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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Another Week Ends: Techno-Fasting, Google Glass, Tiger Babies, Missional Burnouts, Serrano’s Backfire, Powell’s Joy, and Family Tree
For Those Who Love Poorly: Forgiveness in The Woodsman & Around the Bend
“Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.” –Henri Nouwen
“…God’s grace and forgiveness, while free to the recipient, are always costly for the giver…. From the earliest parts of the Bible, it was understood that God could not forgive without sacrifice. No one who is seriously wronged can “just forgive” the perpetrator…. But when you forgive, that…
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Another Week Ends: Abercrombie’s Hot People, The Neverending “Me Me Me” Era, George Jones’ “Choices,” Katharine Welby, New TV, and New Vampire Weekend
1) The Atlantic provided an insightful zinger to the finger-waggers of today’s adultescent. Looking at today’s young people, of whom I am one—blogging away, shoes off—the piece is a response to the recent cover article of Time magazine, “The Me Me Me Generation.” The Time piece is a backhanded spotlight on the millennials, a heat-ray at their unique and insipid self-absorption, their phones, their extended stays at home. Contrary to this, Elspeth Reeve writes that the Me, Me, Me Generation is every generation—that we’ve been locating (and writing about) the narcissism of youth since we’ve written. She then delineates a…
Ministering to Winners: The Blind, Poor, Broken, Oppressed (and Other People Like You and Me)
In which our hero falls into a pile of excrement and discovers the theology of the cross… Must watch for ministers–and human beings–of all persuasions:
You may download the recording of this session by clicking here.
This Team is Terrible…And Awesome
The Carroll Academy Lady Jags have lost 213 straight high school basketball games. They’ve won six games in fourteen years. Let that sink in for a second. Now watch this touching piece on their story:
As you can see, Carroll Academy is no ordinary school, and this is no ordinary basketball team. It’s almost as if the coaches have been reading Mockingbird! There are, to be sure, a few of the usual ESPN tug-the-heartstrings triumph-in-the-face-of-adversity moments, but some of the things that the coaches say are wonderfully profound.
This is nothing compared to what you’re gonna face in your life. 20, 25,…
Who’s Afraid of Modern Art?
Last Wednesday, Mbird friend and conference speaker Dan Siedell visited Charlottesville and gave a wonderful talk on modern art and Christianity. What made the talk compelling – among other things – was its confessional bent, an admittedly unshakable love of modern art despite questions as to its usefulness and a constant difficulty to justify that love along religious grounds. Rather than a forced dialogue between Christianity and modern art, we see two genuine, agenda-less loves of both, striving to come to terms with each other in an honest, profound, and emotionally charged way. But enough by way of intro: some of the…
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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
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…
Mine Eyes Have (and Have Not) Seen the Glory: Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder
Terrence Malick
There are reasons not to perform well at your work. If you give a fine sermon that alters the thinking of your parishioner, your parishioner will have that sermon in mind when he listens to your next one. If you complete your projects at work and impress your superiors, you will be given more work. Or, as Jerry Seinfeld once said, if you host an award show and bring the house down, your only reward is the opportunities to host more award shows.
The quandary faces Terence Malick in the crafting of his new film, To the Wonder. Coming…
The Flying Dutchman, Schadenfreude, and Tim Tebow
The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake.
–H. L. Mencken
Saturday was my birthday, and I was showered with a heap of my favorite kind of gift: Stories about triumphant people whose lives have been ruined. I’d like to say that it is theological conviction that makes me read these stories end to end, but it is probably some sort of dopamine-stimulating Schadenfreude. Either way, it is an embarrassment of riches.
First, the…
The Unlikely Believer: How a Smart-Assed Intellectual Crossed the Secular/Religious Divide – Mary Karr
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.
Kindness Countdowns, First Responders and Human Exhaustion
A timely contribution from Mbird Sarah Condon:
In the wake of the bombings in Boston, social media was aflutter with stories about the human response to the tragedy. Numerous articles were shared in the days that followed offering heroic accounts of those who stepped in to offer help and those who placed their own lives at risk. One of the countdowns I kept seeing was this piece on Buzzfeed. There was also this on The Atlantic. Such kindness countdowns are always popular and particularly after highly publicized acts of human violence. They usually have taglines like “These 6 photos will restore…
Who Runs Toward an Injury?
During Louisville’s Elite Eight win over Duke, on their way to a National Championship, Kevin Ware experienced what is probably the most gruesome injury ever broadcast on live television. If you were watching, you’ll know what I’m talking about, and if you weren’t…there’s really no way to describe it. It will suffice to say that broken bone was visible through skin, and men young and old were immediately moved to tears at the sight. Everyone, coaches, players, and referees, instinctively moved away from Ware, horrified by his injury. Only one person, Ware’s Louisville teammate Luke Hancock, went the other way.…
Francis Spufford’s Good Friday: Communication, Emotion, and Atonement
Continuing our recent flurry of (irresistible) Francis Spufford posts, his writing on Jesus in Unapologetic [spoiler alert!] is some of the most fresh I’ve ever read. Thornton Wilder called for “new persuasive words“, and Spufford’s imaginative, playful (non-)apology for Christianity gives the kind of new angle on old news that any writer or theologian could envy. Here we turn to Christ’s death and resurrection, and Spufford’s attempt to circumvent loaded, often-difficult intellectual language to address the emotions:
He cannot do anything deliberate now. The strain of his whole weight on his outstretched arms hurts too much…And yet he goes on taking in. It…
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From One Juliet to Another: Sufferers Comforting Sufferers
One of the criticisms of Gospel preaching is that it can, at times, be gloomy. “Do we have to hear about sin again?”, the complaint goes, “Do you have to be so down on humanity?”, “Can’t we talk about how great life is sometimes?”, “Can’t you give me some self-improvement tools?”
To these voices the Gospel preacher replies that life is often (perhaps mostly) hard, and that as much as we might crave a word of optimism, a little fuel for the part of us that longs to live in blissful ignorance (or denial), what we really need is not to…
Through the Wire: A Reading From the Post-Punk Gospel
Wire’s initial three albums have long been favorites of mine, especially the first and the third. The debut album, Pink Flag, employed punk minimalism and acidity with a slyly absurd literal-ism, while completely throwing out punk’s reliance on traditional rock n’ roll song structure. It’s fast and fun and leaves you off kilter in a way you don’t quite get at first. The third album, 154, is to me the consummate post-punk album, more so than say the usual suggestions of something by the Gang of Four, Joy Division or Pere Ubu. It’s polished and often desolate art rock (cold…
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