Jeff Berryman : Faith and Culture

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 05:07:30 GMT

Facing the Giants

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Nothing good could come of it, but I did it anyway: I finally watched Facing the Giants. If I hated it, I'd have guilt to deal with, because any film this front and center about wanting to bring God glory ought to be something we laud and applaud, right? On the other hand, if I liked it, I'd be faced with the proposition of going up against people I respect that have, by and large, trounced the film. Either way, it was going to be a tough experience. Warning: spoilers ahead Facing the Giants is a $100,000 movie written and produced by Sherwood Pictures, brainchild of Alex and Stephen Kendrick, associate pastors of Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia. The story (which has grossed over $10M so far) of a down-and-out football team from a southern Christian High School, Facing the Giants is a David-and-Goliath feel-good story in which a coach on the brink of being fired turns to God and receives a series of direct answers to his prayers. Lackluster attitude morphs into gut-busting motivation, a barely-drivable car gets replaced by a Texas sized pick-up truck, a weak-legged kicker "gives his best for God" and comes up with a 50+ yard field goal, and scientifically declared infertility melts in the face of a near-miraculous pregnancy. Maybe that sounds cynical--here's a different way to say it. In this inspirational story, a team of apathetic, high school football players gets challenged by a spiritual coach to give their best for God, and they do. That coach puts his faith in God in that most rare of film moments, the sincere evangelical prayer, and God answers that prayer in ways that frankly, many believers have both witnessed and experienced. Far-fetched? Maybe, but even with the bad acting, the bad writing, and my cynicism perched proudly on my shoulder like a preening cockatoo, there were moments when it was hard not to be moved. All that said, Facing the Giants, and the debate it creates, is fascinating. I have no doubt that Christians of a particular ilk weep when they see this film, not once, but several times. Maybe it's just that they've endured so much filth on screen, that to see their own lifestyle and belief so explicitly--if not completely honestly--represented, is as close as they will come to experiencing the miraculous. And conversely, many other-ilked disciples can barely sit through it, their stomachs churning in dismay at this picture of a God who always comes through. In their experience, that's not how it works at all. On the up side, there are things to like about this film. It looks much better than $100,000, and I am frankly amazed that a church was able to pull it off. There are moments in the film that won legitimate laughs in my living room, and that's not easy for film to do, at least not with me. The story has possibilities; Alex Kendrick has the right idea, and though he mishandles all sorts of things--exposition, structure, reveals and reversals--the bones of what he's getting at are there. I suspect those of us moved by the film aren't being moved by the film at all, but rather we are seeing through to what we wish the film were. And talking about acting--I work with non-actors all the time, and it's not easy to get them to just relax and speak, which Kendrick has done pretty well. That doesn't mean they're acting--in most cases, they're not even close--but they could have been much, much worse. Not much consolation, true, but I'll give them what credit they're due. To get more insight into Alex Kendrick, the man who made it all happen, here's a pretty insightful interview at ProdigalSonMagazine.com. Go read Barbara Nicolosi or Dick Staub (also here and here) or any number of others if you want to read the downside of Facing the Giants, and just know that I agree with most of what's said. But I kept thinking of Barbara as I watched, and about her vehemence about this film. I know she believes God answers prayer, and I know she believes in taking whatever there is in life to Him, so theologically, it's not that she thinks God doesn't work in people's lives, delivering all sorts of blessings that we can choose to attribute to him or not. I guess to state it most simply, Facing the Giants falls far short as a work of filmic art. And because of the power of cinema in culture to create images of reality, the life of God portrayed in film is important. Our vision of God and the life of Christ is largely a function of imagination, and by that, I don't mean fanciful thinking. We image a life of Christ both internally and externally, the latter being somewhat dependent on the former. And how we construct those Kingdom of God images will impact everything we do. Is there a film in which an authentic, modern or post-modern evangelical journey is portrayed? A journey towards faith in God, with the particular trappings of the evangelical environment, with all its calls to faith and piety, yet balanced by the inevitable disappointments and confusions that lead to doubt, distrust, rebellion, and perhaps, repentance and reconciliation, all of it done without a hint of dishonest proselytizing? If you know of one, let me know. ...That's a film I'd like to see...

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 18:04:26 GMT

Home Sick, Thinking about Women

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Yesterday--Thursday--the fogged rolled in. I've always been afraid of taking drugs recreationally, fearing I'd like them too much, but days like yesterday convince me that's not the case. Cold medicines, especially the ones with the "p.m." label, invariably make me loopy in some fashion, and I'm too much of a control freak to enjoy it. But yesterday, I took some "p.m." thing, hoping to sleep. The result was brain fog. So I read and watched films, along with pushing forward on a few plans for various meetings coming up. It turned out to be an interesting day. First there was the short story by Katherine Anne Porter called Maria Conception. Porter is an mid 20th Century writer I'd not heard of, but I started doing research on the town of Kyle, Texas, which is going to have some significance in Cyrus Manning's life (of Leaving Ruin fame), and I discovered that Porter, who won the Pulitzer Prize back in 1966, was from Kyle, and that many of her stories were set in the surrounding countryside. So I ordered up The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter and yesterday read the first story in the collection. Maria Conception is the story of an eighteen-year-old Mexican girl whose young husband betrays her. Porter's telling of Maria's story is a glorious ushering into a world far removed from ours: Maria headed to market with half a dozen living fowls slung over her shoulder; her barefoot discovery of her husband with the fifteen-year-old beekeeper (Maria Rosa) among the cactus-bristles; the subtle camaraderie among the villagers when Maria Rosa turns up dead. No moralizing here, just an objective eye piercing the heart of a woman determined to have justice and the life she wants. Then there was the piece from the latest issue of Image. The title of the essay by Jill Patterson intrigued me: When Marriage is a Tomb Where Silence Dwells. Her story is of a marriage gone bad, two English professors whose careers end up with different degrees of success, the woman's outstripping the man's. The woman takes a break from the marriage, retreating to a corner variety store in small town Colorado, and rediscovers the simpler joys of life, and in the end, finds that sometimes, divorce can be the face of grace. Then I watched a film called The Shape of Things. Still more groggy than I wanted to be, I sat down to this film in hopes of helping my daughter with a scene she's working on from the stage play on which the film is based. Another interesting female character drives this film, played fairly by Rachel Weisz. "Evelyn" is a graduate student in art at Mercy College (interesting choice) whose Master's thesis project consists of manipulating an unsuspecting nerd into changing everything about himself. He, of course, thinks its for love, and that Evelyn's subtle suggestions for change have only his good in mind. The reveal at the end of the film is a cruel one, but has strong things to say for how we determine who we are, and the value we place on physical beauty, and more telling yet, the way personalities change when beauty is substantially enhanced, a la the now so common "makeover." And finally, the last viewing of the day: Babel, which I will blog about later, but needless to say, the journeys of the three women that are the anchors of the film are all compelling and heart breaking. At the end of the day, I couldn't help but reflect again on how difficult women have had it over the centuries, in cultures all over the world. Men have been dominant brutes so often, and women have suffered so terribly. Certainly we[base ']ve all suffered under the brutish reality of sin, but I can't help but see my wife and daughter and pray to God that we do what we can to nudge our parts of the world closer to the compassion and concern of Jesus. He dealt with women so counter-culturally. So should we. ...they deserve better...

