I was listening to an interview with Thi Nguyen, author of his newest book The Score: How To Stop Playing Someone Else’s Game, and it raised some intriguing questions regarding the role of “measures” when it comes to the way we experience life in this world.

His passion is games (see his book Games: Agency As Art), but his interest in the ways this applies to life in general on a philsophical and practical level. As humans we seem to want, or even need, to keep score. This brings about certain emotions and motivations that we would largely deem positive. To a degree its not so much about the outcomes but rather the engagement of challenge and competition.

But it also becomes somewhat problematic when we begin to look at this notion of measures in the broader playing field of life and society. Including our sense of meaning.

Measures carry this tension in which they need to be simple, coherent and accessible, and often presented within sharp dichotomies, in order to be revelant. At the same time these black and white terms tend to disguise the nuance underneath. What makes this more difficult is that the ones drawing out and working with the nuances (the experts) tend to be the minority few, while the ones participating in these games, in work and life and otherwise, tend to be the majority whom are actually the ones playing the games experts are anaylzying and manipulating.

Measures can also be defined as metrics. Metrics determine everything in society from the cost of goods to what we determine success. We find it in schools and workplaces and business structures and politics, family systems and social contexts. We see it in things like BMI to Rotten Tomatoes.

The whole world is a metric.

On a more universal front, particular measures typically rise to the top while others can sometimes be buried. Part of this is looking at the two primary ways of knowing- qualitative (nuanced and hard to communicate) and quantitative (simple and easy to access). In this portrait information is a specific thing that is meant to be shared across a vast cross-section of experiences. It is de-nuanced by necessity. Qualitative made quantitative. Which explains how modern society with its emphasis on technological (and other) progress strives to capture reality in this sort of “information.” Reality defined by numbers. And yet within this, a world with established and studied rules and norms, which all systems need to survive, has to contend with the similtaneous seperation of cultural and perseonal contexts and allegiances.

What struck me about this conversation is how what drives so much of the human experience in modern society, where there is a need to break down studies of complexity into simple and clear pictures that we can then control, remains a construct. It’s not so much that we are constructing reality, although to a degree it is, as reality itself being framed as construct. Here illusions of modern creation meet with the determinitive nature of reality, and more you get away from the minority and into the majority the more true this becomes. All of our lives and every individual can be broken down into “information” feeding a metric. If this makes us uncomortable this can also be seen as a metric, a study of human tendency.

Where this conversation really becomes relevant is when we look at the values or aims behind the metrics. This is where it becomes abundantly clear that the game of life, seen within these measures, is deeply inconsistent and incoherent when it comes to how and why it is applied. It makes sense when contained within particular goals, but not where it comes to purpose. And the author brings up that these two things are important to distinguish between. A goal can largely fluctuate and change and be contained, purpose cannot. And yet when it comes to the study and manipulation of metrics the latter is rarely if ever part of the picture., at least not in a way that is made evident.

On a practical level we can speak of those aspects of reality that contain immense variables. For example, what it means for one person to have a healthy life can be vastly different than the next person. Same with happiness. And yet society has to function by codifying shared metrics. Further, any variable still reflects an individual responding to metrics. Hence, what makes reality what it is and the way we assess this reality and the way we formulate our beliefs depends on the ways in which our base level assumptions can justify itself. In other words, complexity is not an antidote to reductionism in any way, shape or form. We still come up against the same wall.

Why does this matter? Because behind our actions and our choices is the always that lingering question- why. And perhaps the accompanying “what.” These are the assumptions that drive us. Where we see these things as being betrayed as false we thus tend to experience a crisis. This is how it works. Hence why, which we can see when the author speaks about human demand for transparency versus determinitive practice, we intuitively want transparancy because it helps us feel like we aren’t being duped by something false, and yet transparency also forces any process to become hindered and muddled, precisely because the majority cannot function without simplified metrics. This is what the powers manipulate all the time. This is the shape of society.

To ask why then is to actually assess such illusions and ask what we can say is real, both in terms of the reality that is driving us and in terms of whether that can be trusted to say anything about what we value. Even then, in a certain worldview our brains would appear to be hardwired to apply willful ignorance to any forms of disonnance. On a biological level we could not function otherwise. It’s more important to believe and think something is true than for something to be true. That our measures are often manufactured is simply about analysis and control.

I had been mulling over this during the course of this week. In the interview both host and author find this stuff exciting to parse out largely from within a materialist worldview. What I found interesting is wondering about how both host and author justify the value of these metrics beyond the game. What would be the aim beyond necessary manipulation for the sake of progress or construction, which of course can apply to the function of our own lives and the function of the minority with influence over society at large?

Is there any way to move beyond the game?

Alongside this i just finished Wesley W Ellis’ new book Abiding in Amen: Prayer in a Secular Age, which fittingly fits a parallel theory alongisde the ways in which we think about prayer. Ellis sees the “games” the author is talking about in the interview as a function of secularism, which describes a society that is all about the desire and need for control. This is inherent to societal and human function. It is also the thing the author sees prayer, properly understood, as designed to counter. The problem Ellis points out, is that prayer has become redefined within those same secualrist terms. It has become part of the game. Thus I thought my full review of that book could function as an interesting counter to Nguyen’s conclusions:

I have long struggled with the idea of prayer. I have deep rooted anxiety over praying in public, praying out loud, and I tend to view prayer through the narrow lens of duty and discipline, which of course only really serves to underscore how bad I am at praying.

This might be why I find myself revisiting the topic from time to time over the years. One point of awareness that I think I have gained through my studies is that prayer can be practiced and experience in all manners of ways. For me, reading is a form of prayer. Watching film is a form of prayer. I don’t do well with the typical “quieting of the mind” approach. The last thing I want to be is lost in my own head.

Weley Ellis’ book might be the best exposition of the problem however, that problem being our tendency to see prayer as a spiritual discipline, something he ties to the trappings of modernity (or in the terms of the title of this book, secularity). A word that author takes careful aims not to turn into a “malevolent force,” but rather the simple observation of a social and historical reality. Dialoguing with the German philosopher Hartmut Rosa, he defines secularity, or the project of modernity, as “making the world controllable.” (page 15) This leads to the “malaise of modernity,” which is simply disillusionment, recognized or not. More control (modern progress) leads to more uncertainty and less mastery and greater disconnection. It reduces reality to a question of what is useful, “objectifying reality” (page 17) in the process. In terms of the Christian faith and practice, this can be described as idolatry.

In terms of prayer, the author states the following;
“I believe this is how it feels to many who pray. They wonder why prayer isn’t working for them. They struggle because one cannot have a relationship with an idea, and we’ve made God into an idea. They wonder why they don’t feel they’ve mastered the discipline of prayer. So these questions about secularization are not posed to a secular them, outside of Christianity, but to the faithful (myself included) who pray- perhaps even regularly- but are often confronted with the feeling of a dead, frozen object instead of a living God.” (page 18)

This gets him into a theme that will carry through most of the book- prayer is our awareness of an uncontrollable world. “The good news is that whatever it is that we have engineered to death, it is not actually God. The dead thing is a false idol.” (page 19) The abide part of the book’s title then pushes to reframe this necessary aspect of prayer within the relationship it is meant to awaken. Prayer not as having but of being, not a means to an end but of being present with God. To abide in amen, a word that means “truly” or “certainly” is to abide not in the world we seek to control through prayer, but in the certain truth of God’s presence within an uncontrollable world.

This, the author insists, might sound obvious, but at its heart it is in fact a paradigm shift from the way we have become accustomed to think about prayer throuagh the lens of secularity. A shift from prayer as something we do and thus need to master to thinking about prayer as something God does. Here Ellis describes “a reversal in the trajectory” within the equation.

