It’s spring now, and the lines are gathering at Lowe’s for the outdoor projects–the hammers, the nails, the pavers and edgers, the crabgrass preventer, the mulch. And lately if there’s anything this means, it’s that community gardens by the hundreds will be poking up like new year’s resolutions around your town, little buds and bulbs being planted by the Channings, the Arnolds, and the neighbors whose names you’ve never gotten but whose beagle seems to be on some kind of new death-howling-at-4-AM routine right outside your bedroom window. It’s a gorgeous Saturday spring morning, neighbors caring for neighbors, caring for…
Hungry for Love: Dystopia, Genesis 4, and The Hunger Games
Will I be at the midnight showing of The Hunger Games this Thursday? I hope so! Back in 2009, Mockingjay- er, Mockingbird- contributor JDK wrote a fantastic piece on George Orwell and Law/Gospel, noting an important link between dystopian literature and life after the fall. The genre has proven to be a fairly bankable one in Hollywood (from Total Recall and The Matrix to I Am Legend and The Walking Dead and everywhere in between), a trend which shows no sign of slowing anytime soon. Indeed, the latest high-profile dystopian fantasy to hit the silver screen is the most hyped…
Sucker Punched By One-Way Love
Let it be known, I am no romantic. But being an avid This American Life listener, sometimes I get sucker-punched by the occasional, irresistibly sappy story. This is such a great story of grace in practice I couldn’t not share it. It doesn’t hurt that Mockingbird is getting ready to release a publication about the show called This American Gospel…
In episode #425, “Slow To React”, Ira Glass cues up the scene of a “legendarily romantic love story”. The writer of the piece, Sean Lewis, recounts the story of his somewhat awkward, sometimes stoic, dutiful uncle, Mark. This is the kind…
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Another Week Ends: Willy Loman Preaches, Complicated Mourning, Extroversion Mandates, Celebrity Marriage Formulas, Dependency Dilemmas, Kontiki, Mad Men and Rowan Williams
1. A little over four weeks until our Spring Conference in NYC (4/19-21), which means that on Monday night 3/19, the “Earlybird rates” will expire ($150/couple or $100/person all-inclusive). You can’t say we didn’t warn you… If you need an extra push, earlier this week the Episcopal News Service published a generous piece about Mockingbird, which describes our past conferences in flattering terms. So pre-register today! And speaking of our little organization, in the you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up department, a killer Mbird headline appeared in The NY Times recently that was just too uncanny not to share, “Nazareth Defeats Christ the King in…
Grace in (Sexual) Addiction: Honesty and Freedom in a Cyber-Connected World
The second in our series of posts previewing the breakout sessions at our upcoming Spring Conference in NYC, this one will be presented by special guest Jay Haug. It is a topic we feel is particularly important, so much so that we are running it twice, once in the morning and once in the afternoon on Friday (4/20). And the afternoon session is open to the general public, free of charge – spread the word:
Pornography, cyber hook-ups, friends with benefits. What was once a major journey into the inner city has now become mainstream temptation, a small step only a…
From The Onion: Girlfriend Changes Man Into Someone She’s Not Interested In
Pretty hilarious one from the Onion archives. You can read the whole thing here:
CHARLOTTE, NC–After two and a half years of subtle prodding and manipulation, Jill Nickles has finally molded boyfriend Brendan Eiler into the sort of man in whom she’s not interested. “When I first met Brendan, he was a guitarist for [local rock band] The Heavy Petters, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him,” said Nickles, 28. “I used to go to Tramp’s every Thursday night just to watch him play. He wasn’t even the most handsome guy in the world, but he just had this mystique,…
Capon, Silverstein and the Foolishness of the Cross
A couple of literary meditations – one religious, one secular, both sacred – on this Sunday’s Lectionary reading, 1 Corinthians 1:18-25, and the “foolishness” of the cross. First, from Robert Farrar Capon’s Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus:
Direct, straight-line, intervening power does, of course, have many uses. With it, you can lift the spaghetti from the plate to your mouth, wipe the sauce off your slacks, carry them to the dry cleaners, and perhaps even make enough money to ransom them back. Indeed, straight-line power (“use the force you need to get the result…
From The New Yorker
And if you’re in need of some extra comic relief – and who isn’t – Jack Handey’s (of Deep Thoughts fame) “Alexander the Great” should do the trick.