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 19:28:52 GMT

Children of Men

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When my daughter was born--my first child--her entry into my world felt miraculous. Strictly speaking, it wasn't. It was the natural first flowering of human life, but birth up close demands attention, staggering the imagination. From what comes life? We know the science, but not the why of it. When I first held her, awe and worship is all that really came to mind. Worship not of nature or of some primal urge fulfilled, nor of destiny, but of God. When Jesus was born, it was in a backwater place, a forgotten little town like millions of others now around the globe. Women had babies everyday, and life was hard, normal, uneventful except for those personal things human beings treasure. But then, a young girl had a conversation with a man who matter-of-factly said he was from God. She said okay, and the Messiah came. Having recently gone through another advent season, written another Christmas play, sharing another round of gifts under the tree, I have to admit its hard to grasp what Jesus' coming meant at the time. I haven't yet seen The Nativity Story so I'm not sure what its impact will be. Apparently it's received mostly strong reviews. Now I'm sitting in the movie theatre last Saturday with Anjie and Daniel, all of us watching Children of Men. I don't know much about the film, other than having read that for many people, it strikes a chord The Nativity Story was trying to strike, supposedly doing so more effectively. Children of Men is the story of earth some twenty years from now. A mysterious infertility grips the world, procreation non-existent. No babies have been born on earth since 2009. Chaos rules every continent, collapsing societies under constant threat by militant revolutionaries of all stripes. Theo Faron (Clive Owen) is a British government worker thrust into the great adventure of his time: he is entrusted with a woman who has inexplicably become pregnant. He must get her to safety, taking her into the heart of a brutal world of desperate refugees in order to deliver her into the hands of "The Human Project." (Warning: Spoilers ahead. If you don't want to know what happens, don't read.) Two moments in the film stand out. The first is in a barn in which Kee, the Fuji woman who is pregnant, reveals her condition to Theo. The wonder in his eyes as he stands trying to comprehend what by this time is considered to be impossible. Suddenly, the stakes of the film shoot through the roof. The second, and most powerful moment in the film, is the day after the baby is born. A revolution has begun in the refugee camp that has been Theo and Kee's stopping place on the way to "The Human Project." The fighting in the camp is heavy and brutal. Theo and Kee are separated, and after a terrible hunt, Theo finds Kee and child on an upper floor of a building under siege by heavily armed government forces. In the midst of the battle, Theo leads Kee away from her hiding place. Suddenly, cutting through the noise of mortar shells and gunfire comes a loud constant crying announcing to everyone there that this woman carries a newborn child. Theo and Kee continue on, and as soldiers storm up the stairs they are traveling down, the soldiers begin to scream for a cease-fire. The battlefield goes silent, and all stand in awe of what they perceive to be salvation for humanity. Hands fill the edges of the frame as the people reach out to touch the child and the mother. There is quiet, the soldiers in full battle regalia hushed, faces all filled with stunned rapture. Worship. I suddenly saw the shepherds in my mind, the magi, Joseph and Mary all speechless before a child who should not have been born, yet was. The child was, as was the baby girl born to Kee, a world's Word of hope, a testament to the presence of God. Even the worst disasters of our time fall silent when that birth happens all over again in the heart of a man or woman paying attention when God walks by. A beautiful film, I thought. Theo ends up giving his life to see the child to safety. I was disappointed, caught up in the moment, wanting along with everyone else to see Theo reach safety, enjoying the new life he'd helped usher in. But I should have known better. Birth requires death, and what greater love is there than to give up your life for the one who will save us all? Theo, of course, is the Greek word for God. ...He so loved the world...

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 16:31:33 GMT

Acedia, Enthusiasm, Cynicism...Super Bowl Sunday

This morning's Bible class will use Chapter 17 of Os Guinness' book The Call to address a topic we've visited before: acedia. Linked in the modern world to depression, the popular word for acedia is sloth, and I blogged about it back in September of 2006, so I won't revisit that territory here. Enough to say that sloth is far more than lazing on the couch watching the Colts and the Bears: it is a complex spiritual condition that kills. Os Guinness asserts that having a deep sense of God's calling is the best antidote to acedia, and I tend to agree, but that's not what I want to talk about. In getting ready for class, I kept encountering intersections with both enthusiasm and cynicism. As an INFP (Myers-Briggs), I am a classic idealist, and you know what they say---an idealist is a cynic in training. Confession time: I fit the bill. Anjie and I were talking last night, and I confessed that one of my chief challenges is that I need to recover my "passion" for the things I'm doing. I've always (I say "always"--probably not so much anymore) been known as a passionate sort of guy. As a teacher, many of my student-reviews have included the word "passionate," and there is usually a sense of gratitude that goes with the description. As an actor, I've been described the same way. Unfortunately, life has a way of beating up the idealist, the world being a generally difficult place to live, and the temptation to cave in to cynicism, despair, and acedia can be overwhelming. But as I said, in this morning's study, two things emerged. First of all, in looking at sloth as the fourth of the seven deadly sins, I came across the seven holy virtues that are guards against the sins, and guess what lines up with sloth? Zeal and diligence, both which have associations with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm--now there's an old friend of a word. I remember all the days of Amway rallies, the tapes and books all trumpeting the idea that enthusiasm comes for the Greek meaning, essentially, "God in you." Well, the cynic in me advises me to turn up my nose at such foolishness, reminding me I didn't very well with all that hype business, but the etymology of the word is just what all those motivators said it was. The Greeks had this notion of being inspired or infused by the gods, and that the state of enthusiasm was a state of possession. I confess, possession by God in service of his chosen task for my life, a possession come by not through coercion and fear but by willing yielding...this sounds very much like Jesus' life, the life Paul describes as being the inheritance of the children of God. Paul said, "Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord." (Romans 12:11) But today of all days is a day of unbridled enthusiasm in American culture, and perhaps this is why so many of us creep to the door of enthusiasm with such misgivings. "Hype" is the bastard child of enthusiasm, trading on the word's good name, but in the end, selling us little of substance. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the Super Bowl, and I'll watch from the kickoff to the final whistle, and I'll even enjoy the commercials. But truth is, it's a football game played in the midst of a big commercial party, and certainly most would agree that the enthusiasm for this event is less than pure, and the amateur's love of sport is not what's being celebrated. Coach Taylor (on Friday Night Lights) tells his wife, "I love football. And I love these kids." His enthusiasm for the game shows, but what it really shows is his enthusiasm for what football does in his own life, how it anchors him, how it gives him a focus and reason for being and giving his best, and how it gives him a means by which to connect with and help his students. For Coach Taylor, football's meaning is certainly something other that the money, the celebrity, and the shared experiential high that sweeps the westernized world each February. Call me a cynic. Fun is not a bad thing--we'll have Super Bowl fun in my house today. But what I really pray is that at the end of the game, I will turn back to my tasks with God's Spirit possessing me, yielding to the call I was given a long time ago. True, organic, child-like enthusiasm points to that which we love ("You should see my children!") and may our love for God and his beauty and presence lift us up off the couches of our cynicism to offer a deeply grounded hope. Was there ever a cynical gardener, a bitter farmer who planted even though he was sure in his heart nothing would grow? ...when the call comes, so does adrenaline...