“i believe our struggle with prayer is one that can be solved not by doing more of anything but by letting things happen to us. It will require our getting out of the way, waiting, and allwoing the living God to act.” (page 49)

To “allow the first thought of prayer to be God’s action.” The author I think makes a profound statement to this end that this is not mere theological niceties, it “must meet the ground of our actual experience and emerge from it.” (page 50) It is something we come to know through participation. A participation that begins in the liturgical sense with the act of confession, which he defines as “removing whatever masks we may be wearing to hide our truest selves,” which is all of the stuff secularity has taught us to wear for the sake of control in a world built for manipulation and usefulness towards certain ends. A world that is designed to tell us where and how we are on the inside or on the outside. As the author writes, “It’s not merely that secularization has made it more difficult to believe in the existence of God. It is because secularization and the underlying epistemic and philosophical positions it has birthed (or perhaps from which it has been birthed, depending on how you look at it)- neoliberalism, capitalism, instrumental rationality, burnout, and developmentalism- have shifted the ground on which we stand and contorted the vantage point from which we pray, skewing our understanding of the very purpose, trajectory, and telos of prayer.” (page 58)

Again, this might sound trite or simple, but there is a profound resistance to moving from prayer as control to prayer as dependence. To moving from us as the starting point (the pray-er) to God as the starting point (the one who acts in drawing us to prayer). And one of the reasons this paradigm shift feels so much resistance is because God as the starting point means praying without control and without certianty. It strikes at the heart of belief and disbelief, essentially collapsing those things into a singular facet of this thing called “faith” (or its proper terminology, faithfulness or participatory belief). As the author states (page 108), if you are one who believes you will experience doubts, if you are one who doubts you will haunted by those things that lead us to wrestle with belief. We will always carry this tension (which the author cites Charles Taylor’s definition of a “cross-pressure”), which is precisely why prayer matters.

“No one defintion can fully sum up prayer, but each one captures something important about it. It is a raising up of our minds and hearts; a surge of the heart; sharing between friends; a long loving look at the real; and a conscious conversation.” (page 121) In short, the author sums this up as “a gift,” but in many ways a dangerous gift precisely because it calls us to give up control. A world, in conversation with Hartmut Rosa, defined by immanence and human agency can only lead to points of aggression. Which is exactly what we find within secularity. Not aggression as in violence (although it can be that to), but aggression as in aggressively needing to master the world through human ambition, be it within the context of our lives, enlightenment ideals, western progress. It is about stepping into a world where life is a constant measure of success of failure in this regard. And for anyone who also believes this aggression matters and has meaning to something (be it life itself or some idealized future aim), it leads us to constant propping up of illusions and delusions in order to justify the game.

That this thinking has infiltrated the church and the way we do church has simply lost the narrative of the clash of kingdoms to this end. As the author says, “when we should be talking about the crisis of faith, we tend to talk more about the crisis of effectiveness.” (page 138) That crisis of faith referencing the above tensions that belief and disbelief require. “Peace with God means conflict with the world.” Not conflict in the sense of opposition or violence, but the kind of abiding that teaches us how to see and engage something like secularity as a common human tendency in a world where God draws us to prayer. To learn how to engage the differences between abiding in amen of God’s rule and abiding in the great modern project. “The movement of prayer is the movement out of instrumental rationality and into… Christopraxis.” (page 144)  Something the author parlays into a discussion of Aristotles concepts of poiesis (activities that result in an end product) and praxis (activities that are ends in and of themselves). For Aristotle, human flourishing was understood to be found in the latter. For the term Christopraxis, participation in Christ is the end prayer seeks. Part of the great suprirse of praxis is that such a way of participation actually leads to tranfsormation. Which is counter intuitive to a secularity that has taught us to give our time to things that have measurable outcomes. The difference is the ability to name that which matters (praxis) and giving ourselves to that which we cannot name (poiesis). We seek the measurable outcome naturally because it gives us control. But the irony is we do so without any measurable way to define why it matters or means anything at all. We know this intuitively, which is why secularity takes its toll on us, but giving up control (the act of prayer) is the much more difficult thing to do.

So, the author says. “What if we thought of prayer as God’s act of listening before we thought of it as our act of talking?” (page 164) How does this singular paradigm shift change our perspective? Our prayer life? How does it challenge our long standing tendency to see prayer as a discipline (mechanicistic practice). It brings alive this crazy idea that “prayer is for nothing.” (page 169) Which sounds crazy, and yet, as the author posits, is precisely where we find everything to be in Christ as the gift of prayer, not the outcome of prayer. Prayer becomes preparation for greater participation in a world where secularity lives and breathes as a reflection of the tensions we carry and face. “Human being is not a product of human becoming or of human doing.” (page 177) That is the heart of this preparation. That is what guides us through the tension. All else has one singular corollation- death. To be “in Christ,” as prayer makes aware, is to corollate being with life.

“If prayer were merely a human action, it would be fragile and fleeting- as fragile and fleeing as our own belief. The possiblity of prayer would be dependent on our ability to pray. It would have to stand on our own strength and our limited (in)ability to control the world around us. It would sway with the tides of circumstance, rising and falling with our own uncertainties. But because prayer is a divine act- an act in which God invites us to join- it stands firm.” (page 187)

Listening to Jack Garrett’s cover of the Waterboys’ “The Whole of the Moon” this morning. Was struck by this thought. 10 years ago I started my personal blog space as a way of grappling with the reality of turning 40, which for me had brought on a deeply felt existential crisis regarding this world and my place in it. The blog was my attempt to get that struggle out of my head and on to the page where it could percolate and breathe on the outside rather than consuming me from the inside. It’s a practice I still need to utilize to this day

When I turned 45 I changed the name of my blog space to “The Stories of my Life.” This was an attempt to shift my focus away from the anxieties of being in my 40s towards the ongoing practice of living towards my 50s, with this recognition in tow- the story of my life is shaped by the stories of my life. Who I am is a reflection of that participation, and it is that participation that sets me within the larger narrative of this greater existence that embodies us all.

This included the role of the arts. It also includes the stories of relationships and encounters and experiences. All of these things are what shape a life far beyond the tightly guarded parameters of the “I” which grounds so much of the ideology I find in the modern western mythos. To this end, this song reminded me of the ways in which so much that awakens a life is our relationship to those whom inspire us to see the whole. Whom help us to see what we are blinded to in the circumstances of the present moment. These relationships arrive in all sorts of ways. For me, these are most often the persons whom seem to fill in the gaps of my own lacking.

I am someone who has always been drawn to this tension filled space beteeen cynicism and wonder, and I often find greatest inspiration from those whom seem to have this inate ability to embody that tension in a way that is able (and brave enough) to carry that forward in the form of true belief. Subsequently, this tends to be those voices whom seem to have this inate awareness of and access to what I would call the spiritual dimension of this world that I continually need and long for in my sense of wonder but protect against with my cynicism. Over the years I have found that my cynicism only makes sense in a world where true wonder actually exists, and for me that is sustained in the stories that define me, the stories that represent those whom seem to be able to open up those liminal spaces where the whole moon can be seen and felt and understood in the tensions that force me to wrestle with it. Without this i find life ceases to make sense.

