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Now Available! The Mockingbird Devotional: Good News for Today (and Every Day)!

by Mockingbird on May 24, 2013 • 2 Comments

TMDscreenshotFinally, it is here! Five years and over sixty contributors in the making, The Mockingbird Devotional is now available for purchase! While it will be available for purchase on Amazon in the next few days or so, it is currently available directly from Createspace for $20, which is where we’d encourage you to buy them anyways (being as more royalty comes our way). What is The Mockingbird Devotional all about, you ask? Besides getting a sense of it via our year’s worth of Hopelessly Devoted previews, here’s the back blurb:

“As long as it has been available, people have turned to the Bible to address the problems and anxieties of everyday life. We look to it for comfort in the midst of suffering, clarity in times of confusion, or simply to learn about God. Thankfully, what we find in its pages is not a collection of rules or demands but a message of unbending honesty and unspeakable compassion: the gospel of Jesus Christ. With humor and heart (and a surprising number of disco and B-movie references) the 365 short devotions in The Mockingbird Devotional carry the good news of God’s mercy and forgiveness to the inner-rooms of human reality.”

Order your copy today! Also, for a limited time, a complimentary copy will be sent to anyone who signs up for any amount of monthly giving! Visit our support page for more information. Feed up time, come get it…

P.S. Check the comments for a full contributor list.

Selling Out to Keep It Real: Indie Currency in the Decade(s) of Dysfunction
America / Art / Books / Celebrity / Identity / Money / Music / Radio

Selling Out to Keep It Real: Indie Currency in the Decade(s) of Dysfunction

by Ethan Richardson on May 21, 2013 • 2 Comments

n+1 has a new piece on the changing landscape of the “sellout,” and the assertions of authenticity that have been re-shaped in the relationship between art and commerce. Evan Kindley is writing a review on a few books in the topic, one of which is spotlighted, by Timothy Taylor, The Sounds of Capitalism: Advertising, Music, and the Conquest of Culture. Going back to the origin of music being used for advertising ends, the book archives the radio-days of musicians crafting Lucky Strike jingles, all the way to the  visual age of musicians having their own songs (and personas) implanted into…

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And I Was Alive (With a Shard of Glass in the Gut): A Week with Christian Wiman
Art / Death / Literature / Poetry / Religion / Suffering / Theology

And I Was Alive (With a Shard of Glass in the Gut): A Week with Christian Wiman

by David Zahl on May 21, 2013 • 1 Comment

What a rare and inspiring privilege it was to be with poet and author Christian Wiman last week. I for one am still reeling–don’t know how it could have possibly been any richer. Thankfully, like his poetry in Every Riven Thing and his prose in My Bright Abyss, the talks he gave here in Charlottesville defy distillation. They require real attention–and while one might expect as much from an artist of his caliber and quality, still, the anticipation of poetic brilliance doesn’t make it any less arresting when you actually experience it.

Which is not to imply that a portion of…

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Another Week Ends: Techno-Fasting, Google Glass, Tiger Babies, Missional Burnouts, Serrano’s Backfire, Powell’s Joy, and Family Tree
Art / Children / Humor / Identity / Law / Literature / Relationships / Religion / Sports / Suffering / Technology / TV / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: Techno-Fasting, Google Glass, Tiger Babies, Missional Burnouts, Serrano’s Backfire, Powell’s Joy, and Family Tree

by David Zahl on May 17, 2013 • 2 Comments

1. First off, a timely rejoinder to our many social-media-is-making-us-lonely posts from Paul Miller on The Verge, entitled “I’m Still Here: Back Online After A Year Without Internet”. As the title suggests, Miller unplugged for a solid year, partly as an assignment to try to discover how technology, and the Internet in particular, had affected him (and us) over time. He reports that while the experience was initially incredibly freeing, he eventually found himself right back where he started, i.e. his new habits became just as constraining as the old ones. In theological terms, you might say that Paul’s story…

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A New Pentecost, or Maybe Just a Rhetorical Revival, According to Peanuts
Art / Books / Church / Comics / Religion / Theology

