Svenson: everyone needs time

Speed. Supercomputers operate at trillionths of a second. Do you know what that means?   Neither do I, and I have a degree in physics. A trillionth of a second has no human reference.

Everyone needs personal time. Those who say they don’t need time for self are probably the ones who need it the most. We all need time to let the dust settle, to evaluate how life is going, to plan for the future.  

“Since the opportunity for inward attention hardly ever comes, many people have not heard from themselves for a long, long time. Those who are always ‘on the run’ never meet anyone any more, not even themselves.”

Margin (loc.1895ff)  

Svenson: positive effect of exercise

One hundred percent of people who exercise to the point of cardiorespiratory fitness will experience an increased sense of well-being. Exercise has a tranquilizing effect on the body. It helps decompress stress and is good medicine for anxiety or depression. Along with increased energy, it grants increased alertness, independence, dignity, self-esteem, and sleep.

Fatigue often has its source in emotional rather than muscular or cardiovascular exhaustion.

Margin  (loc.1638ff)

Postman: what's all this information for?

Attend any conference on telecommunications or computer technology, and you will be attending a celebration of innovative machinery that generates, stores and distributes more information, more conveniently, at greater speeds than ever before.  To the question "What problem does that information solve?" the answer is usually "How to generate, store and distribute more information, more conveniently, at greater speeds than ever before".  This is the elevation of information to a metaphysical status: information as both the means and end of human creativity.  For what purpose or with what limitations, it is not for us to ask;  and we are not accustomed to asking, since the problem is unprecedented.  The world has never before been confronted with information  glut and has hardly had time to reflect on its consequences.

Technopoly, p61.

Svenson: choose rest

To sleep soundly for a full night is a valuable restorative gift. 


Choose to get enough rest.

Don’t engage in disturbing conversations immediately before bedtime.

As a rule, oversleeping will make you feel worse rather than better. Extra sleeping paradoxically often causes extra tiredness. Also, headaches are more common with excess sleep.

Margin (loc 1520ff)  

Svenson: love as medicine

Love is the only medicine I know of which, when used according to directions, heals completely yet takes one’s life away. It is dangerous; it is uncontrollable; it is “self-expenditure”; and it can never be taken on any terms but its own. Yet as a healer of the emotions, it has no equal.

Margin  (loc 1435)

Movement/institution

The difference between an institution and a movement is that one crosses boundaries while the other guards them.

David J Bosch (quoted here)

Svenson: chopping a hole in your lifeboat

I don’t think most of us realize what a weighty emotional burden it is to judge others and to be judged in return. It is a form of emotional and spiritual suicide—like chopping a hole in the bottom of your lifeboat because you don’t want the other person to be rescued.

Margin (loc.1394)

Quick-review: Agatha Raisin & The Quiche of Death

...by MC Beaton.

A long bank holiday and a need for something not demanding but engaging and fun...this definitely did it.

It feels a lot like one of those British films of the 50s and 60s - a typical English village, sinister happenings under the surface, but lots of light-heartedness and silliness (but in a 1990s style - so in places the language is not what one would find in a 50s film: not as bad as The Holmes Affair by a long shot, but it's there; and some incidents that wouldn't have appeared either - shame - though Agatha is surprisingly old-fashioned conservative in many ways).

Former advertising executive, Agatha Raisin, takes (very) early retirement to her dream house in the Cotswolds.  In an effort to do something about the unexpected sense of isolation and boredom, she ends up inadvertently looking like the chief suspect in the murder of the judge of a WI-style quiche competition.  The rest of the story is Agatha's attempt to unravel the mystery, to fit in the local community, and the building of a cast of characters (well-drawn too) who, I assume, will turn up in subsequent books.

Good fun.

Svenson: boundaries

Boundaries are about establishing a perimeter around the personal and private spaces of our lives and not letting the world come crashing in uninvited. This is not an issue of selfishness but instead of self-care.  “Boundary deficits,” explains psychologist Dr. John Townsend, “can be deeply disabling to anyone, including Christians. People with unclear boundaries can find themselves making commitments under pressure that they would never make with a clear head. They find themselves ‘caving in’ to others.

Margin  (loc.1358)

Quick-review: Howard's End is on the Landing

by Susan Hill.

I have never read Susan Hill's novels and was originally led to this book by the the subject and the dust jacket alone. And whilst I can't speak for her other work, this has been a lovely, relaxing, fascinating read.