It is the grace that these stories offer me which push me to hold on to wonder as I approach my 50th year. Heres the lyrics to the song:

The Whole Of The Moon”

I pictured a rainbow
You held it in your hands
I had flashes
But you saw the plan
I wandered out in the world for years
While you just stayed in your room
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon
The whole of the moon

You were there at the turnstiles
With the wind at your heels
You stretched for the stars
And you know how it feels
To reach too high
Too far
Too soon
You saw the whole of the moon

I was grounded
While you filled the skies
I was dumbfounded by truths
You cut through lies
I saw the rain-dirty valley
You saw Brigadoon
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon

I spoke about wings
You just flew
I wondered, I guessed and I tried
You just knew
I sighed
But you swooned
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon
The whole of the moon

With a torch in your pocket
And the wind at your heels
You climbed on the ladder
And you know how it feels
To get too high
Too far
Too soon
You saw the whole of the moon
The whole of the moon

Unicorns and cannonballs
Palaces and piers
Trumpets, towers, and tenements
Wide oceans full of tears
Flags, rags, ferry boats
Scimitars and scarves
Every precious dream and vision
Underneath the stars

Yes, you climbed on the ladder
With the wind in your sails
You came like a comet
Blazing your trail
Too high
Too far
Too soon
You saw the whole of the moon

The tagline for the book Progress: A History of Humanity’s Worst Idea by Samuel Miller McDonald says,
“Progress is power. But our modern story of progress is a very dangerous fiction.”

I have been listening to this on audio along with Sven Beckert’s Capitalism: A Global History and Adam Kucharski’s Proof: The Art and Science of Certainty. All three books, in their own ways, speak of this dangerous fiction as an interconnected reality informing, but not limited to, our Western history and political constructions

Although this is a surface summary, I could state the interconnected relationship of these things in the following way:

• Capitalism is by definition a global idea and reality and is the ultimate outcome of progress
• Progress is rooted in a historical seedbed that gives rise to our narrative of western exceptionalism (otherwise known as the myth of progress) and all of its political expressions
• Proof, married as it is to the fallacy of certainty, is what sustains and gives Progress it’s power through the language of the modern scientific enterprise

In all three cases what strikes me is how so much of what we see in the world today tends to find itself anchored in one of these three assumptions, which is what really drove me this year to dig deeper into the simple observation that the narratives we tell define how we both name the problem and express our hope. In many ways we’ve lost the language of story having sacrificed it on the alter of our modern myths. The irony being these myths are in fact guiding stories that reflect what we believe to be true about the world.

For me, the first necessary step to any sort of healing or transformation on a societal and social level, and even a personal level, is recognizing what story we are in and seeking better narratives. Even where that challenges some of our most tightly guarded allegiances. Or perhaps so that such allegiances might be challenged. The quickest way to ensure it can’t be? Tell ourselves that we aren’t beholden to a story.

For me when people ask who my favorite filmmaker is there is one name that immediately comes to mind- Guillermo del Toro.

I have read a ton on this enigmatic figure over the years, I had the chance to visit the touring exhibit on his life and career, At Home With Monsters, and I’ve spent years meditating on and exploring his most seminal work, Pans Labyrinth, a film and book which have long awakened wonder in me for a world beyond the tightly guarded framework of my rational senses.

What makes del Toro an especially interesting figure for me is the way my own interaction with his work and art consistently places me in the company of those who see his work as awakening wonder in a world where the perceived metaphors that capture del Toros imagination are rooted in a material existence not a true spiritual reality. From this vantage point I find del Toro’s ability to carry the tensions of his own questions to do quite the opposite. From his vantage point, an upbringing that found him caught between the polarizing and contrasting atheism of one caregiver and the religious dogmatism of another found its most clarifying voice in an individual who helped connect these two things in the singular language he could understand- the monsters that connect flesh and blood realities to our spiritual longjngs. Metaphors are only meaningful if they are rooted in something true, and for del Toro, as is evidenced by his life and work, it is the tension that holds that in place without losing his grasp on either.

There is another aspect of his story though that I have always found captivating- a life that embraces the tensions and questions against the backdrop of a genuine spiritual experience that he can’t just explain away. This is made even more fascinating having read Ron Perlman’s autobiography Easy Street (The Hard Way), as Perlman’s own example of this very same thing grounded that relationship in a shared wrestling.

I was thinking about this as I finished reading Anthony Hopkins memoir We Did Okay, Kid yesterday. A figure I thought I knew but it turns out I didn’t, and a memoir that handed me a deep appreciation for a life on similar grounds. Similarly for Hopkins, he grew up with the hard atheism of his father on one side and the religious convictions of his mother on the other, navigating his own life and career against the emerging questions that would come from a spiritual experience he could not simply explain away. In fact, over and over again I find this to be the case with creative voices. I think it is this reality that frees up these voices to use art to truly explore the questions without parameters. In the case of Hopkins, this formative phrase “I’m okay, we are okay” becomes a mantra his aging self speaks over his life as a governing truth, that he can speak to that life of wrestling and say “We did okay.” A mantra that, as he explains, has come to embrace the great mystery of this existence which he has come to call God.

Reminiscent of a book I read earlier in January called Conversations on Faith with Martin Scorsese as he speaks of his own work reflecting a similar wrestling with the coexisting dimensions of this world. As he states, “The idea that everything can be scientifically explained doesn’t seem ridiculous to me, but quite naive.” As a voice speaks into Hopkins life at one point, to say “I think I’ve found God” is to discover that God was always there, a truism that anchors any spiritual quest, which for me all art evidently becomes and reflects.

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith? And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

• Mark 4:35-41

Immediately he made his disciples get into the baot and go on ahead to the other side, to Behsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. After waying farewell to them, he went up on the mountain to pray.

When evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land. When he saw that they were straining at the oars against an adverse wind, he came towards them early in the morning, walking on the sea. He intended to pass them by. But when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out; for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Then he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.

• Mark 6:45-52

The other week my pastor posed a question in relationship to Mark’s depiction of the demioniac in chapter 5:1-20. Why is it that in this story the thing the disciples fear is not the demons but the transformed (clothed and in right mind) man? I had been pondering this question, finding it an illuminating expression of how it is that we tend to deal with our fears as people. Is it that they deal with their fear by demonizing the other? In this case it makes sense why the transformed man would be the thing they resist, as for as long as one can conflate the demon with the other it means we are on the right side of the equaion.

Or is it that they fear the power of the one who can command the demons? This is certainly a common theme in the Gospel according to Mark, people responding to Jesus’ power in fear. In nearly every case this relates to who Jesus is. There is a sense in which discovering who Jesus is overturns our own lives.

It very well could be both of those things at once. “The other side,” according to my commentaries, was a place known for its association with strange activity. Thus fear would have naturally been built in to these sea crossings. It was when we walked through Chapter 6 this past week, the second storm narrative (6:45-52), that I felt some of my thoughts coming together.

If, as I have reflected on in previous blogs in this space, the opening of Mark 1 awakens us to not just the beginning of the story of Jesus but the beginning of a new creation story (the Gospel which proclaims the arrival and inaugeration of this new creation, also called the arrival of the kingdom of God or “the fulfillment of time”, 1:15), the author of Mark’s Gospel gives us not just a portrait of contrasting kingdoms but contrasting rule. The one who “is more powerful than I,” says John, is coming. And what is the ultimate expression of this coming? Baptizing with the Holy Spirit, the very thing that has the power to transform. 

For Mark, the story of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is marked by his intent to frame it within Israel’s story, conjuring up the picture of Israel as God’s child and firstborn (Exodus 4; Hosea 11:1; Jeremiah 31). The Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness (which is where John already was proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, bringing the people from the whole Judean countryside and Jerusalem out to him in 1:4) where Jesus confronts the very powers enslaving God’s good creation, doing what God had promised to do through the raising up of Israel as his covenant people.

