Posts tagged "LOVE"
Dying to Be Loved: Lana del Rey’s Tragic Bleeding Heart
Death / Gender / Identity / Law / Music

Dying to Be Loved: Lana del Rey’s Tragic Bleeding Heart

by Mockingbird on May 23, 2013 • No Comments

Intern Thursday continues! This one comes to us courtesy of our other esteemed mockingintern this summer, Emily Hornsby, from all the way in Buenos Aires:

In her new song for The Great Gatsby soundtrack called “Young and Beautiful,” Lana del Rey sings about her two favorite topics—love and death.  In the music video, the ever-glamorous, ever-pouty del Rey asks the hypothetical guy she is singing to, “Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful?” These lyrics are classic Lana, but in the third verse things get interesting:

Dear Lord, when I get to heaven
Please let me bring my…

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What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Music / Relationships / Theology

What’s Love Got To Do With It?

by Lynn MacDougall on Apr 25, 2013 • 1 Comment

“And I want love to change my friends to enemies, change My friends to enemies, and show me how its all my fault … And I won’t let love disrupt, corrupt, or interrupt me” – Jack White in “Love Interruption”

I’ve been struggling these past months, through and past Lent and into Eastertide, with what it means to love. There’s no hiddenness on the subject in Scripture–”By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” This among multiple other passages.

At the same time, we live with…

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The Self-Abandonment of Love, According to Rudolf Bultmann
Bible / Theology

The Self-Abandonment of Love, According to Rudolf Bultmann

by Todd Brewer on Feb 14, 2013 • No Comments

In celebration of Valentine’s Day, here are a few choice quotes on love from the great Lutheran New Testament scholar, Rudolf Bultmann:

“An act of friendship or love is genuine only if I am really in the doing of it, and do not stand alongside it: only when I do not think of myself and my achievement, only when the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing: only when I think of absolutely nothing bu the person on whom I am bestowing it. A Work of love is fundamentally easy even when I exhort it from myself…

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Previously on Parenthood, Pt. 5: Perfect Love & Prodigal Returns
Christmas / Forgiveness / Relationships / Suffering / TV

Previously on Parenthood, Pt. 5: Perfect Love & Prodigal Returns

by Matt Schneider on Dec 17, 2012 • 6 Comments

This is the fifth installment in a look at the theological and pastoral wisdom found in the current season of NBC’s Parenthood, mostly regarding the intersection of unsuspected love in the context of suffering. It has been almost a month since I have written anything, mostly because I felt the program was in the middle of a filler-episode streak, understandably serving to carry on the narratives of its many subplots but not standing out with profound moments of grace in ways earlier episodes have. Don’t get me wrong. There were some touching moments in recent episodes like Adam caring for Kristina…

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Elmo Loves You
Children / Film / Grace in Practice / TV

Elmo Loves You

by Matt Schneider on Aug 27, 2012 • 2 Comments

About a year ago my daughter developed a deep affection for that furry red monster from Sesame Street, Elmo. I admit at first I was skeptical: Isn’t that the annoying little Muppet, you know, the one with the irritating laugh? But my wife and I quickly learned the power that the YouTube video of “Elmo’s Song” had in calming down an irate toddler, so we grew to appreciate Elmo.

About the same time, the documentary Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey was released. I’m a little behind the game here given the documentary is no current event, but I feel obligated to write something…

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Kierkegaard on Erotic Love, Divine Sorrow and True Imputation
Forgiveness / Identity / Philosophy / Theology

Kierkegaard on Erotic Love, Divine Sorrow and True Imputation

by WB on Jul 26, 2012 • 8 Comments

We’re embarking on one of Kierkegaard’s bizarre thought-experiments here, on the love of God in Christ. It’s anthropomorphic, it’s controversial, and it’s all possibly a crock of you-know-what…but it’s deeply moving and, to this blogger’s mind, it brings out some brilliant aspects of God’s love and imputation’s reality.

God’s eternal motive with regard to man is to make His love understood – just to communicate it, in the same way a romantic feels compulsion to send a love letter or an avid fan absolutely must praise the author of a book or song. God’s love for us compels him to make that…

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New Music: The Walkmen’s Heaven
Music / Reviews

New Music: The Walkmen’s Heaven

by Carl Laamanen on Jul 5, 2012 • 2 Comments

The title track on the newest Walkmen record Heaven, seems to suggest that heaven, at least in the realm of human relationships, does not come easy, placing the band on the periphery of the cheery perfection of love promised by many modern day pop songs. In keeping with the band’s encouragement on this track to “remember, remember, all we fight for,” their approach to their craft throughout the thirteen songs on Heaven, although bathed in a pop sheen, reveals a deep, mature take on the pop music genre tempered by age and experience. Heaven being my first encounter with The…

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Can a Gorgeous Olympian Find Love…Please?
Relationships / Sports

Can a Gorgeous Olympian Find Love…Please?

by Nick Lannon on May 23, 2012 • 1 Comment

Lolo Jones, owner of a beautiful face, sculpted physique, one of sports’ coolest names and the American record in the 60 meter hurdles, can’t find a boyfriend.  Why?  She won’t sleep with any of her suitors.  Male depravity has never been in more glaring display than when, as Jones reports, a man told her that having sex with him would “make her run faster.”