Whilst searching for one book in particular, the author came across countless books in her house which she had not read or wanted to re-read.  She committed herself to one year of reading from home - no new books.  The record of her journey through "reading from home" is laced with her own memories, both domestic and literary: as a writer and publisher she either knows or has bumped into a great number of the famous and fascinating.

Lovely stuff.

Svenson: laughter (& crying) helps

New studies indicate that even the anticipation of a humorous event—as far as two days in advance—will begin reducing stress hormone levels and boosting the immune system.  Laughter lifts; crying cleanses. Both are partners in the process of emotional restoration

Margin  (loc.1348f)

Svenson: what kind of rest?

Many of us funnel all our rest needs into already jam-packed weekends and holidays. But don’t fall into the trap of thinking weekends and holidays are restful. Often they are not. Sometimes they are even more draining than the week we just escaped. Weekends, Sundays, holidays, vacations—all have been modernized, and are only restful if forced to behave. When emotionally exhausted, the first thing I do is find quiet, solitude, and a chance to do nothing. I don’t feel guilty, for fallow times are just as important as productive times. I cycle quickly, and my energy will return shortly. All I need is quiet and some time.

Margin  (loc.1328ff)

Susan Hill: children's books

Since our children's books were first bought, fiction for young readers has become more and more issue-led.  Divorce, step-parents, drugs, alcohol, early sex, knife-crime, foster-care, child-abuse,unemployment, gang warfare, AIDS, terminal illness....you name it, there is a novel for children about it.  But all children are anxious, adult life contains much that is ugly and unhappy, unpleasant or downright bad.  Why introduce them to that too early, through books , which can be such a force for enjoyment, imaginative enrichment, fun, excitement, adventure, magic?   Realism comes home soon enough and many children have too much anguish to cope with in their everyday lives as it is.  Their books can be one corner of their life that remains untainted by the troubles brought upon their heads by unthinking, unloving adults.  I am glad mine remained ignorant of much that is polluted, cruel, ugly, hurtful, wrong as long as possible (which is not, after all, very long, in the scheme of things) and that their books were wholesome, enriching, enlivening, enjoyable, lovable and for the most part, were about worlds into which they could happily innocently escape.

Susuan Hill,  Howards End is on the Landing, p196-7

An unread book is a chrysalis

A book which is left on the shelf is a dead thing but it is also a chrysalis, an inanimate object packed with the potential to burst into new life.

Susuan Hill,  Howard's End is on the Landing, p2

Svenson: the limits of emotional reserves

“If we string ourselves out, expending 100 percent of our time and energy, there is no way in which we can adjust to the unexpected emergency,” concludes Pastor Louis H. Evans, Jr. “We become defensive about our expended energies because there isn’t anything left to give. Having nothing in reserve, we tune out the need.”  


Each morning we rise to meet the day with a certain quantum of emotional energy. For some, this energy reservoir is huge, while for others it is nearly drained empty. Some are buoyant and resilient, filled with a zest and vitality that never seems to change. Others have their emotional chins on the ground and can’t remember what it feels like to smile. This quantum of emotional energy is not fixed but instead is in constant flux with the environment. We are always losing energy into the environment and receiving energy back again. Sometimes the reservoir is being drained, as when we are sad or angry. Other times the reservoir is being filled, perhaps by expressions of encouragement or activities successfully completed. No matter how large or small the quantum of emotional energy is at the start of the day, and no matter how fast or slow it is exchanging with the environment, one thing is certain: The amount within us is finite. No one has an infinite capacity for emotional discharge. When our reserves are depleted, they are depleted. If we make further withdrawals, pain will be felt.  


It is important to understand our emotional reserves. It is important to understand how much we have at the beginning of each day and which influences drain our emotions dry or recharge our batteries. It is important to learn what our limits are, and not to make further withdrawals if we are already maximally depleted. And it is important to respect these limits in others.

Margin (loc.1177-91)

Svenson: the importance of emotional energy & margin

Of the four margins—emotional energy, physical energy, time, and finances—margin in emotional energy is paramount. When we are emotionally resilient, we can confront our problems with a sense of hope and power. When our psychic reserves are depleted, however, we are seriously weakened. Emotional overload saps our strength, paralyzes our resolve, and maximizes our vulnerability, leaving the door open for even further margin erosion.

Margin (loc.1144/46)

Quick review: Margin

...by Richard A Svenson (NavPress)

The number of quotations appearing on this blog will suggest that this book had an impact on me.

