot into an emp­ty field hop­ing that maybe a deer will show up at the last minute to be felled. I have found, in my ten months or so on Twit­ter, that I have used it main­ly for shar­ing arti­cles (includ­ing my own) or quo­ta­tions with a sting in the pith. But who ever learned any­thing from those bane­ful descrip­tions of movies in the TV sec­tion, of one sen­tence or a frag­ment? The descrip­tion of “For­rest Gump” might be “A retard­ed man from the fifties til today.”

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The dark night of the soul, and other quick takes. 7QT I, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 12, 2013 • Seven Quick Takes

 

I won­der whether it has ever struck any­one else that Job is so well-placed in the Old Tes­ta­ment. Tech­ni­cal­ly, it could have been placed any­where, but in the prov­i­dence of God it was placed imme­di­ate­ly before the Psalms. In the Psalms, to be sure, there are laments and cries to a God who seems absent or slow. But ulti­mate­ly they are songs of praise and thanks­giv­ing. So imme­di­ate­ly before the Psalms we read the ulti­mate nar­ra­tive of spir­i­tu­al dark­ness in Job. Job is the night; the Psalms are the day. Job is lament; the Psalms are praise. The books com­ple­ment each oth­er.

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