Jones is perhaps the first person I’ve ever heard make this admission without talking about their Christian faith. A saved celebrity virginity is almost always presented as a testament to the celebrity’s faith in God, and their…

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Mockingbird (Conference) at the Movies: Hollywood’s Love Affair with Love
Conferences / Film / Theology / TV

Mockingbird (Conference) at the Movies: Hollywood’s Love Affair with Love

by Nick Lannon on Apr 3, 2012 • 11 Comments

C.S. Lewis described four kinds of love (based on the four Greek words): affection, friendship, romance, and charity (unconditional love). Since I’m about half as smart as him, I’ll say that, at the root, there are two kinds of love: love that requires something, and love that requires nothing. In this break-out session at the upcoming Mockingbird Conference (Friday, April 20th at 2:30pm), we’ll look at these two loves through the celluloid eyes of Hollywood.

In their effort to get us to put cash on the barrelhead at theaters across the country, the movies often tempt us with stories of love.…

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How Good it Feels! Black Beauty and the Beauty of Yes
Books / Literature / Theology

How Good it Feels! Black Beauty and the Beauty of Yes

by Lauren R.E. Larkin on Oct 13, 2011 • 1 Comment

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reading Black Beauty to my boys at nap-time. While it was favorite of mine growing up, I am now struck (read: shocked) by the repeated emphasis on right action and the dichotomy between good humans and bad humans – which seems solely to be based on action. I questioned how I even loved this story as a child; why in the world did I shed so many tears every time I read it?  The story seems so full of judgment.

But then it dawned on me. I’m not afraid to admit that I began…

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PZ’s Podcast: “Don’t Make Me Over”
Grace in Practice / Relationships

PZ’s Podcast: “Don’t Make Me Over”

by Mockingbird on Jun 27, 2011 • No Comments

EPISODE 52

Love that is looking for change in the person being loved, fails.

If you’re trying to change somebody by means of your love, it’s not going to work.

Have you tried recently? Have you tried to change someone by means of your love?
Even if you’re keeping it to yourself — “it” being some imaged result of what you want to have happen in the person’s life — it still won’t work. Love in order to be love has to be separated from “desired outcomes.” Love that is love is not looking for desired outcomes.

This is true empirically, since people…

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Mockingbird at the Movies: Catch Love if You Can
Books / Film

Mockingbird at the Movies: Catch Love if You Can

by Nick Lannon on May 23, 2011 • No Comments

Frank Abagnale, Jr. (a real person), is perhaps better known as “The Guy Leonardo DiCaprio Plays in Catch Me if You Can.”  His 2000 autobiography is the inspiration for the movie, and his exploits in the book are, if anything, more audacious than those in the film.

For the uninitiated, Frank Abagnale was, according to his wikipedia page, the autobiography, and the film, a

“confidence trickster, check forger, impostor, and escape artist. He became notorious in the 1960s for passing $2.5 million worth of meticulously forged checks across 26 countries over the course of five years, beginning when he was 16 years…

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David Foster Wallace on Fear, Love and American Males
Gender / Literature / Psychology / Theology

David Foster Wallace on Fear, Love and American Males

by Ron on Jan 17, 2011 • 10 Comments

From the short story “Good Old Neon” by David Foster Wallace, collected in Oblivion. Narrator posthumously (sadly, foretellingly) recounts his meetings with his psychotherapist:

“For instance, it turned out that one of his basic operating premises was the claim that there were really only two basic, fundamental orientations a person could have toward the world, (1) love and (2) fear, and that they couldn’t coexist (or, in logical terms, that their domains were exhaustive and mutually exclusive, or that their two sets had no intersection but their union comprised all possible elements, or that

(ψx)((Fx – ~(Lx)) & (Lx – ~ (Fx)))…

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Church / Humor / Religion

How Does An Expert View Heaven?

by Dusty on Apr 29, 2009 • 23 Comments

A GREAT video on Heaven. It’s comforting to know that Heaven will be 1400 times the size of New York City. And please if you’re going to watch it, watch it all the way through. I wouldn’t want you to miss the special treat at the end.

I LOVE this stuff. Could watch it all day long. It’s part of who we are, embrace it!