# Boston Weekend: Augustine Collective By [Jack Brustkern](https://paragraph.com/@jbrustkern) · 2023-02-07 --- Great people, great time. Some ideas: * * * **James KA Smith** **on Time** Time is a commodity; expectation to leverage our investment; efficiency taskmaster; never enough -- like too many’s relationship with money; bonds expectation of self to have it all figured out versus Time is given to us. Given. Created from nothing. Creature-hood. Own your mortality. Free to not be perfect. Role * * * **Terrance Malik and Beauty** Beauty brings us out of ourselves and reminds us of God. Recognizing how powerful art -- movies and books -- are at shaping our vision and opinions -- discern them: are they being true to humanity? * I like this idea, but it’s not fully satisfying, how do we know whether something is so or not? Contemplare et contemplata aliis tradere: Contemplate and share the fruits of contemplation * * * **Justin Hawkins** This guy is so on fire and alive -- showed a glimpse I don’t see often, of a deeply faithful young person who has pursued Christ and the excellence in truth to a deep extent, and is so alive and learned. It’s not a specialized slog long off, or a secular avoidance, but a dive in, a trust, a deep learning. Read upstream. Know your purpose in reading it also. God doesn’t replace, he empowers. Agency. It’s how he works You are the salt of the earth. Kierkergard -- need to “throw up” bad understanding of religion to get to the truth. **Some other ideas** Wisdom: “The owl of Minerva only flies at dusk” The Sabbath -- relinquishing sovereignty and control to the sovereignty of God. Margin to play. Margin to be. If there is not transcendence or eternity, we have to figure everything out ourselves and now. Religion and secularity is often spoken of as a dichotomy, but you can’t separate religion from man just like it’s some club. When a person writes honestly, about how the world is, it is informed by how they see the world. The Christian view informs this. Dostoevsky’s characters have these different views. On economics and poverty -- start on the family level, and grow from there. The gift economy. All is a gift to begin with, given to us from God. Idea: the university today has no unifying factor, no thing to strive to -- just bound by the the mutual passing through the Dartmouth acceptance machine, a few shared experiences, and the don’t offend - keep at arms distance happy face. **Specifically on the Journal** Play to your strengths -- the campus: Look at campus. Notice the posters being looked at, the architecture, the history, the people of history. Listen. Analyze. What are the loves of the students? Guide its loves, don’t refute them. Come alongside them, guide them home. Look at these areas, and through them to the good. Ask them too -- what do you love in this? Serve the person, not us to serve it. Why the apologia? * To help us see Jesus at the other end of a friends idea. To help us understand our faith, both for our own deepening of faith and our ability to evangelize when called upon. For people to see -- to evangelize through the journal. * The Apologia -- not a retreat from the world into an enclosed circle, but a going into the slum, loving, trying, letting Christ work. We want to be in the school, not peripheral to it. To serve Dartmouth. Writing ideas * AI → what is a human? Short story ideas * The dashboard: the mind, with everything open, all the applications, efficiently turning away, back and forth. And another, with all closed off, looking to allow the human choice, that little voice. Peace, humanity --- *Originally published on [Jack Brustkern](https://paragraph.com/@jbrustkern/boston-weekend-augustine-collective)*