Nearing the finish line, we are thrilled to present Dan Siedell’s session from our recent NYC conference, complete with an integrated slideshow. Do yourself a favor:
You may download the audio recording by clicking here. Interested parties should also be sure to check out Dan’s “Who’s Afraid of Modern Art?” lecture.
Week two of conference video begins! This time with the inimitable Dr. Koch:
You may download the recording of this talk by clicking here. To read the post upon which this talk was partly based, go here. He also references this one at some length.
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…
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.…
1. The NY Times published a wise op-ed from sociologist Tanya Luhrmann this past week on the the subject of “How Skeptics and Believers Can Connect”. She begins the column by recounting a disconcerting experience she had promoting her terrific book, When God Talks Back, on a Christian radio station. Luhrmann does not self-identify as a Christian, which the host of the show apparently took as a cue to berate her into converting on air (rather than dig into a book that has quite a bit of sympathetic material to relate). Now, God only knows what exactly the motivation/justification at…
This morning’s devotion comes from Jacob Smith. A reminder that this devotion (and 364 others) will be released at the Spring Conference in the long-awaited Mockingbird Devotional: Good News for Today (and Every Day).
“…Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said…” (ESV)
This is the account of the first Easter morning. However, on this Easter morning there is no linen, no brass instruments, no baked hams or Easter eggs, and no large lilac hats. Instead, the initial tone of the first Easter morning is…
In an enticingly titled NY Times op-ed “Diagnosis: Human” this past week, Harvard ethicist Ted Gup warned of the dangers of approaching our problems in an overly/exclusively pharmaceutical fashion. The temptation with certain types of psychotropic drugs being that they will serve as quick-fix band-aids rather than as part of an actual cure, and in doing so, they may even backfire. Part of his concern has to do with what he sees as the fallout of prescription-happy doctors when it comes to the diagnosing of boys with ADD/ADHD. You’ll have to read the whole article to understand just how deep…
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.
Our next preview of the breakout sessions at our upcoming NYC Conference comes from Daniel Siedell:
In Dead Man (1995), a Native-American guide named “Nobody” confronts an accountant from Cleveland (played by Johnny Depp) about his own name. When Depp’s character affirms that, indeed, his name is “William Blake,” Nobody exclaims:
Then you are a dead man!
Each artist suffers to learn in her own way what William Blake must learn. Whether it is Anselm Kiefer making gigantic paintings in a huge studio in the south of France or a student in grad school in the Midwest sharing a refurbished office with three…
“The word of the cross for marriage is the word of perpetual absolution. It is the word that forgives the existence of the other.”
Paul Zahl, Grace in Practice
In the next two weeks, I will be attending two weddings. Because I will merely be a guest at both weddings, I have no legitimate basis for insinuating myself into the toasting. There is thus no captive audience for my unsolicited advice, nor (unfortunately) is my advice ever solicited.
But marriage advice is readily available; it depends only on your attention span. A quick Google search will give you anywhere from “6 Scientific Tips…
Did you know that we are releasing, at our upcoming spring conference, The Mockingbird Devotional? Five years in the making, with 365 devotions from over 60 writers, the devotional travels from Genesis to Revelation to bring you God’s good news–including this Holy Week-appropriate reflection from Paul Zahl himself.
This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying, “Tell the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on an ass, and on a colt, the foal of an ass.’” (RSV)
Palm Sunday is a day in the Christian Calendar, and a day in history,…
As Good Friday nears, a beautiful sermon of Martin Luther King’s we had sent our way, that we had to put up here. The speech was given after the bombing at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963, just three weeks after the March on Washington.
This afternoon we gather in the quiet of this sanctuary to pay our last tribute of respect to these beautiful children of God. They entered the stage of history just a few years ago, and in the brief years that they were privileged to act on this mortal stage, they played their parts exceedingly…
Jim Valvano (most likely known to non-sports fans as the namesake of the Jimmy V Foundation, a cancer research supporter which has given away hundreds of millions of dollars to fight the disease) was the subject of the latest ESPN 30-for-30 documentary, “Survive and Advance,” which premiered on Sunday night. The doc is about the unlikely path-to-a-championship of the 1983 North Carolina State Wolfpack, coached by Valvano, which included nine consecutive must-win games, many of which came down to the final seconds. The team’s run (the final basket in the championship game was recognized by Sports…
The Province of the Saved
Should be the Art – To Save -
Through Skill obtained in Themselves -
The Science of the Grave
No Man can understand
But He that hath endured
The Dissolution – in Himself -
That Man – be qualified
To qualify Despair
To Those who failing new -
Mistake Defeat for Death – Each time -
Till acclimated – to -
John Zahl: The British version blows the American version out of the water! One ...
Scot: To this psychiatric-clinic veteran, Amy clearly has the entire range o...
michael cooper: The Office at its best was full of grace-infused irony, and concrete p...
ginger: I loved in the retrospective when Mindy Kaling said that most fans tho...
Michael Sansbury: Amen. But my face was far from straight....