A New Pentecost, or Maybe Just a Rhetorical Revival, According to Peanuts

by Matt Schneider on May 17, 2013 • 2 Comments

We have written several pieces on Charles Schulz’s Peanuts here before, and in particular on Robert L. Short’s prophetic interpretation in his The Gospel According to Peanuts (1965) here, here, and here. Both Peanuts in general and Short’s book in particular have played meaningful roles in my life ever since my conversion to Christian faith. In fact, I recently reread Short’s very important (and Mockingbird-esque) first chapter, “The Church and the Arts.” I found that he gives us—as Thornton Wilder called it—some “new persuasive words  for defaced or degraded ones” about Pentecost and the Holy Spirit’s work in the arts and…

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The Element In Man For Which Moralism Cannot Account
Law / Literature / Religion

The Element In Man For Which Moralism Cannot Account

by David Zahl on May 14, 2013 • No Comments

Some germane thoughts from the late Jaroslav Pelikan, taken from the “Dostoevsky: The Holy and the Good” chapter of Fools for Christ, ht CB:

Wherever Christianity is viewed as a quiet submission to traditional patterns of conduct and an acceptance of social convention, there will be no appreciation of the atheism of Ivan Karamazov. His atheism begins to mean something when it becomes clear that the Christian gospel is a religious denunciation of religion–religion being understood as man’s attempt to relate himself constructively to the Holy. Traditional moralism and conventional piety have often put the objects of their search alongside God…

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Poetry

From a Window – Christian Wiman

by David Zahl on May 13, 2013 • 2 Comments

In honor of the beginning of “Wiman Week” here in Charlottesville, here is a doozie from Every Riven Thing, originally published in The Atlantic:

the-tree-of-life_3Incurable and unbelieving
in any truth but the truth of grieving,

I saw a tree inside a tree
rise kaleidoscopically

as if the leaves had livelier ghosts.
I pressed my face as close

to the pane as I could get
to watch that fitful, fluent spirit

that seemed a single being undefined
or countless beings of one mind

haul its strange cohesion
beyond the limits of my vision

over the house heavenwards.
Of course I knew those leaves were birds.

Of course that old tree stood
exactly as it had and would

(but why should it seem fuller now?)
and though a man’s mind might endow

even a tree with some excess
of life to which a man seems witness,

that life is not the life of men.
And that is where the joy came in.

To listen to Christian doing an astounding reading of an astounding poem, go here.

Kierkegaard, Honesty, and Grace (200 Years Later)
Books / Philosophy / Psychology / Religion / Theology

Kierkegaard, Honesty, and Grace (200 Years Later)

by WB on May 8, 2013 • 3 Comments

Three days past Kierkegaard’s 200th birthday, some great articles have cropped up examining his legacy. The New York Times, for instance, featured a great mini-summary of his legacy; more interestingly, at aeon, atheist Julian Baggini writes a fantastic essay about his personal relationship with Kierkegaard’s thought:

He was an existentialist a century before Jean-Paul Sarte, more rigorously post-modern than postmodernism, and a theist whose attacks on religion bit far deeper than many of those of today’s new atheists. Kierkegaard is not so much a thinker for our time but a timeless thinker, whose work is pertinent for all ages yet destined…

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Dad Is Fat: Jim Gaffigan’s Refreshingly Honest New Book on Parenting
Books / Celebrity / Children / Humor

Dad Is Fat: Jim Gaffigan’s Refreshingly Honest New Book on Parenting

by Matt Schneider on May 6, 2013 • 2 Comments

Comedian Jim Gaffigan just wrote a book: Dad Is Fat. It’s a not-so-serious (but therefore very serious) book on parenting, and the publisher actually sent me an advanced copy to review here on Mockingbird—hence this post. (Can I just take second to revel in the fact that this is the first advanced copy I have received to review. Thanks.) The book will be released for sale tomorrow, May 7th. You can read my previous ruminations and some helpful background on Gaffigan and his comedic talents here, but you might already know him as “the Hot Pockets guy.”