To me the value of this volume is the way it gives name and form to some of the issues which rot the soul of modern people.  Essentially, Svenson suggests that we have entered an age of too much (to do, to think about, to take in, to cope with) and we have forgotten that we have natural limits.  Obvious really, but how come we didn't notice?  That the feeling which bows our hearts with such weight we cannot cope, is frustration.  He's right.

His aim is to encourage us to build a margin in our life so that we can deal with the unexpected and stay healthy: emotional, physical, financial and time margin - and he does so persuasively, with hope and wit.  His advice is practical without being overbearing or beyond possibility.

I won't say any more here, but if the quotes on this blog and this brief description seem to resonate with where you are, then get the book.  It is really worth reading.

Quick Review: The Short Day Dying

...by Peter Hobbs (Faber)

In some ways I would liken this to Gilead: not a 'plot' as such, but the slow, everyday routine of a religious man, humbly told. However, where Gilead has sunshine and hope, this novel tends more towards sadness and shaken certainty.

In effect it is roughly a year in the life of a Cornish blacksmith and local Methodist preacher.  I don't know Hobbs' background, but he captures remarkably well the tone and priorities of that world. Not a great deal happens really, but we see the inner workings of this simple man as he struggles with loneliness, loss, love (probably) and faith.  Sentence construction is unusual - I'm not sure there is a comma in the whole book - which feels as though the narrator is writing his thoughts as they emerge from his mind without refining the punctuation.

I didn't leave the book feeling cheered, but I was impressed by Hobbs' use of language, and it was quite a relaxing read, taking on the tones and rhythms of a slower, more basic and much quieter era.

Groeschel: worry is a prayer alarm

...we must learn to recognise and label worry for what it is.  It is the alarm calling us to pray.  We can start by telling ourselves, This is not a God thought.  This is a thought based on fear..  Then we must capture that runaway thought and make it obedient to Christ.

Craig Groeschel,  The Christian Atheist, p154

keller on Douthat on materialism

The fourth factor in Christianity’s decline, according to Douthat, is the enormous growth in the kind of material prosperity that generally works against faith. This explanation was striking to me personally. Most religious-cultural analysts do not go here, but I found this argument persuasive. John Wesley was famous for his insistence that whenever a society (or a portion of society) becomes more wealthy, Christianity loses its power. Why? One underrated reason for the decline in the quality and quantity of those pursuing the ministry as a vocation is that other professions now provide far more wealth and status (as they did not 50 years ago). Another is that Biblical Christianity actually contains a very trenchant, powerful critique of greed and acquisition, as it does of sexual immorality. Just as the sexual revolution makes it hard for people to stomach one part of Biblical wisdom, so a highly materialistic society makes it hard to stomach the other. In addition, the consumerism of our culture is so pervasive and powerful that it has shaped American Christians’ attitude toward the church—namely, it makes the church irrelevant. Americans are conditioned to think of themselves as customers of goods and services, and churches as vendors that can be used or discarded on the basis of cost-benefit analysis. Douthat adds that in a materialistic society people are extremely mobile and they tend to commute long-distances to work. “Religious community proved harder to sustain in the new commuter society than it had been in an America of small towns and urban neighborhoods.” That’s right. In a society of increasing wealth, human community becomes less important for sustaining your life. Both church and neighborhood becomes superfluous. 

 Redeemer Blog

However you feel in the morning, get up...

In John14:15 Jesus says, "If you love me you will obey what I command."  So whenever we are in  a situation of pressure, we need to remember that obedience to God is, paradoxically, the way we find eventual freedom.  that was Jesus' own way.  "He learned obedience from what He suffered." (Heb 5:8)

It takes some time before we learn that obedience, involving sometimes painful personal decisions and sacrifice, is actually the way to freedom...it does work, every time.

Here's a spiritual health warning:  don't rely on your feelings.  Feelings matter, but they are as variable as the weather, and they are a very unreliable guide to the way things are are should be.  It is possible to wake up in the morning feeling glum and out of sorts.  Attitudes can quickly become hardened, and quite soon nothing will be expected to go right with the day.  Such is the power of our feelings to distort badly the actual reality in which we live.  The important matter is to rely on what you know, and persuade yourself with all your strength to do it.  Whatever you feel in the morning, get up and do everything in your power to make something positive of the day.

Michael Lawson, 'D' is for Depression, p117