From here Mark jumps straight into Jesus’ ministry with the words “follow me.” Jesus is on the move and the called people are called to move with him in this transforming work, leading them straight into a confrontation with the same powers Jesus encountered in the wilderness. Powers that fear Jesus has come to “destroy” them precisely because they know who Jesus is (1:24)

This begins a patterned movement early on in the Gospel according to Mark between Jesus entering houses and synagogues, creating this interesting contrast between those on the inside and those on the outside. The house is a picture of the the temple/tabernacle, which is where God has taken up residence in the midst of a creation enslaved to the Powers of Sin and Death according to the story of Israel (the Torah). It is a microcosm of Eden where Adam and Eve ultimately enter the wilderness. Thus we find the crowds consistently positioned at the doorway, representing that inbetween space of conflict and disruption. And yet the Jesus we encounter in Mark is one who is on the move, and in Chapter 6 we find this pattern giving way to the gradual process of breaking down the walls between the temple and the wilderness. Following a chapter on the nature of God’s kingdom (chapter 4), we have these two framed “storm” passages quoted above marked by getting into the boat and going to the other side, the first indication that what is contained inbetween reflects an important transitional point in the narrative. If the first storm narrative brings about a particular response (“Do you not care that we are perishing”, 4:38), a response that echos the very words of the demons (“Have you come to destroy us”, 1:24), the second storm narrative in chapter 6 is said to evoke fear (“they saw him and were terrified”, 6:50) because they did not understand about the loaves (6:52).

Only a few chapters later the author of Mark will bring in a second framing device using twinned “feeding” stories, underscoring an important connection to the storm narratives, stating again that they do not yet understand. Back in 2:21-28 Jesus is picking grain on the sabbath, leading him to call back to David when challenged to note how David entered the house of God, ate, broke bread and fed the people, an unlawful act in light of the Torah. What then does this mean for Jesus to pick grain on the sabbath? Here the clear indication is that the sabbath is reflective of the arrival of the new careation. Soon we will have this very picture being applied to breaking loaves and feeding the crowds in the wilderness- creation being tranformed.

Thus, if the feeding is positioned here within two storm narratives as the “point,” it seems a fair to suggest that the reason they fear the transformed man seems intimately tied to what Jesus is doing in the wilderness. To feed the crowds, when seen in light of the gathering of the grain on the sabbath for the sake of this feeding, belongs to the same act of transofrming the world Jesus is bringing the Spirit to. Indeed, what is even more interesting is what ultimately brings us to this second storm passage, which is the stunning statment that Jesus has no power in his hometown (6:5), indicating that the movement of the Spirit is to be found in the wilderness. It is for this reason that Jesus calls the twelve (evoking the story of Israel) and sends them out into the wilderness two by two (which reflects the concern for proper “witness” within the law), giving them the same authority we find them fearing in response to seeing the transformed man- authority over the enslaving powers. A point of transition that is then marked by the death of John the Baptist, a narrative move that brings us all the way back to the beginning of chapter 1 and the one who is “more powerful” coming to baptize in the Spirit. Now the disciples are the ones casting out demons.and bringing about transformation in others.

What’s even more striking? The fact that the crowds who have recognized Jesus to this point now recognize the disciples/apostles (6:30-37), which is where the disciples urge Jesus to send them away so that they might buy their own food. Jesus’ response? “You give them something to eat.” (6:37) In the second feeding the story it is not resistance to the feeding that marks the disciples repeated command to “feed” the people (8:1-3) but the question “how can one feed” these people in the wilderness.

Just as the disciples are now casting out demons as Jesus did, the feeding of the crowd is followed by Jesus sending the disciples to the other side on their own (reversing Jesus’ movement of going ahead of the disciples), Jesus insstead ascending the mountain in the manner of Moses. Lest we forget the ways in which Jesus is being framed within the story of Israel. This is when the storm comes. One feature of this narrative point is the fact that the storm comes early in the evening and Jesus doess not go out until early in the morning, This indicates a whole night of “straining at the oars against the adverse winds.” Another distinguishing factor of this second storm narrative- they weren’t in danger. They were struggling to get to the other side. This is where we get the language of Jesus walking on the sea (evoking this image of something only God can do), with the intention of Jesus passing them by. Rather than this being a phrase that suggests neglect, its a phrase that indicates the arrival of God’s presence. Just as God’s presence passes by Moses, it passes by the disciples. It is a revelatory picture which once again brings about a response of fear. Fear that exist because they failed to understand the loaves. The very thing Jesus was gaethering grain for back in chapter 1.

So here is the lingering question- if they had understood the loaves how and in what way would this have addressed their fear? I feel like the narrative wants us as readers to connect this to the fear they have over seeing the transformed man. This is the question I am now sitting with. After all, they have now been casting out the demons and seeing the transformation through the Spirit working in their own hands. Which leads me to wonder if this fear would not be connected to something more fundamental. Something indicative of the larger reality this Gospel is proclaiming regarding the inbreaking of the kingdom and the transformation that its liberation from the enslaving powers means.

It feels like the same thing we find in the story of Israel and the people grumbling in the wilderness, echoing the eventual exasperation of the disciples- how can we feed the people (manna) in the wilderness? That somehow this liberation from slavery that brings us into the wilderness is precisely the thing that breeds this fear.

How can this be that the liberative act is followed up by this movement into a space that feels antithetical to what we might expect by such a fulfillment. In this sense the transformed man breeds fear precisely because of what it means for where the disciples are being called to go. Its an interesting thought. We all occupy this space in the wilderness. We are all part of the crowd standing between the doorway of hope on one side and despair on the other. In what sense does that space feel safer than the demons on one side and the transformation on the other? Is it that entering the house means being sent into the wilderness? Is this the nature of the inbreaking of God’s kingdom in an already-not yet reality? This inevitable sense that transformation means being awakened to not just the demons out there but the demons inside our own home and the responsibility this places to follow Jesus into the wilderness. And yet, to do so is precisely where we find the transformation of our home as well.

It’s this stark reality that is most difficult though- in an already-not-yet inbreaking of the kingdom we are called the carry the tension, not do away with it. In this sense I wonder if the fear is the awareness that seeing the transformed man means having to face the demons themselves. This resistance to this participatory nature of the Gospel. The very thing that leads to having to row against the winds of resistance with all of our questions and uncertainties. The Gospel according ot Mark tells us that this is precisely when and where God passes us by. We might feel like we are left fending for ourselves, when the point is that God is still going ahead of us in the struggle, making the new creation reality known through this participation. God is at work making all things new, feeding the world in the wilderness. This is the art of learning to see Jesus rather than a ghost.

Here’s my list of watches for January:

The Old Woman With the Knife (Min Kyu-dong, 2026)- a stylish South Korean indie action film with some nice character beats

Night Call (Michiel Blanchart, 2025)- a tense low budget thriller about a guy who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time from France and Belgium (co-production).

Song Sung Blue (Craig Brewer, 2025)- a true story and a genuine and somewhat suprising crowd pleaser with a genuine emotional punch from the American Director who gave us Footloose

We Bury The Dead (Zak Hilditch, 2026)- Australian mid budget zombie film with an interesting and unique premise and some thoughtful thematic undertones starring the always great Daisy Ridley

Is This Thing On? (Bradley Cooper, 2026)- not the follow up to A Star is Born and Maestro I was expecting, going instead for a far less flashy, low key character film about a struggling marriage, but I’m here for it.

Little Amelie (Mailys Vallade and Liane-cho Han, 2025)- an impressive animated debut with some strong spiritual themes from France

The Mother and the Bear (Johnny Ma, 2026)- a love letter to Winnipeg from a Canadian Director that similtaneously functions as an exploration of family relationships.

Resurrection (Bi Gan, 2025)- a Chinese film from the Director of the Long Day’s Journey Into Night, which this film functions as a kind of spiritual sequel to with its visual and deeply poetic and symbolic presence.

