Andrew Mackey has an outstanding post over at his blog about the importance (or not) of reading “the news.” I very much relate to this as I have a love/hate thing with “the news” and am frequently disgusted by the so-called “straight” news coverage and even more by almost all the opinion talkovereachotherites on the almost entirely unwatchable “news” channels. Still worse, the arrogant and entertaining stupidity of Stewart/Colbert (which is all the “news” a host of people who actually vote get). The news increasingly feels to me like the scene where Dorothy meets “The Great Oz.” Um, I can totally see you back there, dude.

Note: I understand that I am using “quotation marks” way too much. But once you start it’s hard to go back.

Andrew supplies a nice Lewis quotation and follows it up with this:

“…He’s probably right. I’m not sure where to find the balance between paying attention to what goes on in the world around me and, as he put it, an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism.

This has come to the fore for me in the recent redesign of CNN.com. They now display a little graph of the most-read stories in the top right. As I write this, Heidi Klum’s Halloween is the most read story. It’s followed by three straight stories about extreme violence.

I have far more questions than I have conclusions, but perhaps the whole of western civilization could stand to take a look at what we’re interested in / fascinated by. Perhaps we should, as Lewis suggests, spend our time on things that will not be untrue or irrelevant ten years from now. I think our wonderous technology lends “news” to being irrelevant/untrue in ten minutes rather than ten years.”

Read it all (it’s brief) here.

Kevin DeYoung has some good thoughts about art and the church’s thinking about art. I have set out his main points, but you should really read the post if you’re interested in this kind of thing. It’s good.  

The Church and the Arts: Some Common Ground and Some Common Sense

1. We must allow art to be art.

2. Art is valuable, but so are a lot of other things.

3. Art can do some things, and it can’t do some other things.

4. Our worship should strive for artistic excellence, but our worship will inevitably be “popular” and propositional.

5. Churches can learn to welcome artists, but artists should not expect the church to be an art gallery.

6. Artists can help us see our idols, and artists have idols of their own too.

The video.

The audio.

3. Like faith, stories engage us as whole persons, not as parts.

No one believes anything important with the intellect alone. Believing is a whole body, whole life experience. If it doesn’t involve everything, it’s not belief but simply an agreement with an idea. Believing enlists all the aspects of the mind. It involves the will, curiosity, personality, character, our bodies, imagination. You don’t believe anything deeply that isn’t a product of all that you are.

Reason is a tool that will serve any master, including the most odious. By itself it does not get us where we need to go. We need to use it as well as we can, but we are foolish to think that any single human faculty is sufficient to guide our entire lives. A lot of wrong thoughts about life come from not treating people wholly. Anything that respects only reason, or only will-power or discipline will break down.

Consider the example of Nathan’s confrontation of David, after he had slept with Bathsheba and murdered her husband (2 Samuel 12). He tells a story to David, and he tells it masterfully, using timing and irony and pathos. David becomes enraged by the actions of the rich man in Nathan’s story and declares that he deserves to die.

Notice that David’s intellect, emotion, sense of justice, and body are involved. He responds as a whole person, which is exactly the response Nathan must have desired. And then the prophet says most powerfully, “You are that man!,” bringing the full force of the message home to David and leading him to repentance.

Note: As I am about to demonstrate to the world, I have no idea how to do a real interview. But Eric Peters, in his mercy, agreed to do one with me. Now I’m thinking of a lot of questions I should have asked, but they aren’t really good ones either. So the dumb stuff is my fault. Yet I love that this interview does reveal Eric’s sense of humor and humility and made me even more of a fan than I was previously. EP is rare indeed, like a bloody, tasty steak. If you haven’t bought his new album, Chrome, yet (which I somehow failed to ask enough about) then you should remedy that soon. Some of the songs will appear on the soundtrack for the upcoming film Smith/Peters directed by Opie Taylor. The interview will be posted in two parts. The films will be an endless franchise making millions of buckskins. -sam

SDS: All right EP (this is SDS, by the way), some easier questions may follow, but first things first. What is your favorite color and what do you want to be when you grow up?

EP: Red in the fall. Black in winter. Green in spring. Purple in summer.

I’d like to be you when I grow up. You’re Sam Shepard, right? Do I have to grow up?

SDS: Sam, I am. Occupation: Shepherd. And, keep aiming high; follow your dreams and any unicorns which you may see. Speaking of unicorns, on a scale of one to two, how fun/effective was it to work with Ben Shive in making the new record, which, correct me if I’m wrong, is called “Life in Puebla Georgia As Seen From A Book-shaped Heap of Coal?”

EP: Few people know this about Ben (Shive), but he’s an avid unicorn hunter. It’s slightly different than snipe hunting in that the hunter must offer a reed of salt-cured bamboo to the male unicorn, otherwise, you’ll get no closer than 100 yards to either sex. Or, wait, maybe it’s a Twizzler.

Aside from hunting fantastical forest creatures, working with Ben in the (non-fictitious) making of Chrome (This is the correct album title; you might have had me confused with Erik Estrada) was definitely a 1.9 out of a possible 2. I laughed more making this record than I have in a long time. Since laughter is in short supply these days, I was glad for it, and welcomed it like I would a leprechaun riding a unicorn dragging behind it a pot of gold.

