Links and words

A few interesting links that I hope are more than words:
Living Wittily's post on the beatitudes. His next post is good too - on yes and no. He has a Turkish spelling error in it. cun for sun.
Henry's post on reading the NT. I wonder who gets it. It's a problem in acting, not just in theology.
Andrew's post on Israel in narrative history.

And here is a word on words from Elena Ferrante, from the third volume of the Neapolitan quartet. This is an astonishing story, with Naples as a microcosm of the world.

Last night I heard the second John Albert Hall lecture. The words were so well woven into a ball, I could not imagine a question that should be asked. I could not get a knitting needle into that ball to unweave it, yet I thought the ball was empty. This is not a compliment to the speaker. Here is what I read in the novel an hour later:

... it seemed to me that I had mastered words to the point of sweeping away forever the contradictions of being in the world, the surge of emotions, the breathless speech. In short, I now knew a method of speaking and writing that - by means of a refined vocabulary, stately and thoughtful pacing, a determined arrangement of arguments, and a formal orderliness that wasn't supposed to fail - sought to annihilate the interlocutor to the point where he lost the will to object.

Silence