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 17:58:08 GMT

Mr. Deity

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This is a funny bit. I came across Mr. Deity (written and produced by Brian Keith Dalton--he's the guy playing Mr. Deity) in a conversation with a friend of mine, and on a lark, I went home, dialed up YouTube and checked it out. Mr. Deity is a funny little white haired man (which of course he should be) who is running the universe according to a plan he has in mind, and the series (there are five episodes so far) give us a behind the scenes look at his core thinking, or lack of such. His balding assistant Larry has great misgivings about some of Mr. Deity's decisions, but still, he supports and upholds Mr. Deity's right to do what he wants, being as he is the God of the universe. Jesus, a name Mr. Deity has trouble remembering, is a Hollywood hunk who we see weighing whether or not to accept Mr. Deity's offer of complete and equal partnership in this enterprise, knowing that he's going to have to go down and live a sinless life and get crucified for it. (For which of course, there is no insurance--as in no coverage in heaven's corporate insurance plan.) I have a wide range of reactions to this lampooning of God and His process of creation. First of all, this is great production work, very funny writing, and the acting is on the nose. So of course my first reaction is to laugh...laugh hard. I suppose if it didn't make me laugh, I wouldn't pay attention. But Mr. Deity is getting lots of hits on YouTube and iTunes, and the more I think about it, the less happy I am. The creators are hoping to finagle their way into a half-hour television series, and at the rate this is going, it wouldn't surprise me if they got their wish. Creator Brian Keith Dalton is obviously having fun. The FAQ's over at mrdeity.com reveal what I think is a pretty benign desire to have fun at the expense of religion, which of course, comics have been doing forever. Dalton is a former practitioner of something, is not interested in offending people, and has plans in the works to take on the "angry atheists" as well. Of course the problem is that these images of God are very powerful and play into our inability to deal with certain intellectual problems that any faith in God raises. They start with the classical question of theodicy (God and the existence of Evil...why would an all powerful God allow suffering, etc.), and move on to deal with other mind-bending aspects of Christian Theology, some of which they get right, some of which they get wrong. (Apparently Adam and Eve couldn't have sex before they ate the apple.) Of course faith in God raises intellectual problems. So does the atheism/evolution paradigm. (Just why does that fish crawl out onto land?) Actually the real concern has to do with the post from a couple of days ago...the Neil Postman problem. The real question has to do with how the thousands, perhaps millions of people watching Mr. Deity process what they are seeing. Do they actually examine them? Do analysis for the truth of what they're seeing? I think Christians can learn some things from Mr. Diety, and certainly non-Christians can, too. But truthfully, to talk about deep analysis is just to take the fun out of the whole thing. My fear is that people will laugh and be greatly entertained (I certainly am) and walk away saying to their friends, "See I knew God was a stupid idea," and leave it at that. End of story, case closed. And all you have to do is read the YouTube comments and see. I'm sure God has a sense of humor, and can laugh at Himself along with the best of them. But I'm not sure Mr. Deity helps us move to a deeper understanding of the awe and wonder of creation, which for my money, couldn't possibly arise from time plus chance plus nothing. Offended? Not really. Sad...in the end, profoundly. ...of course He is beyond us...