Ben is immensely talented, as creative as anyone I know, and, in the case of Chrome, was a giant for me in the way of encouragement and seeing through some of the dark lyrics to the soul of what I was trying to say, even finding and instilling hope in those places. Ben is absolutely an artist, and is one of the hardest working dudes I know. I am deeply grateful to him for taking on my project even on a shoestring budget, and for treating it as if it were making him wealthy and famous. Which it didn’t. Which it won’t.

SDS: OK, That was the best answer ever in the history of journalism. Probably because of my penetrating question and the presence of unicorns. Continue reading

I have the privilege of being a guest poster over at I Saw Lightning Fall, the blog of writer Loren Eaton. I’ve never met Loren in real life, but on the internet he sure seems like one of the good ones and has always been very encouraging to me.

Loren has a cool, thoughtful blog and for some reason he asked for me to be a part of his guest post pulpit supply while he is away.

Read my riveting guest post there here. It’s called “Being Precisely You.”

“In recent years it has become popular to sketch the Bible‘s storyline something like this: Ever since the fall, God has been active to reverse the effects of sin. He takes action to limit sin’s damage; he calls out a new nation, the Israelites, to mediate his teaching and his grace to others; he promises that one day he will send the promised Davidic king to overthrow sin and death and all their wretched effects. This is what Jesus does: he conquers death, inaugurates the kingdom of righteousness, and calls his followers to live out that righteousness now in prospect of the consummation still to come.

Much of this description of the Bible’s storyline, of course, is true. Yet it is so painfully reductionistic that it introduces a major distortion. It collapses human rebellion, God’s wrath, and assorted disasters into one construct, namely, the degradation of human life, while depersonalizing the wrath of God. It thus fails to wrestle with the fact that from the beginning, sin is an offense against God.”

D.A. Carson

Emphasis mine. HT: Justin Taylor

If you, like me, were a fan of the film Once, and the music of The Swell Season, then you will enjoy this desktop concert from NPR. They have a new record which is, somehow, not called “Once Again.”

Here’s a video from Once, which features great folk music and a fascinating story.

Note: Both the film, and this little concert have “objectionable language.” Most of it is in English, but contains words which can be offensive (which we call “swear” words, or “cursing,” –not always with a great deal of biblical accuracy in my view).

HT: @Jeff_Overstreet

Andrew Peterson was recently on Al Mohler’s radio show (which was guest hosted by Russel Moore). That’s quite a combo. And Dr. Moore’s interview with AP was very good.

Give it a listen.

And while we’re talking about interviews with Andrew, Son of Peter, here’s a four-part series of Q&A AP did over at one of my favorite blogs: Between Two Worlds. That interview was conducted by Mister Robert Sagers.

It included, but was not limited, to this exchange:

RES: In Art for God’s Sake, Philip Graham Ryken recalls traveling to New York City to view the paintings of Makoto Fujimura. So moved by what he saw, Ryken writes the following: “At its best, art is able to do what Fujimura’s paintings do: satisfy our deep longing for beauty and communicate profound spiritual, intellectual, and emotional truth about the world that God has made for his glory.” What is art, and what do you think is its purpose?

AP: Wow. I don’t know how I’d say it better than Ryken—although I have one tiny issue with his quote. Art can’t satisfy a longing for beauty. Art can pique it. It can remind us that we were made for ultimate beauty, but it’s only a window. When I’m confronted by a profoundly beautiful work of art, I feel a profound ache, like a kid peeking through the gate at Disney World. I’m comforted to remember that such a world exists, but I’m not yet allowed entrance. An artist hangs windows all over the shadowy world, lets the light in, reminds people to draw near and peek through.

If AP gets interviewed by anyone else, like perhaps the AP, then I’ll let you know.

Don’t forget his new book, North! Or, Be Eaten, releases August 18, 2009. I have read it and it is grand. (More on that later.)

Eric Peters, bird-lover and future former farmer, has posted a song from his nearly-released new record, Chrome.

It’s called “I’ll Go With You” and it’s a self-fulfilling title as it has gone with me all over –totally stuck in my head.

This is another common EP experience. His songs get stuck in your head, but not in an annoying way. You do not wish for them to become unstuck.

The song is a sweet gift for his boys. I’m sure many of you, like me, can relate.

Chrome comes in full on August 25. ORDER NOW.

Like Victor Navorski: “I wait.”

David Mills makes a list recommending where to begin when reading C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton –it is helpful (HT: Justin Taylor).

Chesterton is fairly new to me, so I have little to say for that part, I’ve only read a few of his books (which I have liked very much, though not with the same intensity as Mr. Lewis).

Here’s my own hasty list of favorite CSL books –for what it’s worth.

Fiction
1. Till We Have Faces (the only easy choice for me)
2. Perelandra
3. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
4. That Hideous Strength
5. Prince Caspian

Not Fiction
1. The Weight of Glory
2. The Screwtape Letters
3. Poems
4. Surprised by Joy
5. The Abolition of Man

I would also recommend, along with the autobiographical Surprised by Joy, that you consider the book Jack: A Life of C.S Lewis by George Sayer.

Wow, that was pretty hard. Not like storm-the-beach-at-Normandy hard, but, you know –not precisely easy.

I didn’t think about it too much. But I see that so many could easily go up in my list, while it’s hard to send any down. Plus, it’s almost impossible not to mention others, like The Four Loves and The Great Divorce, not to mention the other Narnia books. I guess that’s what makes a great author great.

So what’s your favorite C.S. Lewis work?

Note of Disclosure: The store links are to my Amazon store. If you buy there I get a kickback. In other words –this is all about money to me.