Jonathan Simcoe

Like the exhausted refugee, fatigued by vulnerability, what we crave is rest. “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

Our loves and longings are steered wrong, not because we’ve been hoodwinked by bad ideas, but because we’ve been immersed in de-formative liturgies and not realized it. As a result, we absorb a very different Story about the telos of being human and the norms for flourishing. We start to live toward a rival understanding of the good life.

To publicize his campaign, he laid plans to make a solo ascent of the south face of Denali, the mountain’s steepest aspect, in winter, with a minimum of food.

I walk around the church, wondering whether Bach ever felt discouraged. However brilliant he was, his fellow parishioners probably took him for granted. Week in and week out, Bach wrote anyway, his way of glorifying God. Sometimes it was a joy. Sometimes it probably felt like a sacrifice.

In 1963, Tom Hornbein’s expedition began the long trek to Everest from Banepa, a dozen miles outside Kathmandu, and spent thirty-one days on the trail before arriving at Base Camp.

But to achieve this he had been obliged to let a great part of his own inherent power (a frequent and very significant motive in myth and fairy-story) pass into the One Ring. While he wore it, his power on earth was actually enhanced. But even if he did not wear it, that power existed and was in ‘rapport’ with himself: he was not ‘diminished’.

We might assume that the opposite of a fragile system is a robust one; an organization that is designed to withstand any single threat. But Taleb disagrees and says that the best systems don’t merely resist threats, but actually grow stronger when challenged. He calls such systems anti-fragile. Consider muscles. When put under stress, our muscles