Primate (Johannes Roberts, 2026)- it’s exactly what it sells itself as, which is a tightly scripted and paced horror film about a Primate who goes around killing everyone, managing to be a solid middle of the road January entry

Dead Man’s Wire (Gus Van Sant, 2025)- starring Bill Skarsgard, this retro drama is soaked in its 70’s vibe in all the necessary ways, making up for a slightly muted script with its deliciously old school presence

No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook, 2026)- a masterclass in filmmaking from South Korea’s greatest auteur, blending humor and commentary and moral ambiguity with a beautifully scripted story about a family and the socio-economic realities that define the real world struggles they have to manage

The Testament of Ann Lee (Mona Fastvld, 2025)- the real life story is perfectly suited for the choice to frame this as a kind of musical, treating the subject matter with the stort of openness and respect and curiousity that allows it to be a genuine exploration of faith and struggle

Mercy (Timur Bekmambetov, 2026)- decent idea, questionable execution leaves this a bit of a middling effort that was worth seeing on the big screen for the ways it utilizes a small budget (it’s creative to that end), but I don’t think it has lasting power beyond that

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (Nia DaCosta, 2026)- a follow up to one of my favorite films of 2025 (28 Years Later), and while I think it has some issues on the story front it nevertheless functions as a solid follow up in tone and theme

Shelter (Ric Roman Waugh, 2026)- another January, another Statham film, and I would put this one in the upper tier of his filmmography, as its a no frills, no twists, straight forward thriller that uses that simplicity to make the most of the chemistry between its aging and the young star, whom happens to be the best part about the film

Send Help (Sam Raimi, 2026)- Raimi’s back to doing what he loves, which is having fun going off the rails with some unhinged performances (in this case featuring what I think is a career best performance from McAdams). It misses some opportunities to really land the commentary that’s there for the taking, trading that instead for a few more late game twists, but that’s a small quibble with a film that boasts some memorable moments (and shout out to making one for us Survivor fans out here)

My month started with two hold overs from 2025, the buzzy Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (format: physical book) and the massive tome, Mark Twain by Ron Chernow (format: audiobook). Both books are ones in which I read the majority last year, but finished in the early weeks of January. McConaghy’s patient mystery lived up to expectations, finding a way to use it’s multiple POV’s in service of a linear storyline, its poetic and symbolic presence overcoming a slight identity crisis. It’s a story that begs the question, where do we find hope amidst the wild dark shores of this world.

Chernow on the other hand has managed what I would suggest is the definitive work on Twain and a must read for anyone interested in his life. It is exhaustive, made up of a broad collection of stories which blend together to create a nuanced and intimate picture of a complex life and enigmatic figure. It’s great in audio format, as it functions very much as oral storytelling, immersing the reader in the rhythms of the narrative.

The first book I started in 2026 was Martin Scorsese’s Conversations on Faith (format: physical book), a short 100 pages that boasts an often powerful and substantive window into Scorsese’s relationship to both film and faith. A must read for any fan of the filmmaker.

The first in a series of books I am reading on the importance of story and narrative was Kaitlin B. Curtice’s Everything Is a Story: Reclaiming the Power of Stories to Heal and Shape Our Lives (format: Kobo digital) This one was a bit of a mixed bag. It relies heavily on a working allegory, and if that allegory doesn’t land (for me it didn’t fully land) it ends up undercutting some of the observations the author wants to make. But I did do a lot of highlighting, and there were bits and pieces that I did find profound, beginning with the simple act of seeing everything as a story, and even more importantly recognizing that we are all born into a story that is already unfolding. Equally so it is the world around us that begins telling our story long before we come into awareness of it. I also appreciated the insights Curtice brings to the subject from the vantage point of her indigenous roots and spirituality.

The first fiction novel I read was Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before We Forget Kindness (format: physical book) , the next and final book in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series. One of two books I read this month featuring time travel and coffee, which is of course is an outstanding fact. As the final book this one does a really nice job of summarizing the journey of all of the characters, which I appreciated. It follows the familiar patterns, and while there’s nothing ground breaking here it has the touching and lovely dynamic that I’ve come to expect.

Leslie Baynes Between Interpretation and Imagination: C.S. Lewis and the Bible continues the welcome and apparent renassaince of renewed interest in Lewis and Tolkien as of late. This one focuses specifically on his relationship to the scriptures, which gives it a unique spin. The highlight by far is the second half of the book which walks through each book from the Narnia series making the argument that it remains his best expositional work. I found it not only incredibly persuasive (you’ll never look at the stories the same way), but enlightening.

I was less taken with Hugo Mendez’s The Gospel of John: A New History (format: Kobo digital) which I found to be full of questionable assumptions regarding the nature of this Gospel, both in its readings and its theories. For Ehrman apologists, of whom he is a student of and shares his views with, I imagine they will go for this like gangbusters. But to me there is so much other scholarship out there doing far better work on the relationship between John’s hellenized elements and its distinct Jewish presence, something Mendez continually ignores.

Wolf, Moon Dog by Thomas Wharton (format: public library): loved the premise, thought it was less effective in its execution. The early moments are good, but once it starts to move through broad sections of history and time it starts to get more and more unfocused as a narrative.

Jesus Changes Everything: A New World Made Possibler by Stanely Hauerwas (format: Kobo digital) is a great introduction to the hard hitting theologian, bringing together short essays that exhibit his unfiltered approach in speaking to what he sees as the demanding but liberating call of the Gospel. Full of great bite size quotes and readily desires to unsettle comfortable positions.

The Wages of Cinema: A Christian Aesthatic of Film in Conversation with Dorothy L. Sayers (format: Kobo digital) by Crystal L. Downing is about Sayers, about the technical art of film, and its about a particular christian aesthatic. Which is to say- it’s about a lot. Do all of these things work as effectively entry points depending on your point of interest? Maybe. For me I am deeply interested in the art of film and its intersection (in dialogue) with the Christian faith. I had only cursary knowledge of Sayers. From that vantage point I enjoyed a lot of it, although I can see where it is probably trying to do too much at the same time.

Sandwhich by Catherine Newman (format: Kindle digital) was my “actively dislike” read of the month. I went in blind, and wish I hadn’t because everything from the structure to the subject matter was not for me. It takes a plotless approach and binds it to superficial characters. Wasn’t a fan.

Mark as Story: An Introduction to the Narrative of a Gospel by David M. Rhoads (format: Kobo digital) was my the first book I finished in tandem with my journey this year through the Gospel according to Mark. A good place to start given my equal interest in narrative. It’s not the strongest work overall, but for anyone interested in reading the Gospel through the lens of story its a helpful treatment of literary style and structure and form. It’s a reminder that the Gospel is a literary construction as much as it is also a Gospel.

The next book I read is one that I really enjoyed, which is the recently released Meet the Newmans by Jennifer Niven (format: Libra audiobook). I loved the nostalgia of its 50’s/60’s Hollywood setting, but what I didn’t expect was how timely the commentary would feel, depicting a film industry in the throes of uncertainty and upheaval. Here the commentary speaks broadly, but it also has an intimate element as well, revolving around a memorable cast of characters and a really effective story structure. The way it centers on two pivotal moments, both essentially defining the arc in its own way on either side of each moment in the story gave it layers and intrigue. I’ll be thinking about this one for a while.

The Time Hop Coffee Shop by Phaedra Patrick (format: physical book) was a blind buy, and is the second book featuring time travel (sort of) and coffee. It’s surface level, although the idea is good and elements were endearing. As a whole some of the plot devices didn’t work as well as they needed to fully get me to where I needed to be with the character transofrmations. It id inspire a write up though in conversation with Meet the Newmans, as there is some interesting overlap in themes reagarding nostalgia and the different worlds we occupy.

The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz (format: Libby digital) is a sequel to the great blockbuster The Plot, which I read last year. It’s not quite as strong, with the construction of the plot devices feeling a bit too aware and at times forced, but it still works and it was still entertaining. It’s one I feel could grow in my appreciation over time. I just need to reconcile the slow build of the first half.

The final book I read in January was also my favorite, which is Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery, the first of three books I am planning to read by and about the famed author this year. It was my introduction to Montgomery and I really fell in love with her language, her style, and found great affinity with the character of Emily. I love when a book helps me to feel understood, and in this case very much affirmed in some of my own strange quirks questions and tendencies and passions.

