If for whatever reason you are ever asked to address a group of college students, I’ve found that few things hit home with as much depth or laughter as the first ten minutes of Noah Baumbach’s overstuffed yet incredibly charming debut film, Kicking and Screaming. Some of the trappings might have dated a little, but the humor holds up, as does, more importantly, the content. The opening depicts a bunch of college seniors moping around a table at their graduation party, lamenting the loss of their identity and contemplating the uncertainty of their future(s). Who am I now that I’m…
Books / Church / Death / Humor / Identity / Law / Music / Psychology / Religion / Social Science / Technology / Week In Review
Another Week Ends: Schismogenesis, Megachurch Funerals, Accidental Theology, Smartphone Shrinks, Mean Professors, Nocebos, Zooropa and Elysium
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…
Grace in Practice / Humor / Law / Music / Psychology / Religion / Social Science / Theology / TV / Week In Review
Another Week Ends: One Way Love, Platonic Tennis, Curmudgeon Law, Downton Anti-Snobbery, Ecumenical Shipwrecks, Dr. Hook, House of Cards and Justified
1. The hits just keep on coming. Spring Conference speaker and friend Tullian Tchividjian announced his next book this morning and the title will be familiar to some of you, One Way Love: The Power of Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World. Tullian, of course, is paying tribute to the definition of grace that PZ coined in Grace In Practice. If the rest of the book is at all like the intro (and I have a strong feeling that it is, wink wink), then this is something to be very excited about:
The good news of God’s inexhaustible grace for…
Expectation Hangovers and Twentysomething Nones
A slightly unconventional week end column this time, in which we take a closer look at a single subject, but through the lens of a handful of different articles. The focus this time being the state of twentysomething life in America, its particular pressures and obstacles, as well as the apparent lack of religiosity which seems so constitutive of the current generation, at least if the data is to be trusted. The instinct tends to be (and I’m pointing the finger chiefly at myself) blaming abstract forces like Secularization, Science! etc rather than trying to understand the dearth/flight of twentysomethings…
Church / Film / Humor / Literature / Music / Philosophy / Psychology / Religion / TV / Week In Review
Another Week Ends: Helpful Selves, Happy Meanings, Simple Saints, Good Bishops, Beloved Zombies and Portland Missionaries
1. Kathryn Schulz (of Being Wrong fame) wrote an article for New York Magazine that’ll get your motors running, “The Self in Self-Help.” It’s a bit of a conceptual quagmire to be honest, esp for those of us who consider God to be more than a metaphor, but it’s also pretty fun. Positively jammed with soundbites, a few of which include:
[The master theory of self-help] goes like this: Somewhere below or above or beyond the part of you that is struggling with weight loss or procrastination or whatever your particular problem might be, there is another part of you that…
Celebrity / Christmas / Film / Grace in Practice / Identity / Music / Religion / TV / Week In Review
Another Week Ends: Advent Mudballs, Freaks and Geeks, Christian Pariahs, Yiddish Petraeus, Hitchcock Communion, Scott Walker and Super Wolf
1. Not sure exactly what The American Interest is, but Walter Russell Mead’s reflection on the meaning of Advent is the most moving and poetic thing I’ve read on the subject this season, ht TH:
As a kid I could never understand why Advent was a season of fasting and solemnity in the church rather than a time of feasting and dancing. What better way to prepare for a really big celebration than to have a lot of little celebrations as you approach it? What better way to get into the mood?…
But as I’ve reflected on the holiday over the years,…
From The New Yorker
Couldn’t be a more perfect opportunity to repost Aaron Zimmerman’s wonderful sermon, “Instant Karma Got Him”:
A Few Thanksgivings: Salinger’s Hapworth Dances with Jesus and Bill Fay
You may know that J.D. Salinger’s final published work was “Hapworth 16, 1924″, a novella which took up 81 pages of the 6/19/65 issue of The New Yorker (i.e. the entire issue). I only found out about it a couple of weeks ago. You see, although Salinger considered it “a high point of his writing,” Hapworth was not exactly hailed as a masterpiece when it arrived–the opposite, in fact–and has never been republished in any form. Which is where the Internet comes in, thankfully. It takes the form of a letter written from summer camp by a (ridiculously precocious) 7…
hespenshied: ditto what Karen said.........I understand the SportsCenter habit, tho...
Melissa: Thank you so much!...
Carey: This visit with Christian Wiman was indeed a reverberating gift. Than...
David Zahl: Affirmative! Download here: http://www.mbird.com/resources/?sermon_id...
karen: Nick: I have thoroughly enjoyed reading your columns/posts at MB. Than...