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 02:59:15 GMT

The Neil Postman Problem

Monday night, Anjie and I went to Hale's Ales in Ballard to Dick Staub's The Kindlings Muse. If you haven't checked it out, you should. Every Monday night, former Chicago radio personality Dick Staub hosts an evening with experts in various fields of creativity, arts, religion, and politics hoping to foster what he calls "hospitable" conversations about Christian faith and current culture. Podcasts of these conversations can be found at The Kindling's Muse web site. Monday night's forum was a discussion of the ongoing relevance of Neil Postman's late 1980's book Amusing Ourselves to Death in which Postman argues that mass media culture--especially the visual culture, namely television--is a detriment to rational discourse, especially discourse on a national level. Staub was joined by Image journal editor Gregory Wolfe, local Seattle artist Scott Erickson, and the producer of The Kindling's Muse, Jennie Spohr. I've been using Postman's book in my classes for the past eight or nine years, which made me curious as to how the conversation would go. Greg Wolfe did his usual brilliant commentary, summarizing Postman's major thesis that everything these days is entertainment, that informed serious discourse is next to impossible in this television age, and that the very medium of television shrinks and distorts no matter how responsibly it is used. For Postman, reading is a higher form of processing information, and even back in those days, he was worried that we were suffering as a culture because we got most of our information from television and celebrity magazines. The idea is that how we process information, and the various technologies that support those processes, impact and change not only what we think, but how we think, how we go about reasoning, and that the sort of reasoning championed by the Enlightment simply cannot be fostered by a mass media barrage of images. Ken Myer argued much the same thing in another great book All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes. What was curious was that I kept expecting to hear the pushback to Postman's arguments, that mass media technologies--especially television and the Internet--are too new to really assess how they might impact the intellectual life long term. Or that the access to so much new information on a global scale changes the possibilities and make potential connections almost infinite in scope. And certainly no one ventured the opinion that the rapid, never ending process of juxtaposition of disparate images and the endless assembling of those images into self-constructed stories is a cognitive process every bit as rich and effective as the abstract reasoning championed by the Greeks and everybody else in Western culture since Socrates and Plato. I look at it like this: let's suppose we conducted a hypothetical case study concerning two children of comparable intelligence and opportunity. From the age of three, let's say that the first child read almost exclusively, hardly ever watching television, and using the Internet for primarily social contact and research. Let's say the other child spends most of his time watching television, reading only when part of an assignment, never for pleasure according to his own choice, and his use of the Internet was not only for social contact and research, but was primarily for entertainment. Now there will no doubt be difference between these two children. What might those differences be? We can hem and haw all day long, but in the end, I think you would be hard pressed to find many parents who would not prefer their children to grow up with the acquired skill sets of the first child rather than the skills sets of the second. To put it another way, a person can do strong analysis of film and television, be it social, theological, or psychological, but if they only watched film and television, they would never learn how to do such analysis. Is it fair to say that for the engagement of pop culture to be effective, the critic must bring a literary mind to their analysis of the film? I may be wrong here, but does it not take deep rationality to grasp the meanings and truths of post-modern juxtapositions? Anyway, the rebuttal to Postman's thesis was pretty non-existent on Monday night's panel. There were some general statements like "we shouldn't elevate the word over the image or the image over the word," which to my ear sounded mostly like, "Can't we just all get along?" What was stunning to me was how the panel's comments gave us a sort of case study of Postman's point. Wolfe, the panel expert raised in, steeped in, and championing the culture of reading and literature made reasoned, cogent, entertaining, and illuminating points regarding Postman's thesis (one which he obviously agrees with in great degree), while Erickson and Spohr, both younger and extremely intelligent in their own right, were unable to clearly articulate anything in rebuttal. Actually, Erickson seemed to support Postman, arguing for a deeper kind of art that demands work on the part of the audience (far more so that pop culture requires). He also observed that the television culture does not allow for the kind of silent meditation and interaction with reality required to penetrate the spiritual world deeply. Jennie Spohr was the closest thing to a champion mass media pop culture had, and in the end, didn't really offer any strong reasons why Postman may have gotten it wrong. While earnest and sincere in her statements about good films impacting our lives for the good (she and Staub had just gotten back from the Sundance Festival, where they say what they considered deeply impactful films), she did not really have an answer to why the loss of the historical primacy of the word over the image isn't a bad thing. No doubt there are good reasons to fight for the place of image at the table, but we didn't hear them Monday night. I tend to agree with Postman that something deep is missing in the national conversation, namely civil reasoning, politics being driven more by sound bytes, spin doctors, and image positioning. On the other hand, I also suspect that those who point us to the relative youth of the technologies of pop culture are right in suggesting that we have no idea what the long term implications might be. I hope they're all good. But truthfully, I'm not sure--at least on the cultural and intellectual level--that it will be good at all. But here's the really sticky question: does rich cultural life necessarily lead to rich spiritual life and experience? Would we be willing to give up cultural sophistication in order to be closer to God? At what point does the desire to be more fully human culturally interfere with the journey to God? It's not a rhetorical question. I honestly don't know. ...heading off to read a book...

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 17:33:01 GMT

Why call it "Art?"

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Anjie at the Alte Pinokothek in Munich.

This question came up on the discussion board that is part of the NW Arts Ministry. We're kicking around the definition of art and it struck me that anytime I have this discussion with a class or a group of friends, it centers around the desire to call something "art." Is this collage "art?" Is this movie "art?" Is a piece of bubblegum left on a platter "art" if someone thinks it is? These questions led me to wonder: why do we care if we can call a thing "art" or not? Does its inherent value rise if I can call it art? Does it carry an instant sort of credibility or seriousness if I can call my creative effort art? If I am an "artist", is that a descriptor of a kind of activity I engage in, or am I co-opting a title that says something about my worth before the result of my effort has been evaluated. (My plays may suck, but I'm an "artist.") I'm not sure about this, but what comes to mind is this: "intentional creation." We are makers, icons of God's image, makers of order from chaos in the stream of His making. The word "art" has more connections historically with the idea of work and utility than it does with "beauty" as in "fine art." And to call a thing "art" is to describe a process, a result, and an experience (by an audience, a receiver) of that result. Our desire to call a thing art, perhaps, starts with our encounter with great art that ushers us into the presence of experiences we usually associate with beauty, truth, goodness, and even God. The great paintings in the museums of the world, the astonishing pieces of architecture as Anjie and I just encountered in Germany, the symphonies and rock anthems that define generations--these encounters with art demonstrate to us that "intentional creation" can move and lift and stretch our spirits in ways that are hardly describable. We recognize a deep worth in these experiences, as well as in the objects and events that bring them to us. So do we call all manner of things art in order to connect them to this kind of greatness, hoping that naming it thus will somehow bring a vestige of what has soared in us before back to us again? I don't really know the answer, but for some reason, it's important to me to try and distinguish some parameters for what should be called art and what shouldn't. But really...does it matter? The map is not the territory...

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 15:45:10 GMT

Doubt

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Kandiss Chappell and Corey Brill in Seattle Repertory Theatre's Doubt, from the Seattle Weekly's Review

This past Saturday night, Anjie and I were fortunate to see Seattle Repertory Theatre's closing night performance of John Patrick Shanley's Doubt. Doubt, which was running in New York when Daniel and I were there last year, won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama, and no wonder. Shanley, best known in pop culture as the writer of the film Moonstruck, wrote one of my favorite plays, a short romantic piece exploring teenage romance called The Red Coat. I knew Doubt would be good, but it's elegance and power caught me by surprise. Going to Seattle Rep usually gives me a case of the regrets because of my short stint there in 1984. My resignation from an internship in artistic direction there was a turning point in my life, and not necessarily a good one. It was the foolish act of a young man who knew little about the world of professional theatre, and even less about the difficulty of mixing faith and art. As a result, the times I've been to the Rep since have always been laced with notalgia and thoughts of what might have been. Needless to say, this is not helpful when wanting to engage a play. But Shanley's Doubt blew past all of that. When I first sat down, I read his essay-- "Embracing Doubt"--in the front of the program, a piece which apparently he wrote for the LA Times. I'd hoped to find the essay and link to it, but it doesn't appear to be online. For reasons that were clear to me, the essay spoke some healing into me even before the curtain went up.

"We are living in a culture of extreme advocacy, of confrontation, of judgment, and of verdict. Discussion has given way to debate. Communication has become a contest of wills. Public talking has become obnoxious and insincere. Why? Maybe it's because deep down under the chatter we have come to a place where we know that we don't know...anything. But nobody's willing to say that."

"It is Doubt (so often experienced initially as weakness) that changes things. When a man feels unsteady, when he falters, when hard-won knowledge evaporates before his eyes, he's on the verge of growth. The subtle or violent reconciliation of the outer person and the inner core often seems at first like a mistake, like you've gone the wrong way and you're lost. But this is just emotion longing for the familiar. Life happens when the tectonic power of your speechless soul breaks through the dead habits of the mind. Doubt is nothing less than an opportunity to reenter the Present."