I posted a comment back when I started this book about that euphoric feeling that comes when you discover a like mind and a shared language. Especially when it is a voice that has layed hidden in plain sight for all of these years. Partly, I’m sure, due to the association with Anne of Green Gables, books that I assumed as a young kid were great but wouldn’t be my thing. Emily of New Moon has me second guessing those assumptions, because it turned out I am a big fan of her writing.

Montgomery was put on my radar likely due to a sudden resurgence in interest. Having signed up to Kindle Unlimited for the Christmas season, as I typically do, this was one of the additional books that I happened across in my browsing. This led to me dusting off a copy of The Blue Castle, a $5 classic that has been sitting on my shelf for quite some time without getting read, and planning to delve into one of her biographies. It would be New Moon that would be the starting point of this journey. A story that I would define as a quiet sweeping epic with a pastoral concern. If epic feels misplaced here, I would argue that is only because its more an exercise in character and place than a plot driven spectacle. The book immerses us in Emily’s world, spending the generous page count moving with her through the ebb and flow of time as a young child navigating the stuff of loss and change, school and family, responsibilities and struggles. In terms of plotting, there’s not a whole lot here, so if that feels like it might frustrate you this might not be your thing. What we do get is a subtle movement, which for me even arrived as a kind of surprise, towards an exploration of coming of age against certain obstacles. A youung girl dealt a difficult hand finding ways to manage self doubts and personal passions while figuring out precisely what it means to respond to the systems and powers that afford her a sense of responsbility to the world around her.

This is a young kid with an astute awarness of a world the adults around her seem to have forgotten exists. A world their cynicsm has blinded them to. Emily describes her encounters with this world as “the flash,” that invading presence that disrupts her sense of routine of normalcy and disrupts her imagination. A thing that occupies her love of a walk, her sense of communing with the mysteries of the world around her, of writing and imagining and creating. Montgomery has her describe it this way;

“And for companions she had all the fairies of the countryside- for she could believe in them here- the fairies of the white clover and satin catkins, the little green folk of the grass, the elves of the young fir trees, sprites of win and wild fern and thistledown. Anything migh happen there- everything might come true.” (page 8)

As Emily suggests, to occupy this space is what awakens her need to remember it. “It would hurt her with its beauty until she wrote it down.” (page 8) I felt so much affinity with this sentiment, my mind wandering to many a restless night as a young kid trying to figure out what to do with all of the thoughts rolling around in my head about the world I had encountered. I echo her feelings where “It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, that she was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain aside- but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it and then it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond- only a glimpse- and heard a note of unearthy music… and always when the flash came to her Emily felt that life was a wonderful, mysterious thing of persistent beauty.”(page 9)

This becomes the foundation of a source of tension that follows Emily throughout her story, her world being upended by tragedy and her life being moved to New Moon. One of the real questions that permeates this movement between spaces is, does that imagination get left behind or does it occupy the wider world of all of our experiences regardless of the space we are occupying in a given moment. In Emily’s experience, she states emphatically, “How very big and empty the world had suddenly become. Nothing was interesting any more.” (page 26) Innocence lost. A fact that moves her to start to question the world the adults around her were handing her, wrestling with how to reconcile the truth of the flash with people’s descriptives of a God as the source of it and the simple, harsh facts about reality that continue to push back. Throughout her journey in the book Emily wrestles with the simple observation that who this God is seems intimately tied to the adults who define it. Hence she finds herself praying to the God of those persons whom she finds most true and most able to speak to the tensions she carries. This is something I also felt a deep resonance with, as to encounter God as a young kid for me was to encounter different conceptions of God whom were as broadly present as the different authors I was reading and encountering and the persons whom were demanding things of me. And yet, as Emily does, I was also intimately aware that something True must exist. The flash needed and demanded explanation. Perhaps this simple concession is how Emily comes to be able to say, “And now in this most unlikely place and time it had come- she had seen, with other eyes than those of sense, the wonderful world behind the veil.” (page31) A statement that doesn’t evoke certainty as much as a deeply felt sense of faith in this idea that the world could still make sense. Or more precisely in her words, “I don’t want to learn sense and be done a world of good to, I want somebody to love me.” This she finds in her father: “Nobody who was loved as much as he was could be a failure.” (page 44) As she declares, “If you knew Father’s God you’d believe in Him.” (page 123) This, it would seem, is how Emily “looked about her on her new environment and found it good,” sustained by this mysterious word love. This is where she comes to discover that she could write, an act that becomes one of her primary expressions throughout the book, in journals and lengthy letters where we get to occupy space in Emily’s mind and point of view as she meanders through all her thoughts in real time.

A moment that brings new opportunities. “Her world had conceded her standing. But now other things had to be thought of. The storm was over and the sun had set…. Life tasted good to her again- tasted like more.” (page 124. 150) Where she can look upon the world and say, “I think God is just like my flash, only it lasts only a second and He lasts always.” (page 170) Where “everything Emily had ever read of dream and myth and legend seemed a part of the charm… She was filled to her finger-tips with a rapture of living.” (page 243) Where the very thoughts she affords her Father begin to trickle back in observations about this finnicky, stubborn resistant and yet authentic and impassioned young girl- “I’ve never seen a creature who seemed so full of sheer joy in existence.” (page 292) But in this comes the tension filled reality of this journey- these words break into an entire world of words stating otherwise. Definding her in other terms. Which brings her to an incredibly important observation: “To love is easy and therefore common- but to understand- how rare it is.” (page 293) This hit me hard, as all my life I have carried this deeply rooted fear about being misunderstood. Here I think Emily opened up a fresh understanding of this fear for me personally. The simple truth that this fear exists because we “can’t believe in fairies” alone. That is the existential crisis. To have this awareness of the world so deeply rooted inside of you, to need to find a way to communicate it preserve it before it gets stolen or lost or forgotten, and to have to do this in a world where this must and can only be done in relationship with others. No matter how much I am aware, my awareness only goes so far as knowing that it can be understood by someone else. And yet we seek to be understood, as Emily puts it, in a world caught up in the same cycle that we find in the story of Adam and Eve, a symbol and a picture that opens the book and closes the book and carries throughout the book. The symbol of these two trees that seem to contain the imposed judgments of others as persons standing between the trees seeking to pull from one or the other. On one side is true belief, on the other cynicism. And part of the awareness here is that to live in this world is for any, for all, to occupy this same space. The revelation here for Emily is this innate human tendency to need to see the other as the one who takes the apple, for as long its them we can imagine it is not us. The irony being that this is precisely how we blind ourselves to the Truth (the awarness of the flash) and bind ourselves to the cynicsm.

There’s a phrase too that comes along with this as Emily at one point is wrestling with the Truth of things. A wrestling that comes with the doubts begin to take over in the face of the reality of life’s struggles. The stuff, as it says, of our histories. “Do you know what makes history? Pain- and shame- and rebellion- and bloodshed and heartache… remember that if there is to be drama in your life somebody must pay the piper in the coin of suffering. If not you- then some one else.” To become aware of this, as the sentiment goes, is to learn to be “content with fewer thrills.” This is part of the journey in this book, of knowing and learning what it is to enter into the gentle rhythms of a life, even as we grow up and, as Emily puts it, “certain doors of life get shut behind us and cannot be reopened.” To still see the world that the flash once revealed, the thing Emily states at the start of the journey that she remembers all her life, that’s what sustains one through the open doors that await.

“After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die,”

Charlottes Web (E.B. White)

One of the earliest memories I have of being captivated by a story is reading Charlottes Web. Like the character in Shyamalan and Spark’s recent collaborative effort Remain, I too found myself being struck by this now infamous line. Not simply becasue it seemed to hold some mysterious and elusive truth regarding the nature of this existence, but because it seemed to tap into an unspoken tension i was already feeling and observing as that young seven year old kid holed up in his room seeing the world through the eyes of these characters amidst the glow of my nightlight.

