Posts tagged "Mockingbird"
2012 NYC Conference Recordings: Honesty, Humility and the Grace of God
Addiction / Bible / Children / Conferences / Everyday / Film / Grace in Practice / Humor / Identity / Law / Literature / Music / Poetry / Psychology / Relationships / Religion / Suffering / Theology / TV

2012 NYC Conference Recordings: Honesty, Humility and the Grace of God

by Mockingbird on Apr 26, 2012 • 8 Comments

A major thank you to everyone who helped put on this past weekend’s conference in New York! We could not be happier or more grateful for how it all went. We are offering the recordings free of charge again this year; we only ask that those who were not able to attend this year *consider* making a donation to Mockingbird to help cover the cost of the event. Download links are followed by an in-line player for each recording.

Thursday April 19th

Devotion 1 – Jacob Smith

Download: 01-Devotion-1-1.mp3

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“The Zoolander Antidote: Telling the Truth (About You)” – Aaron Zimmerman

Download: 02-The-Zoolander-Antidote_-Telling-the-Truth-About-Ourselves-1.mp3

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Friday April 20th

Devotion 2…

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Another Week Ends: Twittercide, Paul Simon, Reality TV, Reasons To Quit, Better Book Titles, Community & Shallow Small Groups
Books / Celebrity / Church / Gender / Humor / Music / Psychology / Religion / Technology / TV / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: Twittercide, Paul Simon, Reality TV, Reasons To Quit, Better Book Titles, Community & Shallow Small Groups

by David Zahl on May 13, 2011 • No Comments

1. A great little editorial on Slate about the recent instances of “Twittercide” committed by folks as wide-ranging as Gilbert Gottfried, Tucker Carlson, Keith Olbermann, and Rashard Mendenhall. The author wisely points out how silly it is to blame the medium – its immediacy is a big part of its genius after all – that while twitter may amplify trash-talking by catering to impulse, the animus/judgment was there a priori. That is, the problems are a matter of nature, not technology or even self-control:

I reject the idea that Twitter trips up naïve users such…

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Welcome to Mbird 2.0!
News

Welcome to Mbird 2.0!

by David Zahl on Apr 11, 2011 • 13 Comments

At long last, the new site is here! We encourage you to explore. Beyond the crisper presentation, there are a variety of new features for you to check out. One of our chief aims with this new site was to create a platform that made better use of our increasingly vast archives (there’s gold in them hills…); we understand that the range of topics we cover can be a bit frustrating for folks who are only interested in certain aspects. To that end, we’ve introduced a number of new ways for content to “bubble up,” that is, to find past…

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Science

Lyre Bird Ministries

by David Zahl on Feb 28, 2011 • 4 Comments


ht BM (post number 2000!)

NYC Conference Update: Talk Titles
Church / Conferences / Theology

NYC Conference Update: Talk Titles

by Mockingbird on Feb 18, 2011 • No Comments

We are very excited to announce the official, appetite-whetting titles of the talks at our upcoming conference in New York City:

Thursday March 31st
7:00pm “Jesus Shot My Dog: Fear, Control and the End of the Law” – Jady Koch

Friday April 1st
9:15am “The Religious Culture of Control” – Mark Galli
2:30pm “The Liberating Grace of Chaos” – Mark Galli

Saturday April 2nd
9:30am “Grace in the Midst of Mere Religion” – Mark Galli
11:00am “What We Talk About When We Talk About Freedom: The Discontented Self and the Love of God” – David Zahl

The full schedule is up on the conference site, as are a…

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A Sympathy That Predominates: Some Anglican Evangelicals in Literature
Church / Literature

A Sympathy That Predominates: Some Anglican Evangelicals in Literature

by Mockingbird on Feb 9, 2011 • No Comments

A companion piece to this week’s episodes of PZ’s Podcast, which deal with the Protestant (architectural) face of Anglicanism:

There are few sympathetic portrayals in literature of Anglican or Episcopal clergy who are Evangelicals. Most novelists have described Anglican Evangelical clergy as self-righteous, puritanical, and hypocritical. The classic portrayals are ‘Mr. Slope’ in Trollope’s Barchester Towers, ‘Mr. Honeyman’ in Thackerey’s The Newcomes, and ‘Mr. Chadband’ in Dickens’ Bleak House (tho’ Mr. Chadband may be a Dissenting Minister rather than a Minister of the Established Church). There is also a devastating portrait of a young ‘Simeonite’ (i.e., Evangelical) clergyman at Cambridge…

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Amy Adams on Children and Freedom
Celebrity / Theology

Amy Adams on Children and Freedom

by Mockingbird on Feb 8, 2011 • 3 Comments

A quick one from Mbird friend Russ Masterson.

Amy Adams, who just received a well-deserved Oscar nomination for her role in The Fighter was on Tavis Smiley in December to promote the film. Tavis asked Amy about having a new baby, and her response was priceless:

“I like the world more now. The focus is off of me, and that is freedom. That I no longer am the most important thing in my life. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, before I was self-centered. I didn’t even realize how self-centered. My small day to day drama is now…

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Music / Poetry / Religion

John Donne’s "Batter My Heart" in John Adams’ Dr. Atomic

by Mockingbird on Feb 3, 2011 • 7 Comments

Mockingbird’s resident opera aficionado Ken Wilson offers forth a truly breathtaking moment of beauty:

John Donne’s plea in Holy Sonnet XIV that grace will break his captive will, set to necessarily inadequate but characteristically gorgeous music by John Adams and sung by bass-baritone Gerald Finley in the Adams opera Dr. Atomic (about Robert Oppenheimer and the setting off of the first atomic bomb):

Batter my heart, three-person’d God ; for youAs yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bendYour force, to break, blow, burn, and…

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Conferences

Preliminary NYC Conference Schedule

by Mockingbird on Feb 1, 2011 • No Comments

Some details subject to change (slightly). To pre-register go here.