My overall response is that…

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Another Week Ends: Underconfidence, Kate Middleton’s Picnics, Unreported Medical Advice, D.H. Lawrence’s Christian Wonder, the Double-Bind of Summer Movies, More Christian Wiman, and (Way) Too Much Sociology
America / Books / Film / Humor / Identity / Interviews / Poetry / Psychology / Suffering / Theology / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: Underconfidence, Kate Middleton’s Picnics, Unreported Medical Advice, D.H. Lawrence’s Christian Wonder, the Double-Bind of Summer Movies, More Christian Wiman, and (Way) Too Much Sociology

by WB on May 3, 2013 • 2 Comments

1. How confident are you? Over at The New York Times, David Brooks surveyed his readers to get a sense for self-confidence, lack thereof, and the ways males and females experience confidence differently. While the word itself is a bit vague and murky, and Brooks found few trends in the survey data, the individual responses are definitely worth a look:

But it was really hard to see consistent correlations and trends. The essays were highly idiosyncratic, and I don’t want to impose a false order on them that isn’t there. Let me just string together some of the interesting points…

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Short Story Wednesdays: “Winky” by George Saunders
Bible / Identity / Literature / Relationships

Short Story Wednesdays: “Winky” by George Saunders

by Ethan Richardson on May 1, 2013 • No Comments

This week we slip into the mind of George Saunders, contemporary and friend to the late DFW, and colleague of Mary Karr at Syracuse University. “Winky,” a very short story, was published here in the New Yorker for you to read in full (if you are a subscriber), or you could just buy the collection of stories (highly recommended), Pastoralia.

“I’m lost!” You cried. “I’m wandering in a sort of wilderness!”

“Hey, You, come on over!” shouted a girl across the stage, labeled “Inner Peace.” “I bet you’ve been looking for me your whole life!”

“Boy, have I!” said You. “I’ll be right…

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Addiction / Church / Literature / Poetry / Prayer / Religion / Suffering

The Unlikely Believer: How a Smart-Assed Intellectual Crossed the Secular/Religious Divide – Mary Karr

by Mockingbird on Apr 30, 2013 • 4 Comments

What an absolute delight and honor it was to meet and listen to the one and only Mary Karr at last week’s conference in NYC. Buckle your seat-belts indeed – just don’t leave the cake out in the rain:

You may download this recording by clicking here.

Another Week Ends: Fairness, The Life of Wiman, Motherly Love, Malick Sacraments, Karr Talks Saunders, Anderson Shoots Prada, and the Ke$ha Trump Card
Art / Books / Children / Death / Everyday / Film / Forgiveness / Music / Relationships / TV / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: Fairness, The Life of Wiman, Motherly Love, Malick Sacraments, Karr Talks Saunders, Anderson Shoots Prada, and the Ke$ha Trump Card

by Ethan Richardson on Apr 26, 2013 • 1 Comment

1) The Chronicle released a preview last month to Wiman’s newest piece of work, My Bright Abyss, which we’ve already pulled from a couple of times, here and here, and the life and the illness that spurred it. Jay Parini writes that poetry criticism and commentary began by pulling the fabric of a piece of work as closely as possible upon the tables of lived experience, but Parini also notes that contemporary criticism has become so po-mo-phobic of plainspeak that it winds up saying nothing at all. But Wiman, on the other hand, with sickness, has been voided of this…

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2013 NYC Conference Recordings: Good News That Never Gets Old
Addiction / Art / Church / Conferences / Death / Everyday / Grace in Practice / Law / Literature / Poetry / Religion / Sports / Theology / TV

2013 NYC Conference Recordings: Good News That Never Gets Old

by Mockingbird on Apr 26, 2013 • 9 Comments

Another heartfelt thank-you to everyone who helped put on this year’s Mockingbird Conference in NYC, especially our friends at Calvary St. George’s Church. It’s a good thing most of the presentations below have to do with grace, as the very thought of trying to top it is incredibly scary…! Speaking of freebies, though, we are once again making the recordings available at no charge; we only ask that those who were not able to attend this year *consider* making a donation to help cover the cost of the event. Download links are followed by an in-line player for each recording.…

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2013 NYC Conference Book Table
Books / Conferences

2013 NYC Conference Book Table

by Mockingbird on Apr 23, 2013 • 3 Comments

A major thank you goes out to all who helped put on this past weekend’s conference in New York! We honestly could not be more pleased with how it all went. Recordings and video should be available soon — hopefully by the end of the week. Until then, here’s this year’s book table, with a couple of embarrassing omissions and logistical impossibilities rectified. Every year it’s a little different, depending on speaker and theme, but overall, it’s safe to say that it doubles as something of a “Mockingbird Reading List.”

NON-FICTION

Alcoholics Anonymous – Big Book (little version)
Aronson, Elliot, and Tavris, Carol…

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