Passive Subversive

Ooops. I really thought I might make a run for NaBloPoMo. But it hit me this morning that I’d plumb forgot to. Maybe I’ll make a run for Honorable Mention.
Had an unexpected opportunity to offer the invocation at a meeting of local officials last week. My ambivalence about the powers that be aside, I figured, [...]

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Taizizze in the Hizzle

From Taize founder Brother Roger, in Songs and Prayers from Taize:
In a technological society, there is a clear separation between prayer and work. When inner life and human solidarity appear to be in competition with one anothe, as if people had to choose between them, that opposition tears apart the very depths of the soul.
Prayer [...]

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We Are the Illusion

We watched Network (1976) over the weekend; first time I’ve seen it. If you haven’t seen it in a while, or have it somewhere at the bottom of your queue, I recommend moving it up. Things have changed so much in the last thirty years that they’re pretty much exactly the same.
The clip below is [...]

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As you said it to the least of these. . .

Now, I can hardly believe a word being said on or about a convention stage in the last two weeks, but I thought this was an interesting response: a call for Christians to stand against Palin’s rhetoric, if not her content.

The Matthew 25 Network includes both shunned Obamacon Roman Catholic Doug Kmiec and ubiquitous new [...]

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This Present Dark Knight

[I'm going to talk about this as if you are among the six bazillion people who have already paid to see it, i.e., "spoilers ahead"]

The Dark Knight is a great movie, and there is plenty of print to tell you so, so I’ll skip over that point. Christopher Nolan has crafted something which, as the [...]

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A Nation of Mans

Within a few experiences of each other, I saw Mike Judge’s Idiocracy and Pixar’s Wall-E. I don’t know if this will happen to a lot of people, but it makes for an interesting vision of the future. Wall-E assumes we will be commodified and technopolied into boneless blobs of passive, isolated-in-a-crowd, roaming media eaters. Idiocracy [...]

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Julian

Julian of Norwich asked three things of God: a sympathetic vision of Christ’s suffering; an encounter with debilitating physical illness to facilitate pure worship and nearness to God; and “three wounds” described here:

These two desires of the Passion and the sickness I desired with a condition, saying thus: Lord, Thou knowest what I would,—if it [...]

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Right side up

Hard to believe you can get a crowd these days at an event called “Bible Lectures,” but it’s a great week around here for seeing folks you love to see and hearing folks who’ve given some thought to what matters. Highlight of the week so far was a few nights ago when a coupla ministers [...]

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The Whole Sermon

I have not committed my vote, but I am now more interested in attending Senator Obama’s church.* Here is Rev. Jeremiah Wright addressing the National Press Club (broadcast on CSPAN and FOX News in its entirety)[after the jump]. He invokes the prophetic tradition in the Black Church in America as the full context of his [...]

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Rarities

1) I can’t find Elder Baab and the Madison Bumblebees records. If anyone can direct me to some, I will give you a sweet prize.
2) This is promising: gracious public dialogue between Christians and Muslims (HT Tyler).
A Common Word
A Christian Response

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