Posts tagged "Salon"
Another Week Ends: Miracle Baskets, Doubtful Essays, Optimism vs Quitting, Paternalism, Secret Menus, Netflix Puppetry, Bowie and Mats Return, and Hathaway Haters
America / Books / Celebrity / Film / Food / Grace in Practice / Humor / Identity / Music / Psychology / Religion / Social Science / Technology / Theology / TV / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: Miracle Baskets, Doubtful Essays, Optimism vs Quitting, Paternalism, Secret Menus, Netflix Puppetry, Bowie and Mats Return, and Hathaway Haters

by David Zahl on Mar 1, 2013 • No Comments

1. In need of a little (heart)warming on a cold winter’s day? Look no further than the spontaneous act of mercy that occurred on a high school basketball court in Texas last month, ht JD:

2. Phillip Lopate ponders the declining place of Doubt in an essay for The NY Times, evidence perhaps of deeper denials, ht SY:

Despite periodic warnings of the essay’s demise, the stuff does continue to be published; if anything, the essay has experienced a slight resurgence of late. I wonder if that may be because it is attuned to the current mood, speaks to the present moment.…

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Have It All, Ladies (and Gents)… Or Else!
Children / Identity / Law

Have It All, Ladies (and Gents)… Or Else!

by David Zahl on Jun 27, 2012 • 7 Comments

A lot has already been said about Anne Marie Slaughter’s controversial cover story for The Atlantic, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All”. Naturally, I hesitated to comment at first–do we really need another male point of view?–but as the debate raging around the article has shifted to somewhat more universal questions, e.g. what constitutes success and value in our society, indeed what constitutes a meaningful life, period, the resistance melted away. She’s clearly touched a nerve! If you haven’t read the piece, it is packed with vulnerability and smarts (if not, perhaps, an overflow of wisdom), very much worth…

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Hallelujah! A Self-Justifying Car Post
Grace in Practice / Humor / Identity / News / Psychology / Social Science / Technology / Theology

Hallelujah! A Self-Justifying Car Post

by R-J Heijmen on May 16, 2012 • 3 Comments

As you may (or may not) have noticed, we have a few car nuts ’round these parts. Witness here, here and here. Ok, ok, so I wrote all of those posts, but that’s beside the point. Mockingbird has always held, as one of the corollaries to its obsession with the Gospel, that the imputed righteousness of Christ sets us free to love what we actually love, rather than what we ought to love. Hence the occasionally “random” nature of the blog. Dave encourages each of us to write not only on theology, but also to throw in a periodic nod…

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Another Week Ends: John Carter, Obesity FAILs, Mary Karr on Suffering, Winning!, Friends with Kids, Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball and Community Returns
Addiction / Film / Grace in Practice / Humor / Interviews / Literature / Music / Religion / Social Science / Suffering / TV / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: John Carter, Obesity FAILs, Mary Karr on Suffering, Winning!, Friends with Kids, Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball and Community Returns

by David Zahl on Mar 9, 2012 • 3 Comments

1. “I am not Jesus, but I have the same initials.” Thus sang Jarvis Cocker on the classic Pulp track “Dishes” (at bottom), and it now looks like he has a new contender to the throne, Tim Riggins himself, Mr. John Carter of Mars. That’s right: Finding Nemo director Andrew Stanton’s first live-action feature is out this weekend, and the consensus thus far is that there’s no consensus. Some claim that it’s an overblown mess, others that it’s the sort of exceedingly fun pulp adventure that doesn’t get made anymore. But Stanton is a filmmaker that I trust over any…

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Another Week Ends: Christian Neurotics, Shrieking Children, Grunge-Love, Steve Jobs, and Idiot Brothers
America / Children / Film / Music / News / Psychology / Reviews / Suffering / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: Christian Neurotics, Shrieking Children, Grunge-Love, Steve Jobs, and Idiot Brothers

by Ethan Richardson on Aug 26, 2011 • No Comments

At week’s end, despite the continued reverberations, ironic photo blogs, and miraculous happenings, all is still in post-quake Central Virginia! The Mockingbird offices remain in functional tact…

1) Over at First Things, and similarly confronting the stigmas of mental health as discussed in an earlier post this week, “The Christian Neurotic” ponders “neurosis” and its impact (good and bad) upon one’s grasp on the dual nature of reality, that is, one fraught with despair and yet, in the framework of Christian belief, tinged with hope:

