You have to be very careful when you bill something as “the real-life Friday Night Lights“. I don’t just say that because, in more ways than one, Friday Night Lights itself is the “real life Friday Night Lights.” I say it because that series occupies such a vaunted place in some of our hearts that its name cannot/should not be invoked lightly. Which is another way of explaining why I dragged my heels about watching Undefeated as long as I did. Even after it won an Oscar for Best Documentary in 2011, even when numerous people insisted it was “the…
Bible Wednesdays: Jesus Walks on Water to Deliver Cheetos
Continuing our brief series on some hot-spots in the Gospel by John.
In early parts of the book of John, miracles are generally followed up with some kind of teaching, some way Jesus draws a line between the act and himself. This is the case with the Feeding of the Five Thousand, which is then followed up by Jesus telling the crowd the next day that he is the Bread from Heaven. Doing it this way, Jesus becomes more than a teacher and more than a miracle worker—Robert Farrar Capon calls them “acted parables.” Doing it this way, Jesus is God…
Reanimating the Word: Mockingbird Interviews Christian Wiman
Last month, Mockingbird co-sponsored a talk with poet Christian Wiman, whose Ambition and Survival, My Bright Abyss, and Every Riven Thing have quickly become Mbird favorites. We also had the great pleasure of interviewing him – transcript below:
MB: Thornton Wilder said that “the revival in religion will be a rhetorical problem – new persuasive words for defaced or degraded ones.” And you reference the need for a “new poetics of faith” in your new book – could you expand on that?
CW: I’m of two minds about that. There’s another quote in that book from a Polish poet, Anna Kamienska, who…
Bread and Jam for Frances Ha
Another pearl from Charlotte Hornsby on the newest Noah Baumbach film.
We, the followers and the followed, the tagged and untagged, the liked and the retweeted are building a Xanadu writ in html, a constant feed of pictures and updates that allows everyone to share his or her story… so long as it isn’t boring.
Yes, I’m being sensational, but isn’t that what social media is good at? When was the last time you saw a status update about a trip to Milwaukee or an instagram of a frozen dinner? My Facebook newsfeed often looks just as mouthwatering and envy-inspiring as the…
The Modern State of This Charming Man
This is written in light of recent news that Vince Vaughn has (sadly) been chosen to be the star in a film based on the 1970′s television show The Rockford Files, starring James Garner.
Grant had developed a new way to interact with a woman onscreen: he treated his leading lady as both a sexually attractive female and an idiosyncratic personality, an approach that often required little more than just listening to her—a tactic that had previously been as ignored in the pictures as it remains, among men, in real life. His knowing but inconspicuously generous style let the actress’s…
Reply All’s and The End of Civilization as We Know It
This guy. I’m telling you. This guy! He’s so good you almost want to stop writing. So gut-level and truthful and witty and articulate, yet somehow tossed off seeming. I’m talking about Tim Kreider, who batted another one out of the park this week with “I Know What You Think Of Me” for the NY Times. It’s a short and deceptively wise reflection on the insights one can glean when someone accidentally hits “reply” instead of “forward” on an email. What may sound like the epitome of a modern problem/nightmare is, in Kreider’s hands, not simply the latest iteration of…
The Grace of Beards
The College World Series began this weekend in Omaha, Nebraska, and, for baseball fans, there is hardly anything more fun to watch. College baseball players make many more mistakes than their pro counterparts, so every at-bat—every game—is unpredictable. And, with double-elimination brackets, every game truly counts.
This year, Mississippi State’s baseball team made the College World Series for the first time since 2007. (Full disclosure: I have a rooting interest.) Its current head coach, John Cohen, was hired in 2008. Cohen is known as a very intense, no-nonsense coach, and, prior to this year, he did not allow the team—or any team…
Another Week Ends: Snowden Psychology, Child Stars Grown Up, Sleep Perfomance, the Science of Risk-Management, and Ira Glass on Jesus Freaks
1) I guess the graduation speeches were of quite the well-suited ilk this year—fitted more for the heart and less the diploma. Jonathan Safran-Foer spoke at Middlebury’s graduation (the transcript was then printed for the Times), and talked a lot about today’s ease of communication and, thus, today’s relational retreat. Entitled “How Not To Be Lonely,” he catalogues some of the cultural and social restraints of technology, something we love…to…talk…about, but what’s more interesting is the focus he takes on power of intervention and attention.
