February 2010
42 posts
Reformed Forum » Discussion: Curse Your Branches →
The guys at Reformed Forum do an analysis (not a review) of David Bazan’s latest album Curse Your Branches. The combox discussion is a bit overheated, mainly because folks think the hosts were unloving, pedantic, flippant, and “throwing Bible verses” at it/him. I mostly disagree with their assessment of the show. Listen for yourself.
January 2010
41 posts
Writing theology: A Workshop with Marilynne... →
If you’re anywhere near New Jersey this summer (and you’re a scholar of the theological and literary sort), make sure to apply for this workshop. Sadly, that does not include me. (via Ben Myers)
Bunch Of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger →
“‘He had a real impact on the literary world and on millions of readers,’ said hot-shot English professor David Clarke, who is just like the rest of them, and even works at one of those crumby schools that rich people send their kids to so they don’t have to look at them for four years.” (via Gruber)
3 tags
A Contradiction in Terms
“A Christian who stays away from the assembly is a contradiction in terms. The church-community, united by one word, hears this word again and again while assembled; conversely, the word that created the church-community again and again calls it together into concrete assembly. For it is the word preached according to the will of God and of the church-community that is the means through which this...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-1-24) →
“Visiting the pub and drinking beer became a form of protest against the new...”
– » Tom Hodgkinson, How To Be Idle (quoted in Jason J. Stellman, Dual Citizens, 133)
“When there is always a book to read or a book to write, a sermon to prepare or a...”
– » Brennan Manning (via lukescommonplacebook, via wesleyhill). I needed to hear this just now.
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-1-17) →
The GOOD (and ReadyMade) Guide to Slowing Down -... →
17 ways to make your life slower.
U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret... →
Another evidence that American Christian preaching is ridiculously inadequate (and by “Secret ‘Jesus‘ Bible Codes”, ABC means abbreviated New Testament references). The story claims that these verses are on the gun sights in order to put Jesus front and center before the soldier and the victim; yet it seems to me that since all the verses they use are about “light” and “seeing,” these folks are...
“The church likes to refer to itself as the “Body of Christ”. But it behaves as...”
– » M. Scott Peck, The Different Drum, 300 at Per Crucem ad Lucem
How (not) to be an American Missionary in Scotland →
Great, great stuff from David Robertson (may I remember it always): “Cross cultural mission is difficult. There are dangers as well as opportunities. I believe that for American missionaries to be effective over here they need to have a passionate realism, a people centered ministry, a Biblical God centered theology and a willingness to work in partnership.”
“If I had a thing going with Haiti, there’d be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs,...”
– » Satan, in a letter to Pat Robertson (via wesleyhill)
Brandlessness IS a Brand
“As a child and teenager I was almost obsessively drawn to brands. But writing No Logo required four years of total immersion in ad culture – four years of watching and rewatching Super Bowl ads, scouring Advertising Age for the latest innovations in corporate synergy, reading soul-destroying business books on how to get in touch with your personal brand values, making excursions to Niketowns, to...
“[The resurrection of Jesus] bursts open the constraints of nature and history,...”
– » Richard Bauckham (via wesleyhill)
5 tags
We Will Not Make It Right
What would sin, evil, and death look like if we stripped away our efforts to turn them back, to paper over their effects in the world? I think the world would look like The Road, and I think that is what McCarthy is (partly) getting at in the book. McCarthy’s man and boy live in a reality in which the results of the Curse are seen in every aspect of creation, not merely in humanity: dead, black...
Calibri is the new Arial. It’s friggin’ everywhere.
Resolved into Nothingness
“In those first years the roads were peopled with refugees shrouded up in their clothing. Wearing masks and goggles, sitting in their rags by the side of the road like ruined aviators. Their barrows heaped with shoddy. Towing wagons or carts. Their eyes bright in their skulls. Creedless shells of men tottering down the causeways like migrants in a feverland. The frailty of everything revealed at...
Holy crap, Tumblarity is gone. Yes and amen.
(But Tumblr now seems to be turning into Facebook, so pick your poison).
Not Be Made Right Again (?)
“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-1-10) →
“George W. Bush is sitting by Emmitt Smith at the Cowboys/Eagles game. English is...”
– » The Run of Play on Twitter
COMMENTARY: Finland - land of blind violence →
If the Helsingin Sanomat is saying this (and this), then you know it’s a big event. Let’s pray they have the motivation to change a bit.
“We see what the heat of controversy does in carrying on disputes. Had all those...”
– » John Calvin, Commentary on 2 Cor. 4:4, and some of the Fathers’ misunderstanding of it
Creative Review - Font of Champions →
The UEFA Champions League gets its own new sans-serif type. Meh.
Premier League Soccer Teams Look Globally For... →
‘”If we’re not careful, all the jobs will go to foreign coaches,” Sunderland manager Steve Bruce recently told reporters.’ Uh, so? Arsenal and Portsmouth played the first match in FA history last month with all starting 22 players being non-English. Roy Keane nailed it when he said the only thing it says is that the future of the English national team is in big trouble.
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-1-3) →
Vince Guaraldi Trio (62)
The Avett Brothers (50)
Coldplay (27)
David Gray (18)
Bob Kauflin (15)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
“Leeds!”
An Interview with Marilynne Robinson: White Horse... →
This week’s WHI program is excellent, an interview with one of our time’s greatest authors. Go listen now.
You Don’t Like ‘Nucular’?
“Long before Old English started taking on words from Old Norse and then French and Latin, in a fashion that we today read as so cosmopolitan, Proto-Germanic had taken on countless words from some other language. Yet the isolated, parochial tribespeople who spoke it were not cosmopolitan in the least. They knew and cared little of the world beyond them except as a prospect for land and plunder....