"Doubt requires more courage than conviction does, and more energy; because conviction is a resting place and doubt is infinite--it is a passionate exercise. You may come out of my play uncertain. You may want to be sure. Look down on that feeling. We've got to learn to live with a full measure of uncertainty. There is no last word. That's the silence under the chatter of our time."

While I can't subscribe to the "no last word" theory, Shanley's belief that doubt is a humanizing force, creating humility and the possiblity for true diverse community, is a welcome idea. I could breathe easier as I settled in for the opening of the play, knowing that perhaps these are days of growth, as hard as they are. Tomorrow, the play...

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 14:07:49 GMT

Authoritarian, Critical, Benevolent, Distant: God's Personality

So it turns out our take on God's personality and His level of engagement with the world matters. A new poll written by Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion, a survey hailed as the most extensive sampling of religious beliefs in American history, suggests that a person's view of God is the most accurate predictor of social and political beliefs. According to this survey administered by the Gallop organization, Americans see God through one of four lenses.

Authoritarian

Benevolent: This God is actively involved in our world and our decisions, but is not angry. One analyst suggests the forgiving father of the prodigal story is the primary picture of this view of God.

Critical: The critical God is not involved in our affairs, but remains ready to judge the world at the end of time.

Distant: Those who see Him as distant are the ones who figure God started the world on its course, then decided to just leave it alone and let it play out its own destiny.

From an article in USA Today:

Though 12.2% overall say abortion is wrong in all circumstances, the number nearly doubles to 23.4% for those who see an authoritarian God and slides to 1.5% for followers of a distant God.

Washington Post article

Think maybe meditating on the nature of God has practical results?

Wed, 11 Oct 2006 15:14:06 GMT

Certainty vs. Doubt

When Not Seeing Is Believing: Andrew Sullivan on the rise of fundamentalism and why embracing spiritual doubt is the key to defusing the tension between East and West.

Here's an article that's worth discussing for a week. Andrew Sullivan, writing in Time Magazine, serves up a thoughtful, balanced warning concerning the "blasphemy" of being absolutely certain of one's religious faith. He begins by citing the calm smile of peace on the face of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as he spoke to the U.N. recently. It was the "utterly serene" smile of the fundamental believer who knows the world is in his God's hands. From there Sullivan contrasts two different kinds of faiths. The faith of the fundamentalist who is sure of things, and the faith of the ambiguously inclined. As I read the tone of my writing, I'm surprised that it would seem my allegiance lies with the fundamentalist, but in truth, I am of the ambiguous ilk. This balance between what we can know and what we can't has been a tension in my life for a long time. Sullivan appeals to the enormity of God, being assuredly out of our reach, as evidence that we ought not to hold up our banner of belief with the certainty of the medievals, for that kind of certain faith threatens our very civilization. He points to the crusades and invites us to imagine them with nuclear weapons. It isn't hard to see his point. The disciples would have said, "We know." In fact, that is exactly what John says in the first chapter of I John. So doubt as Sullivan is arguing for would not have played well with him. But then Sullivan argues that even Jesus doubted. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" I think Sullivan is absolutely right about the humility that we have to bring to our knowing. There is no question that the older I get, the less I know. Humility and the heart of the Christ is first about love, and less about persuasion about ideas. And I know that Dallas Willard and Schaeffer and everyone else says that ideas are paramount, and they are. But ideas must be enfleshed, incarnated, if they are ever to be taken as possible truths. How do you negotiate the certainty of your faith with the humility of doubt? Speaking ideas without incarnation is just pretending... Sadly...I speak from experience...

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 16:09:39 GMT

Oscar Wilde Writing on Jesus as Artist

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I've never studied the life of Oscar Wilde. But this morning my curiosity is piqued because of an article I came across over at Beliefnet by Dan Wakefield, whose work I am not familiar with, but on cursory glance, appears to be substantial and wide-ranging, including several books on creativity and spirituality. The article is called Jesus as Artist. Wakefield's article refers to a long letter written by Wilde while in prison, published after his death as De Profundis. Wilde was sent to prison in 1895, having been sentenced to two years hard labor for acts of "gross indecency," referring to Wilde's now well-known promiscuous homosexuality. In De Produndis, Wilde speaks of his spiritual journey in prison, about his lack of remorse for any part of his life, and of his discovery of humility. What's interesting is the impact that Christ had on his thinking. I've only read it this morning, so this is a first glance look, but Wilde seems to have found much to love in Jesus. Wilde relates that after he acquired a Greek New Testament, he began each day with reading some dozen verses or so of Christ's life. Wilde sees the Christ bringing an artist's awareness and romantic nature to all of human experience, and while denying the actuality of Christ's miracles (it seems to me that's what he's doing), he gets the idea of the deep beauty of Christ's action in the world. It's a fascinating read, tragic in that he is, in the end, affirming a gnostic notion of the Christ, but in the mix are some beautiful thoughts that are not that far from Merton and others who write of the humility that suffering brings, and its transforming power. From De Profundis:

I remember when I was at Oxford saying to one of my friends as we were strolling round Magdalen's narrow bird-haunted walks one morning in the year before I took my degree, that I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world, and that I was going out into the world with that passion in my soul. And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived.

Sounds a bit like the writer of Ecclesiastes, as Wilde does again in the following passage:

I don't regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience. I threw the pearl of my soul into a cup of wine. I went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes. I lived on honeycomb.

But Wilde realizes through his prison experience that this is only one side of life, that the darkness of suffering has much to teach. And it is here, that he begins talking of Jesus.

I see a far more intimate and immediate connection between the true life of Christ and the true life of the artist; and I take a keen pleasure in the reflection that long before sorrow had made my days her own and bound me to her wheel I had written in THE SOUL OF MAN that he who would lead a Christ-like life must be entirely and absolutely himself, and had taken as my types not merely the shepherd on the hillside and the prisoner in his cell, but also the painter to whom the world is a pageant and the poet for whom the world is a song.

To follow Christ and, in the following, to discover one's true self...sounds like Merton. The next passage, some one hundred and ten years later, seems incredibly in line with so much of what the emergent church is telling us about the heart of the Christ, a heart inflamed with empathetic imagination.

imaginative sympathy

whatever happens to another happens to oneself

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you...

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 14:35:14 GMT

Barry Moser: Uncomfortable, Uncertain, Unarmed

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A great biographical article from the artist who illustrated the PennyRoyal Caxton Bible. Great fodder for discussion about calling, the prayer of the artist, and what it means to follow God, and why. Go read it here. In the life of faith, how much honesty before God can we stand?

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 14:18:48 GMT

Gods and Generals

Just a heads up on a wonderful talk given by Ronald F. Maxwell, director of God's and Generals, at George Washington University, concerning the need for and difficulty of telling the truth in historical filmmaking. Go read it here. It's halfway down the page, in pdf format. Someone told me it was worth the read...they were right..

