Perpetually Restless

Excerpt from Justin Taylor post:  Addicted to Diversion and Afraid of Silence

Some people write out of their strengths; others out of their weaknesses, because they care most about what they struggle with most. I’m aware of my own temptations toward distraction and busyness, so I care about calls away from our cultural addiction to diversion.

Blasie Pascal (1623-1662) has been a good mentor on these issues. I’d recommend getting Peter Kreeft’s edition, Christianity for Modern Pagans, Pascal’s Pensees Edited, Outlined, and Explained, where his thoughts on God, man, and diversion are all gathered in one section (pp. 167-187). Kreeft writes that when he teaches this material, his “students are always stunned and shamed to silence as

Pascal shows them in these pensees their own lives in all their shallowness, cowardice and dishonesty.”

Here is one line from Pascal (from #136) that it worthy of a lot of meditation::

I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.

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