P.S. We’ve heard that people are getting great deals on hotel rooms in the vicinity via booking.com. Also, word has it that AirTran is having particularly good sale this week, and Delta is matching the price points. Just sayin.

P.P.S. For a great and provocative discussion of keynote speaker Mark Galli’s recent work, check out InternetMonk!

2011 NYC MOCKINGBIRD CONFERENCE: PRE-REGISTRATION NOW OPEN!
Conferences

2011 NYC MOCKINGBIRD CONFERENCE: PRE-REGISTRATION NOW OPEN!

by Mockingbird on Jan 14, 2011 • No Comments

Control and Freedom. Two words that dominate the emotional, spiritual and cultural landscape. Also two words that many of us spend our lives chasing after, mistaking one for the other, or believing they go hand-in-hand. Yet how friendly are these terms? What is the actual relation between freedom and personal control? Please join us this Spring in NYC as we explore how God’s grace calms our fears, upsets our controls, and inspires freedom in the way we live, work and love.

Our keynote speaker this year will be Mark Galli, Senior Managing Editor of Christianity Today. Other speakers include Jady Koch…

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GuestList: Top Ten Pieces of Culture (That Impacted My Life in 2010)
Art / Film / Literature / Music / Year In Review

GuestList: Top Ten Pieces of Culture (That Impacted My Life in 2010)

by Mockingbird on Dec 30, 2010 • No Comments

Another treat to tide you over until we shift back into full-speed next week, a guest year-end list from Carl Laamanen of the excellent Losing Sight of Land blog. 

Human beings, especially those that really like popular culture, must love lists. This is the only explanation for the hundreds of year-end “best of” lists that begin to pervade the internet at the onset of December. This is also the only reason I can provide for why I find them so fascinating. Heck, Popmatters had two weeks of music lists alone, leading up to their top 70 albums of the year,…

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Christ Was Never In Christmas
Christmas / Church / Religion / Testimony

Christ Was Never In Christmas

by Mockingbird on Dec 21, 2010 • 4 Comments

A timely reflection from Mbird friend Russ Masterson: 

The tug is relentless this time of year – look at things, buy things, think about things. In December materialism is like breathing, at least it is for me. In the Christmas season we tend to overshop and overeat – an admittedly weird way to celebrate the birth of Jesus, a man who modeled simplicity and moderation. Of course, Santa Claus has become as much the key person in the holiday as Christ. You probably know the story: Saint Nicholas was a fourth century saint, the bishop of Myra (present day Turkey)…

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December Playlist – A (Vegas) Xmas Story
Humor / Playlist / Theology

December Playlist – A (Vegas) Xmas Story

by Mockingbird on Dec 14, 2010 • 3 Comments

Another guest playlist this month, this time from long-time Mbird friend Taylor Foran. Fully annotated too!

As far as the Incarnation is concerned, I believe firmly in it…Eternity steps into Time, and Time loses itself in Eternity. Hence Jesus, in the eyes of God, a Man, and, in the eyes of men a God. It’s sublimely simple: a transcendental soap opera going on century after century in which there have been endless variations in the script, in the music, in the dialogue, but in which one thing remains constant—the central figure, Jesus. ~Malcolm Muggeridge

Prelude—“For my Lord, for my Lord”

1. Workin’ on…

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For Advent: Fulke Greville’s Chorus Sacerdotum
Christmas / Poetry

For Advent: Fulke Greville’s Chorus Sacerdotum

by Mockingbird on Dec 7, 2010 • 2 Comments

Here is an inspired text for Advent ‘meditation’ from Fulke Greville, who became the Earl of Warwick, and lived from 1554 to 1628.  He regarded the chief point in his life as having been the bosom friend of Sir Philip Sidney.  Almost no one knew about Greville’s poems, some of the them distinctly ‘Calvinist’, until after he died.  I am a great admirer of them.  Only recently did I find out that James Gould Cozzens was also a fan.  

Line six of the following passage, from Fulke Greville’s ‘closet’ or ‘Senecan’ play “Mustapha” (i.e.,…

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Another Week Ends: Self-Evangelism, Jay-Z, Paradoxes, Susan Boyle, NASA, Friday Night Lights
Church / Music / Philosophy / Science / Sermons / TV / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: Self-Evangelism, Jay-Z, Paradoxes, Susan Boyle, NASA, Friday Night Lights

by David Zahl on Dec 3, 2010 • 1 Comment

1. Another scorcher from our 2011 NYC conference speaker Mark Galli entitled “Evangelizing Ourselves”, in which he unwittingly sums up much of our operating philosophy:

How do we talk about our faith without making others feel denigrated or angry? For one, we can talk about our faith so that everyone feels equally denigrated and equally inflamed!… So that everyone—even the Christian—recognizes his or her sinfulness…[and his or her] desperate need of a savior. If we can do that, a couple of remarkable things will happen. First, we will recognize afresh that we’re not talking about our religion versus…

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