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Another Week Ends: Inner Machiavellians, Lutheran Insults, Whisky Priests, Monkees, Mets, Parenthood, Veep, Viola Davis and Frankenweenie
1. I’ll admit it: I’ve been trying to lay off the David Brooks, at least in the Weekend columns. As insightful as he frequently is, there are plenty of fish in the digital sea, are there not? Well, to paraphrase a Pacino, every time I think I’m out, he pulls me back in. That is to say, giving anything top billing other than his NY Times column from yesterday, “The Machiavellian Temptation,” would be dishonest. It’s getting to the point where I suspect we’re being punked a la Candid Camera. Anyway, this time around Herr Brooks is contrasting recent breakthroughs…
Now You’re Special To Me: Downton Abbey and the Adoption of Daisy
Many of us struggled with the recently completed second season of costumed PBS/BBC megahit Downton Abbey. And for good reason. It zigzagged relentlessly, introducing subplot after ridiculous subplot, the bandaged Canadian stranger being the lowest blow, an understandable point of no return for some. Perhaps the culprit was the editing for US audiences, who knows, certainly a slower boil in the last few episodes would have gone a long way (though I’m not sure it could have saved the arc entirely).
This is not to say the season was without merit. Julian Fellowes may have been focusing a bit more on…
Book Review: The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller
Two things led me to pick up Tim Keller’s new book on marriage, both of which were pressing. The first: I needed a “marriage book” for Pastoral Care class at seminary. The second: I had an engagement ring burning a hole in my pocket, and it was gonna be there for another week before I could “unload it.” So you might say matrimony has been on my mind, for both academic and personal reasons. Seeing as I also happen to contribute on occasion to Mockingbird, the question quickly took on a larger scope: where does a grace-dependent Gospel junkie like me…
“Weeping and Lifting Weights”: Getting Real with The Bachelor
Did you see this Monday’s Bachelor? When Casey S. got called to come outside and talk to Chris about something important, you knew, you knew it was something important. You just knew her bags were packed, she was leaving her chance at, her life with Ben. Casey S. had that look, like “I know I’m about to be found out, but I’m going to hold these cards up until the very last minute. I can’t give in. Well, I want to, but I don’t want to, you know?” You know? The scene was so perfect. Out the heavily windowed courtyard,…
Humility Is Endless: A Few Choice Cuts From The Merciful Impasse
If you’re one of the few who has been holding out on Paul Zahl’s The Merciful Impasse: The Sermon on the Mount for People Who’ve Crashed (and Burned), the audio collection that Mockingbird released this past Fall, hold out no longer! Here are a few soundbites to whet your appetite. The only aspect of the set they don’t capture is the truly laugh-out-loud humor:
What I’m really talking about is the roots of the problem of being human. Why are we the way we are? What causes us to be intractably defensive, and resistant, and feeling terribly vulnerable to people’s judgments…
A Boy and His Dog: When One-Way Love Meets Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
Ready for a tearjerker? The NY Times Magazine article “Wonder Dog” could be just what the doctor ordered. The story of Iyal Winokur, a Russian boy with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome adopted by American parents (a rabbi and his wife, in fact), it’s an extremely moving example of one-way love accomplishing what restraint couldn’t, an animal reaching through emotional and physiological defenses that had frustrated all human patience and compassion. You might even say the dog in question, Chancer, is conditioned for the sort of unconditionality that you and I could never muster (I want one!), whose object has done nothing…
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