He remembers sitting in a park, next to a woman who crying in public. Not knowing…
Tim Tebow at the Bottom of His Barrel
Guess who’s back?! Everyone’s favorite sports talking point (including Mockingbird’s) is heading to the New England Patriots, and the initial reactions are just as polarized as any conversation about Tim Tebow has ever been. There’s the cautious optimist, there’s the outright optimist, and then there’s the severe pessimist, to name just a few.
The Patriots are building a track record for giving high-profile names a second shot after failure. Sometimes it has worked (see Randy Moss) and other it has failed (Albert Hayensworth). Even though he is willing to give these second chances, the Patriots head coach, Bill Belichick, isn’t exactly the…
#70 of Joy Williams’ 99 Stories of God
The Paris Review‘s blog has been highlighting stories from Pulitzer-prize finalist Joy Williams’ newest book, 99 Stories of God. Often just intangible, yet more tangibly bitesized than we’re often comfortable seeing or saying, #70 puts God in a demolition derby Wagoneer–painted pink:
The Lord had always wanted to participate in a Demolition Derby. Year after year he would attend the one-day summer event on a particular small island where junked cars, gutted and refitted for the challenge, would compete. He studied the drivers’ techniques carefully. It was mayhem! Usually the drivers would prepare their wrecks themselves, but there was…
Another Week Ends: New Atheism and the Church, Jonah Lehrer on Redemption, Empathy with Batman, Wiman’s Incarnational Faith, End-of-School-Year Mothers, Billy Joel, and Eurovision
1. First off, Larry Taunton at The Atlantic has spent the last few years working through the whole “New Atheist” thing from the perspective of traditional Christianity, in particular listening (!) expansively to many committed, thought-through atheists. A nice round-up of his observations appeared this past week, with lots of food for thought, ht EB:
Slowly, a composite sketch of American college-aged atheists began to emerge and it would challenge all that we thought we knew about this demographic. Here is what we learned:
They had attended church
Most of our participants had not chosen their worldview from ideologically neutral positions at all, but in reaction to…
Imaginary Meaning: How the Law Drives Us to Virtual Significance
I recently finished reading a super book titled, Life in the Trinity: An Introduction to Theology With the Help of the Church Fathers by Donald Fairbairn. As the title indicates, the main concern of the book is an examination of the doctrine of the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and their significance for Christians and creation at large.
While I enjoyed the entire thing, one section called, “Significance in a Different Guise” caught my attention. Fairbairn posits something we at Mockingbird know to be true, one of the most basic human needs is a sense of significance. This need produces…
Reflections on an Epidemic (and the Most Important News of the Year?)
I was shocked by something this past Fall. At our conference in Charlottesville, RJ Heijmen showed a clip of a father telling the story of his son’s suicide and the emotional and spiritual agony it caused. The man’s words could not have possibly been heavier, and I almost questioned whether we had crossed a line. But that wasn’t what shocked me. What shocked me was the number of people who approached me afterward to share a similar story. Nearly a quarter of those in attendance had experienced the suicide of a close friend or family member. Granted, we are only…
The Golden Age of Television (Criticism)
The new season of Arrested Development came out last week, and let’s make one thing clear; it is amazing. It’s what it’s always been, while full of new gags and tropes that made me excited to go back and watch again (because I’m sure I missed plenty). While I admit, it is rocky in places—the George Sr. storyline being considerably weaker than the others and, sure, editing could have been tighter—it is still the same brilliant show.
The return of Arrested marks another exciting notch in what critics have called “The Golden Age of Television.” Streaming websites like Netflix have become…
When Jono Met Paul: A Short Discussion on Grace in Practice
LIBERATE gave us quite a gift on Friday! It only takes 10 minutes to unwrap. Amazing:
Jono and Paul-Vimeo HD from Coral Ridge | LIBERATE on Vimeo.
John Zahl: Fantastic review of a great film! Thanks, Dave. Undefeated is one mo...
Ken: What a rich interview. I especially love the part where he wonders if ...
DBab: Ethan...this was great! I will use "holy bananas" the rest of the wee...
Alison: Thank you Ethan. That was encouraging....
Darren Sombke: One of our former students and chapel band members at Rockford Luthera...