The psychological conflict of living in two cultures at once can be overbearing. However, it should also…

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Another Week Ends: Of Gods and Men, Unitarian Boundaries, pi Haters, Pinksy on Cowper, Jayhawks, Wilco, Morrissey, FNL, Falling Skies and Brad Bird
Church / Death / Film / Gender / Grace in Practice / Music / Poetry / Religion / Science / Suffering / Theology / TV / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: Of Gods and Men, Unitarian Boundaries, pi Haters, Pinksy on Cowper, Jayhawks, Wilco, Morrissey, FNL, Falling Skies and Brad Bird

by David Zahl on Jul 1, 2011 • 3 Comments

1. No doubt you’re familiar with the martyrdom of the monks of Tibhirine in Algeria, who were assassinated in 1996 by Jihadists. It is, without question, one of the most inspirational true stories of the past twenty years – regardless of where you’re coming from on the religious spectrum. You may have even heard that the recent film based on the events, Of Gods and Men, was Grand Prix winner at Cannes last year. If that weren’t high enough praise for it shoot to the top of your Netflix queue (when it becomes available on Tuesday 7/5), Andrew Sullivan’s stirring…

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Another Week Ends: Impoverished Wills, more Filter Bubbles, Tree of Life, Super 8, True Selves, Bobby Fischer
Film / Money / Music / Philosophy / Technology / Theology / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: Impoverished Wills, more Filter Bubbles, Tree of Life, Super 8, True Selves, Bobby Fischer

by David Zahl on Jun 10, 2011 • 4 Comments

1. Fascinating article in The New Republic by Jamie Holmes entitled “Why Can’t More Poor People Escape Poverty?,” looking at the world through the lens of ego depletion, that is, the theory that we have a finite amount of willpower/self-control, and the more we use it, the less we have.

“Willpower can be understood as the capacity to resolve conflicts among choices as rationally as possible, and to make the best decision in light of one’s personal goals. And, in both cases, willpower seems to be a depletable resource… The core of the breakthrough is that resolving conflicts…

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Ayn Rand Killed My Father
Books / Children / Philosophy / Politics / Religion

Ayn Rand Killed My Father

by David Zahl on Apr 7, 2011 • 21 Comments

Fascinating little testimonial on Salon entitled “How Ayn Rand Ruined My Childhood”, which doubles as a startling treatise on the cruelty of the Law. Say what you will about the political commitments of objectivism (ironically, most libertarians I’ve met are actually coming from a place of faith rather than reason), the relational ramifications appear to be pretty horrific: what happens when confession and repentance are, um, divorced, and honesty crosses the border into self-satisfaction. Is this merely an inflated athropology in the clothing of a deflated one? Or, in this scheme, if God is an objectivist, does that make Jesus…

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Oprah and the Real American Idol
Celebrity / Church / Psychology / Religion / Theology

Oprah and the Real American Idol

by JDK on Mar 14, 2011 • 3 Comments

I ran across an fascinating interview on Salon.com with Kathryn Lofton–Assistant professor of American studies and religious studies at Yale– who is the author of Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon. The interview is entitled “Worshiping at the church of Oprah Winfrey.”

The interview begins, “In the past quarter-century Oprah has become shorthand for self-help: a spiritual guide, a confessor and a warm shoulder for her adoring American public. Now in the final season of her revolutionary daytime talk show, Oprah’s pronouncements have become the Word to live by for a staggeringly diverse audience. In fact, you could argue she…

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Another Week Ends: Pandoran Pantheism, Tissot’s NT, Stanley Fish, Closeted Christians, Films of The Decade
Art / Film / Religion / Testimony / Theology / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: Pandoran Pantheism, Tissot’s NT, Stanley Fish, Closeted Christians, Films of The Decade

by David Zahl on Dec 23, 2009 • 6 Comments

1. Ross Douthat in the NY Times echoed what many have been saying about the “message” of Avatar. For the record, it doesn’t make me want to see it any less (ht JS):

It’s fitting that James Cameron’s “Avatar” arrived in theaters at Christmastime. Like the holiday season itself, the science fiction epic is a crass embodiment of capitalistic excess wrapped around a deeply felt religious message. It’s at once the blockbuster to end all blockbusters, and the Gospel According to James.

But not the Christian Gospel. Instead, “Avatar” is Cameron’s long apologia for pantheism — a faith that equates…

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