Wendell Berry and Bill McKibbon advocate a coal boycott here.
Category: Gospel and Culture
Three Films from 2008
Here are several films I am pleased to have watched in 2008. I’m not predicting any Oscar winners or suggesting that these films are for everyone, but I am saying they made an impact and were well-done. Two foreign, one domestic.
Man on Wire – A documentary about, Philliipe Petit, a frenchman who walked a tightrope between the two Twin Towers before they were completed and destroyed. He prepared for the clandestine ascent and daylight walk for six and a half years. His remarkable resolve would have been fruitless, were it not for his accomplices who were quickly forgotten as Petit moved into the post-walk limelight. The documentary is existentially compelling, artistically stirring, and subtly disturbing. Art meets pride, a Promethean story that tells more than it shows.
Tell No One – Part thriller, part love story, this French film based on the book by American author Harlan Coben both entertains and shocks. Unlike most thrillers produced in Hollywood, the characters possess believable depth, evoking empathy and interest. Ethical dilemmas abound and so should your conversation afterwards.
Transsiberian – a sleeper for 08. Ben Kingsly, Woody Harrelson, & Emily Mortimer. Suspense stretched across the siberian tracks, this film occurs primarily on a train. Without giving the plot away, the film takes a Christian goodie two shoes and a bad girl gone good, pairs them with shady criminals, and subjects them to personal and ethical scrutiny. There are some uncomfortable scenes, especially the torture. Another great conversational film, especially if you want to discuss the importance of truth.
Austin City Life in the Austin Statesman
The Austin Statesman ran a piece on downtown churches that are committed to renewing the city. The cool thing is that Eileen connected it to other church planting efforts in our local network PlantR.org. About a third of the article covers our church, Austin City Life . Here’s an excerpt:
Some are part of a local church planting network that includes about 40 leaders who aim to spread the message of Jesus throughout the city — not just within the walls of already established churches — and to be a renewing presence both socially and spiritually. These churches are cropping up all over the Austin area, but for some leaders, downtown venues hold a particular appeal.
Similar efforts are happening in cities such as Minneapolis and Seattle where church leaders have established sanctuaries in downtown bars, coffeehouses and warehouses.
Jonathan Dodson, pastor of Austin City Life, said his congregation chooses to worship on “common cultural ground,” the idea being “the church goes to the city. The city does not go to the church.”
Read the rest here.
Bono on Christmas
I posted this last year and found it just as reflective and awe-inspiring as last year…
This reflection on Christmas occurred after Bono had just returned home, to Dublin, from a long tour with U2. On Christmas Eve Bono went to the famous St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where Jonathan Swift was dean. Apparently he was given a really poor seat, one obstructed by a pillar, making it even more difficult for him to keep his eyes open…but it was there that Christmas story struck him like never before. He writes:
“The idea that God, if there is a force of Logic and Love in the universe, that it would seek to explain itself is amazing enough. That it would seek to explain itself and describe itself by becoming a child born in straw poverty, in shit and straw…a child… I just thought: “Wow!” Just the poetry … Unknowable love, unknowable power, describes itself as the most vulnerable. There it was. I was sitting there, and it’s not that it hadn’t struck me before, but tears came streaming down my face, and I saw the genius of this, utter genius of picking a particular point in time and deciding to turn on this.”
Isn’t it compelling? The logic and love of a personal God revealing himself, accounting for our person-ality, our propensity to love. And oh, the mercy of God, born in shit and straw, to rescue us from ourselves, our godless gift-giving, and our arrogant disregard for God and for others so that we might know and enjoy him and his new creation forever. And that he, the infinite God, would do it in Christ, in time, in space, in confounding condescension to pivot the course of the entire creation project from despair, destruction, and dereliction to a hopeful, whole, and happy future.
Will you ponder the poetry of Christmas this year, the genius of the incarnation? What obstructions are in your path to dwelling on the vulnerable, inexhaustible power and love of God in Christ? Renounce them and rivet your attention on the Christ.
Excerpt taken from Bono: in conversation (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005), 124-5.