A Conversation With Emily of the New Moon: Learning to Preserve Wonder in a World That Wants to Steal It and the Shared Voices that Help Us Do This

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 GreenContinue reading “A Conversation With Emily of the New Moon: Learning to Preserve Wonder in a World That Wants to Steal It and the Shared Voices that Help Us Do This”

What is a Life: The Questions of a 7 Year Old Boy and the Stories That Shaped Him

“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 thisContinue reading “What is a Life: The Questions of a 7 Year Old Boy and the Stories That Shaped Him”

Between Interpretation and Imagination: Finding the Story in a World of Stories

“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 theContinue reading “Between Interpretation and Imagination: Finding the Story in a World of Stories”

A Conversation With Mark 2:13-17: What it Means To Follow Jesus and For Sinners to Be Restored and What That Tells Us About the Torah and the Scribes

There are two direct parallels called to mind in Mark 2:13-17, a story that describes Jesus walking along the sea of Galilee, encountering a crowd, singling out an individual, and being called out for those whom he is associating with and for his words/actions reflecting an offence in light of Torah faithfulness. The first callContinue reading “A Conversation With Mark 2:13-17: What it Means To Follow Jesus and For Sinners to Be Restored and What That Tells Us About the Torah and the Scribes”

Chapter 3: Another Piece of a Very Rough Draft at My Attempt To Tell My Story 

(I’ve been gradually trying to force myself to get some of my project into a space where it can hold me accountable to doing something with it. I finished what I would call a rough draft of “my story” last year. So now I’ve been putting the very rough version in pieces in this spaceContinue reading “Chapter 3: Another Piece of a Very Rough Draft at My Attempt To Tell My Story “

Resurrection: The Death of Cinema and Finding Ourselves in That Story

Bi Gan’s latest creative venture once again finds the visionary director playing with the subject of perspective, seeing through the lens of this liminal space between dream or illusion and reality. If Long Day’s Journey Into Night reflected on how these transparent spaces translate to cinematic storytelliing and its relationship to form, this film takesContinue reading “Resurrection: The Death of Cinema and Finding Ourselves in That Story”

Surveys and Headlines: What It Really Means To Say Gen Z is Disconnecting at Higher Rates Than Everyone Else

I’m always a bit cautious when it comes to giving too much weight to surveys. Why? Because I have participated in them myself. I’m not even sure how much I trust myself to answer the questions in a reliable or relevant fashion. I’m also very aware that no single survey can say much on itsContinue reading “Surveys and Headlines: What It Really Means To Say Gen Z is Disconnecting at Higher Rates Than Everyone Else”

Some Thoughts on Mark Chapter 2: Houses, Temples, Crowds and Healings

I mentioned this in a previous post, but this year both my Church and I am working through the Gospel of Mark (every year my Church works through a different Gospel beginning with Christmas and moving through Lent and Easter). What has struck me in the beginning chapter is how this Gospel’s penchant for jumpingContinue reading “Some Thoughts on Mark Chapter 2: Houses, Temples, Crowds and Healings”

The Joy That Awakens Our Desire for Truth: A Brief Thought on Remembering and Celebrating 21 Years of Marriage

For Lewis, the experience of Joy as virtue and Joy as person were, if not synonymous, held together as a working metaphor for the other. In this particular quote the author is speaking about the way in which both things are held together by memory. Our lives are memory. Thus, as it was with Lewis,Continue reading “The Joy That Awakens Our Desire for Truth: A Brief Thought on Remembering and Celebrating 21 Years of Marriage”

The Sacred and the Profane: Setting Crystal Downing and Mircea Eliade in Conversation

“Theater started with the sacred and eventually brought in the profane. Cinema started with the profane and brought in the sacred.” (The Wages of Cinema, Crystal Downing) In the book Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, Mircea Eliade defines the nature of the sacred as “differentiation” and defines the profane as “homogeneity.” ItContinue reading “The Sacred and the Profane: Setting Crystal Downing and Mircea Eliade in Conversation”