Some great quotes from the article by David Brooks entitled The Cultural Value of Christian Higher Education follow. He argues that it is in Christian universities that you best see the synthesis in the training of the mind, the soul, the body and the spirit. It is a good read, full of great quotes and things I think are true. It makes me want to send my kids to Abilene Christian University where both Allison and I went to school. I will try to not push them too hard. 😉

In any commitment, love is at the core. A commitment is falling in love with something and then building a structure of behavior around it for those moments when the love falters. It arises at a deep sensation of certainty, a moral and spiritual sensation that something is right, that you’ve been called to something.

Love humbles you because you realize you’re not in control of your own mind. You think obsessively about the person you love. It opens up the crust of life and reveals soft, tender flesh below so you enjoy more and you suffer more. It de-centers the self. You realize your core riches are not in yourself; they’re in another. Love also teaches you how to endure. We’ve all had that first romantic passionate love, but when you educate a love, it’s not reliant on that immediate, passionate first embrace. It longs and endures. It’s what the philospher Roger Scruton calls a second love. This long second love carries people through the tragedies and the blessings of life.

The author Louis de Bernières wrote in the book Captain Coreli’s Mandolin about a love that fused people together. One of his characters says, “Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it. We had roots that grew towards each otherunderground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches, we found that we were one tree and not two.”