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 16:08:26 GMT

Metaphor, Literalism, and The Da Vinci Code, Part II

Words matter.

The Hebrews writer defines faith like this: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (NAS) or as the NIV has it, "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." This definition of faith is at odds with Robert Langdon's definition. Let me repeat the quote from yesterday's blog:

"Sophie, every faith in the world is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith--acceptance off that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove....Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessible. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors."

"Fabrication" is a word that suggests "made up." Now Dan Brown may have Langdon thinking the first definition of "fabrication" which is simply to make or create, but it strikes my ear that the notion of "false" in terms of reality is what's really behind the suggestion. So faith proceeds from fabrication, what we make up in our heads, albeit with good intention. Not only can we not prove that which we have "faith" in, but it's really just a simple matter of us trying to process the unprocessible, which again, I concur with, because human beings contemplating God are stuck in just that dilemma. And without the revealed word of God found in scripture, that would be precisely where human beings would be left. With the wandering ideas--some quite brilliant--about the nature of things cultures have been coming up with for centuries. Back to Hebrews 11: notions like "assurance", "conviction", and "being certain" fly in the face of today's thinking concerning the notion of faith. Assurance and conviction is the very position you are not allowed to take if you are to honor everyone else's faith. Today, the word "faith" is used to suggest something in opposition to real knowledge, though that something is not without its practical uses. Again, metaphor ends up looking like a useful falsehood. And for the people who approach the Bible as if it actually says a true thing, well, this "useful falsehood" business smacks of deceit, so again, out goes metaphor into the street, and the artists right along side. There are events in my own history that I know took place...I was there. But in the retelling of these events, both in my own heart, and in the retelling to others, some of those events take on symbolic and metaphoric properties. I suspect that's the reason these kinds of events linger in our minds so powerfully. Just now, I won't give you a list of those moments in my history that serve as metaphors for the totality of my life, but I suspect you know what I'm talking about. There are memories of childhood, of school, of certain friendships and relationships, certain events with my wife and children that speak to me of the deep movements of life and my various successes and failures, loaded now with symbolic content. This relationship between events as they occurred vs. the way we infuse these events with symbolic content is one of the things in question in the James Frey A Million Little Pieces affair. I haven't read the book, but apparently for the sake of embellishment, Frey "fabricated" some things. Yet, the book struck a deep chord with many people--meaning that they set the stories of the book against their own lives in some fashion, making a metaphoric move, and resonated with something of its experience--but frankly, these same people were offended that they'd been duped by a reporting of events that hadn't happened. Why then, should we feel good about texts that claim to report historical events (which is different that saying they were writing histories for history's sake) which are in fact false just because we can get some pragmatic metaphors out of them? Human beings must make metaphoric moves as we think about things, events, and relationships. As Dorothy Sayers and so many others have pointed out, all language is analogical. Here's the point: metaphor and literalism are not in opposition. They exist side by side. So Robert Langdon's point in The Da Vinci Code is a tricky one, one that we have to reject in its pitting of metaphor against the belief that Jesus was just who the gospel writers say He was. If not, then we are just people who have been duped by historical writers no better than Jim Frey. Good books maybe, these gospels, but if they're not "true to the events", then as Paul puts it, we are fools. As for me and my house...

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 23:11:37 GMT

Metaphor, Literalism, and The Da Vinci Code, Part I

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I just read back through Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. The first time I read it I didn't really read it, but listened to it on cassette during my long drive back to the Northwest from Act One: Screenwriting for Hollywood[base ']s summer intensive. That was the summer of 2004. Listening through all those hours, I didn't assume that what I was hearing was true, and at the end of the ride, I thought, what[base ']s the bruhaha all about? But of course, what I now realize is that people believe this stuff, and that we're going to be hearing a lot more about the Gnostic Gospels and Mary Magdalene when the Ron Howard/Tom Hanks film arrives. What I'd like to address is one particular passage in the book that speaks about the relationship of religion to metaphor. I've been championing the value of metaphor for many years, dating back to statement I heard a major theatre director make in a workshop. "Evangelicals don't do metaphor," he said, citing this blind spot as the reason these otherwise intelligent and decent religious people could be dangerous, especially to artists. The statement struck me as true, and over the past 15 years or so, I've been working, along with many others, to help reclaim both the understanding and the use of metaphor in our part of God's Kingdom. Here's the passage that caught my eye from the paperback edition of The Da Vinci Code. It starts on page 369. The context (here I'm assuming you are familiar with the story and what is in question. If not, be warned that there are spoilers ahead) is that Langdon and Sophie are discussing whether or not Langdon believes it is time the world hear the proof that "the New Testament is false testimony."

"There's an enormous difference between hypothetically discussing an alternate history of Christ, and..." He paused.
"And what?"
"And presenting to the world thousands of ancient documents as scientific evidence that the New Testament is false testimony."
"But you told me the New Testament is based on fabrications."

Langdon smiled. "Sophie, every faith in the world is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith--acceptance off that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove. Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory, and exaggeration, from the early Egyptians through modern Sunday school. Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessible. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors."

Sophie replies, "But it appears their reality is false." Langdon then replies with a comment about cryptology and the fact that mathematics has properties that work in reality, but aren't really there, either.

Okay...having said all that, here's my concern. What Dan Brown is telling us is that metaphor is the basis of religion, and functionally, it works in terms of making people better, helping them cope, etc. It is a pragmatic move for people to make mentally. 'Hey...if it helps you to believe that Jesus rose from the dead, great. But what you need to understand is that it really doesn't matter, because what's important is the way Jesus lived, and the fact that his death is a metaphoric way of approaching an understanding of life, love, death, etc.'

So now we face a true/false situation in terms of metaphor vs. history. And of course, postmodernism tells us there is no real history, because what we understand to be history is just socially constructed descriptions of events, those descriptions being the ones we get because of who held power at the time the histories were written. Which puts we believers in the historical resurrection of Jesus in a bit of a quandary: we have to choose...metaphor or history? The typical kneejerk reaction is to recoil, kick metaphor out the door, and stick to my historical guns.

Once again, metaphor equals falsehood, and the rich layering that is part and parcel to the most basic functions of the human mind is lost, and literalism leads to fundamentalism leads to some pretty basic ugliness.

So here's the challenge: how do we maintain the historicity scripture claims (if Christ has not been raised from the dead, we are fools), and yet also capture the vast nuance that rises to us through the metaphors and symbols the writers of both Old and New Testaments are giving us (through the work of the Holy Spirit, I might add)?