Which is the question- what is a life anyways.

Or to echo the character in this book, the assumed beauty of this definition also feels to be burdened by a kind of pervading sadness regarding our ability to answer it in terms other than death.

And yet the character in Remain is also aware of what lies beneath this for the timeless story of a spider and a pig. To define “a life” serves to reveal what a life is not. A life is not death. The very essence of the phrase “we live a little while” directs our question towards the thing that death forces us to reconcile- the meaning and nature of a life can only be found in the act of living.

In other words, what E.B. White intuitively understood, which is largely written into the subtext of his narrative (see The Story of Charlotte’s Web: E B White’s Eccentric Life In Nature And Birth Of An American Classic by Michael Sims), is that life and death are not the same thing. They reflect opposing narratives. Which is what awakens Wren, the character in Remain, to note the tension. To live a little while is not to die, it is for existence to “be” in the first place. More than this, it is about what we can rationally and logically say about the nature of a life in light of this antithetial thing called death (and it’s logical implication, a birth).

My very first post 10 years ago in my personal blog space was about Charlottes Web. Encountering this blurb in Remain, particularly as I am now tumbling towards 50, brought this formative story back to mind in a visceral way. I have not yet finished Remain, but in this moment I found the simple observation to be a powerful one. As it would be for Charlotte and Wilbur, the truth is found in the phrase “we live a little while.” The question that breaks in to this equation is simply this- what truth does this thing called a life point towards and reveal. On what grounds can we define what it means to live in ways that actually lliberate us from the defining powers of death.

If I could go back and speak to my 7 year old self, I’d tell him to anticipate 43 years of continuing to wrestle with this question, even in the darkest of places, yet never without glimpses of hope.

“The way a story begins is important…. the stories we believe about who we are and where we come from shape our worldview and the way we see ourselves and value others.” (page 43, Redeeming Eden: How Women in the Bible Advance the Story of Salvation)

Barely one month in and the beginning of the story of my reading year in 2026 is taking me to some interesting and unexpected places. While I started off in the Gospel according to Mark, the Gospel that my Church is working through this year and which I am complimenting with James R. Edwards Pillar New Testament Series commentary, it is the Gospel according to John that keeps muscling its way into the conversation. Beginning with Between Interpretation and Imagination: C.S. Lewis and the Bible, where Leslie Baynes‘ express interest in the ways Lewis saw and used the scriptures emphasizes his particular obsession with the Gospel according to John. As Baynes points out, it is his understanding of this Gospel that ultimately leads to specific tensions, giving us an inroad to both his points of weakness (interpretation applied without imagination) and strengths (imagination applied to interpretation) when it comes to the role of the scriptures in his larger body of work.

It’s an excellent book, especially in the latter half where the author walks through each entry in the Narnia series, the place where she believes Lewis was at his most astute and profound when it came to his application of the scriptures within his imaginative work. That’s worth the price of the book alone. What I didn’t expect is that it would end up being an inroad into Hugo Mendez’s new buzzy book, The Gospel of John: A New History. A book that’s becomming all the rage right now in certain scholarly circles. It’s a book that follows in the footsteps of Bart Ehrman, largely transplanting Ehrman’s specific take on Paul as gnostic writer and thinker immersed in Greco-Roman ideas of secret knowledge attained through special access to the spirit on to fresh observations about the Gospel according to John as a single author composition reflecting the voice of its creator working to invent a false pseudonym (the beloved disciple) as a means of advancing what would become known as the “Johannine” tradition. In other words, Mendez approaches the Gospel according to John by imagining it being unearthed today as a long lost Gospel in the same manner that happened with the Nag Hammadi library, likewise assuming the same soil that Ehrman believes gave us Paul’s writings as well. Does cutting through the noise of centuries of tradition surrounding John uncover some simple truths about the nature and shape of its composition in line with these gnostic texts? Mendez says yes. He believes John bears all the shared markings of such a gnostic text.

Full disclosure- I take a lot of issues with Mendez’s working theory. First, in suggesting that his work looks to strip away the obstacle of centuries of tradition so as to be able to see the Gospel through a more objective lens, he completely buries the fact that he is imposing the lens of his own specific tradition, one anchored in the assumptions Ehrman makes regarding Paul. The story Ehrman tells about Paul shapes how one sees everything else, and as Mendez suggests at one point, he wanted to write a book on the Gospel according to John for this specific circle (my emphasis) of Pauline scholarship. There is however a glaring issue here- if one disagrees with Ehrman’s interpretation of Paul and his writings, as I largely do, successive arguments shaped by these assumptions become challenged as well.

Perhaps the more interesting question then, for a reader like me, is to ask whether Mendez’s successive theory regarding John supports or challenges Ehrman’s assumptions about Paul. That becomes the important starting point. This is what I found occupying my mind as I read through his new theory on the authorship and composition of the fourth Gospel. What I found ultimately unconvincing here was Mendez’s express efforts to isolate and reduce John to its hellenized langauge. Not unlike what Ehrman does with Paul, Mendez reads the Gospel of John as though its completely detached from its second temple Jewish roots, which of course is easy to do when you punt it entirely to a much later world and context. In fact, he largely handwaves entire swaths of the current scholarship out of the picture, labeling anything that disagrees with his working assumptions “evangelical,” thus completely ignoring one of the key facets of that present conversation, which is uncovering and recovering what scholars are recognizing as a deeply rooted Jewish concern in John’s Gospel reflective of that second temple context. This is the key quality and nature of the Gospel according to John that expressly challenges Mendez’s particular readings of the text as reflecting an internal soteriology of secret knowledge being obtained by an inner transformation by way of an exclusive access to the spirit (a key motif and marker of the gnostic traditions). What Mendez fails to consider are the ways in which John is using Hellenized language and symbols to expressly critique this Greco-Roman way of thinking with his specific Jewish (or Judean) concerns, concerns that bring these conceptions of heaven and earth together, not splitting them apart (as Ehrman popularly assumes Paul does in his shared context).

Saying all of this, while I certainly feel more qualified to express thoughts and opinions regarding the Gospel according to John (full cards on the table, I hold to a view that contrasts with Mendez’s operative theory by seeing it as a product of a community shaped over successive generations and reflecting three disctinct periods in time, something we can see in the overall structure of the Gospel itself- three distinct and visible editing phases reflecting different voices but, by its nature, anchored in a source tradition), I felt far less qualified to speak on the Gnostic Traditions themselves. Beyond Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels) and King (What is Gnosticism), I haven’t really delved deeply into the subject, and both of those above sources tend to be bound to a specific lens (not unlike Ehrman). Thus, if I could note why I disagree with Mendez’s specific interpretations regarding the text and composition history of John, I couldn’t say with the same degree of awareness how and why the Gnostic Gospels themselves should be made or kept distinctly seperate from that Gospel beyond appealing to easy rhetorical marks. Which led me to ask some of my online comnunities for recommendations on the Gnostic Gospels. Thus far I have David Litwa (The Gnostic Archive), Yamauchi’s Pre-Christian Gnosticism, and a class called Early Church History: Gnostic and Valentininans (available in podcast form through the Early Church History podcast).

While I was putting those together, I also started (and have almost finished) the book The Girl Who Baptized Herself: How a Lost Scripture About a Saint Named Thecla Reveals the Power of Knowing Our Worth by Meggan Watterson. A book which is all about reclaiming the Gnostic and extant writings as revelatory works over and against a history of canonization led by a very real patriarchy which has taught us to fear and exclude them. The inroad to this conversation is the Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla, a letter (or book) which remains in the conversation within Eastern Traditions as a vital part of this larger portrait of the world of the N.T. and its vision regarding specific customs and views of women in the ANE.

