boredom on Repetition

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it...

When prayer consists of the same spoken sentences on every occasion, naturally we wonder at the value of the practice. If our prayers bore us, do they also bore God? Does God really need to hear me sa...

Boredom: the desire for desires.

We say we turn to our phones when we’re “bored.” And we often find ourselves bored because we have become accustomed to a constant feed of connection, information, and entertainment. We are forever el...

We say we turn to our phones when we’re “bored.” And we often find ourselves bored because we have become accustomed to a constant feed of connection, information, and entertainment. We are forever el...

Want to snatch a day from the manacles of boredom? Do overgenerous deeds, acts beyond reimbursement. Kindness without compensation. Do a deed for which you cannot be repaid.

Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of i...

Ancient Lens What's the historical context? Back to the Wilderness As he has been doing, Jesus calls the people’s minds back to the wilderness during The Exodus and reminds them of the manna ...

Ancient Lens What's the historical context? Back to the Wilderness As he has been doing, Jesus calls the people’s minds back to the wilderness during The Exodus and reminds them of the manna ...

Adulthood is the ability to be totally bored and remain standing. Supermarket line, Motor Vehicle Bureau. You hang right in there, solid as a rock.

I remember taking my youngest son to one of the national art galleries in Washington, DC. As we made our approach, I was so excited about what we were going to see. He was decidedly unexcited. But I j...

An empty-nester friend of mine was recently reflecting on the long days at home with a growing family. “You just gotta keep slinging chow,” she said with a laugh. I laughed too . . . but not quite as ...

In his novel, The Pale King , David Foster Wallace discusses the issue of boredom, or, as he puts it, dullness: . . . Maybe it’s because dullness is intrinsically painful; maybe that’s where phrase...

In her excellent book Liturgy of the Ordinary, pastor and author Tish Harrison Warren describes an encoutner her husband experienced while working on his PhD. While my husband, Jonathan, was getting...

To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe it’s because dullness is intrins...

Jim Rayburn, the founder of Young Life, a nationwide youth ministry, used to say, “It’s a sin to bore a kid with the gospel.” But what about adults? Is it okay to bore grownups with the gospel? I ask ...

Faith gives you a concept of the dignity and worth of all work, even simple work, without which work could bore you.

There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.

In small towns, news travels at the speed of boredom.

Someone has somewhere commented on the fact that millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

If you’re bored, one thing is for sure: You’re not following in the footsteps of Christ.

In 1963, the politician, ambassador, and one-time presidential candidate Adlai E. Stevenson addressed the students of Princeton University with a touch of humor. “I understand I am here to speak, and ...

It should be the goal of the writers of archaeology to make the dead come alive, not to put the living to sleep.

Emma Darwin, a devoted wife to Charles, did not share his passion for science, nor did she pretend to be captivated by the many lectures and events she attended by his side. On one occasion, as they s...

Christ knew that by bread alone you cannot animate man. If there were no spiritual life, no ideal of beauty, man would waste away, die, go mad, kill himself or give himself to pagan fantasies. And as ...

Teenagers whine about it constantly. Office mates step out multiple times a day to Starbucks to escape it. Parents die of it every night as they try to get small children to fall asleep. We use the wo...

In a 2010 study called “A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind” (gulp), Harvard psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert developed an iPhone app to survey the thoughts, feelings, and action...

Fishing is boring, unless you catch an actual fish, and then it is disgusting.

In a study conducted by Timothy Wilson, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, researchers discovered what most of us already know: people do not like to be left alone with their own tho...