Here's my first comment: when Langdon claims these are metaphorical stories, I agree. Stories are metaphors by their very nature. Some stories are fictional, some are historical, but in the telling of both kinds, metaphoric comparisons are created with our own lives, thereby creating a context in which our own attititudes and action can be examined, challenged, and/or affirmed. The comparative move that is metaphor does not imply historical hyperbole. The resurrection of Jesus is certainly one of the strongest metaphors we can think of for the notion of a renewed life, and stands as a deep symbol for the human desire to overcome death. It's true that there are many ancient religious stories about various god figures being resurrected--the desire to escape that final reality is deep in the race.

But the crux of the matter for Christians is that the documents we call the gospels and epistles make the historical claim that Jesus did in fact come back from the grave. So the metaphor and symbol stand, but they do not negate the history. The combination of history plus metaphor is powerful, and to miss the move to metaphor because you fear it undercuts the historicity, one being "true" and the other being "false" is to wall off a major portal to the meanings of God's work in the world. More tomorrow...

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 17:17:18 GMT

Entering the Cultural Dialogue

Hamas won the majority of seats in the recent Palestinian elections, yet another likely monkey wrench in President Bush's plans for American--style democracy leading to American--style values in the Middle East. Brokeback Mountain won a fistful of Golden Globes, and howling is filling the air on both sides of the aisle, albeit for different reasons. James Frey's memoir A Million Little Pieces brings notions of truth and memory and fiction and identity to the fore again, and in this climate, even Oprah can't quite figure out where to stand. The Chinese government is censoring Google, but Google's going to China anyway, reluctantly capitulating to one oppressive government after having just resisted giving up information to their own. John Kerry and Edward Kennedy are calling for a filibuster to delay Judge Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court, fearing Alito might trigger a return to the backward days of pre-Roe v. Wade, but it looks like a futile exercise, and the controlling Republicans have won yet another round. Nobody wants to host the WTO meetings anymore...seems like little more than an open invitation to have your city trashed. There's a lot to be thinking about, salvos coming from all directions. What to make of it all is a question we face every day, but seldom have the energy and strength to answer, at least not with much rigor or insight. By the time one set of issues has been wrestled to the ground, there are ten more waiting to tackle you. Much is up for grabs in these early years of the 21st century. I'm not much of a philosopher, but it seems to me that all the major ideas of what makes for civilization and society are being rethought and made out to be the battlegrounds they are. "What is good?" is central. "What is worth fighting for?" "What is freedom?" "What is a human?" "What is life?" "How are human beings valued, and what makes them any different from the rest of creation?" "What is a family?" And perhaps most importantly, "What is love?" And behind all these questions sits origin and destiny, and God. Empty universe, or full? Anybody home or not? Life after this one, or not, and what might it mean? This morning is really just a hats off to all those of my friends who are so valiantly taking on all these issues in public forums of various kinds, the most obvious being blogs like this one. Just reading Dick Staub, and Jeffrey Overstreet, Barbara Nicolosi, and others inspires me, indicts me, makes me want to get up off my depressed fanny and get to work, joining them in the ongoing task of "engaging" the culture. Theological notions such as "Salvation" and "The Church" and "Christology" have always had deep, practical meaning for me--or perhaps I should say I wanted them to. The old saw "Ideas have consequences" make them worth fighting for, I suppose, and though I'm never sure I'm getting one thing right about the rain of craziness that falls on daily from the mass media, here's my new pledge to enter in more fully, and with more guts. At the center of all this--for me--is the relationship of God to this world. If He's not there, then whatever. But if He is, and the Bible holds anything of His desires for His creation, a creation that burst forth from His love, His character, and His dream of extending the eternal community to include this new kind of being called human, then discovering what He has in mind for us needs to be paramount. For all us Christians out there, that seems obvious, but the subtleties of deception in the human mind (including the minds of the Christians) are endless, and the sincere desire to know God, I fear, is far rarer than we like to think. Does Jesus really have the words of life, or not? So here's to the brave souls fighting the good fight in all the ways they know, stumbling along after the Master. God help us as we go...

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 16:11:06 GMT

I'm Back

Just got back from Abilene Christian University where, for the seventh year, I taught a short course (for a full semester's credit) entitled The Arts and Culture: A Christian Aesthetic. This year's class were engaged throughout, and we had a great experience, though as usual, I picked up a cold near the end of the course. That aside, it was a good week. When I first began to teach this class around 1999 or 2000, I read a lot of media criticism that was depairing of any real way to make the onslaught of mass media constructive. Neil Postman and others were calling into question the notion that mass electronic media could be used to better the mind, to sharpen the ability to focus or hold attention, and that in the end, mass media entertainment was reshaping our ways of processing information that was detrimental. Reading was the way to go, they all said, and short of that, get ready for the fall of the empire. Reading vs. consumption of mass electronic media. It seems hard to argue that they are not two vastly different ways of ordering information and images, and that the brain, as it encounters these two domains, must adjust it's processes accordingly. In other words, watching TV is different than reading a book. Nothing new here. There's a whole new thing going on, though, among Christians trying to be "discerning" in their consumption of media. What's being said now is that the more detrimental effects of constant TV, advertising, and film intake can be overcome through "active engagement" and "reflection." And I have seen that this is true as I've worked with students over the past several years. There is no question that when a student is asked to reflect very specifically on what they are taking in, then their thought processes change, and they become more able to effectively make us of and respond to the images in front of them. My new thought this past week was this: in the long history of human media and thought, electronic media are pretty new. Truth is, we don't know what the long term effect is going to be. There is no question that the proliferation of mass media images is affecting how we view the world. There are postiives and there are negatives. I'm glad that we get to see up close the various world calamaties that need our attention. To see the glory of the earth around the world is a deep blessing. But it is also true that there are many notions of moral reality competing for our devotion and alliegance in the mass media, and whether that will be a good or bad thing in the long term is hard to say. But I did come out of the class with a new hope concerning the possibilities of these new forms. If we can be thoughtful and engage these films, the television series and programs, and yes, these books, then perhaps the changes we want to see in our society, and in us, can be made. Let's try...