There’s actually a lot that I agree with regarding Watterson’s essential plea, which is to let go of the tightly guarded restraints of the patriarchal systems that has handed us a canon disavowing such extant writings, and subsequently a scripture that could be more controlled and abused by said patriarchy under the guise of the divinely inspired “inerrant” word that singular interpretations could dictate and enforce (read: western christianity). It should not be the case that the scriptures represent some kind of closed book where all extant conversations and dialogues are no longer able to enter in. And if Watterson is correct, there should be no reason to be fearful of engaging Gnostic and extant and apocryphal texts as part of our engagment with that larger conversation. What makes the scriptures powerful and inspired and sacred is the way it invites us into that larger and ongoing conversation rooted in a singular confession- the resurrected Jesus. That we are able to find disagreements and disputes within the pages of scripture regarding how this plays itself out in different contexts, which reveal the multi-faceted world of its writers, should make this all the more real not challenged. And certainly the Gnostic Traditions are good and important windows into the different responses that we see shaping the second century world.

But I will say, I take a slightly different path than Watterson towards some shared conclusions. A path I was struggling to fully clarify until I started reading Redeeming Eden: How Women in the Bible Advance the Story of Salvation by Ingrid Faro. Where Watterson tends to get weighted down (in my opinion) by her own express interests in tackling the very real issue of patriarchy, often conflating particular cultural readings and realities with the world of the scriptures themselves (even her “history” of canonization ends up being fairly reductive to this end, wrongly misappropriating the process as a singular aim of the patriarchy, which is not really true), Faro is expressing similar concerns but with an express interest in cutting through the noise of cultural impostions and getting at the world of the scriptures themselves (in her case, the text of Genesis). And in a very real way this brought me full circle back to the book Between Interpretation and Imagination, ironically a book that is all about one of the great historical voices of our modern age writing on the relationship between myth and Christianity (whom famously came to see Christianity as the true myth that made sense of all the world’s stories).

If Watterson’s approach I think erronously leads her to see the revelatory work as a gnostic practice of embracing inner truth and transformation by way of elevating the power of the self, something that I find leaves her sailing on the real and important waters of her subject matter without much of an anchor, and likewise continually leads her to find the liberative power of Thecla’s story as an act of individualization and an elevation of the self or self-made truth (which detaches her from all of the oppressive forces around her, in this line of thinking, robbing her of a truly self made identity), Faro reminded me of the freedom that comes from fiunding our imagination through the act of interpreation that seeks the source of our identy. Right from the get go her book takes a decicidely different turn, where instead of elevating a conception of the self or the individual suggests that the self can only be known when we know the true nature of God. And for Christians that is all about the story that we find Jesus embodying within the world (and pages) of the scriptures. Which I think will be a good fit for a recently announced upcoming release from one of the most formative authors in my life- God’s Homecoming: The Forgotten Promise of Future Renewal- Biblical Theology from Genesis to Revelation on the New Creation by N.T. Wright.

This is where I find myself in this moment, looking ahead to February, and not inconsequently looking forward to another notable upcoming releases by a hugely formative author for me personally- Paul and John in Harmony: A Theological and Historical Exploration by Michael J. Gorman. It’s almost like he knew this would be the book I would be needing right now in the early months of 2026.

Or to wade into the world of potential cliche and yet somehow still true, “… in the beginning (of the story), God had a plan.” (page 42, Redeeming Eden)

A couple things that have really been sticking with me from Faro’s book:

• She brings us into one of the most studied and looked upon and scrutinized portions of the scriptures (Genesis 1-3) by imagining (in conversation with a robust interpretation of the text) Adam and Eve emerging within an already unfolding story (which is the essential thesis of Kaitlin Curtices Everything Is a Story, another book I finished this month and which suggests all of us are born into a story already in play). A story which, in express critique of the surrounding ANE conceptions of a God in conflict with creation, finds God both acting for and dwelling within the created order and creative practice. An unfolding story that finds the particular story of Adam (humanity) and Eve (the living one, or the breathing one) being awakened in their emergence (birthing) on the scene to a pre-existing cosmic divide. Thus what we find in the narrative of the garden is the story of humanity being tasked to guard God’s good creation from this division precisely by imaging (closely related to imaginging) the true nature of God to creation rather than imaging the lie (the serpent). Rather than the trees reflecting a test that brings about the conflict they instead represent a means for humanity to partner with God in guarding creation in the midst of a pre-existing conflict between the spiritual Powers. As she notes, in ancient myths, “after an idol was formed it was taken to a garden or by a stream to complete a vivification process to bring life into the world… when the mouth and the eyes of the statue were opened, it would be inhabited by a spiritual entity, making it a god.” Thus we find one of the key distinctives of the Genesis narrative among a world of creation myths- rather than image bearers being contained to deified rulers, the Judeo-Christian narrative sees all of humanity as image beaerers intended to reflect the true name or nature of God to a world enslaved to those spiritual Powers. To have their eyes open upon eating the fruit is to align themselves with the image of Empire. Idol or image in relationship to human is a word only used positively in this context- all others are attached to idolatry.
• With this as the backdrop for the story, she helps us to see how the seven day framework is a literary device denoting sacred space and sacred time around which a temple is constructed. The creation story “is a temple inauguration.” (page 48) And this is what really had my attention turned. In this temple text, the human (man and woman) are to serve together and protect the garden as sacred space, a place where God could abide with creation- this evokes the idea of being alert to the story that they have entered into, and thus are now emobyding, where spiritual forces have already rebelled against God. Ezer (helper) is a word that everywhere else evokes a military conotation- to guard against. But the imagery here gets blown even more wide open over and against much of our cultural constructs when we recognize what it means for the woman to be birthed from the side of Adam. Tsela (which sometimes is side or rib in translations) is always a special architectural term relating to the sides (walls) of sacred spaces (temples)- the sides must be able to bear the weight together to guard and protect the sanctuary. Here then we have the proper portrait that evokes of “all” humanity imaging the true nature of God over and against the divisions of the Powers that seek to distort what creation is through the deification of the individual, a central facet of Empire, Equally so the way the story gets rewritten to have modern man standing over and above the woman. Or in a more literary sense, to imagine a temple space (creation) where humanity is set against its life source (the unifying nature of God) is to bring us to the idol rather than the revealed God. To be bound to the curse, which is given to the de-creating nature of the spiritual Powers not God’s act of creation, rather than the promise, which is given to creation, is to be left with a story of exile rather than new creation.
• This is something which comes truly aware and alive when we consider how Seth, the seed that comes to reflect the promise of new creation, means “annointed one,” while Seth’s son (Enosh) means “mortal one”. God’s redemptive and restorative work breaking into the mortal human presence in a world enslaved to the Powers of Sin and Death. an act which has a fascinating interplay with the shared word for “universe” and “hide” an act that we find first in Adam and Eve (hiding in the garden) and then parlayed on to God whom is now breaking into the world outside of the garden as a way of occupying this promised and concieved marriage of Heaven and Earth in a world divided- what is hidden is being made known.
• Something which comes even more alive yet when we consider the intentional connections between words which all become a literary interplay between the word “build”: the building of humanity leads to the building of a son leads to the building of a city leads to the building of a temple (tower). As Faro writes, “The creative process involves envisioning something that inspires actions to create something new (page 43).” Meaning, humanity is meant to particpate in the act of “creating.” At the heart of the problem in Genesis 13 is precisely the question of which image we are creating (building) in, or what these creative acts are imaging and what reality it is naming. Or more to the point- what story is this act of building telling regarding the true nature of God, and thus the true nature of creation. As Faro writes, “The God who concieves (also) speaks, and his thoughts become reality.” So it is with us as we are called to participate in this creative process, yet the question for us remains: do our thoughts conceive the reality of a God who is for the world, for creation or against it. This story matters to the way we see the world and value others.