Fri, 25 Nov 2005 17:11:05 GMT

Blue Like Jazz

Well, let me jump on the bandwagon. Blue Like Jazz is a book everyone's been telling me to read, and frankly, I was a little reluctant. Why is hard to say, except that what I was hearing people say about Donald Miller's anecdotal odessey made it clear that it was going to impact me, and I wasn't sure I wanted to be really rocked at this particular moment. But finally, Thanksgiving morning, I picked it up and began to read. Sure enough, it rocked me. "Honesty" is a concept that keep cropping up in my work and in my thinking, and it comes, I think, from acknowleding somewhere inside that there is a deep disconnect between what Jesus had to say about life among the people in the Kingdom of the Heavens and the life of Christians that gets lived out here on the planet. Which is fancy way of saying hypocirisy is as rampant now as it was in Jesus' day, and I am infected with it. What's exciting about Miller's book is that it helps those who want to see that infection clearly do so. For those of you unfamiliar with the book, Blue Like Jazz is Miller's perky tale of his own spiritual journey as a student at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, a place where Christianity is openly disdained and the intellectual life flourishes with great panache. Miller roams around in a frank search for a Jesus that is something other than what is now called "Christianity" and in one telling story, refuses to defend the whole notion of Christianity, seeking instead to talk about Jesus, which for him, is an entirely different subject. Here is why it rocked me: his honesty is bracing, and a call to the rest of us who hem-haw around about what we can feel. If we've never told a single person about the way Jesus has impacted our lives, then chances are, he hasn't. There are many ways around that kind of thinking...as a practicing Christian, I am well skilled at it. Christian-this, Christian-that...it's all well and good, maybe, but a discussion of Jesus is indeed a different matter. I told a friend of mine yesterday, I feel like I'm in the process of leaving the Old Country headed for the new, but there is a long dark journey to be made inbetween. I wonder how many people decide to stay on the shores of the Old Country even though they know there is no real life there anymore. They stand longingly at the banks of an ocean they have to cross. God is calling them to cross that ocean, even providing a boat that He says would rival the ark of Noah. Problem is, he's making no promises about the weather, or about just who will survive the journey. But it's pretty sure the old you won't. Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz is a message from a man at sea. But by God, he makes me think there's a New World out there after all. Anybody wanna go?......

Mon, 20 Jun 2005 22:57:58 GMT

Dick Staub Visits Arthur: The Hunt

Check out the blog entry from Dick Staub, wherein he laments the lighter audiences that have been seeing (or not seeing, as the case may be) Arthur: The Hunt (which, by the way, closed Saturday night at Taproot). Dick called my play a "middlebrow" piece, "demanding" and "a challenge personally enriching...." He then uses the play as a stepping off point to discuss the loss of what he calls "middlebrow" culture. I think he's right, though I haven't really done much work with the term "middlebrow." Dick Staub is a great thinker and writer...check it out here...

Wed, 08 Dec 2004 19:14:37 GMT

Symbol Making, Making Life

What symbols will our lives create today, and to what will they point?

Wed, 01 Dec 2004 16:51:07 GMT

World AIDS Day

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WorldVision

Pray and learn...

Wed, 24 Nov 2004 05:14:47 GMT

What's the Good?

[

]

from Yellowcard's Only One

Yellowcard

Only One

Yahweh

How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

Tue, 23 Nov 2004 05:07:41 GMT

Reading the Times

Desperate Housewives

Manhunt: The Search for America's Most Gorgeous Male Model

Halo 2

Grand Theft Auto

the Ineradicable Stain

Amusing Ourselves to Death

Technopoly

The Closing of the American Mind

The Twilight of American Culture

Carnival Culture: The Trashing of Taste in America

Telling the Truth: Why Our Culture and Our Country Have Stopped Making Sense and What We Can Do About It

Slouching Towards Gomorrah

I started by asking for help. Just after the first of the year, I'm going to be lecturing (oh, how modern of me - lecturing - got to get that out of my head) some very savvy college students on "The Arts and Culture: A Christian Aesthetic." We're going to talk about God, Glory, Creation, The Nature of Gracious Dominion, Cosmos, The Cultural Mandate, Incarnation...in short, the biblical and theological foundations of making art. We'll talk imagination, metaphor and symbol, the falseness of Gnostic dualism, the primacy of sensory experience, the sacred and profane, and the major strains of aesthetic thought over the past couple of millennia. And finally, we'll turn to their world, the world of pop culture, talking about MTV, Hollywood, The Internet, and everything from comic books to collectibles, exploring points of convergence and divergence between scripture and American Popular Culture. The arts and culture are media through which we can read the times. But are we, as a people, continuing to nurture the means by which the arts can be read? I wonder. In listening to all those pop artists today, I found their voices compelling, urgent, and full of things worth hearing, mostly about personal loss, identity crisis, sexual fulfillment as a means to experience living when little else touches them, and of course, outrage. What I saw little of was poetry. Metaphor, symbol? Lots of irony, though. We derided President Bush for lack of nuance - funny that the popular songsters don't have a lot either. (I may be wrong, but that was today's listening.) So what help do I need? Here I'm going to be fully postmodern and say I don't know what help I need, except I'm finding the times hard to read these days. The old words about faith and art that have been coming out of mouth for years appear to be morphing. My mouth's in motion, but no words yet, and I'm not yet sure what they will be, or what they need to be. Stay tuned. Much of this blog is going to be trying to figure it out. If you get any revelations, let me know...

Thu, 11 Nov 2004 15:22:22 GMT

Go Deep, Not Wide

Go deep, not wide.

Silence and the Web

Back to the quiet, back to still waters...

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 16:32:04 GMT

That time of year... This happens to me every year. I've mentioned that I teach a class at Abilene Christian University each January called The Arts and Culture: A Christian Aesthetic, and each year, as I prepare, I again get swept up into the greatness of the notion that we share God's image, that we are made to be makers of things, and that the whole of human enterprise finds its beginning--and its model--in the forever community we call the Trinity. In preparation for the class I start paying closer attention to poetry. I try to figure out the appeal of Orthodox thought as it relates to the arts, why Evangelical thinking about the arts seems so much less hearty. I think of God loving all the people who love art that serious folk call kitsch, why the kitsch-lovers are on a level-playing field with the brilliant when it comes to getting a heart of God. But then, the serious students and lovers of great art have a chance to do things in culture and civic life that impact our collective imaginative life, playing major roles in shaping the souls of the kitsch-lovers, whether they like it or not. Flannery O'Connor, C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, Annie Dillard, Neal Postman, and Richard Kearney. I wander my bookshelves, looking at the titles. All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes, by Ken Meyers; Addicted to Mediocrity by Frankie Schaeffer: The Meaning of the Creative Act by Nicolas Berdyaev, Art, Creativity, and the Sacred, ed. by Diane Apostolos-Cappandona--there's a bunch more. There's a historical community out there, people like me trying to figure out how this urge to make fits with everything else, and as I read, the particular loneliness of spirit that belongs to artists who believe in the Christ recedes. And then it thrills me again to surf online and see that there are many, many contemporary artists and thinkers in that Christ-Artist community, and the loneliness recedes again. I've acted, directed, written, and taught, and will continue to do so. But there is something about this time of year. If I pay attention, I feel the wonder that is God's image in art and in the ones who make it, and I'm called again to join the conversation. I suppose I think entering that particular conversation is the long work of my life, and sometimes, in the long months of summer, I forget. Watch the categories on the left of the page for links related to books, web sites, and other content specifically related to the development of a Christian aesthetic. Join the conversation...