There's a New Blogger In Our Midst

I present to you:

Sister Ames!

Go forth and make her welcome!

Emmanuel

Dear God,

Thank you for filling this beggar's cup.

God, I love you.

Amen

This is the prayer that's been rolling around in my head of late. I mean, for God to become a dying thing that he might infuse the dying with life? What a crazy deal. I get everything, and God gets me. What's crazy is that God's acting like he got the better end of the bargain (Hebrews 12:2, The Song of Solomon, Luke 15). Is this not enough to drive you into the ground with weeping and send you to the sky with rejoicing? Doesn't your heart soar with joy?

All those giddy psalms on giving thanks are starting to make a little more sense...

Merry Christmas!

Retraction

I am still waiting for song lists from six or seven people, however I expect these list to be late, and I see now how silly it is to hold this kind of vote at Christmas time, so I am extending the voting time all the way to Groundhog Day (February second); a much less busy time for me, and I trust for you as well.

Happy Christmas Adam, everybody! Enjoy the season! (Christmas Adam comes before Christmas Eve, for those who were wondering.)

Are You Working On Your List Of You Twenty Favorite Songs?

You'd better be! You only have five days left! Quick, don't just stand there! Make a list!


Note: You can use this post for submitting a list if you want to, but please don't use it for ordinary comments. Thank you.

Oh yes, props once again to Soldout for a great picture.

For the Record

Whoa! This is the coolest news I've heard all day; Sufjan on Vinyl! I got a chance to listen to Illinoise a couple of times at Eucharisto's house and I have to say that the only thing that could make my experience with the album more enjoyable would be if it was an actual album. And now it is! Woo hoo! This just got bumped to the top of my Christmas list. This is too good to be true!

Rock Stars Preachin' It, Vol 1

"Q: Money. Irishness. God. Which one couldn't you live without?
Bono: Wow. Well it's an easy question to ask but... here's a thing. When I was 16, my head was exploding. I just felt my life was going nowhere. I didn't fit in. I couldn't get a job. I didn't know how I could do my exams and I wasn't even sure I could concentrate at college. In those days, I remember, a prayer came up inside me. I said "I don't know what I'm going to do with my life but if there's a God out there, and I believe there is, and You want me to do something, then I'm ready. I don't have any plans for myself and I'm available for work." Pretty much within a few months of that epiphany I had joined U2 and started going out with Ali. A pretty good two months! Now had my destiny been -- if the God in heaven had said I want you to become a fireman and run up very dangerous buildings and save people's pets, I'd like to hope I'd have gone at it with the same gusto. So -- I couldn't let go of my faith. But what's more interesting is that I don't think God will let go of me. I love it when people on bar stools rub their chins and say do you believe in God? That's so presumptuous. A much more important question is does God believe in us?
Q: That sounds like you believe you were chosen.
Bono: No, no, no, I don't believe that. I do think God gets a laugh out of using some very poor materials. I volunteered is what I'm telling you."
--Bono in Q Magazine

Intentions Part 1

I went through a stage in my life where I would start an essay, get about halfway, then tuck the miserable bit of writing away in a folder on my computer to edit later (read: never to be looked at again until my biographers are forced to sift through it to get a clue to my complex thought life).

Recently I accidentally happened upon these writings and thought it might be fun to share them with you (in several installments), since you wouldn't be reading this blog anyway if you weren't obsessed with my every thought. I warn you, though, time has not been good to these essays (written two to three years ago); they are clunky and self-conscience, more so than I remember. But I guess my writing hasn't changed much beyond that, has it?

Maybe I will try to make something coherent out of these one day, but for now let's just air the dirty laundry and see what happens. First up, some rambling writ to do with art. Shocking, no?

The Artistic Element is an element as real as flame or water or dust.
The Artistic Element is a gift, given by God.
It is a means by which we may glorify our Creator, what better way to honor the Creator than through creativity?

On Storytelling
&
Overemphasis

What is it about the film that knocks you over the head with its sentiment that appeals to so many people? Is this sort of storytelling bad storytelling? Is it ever right to indulge in bad storytelling for the sake of the point you’re trying to make? Let’s examine Christ’s Storytelling (if anybody had a point to make it was him) I think that Christ’s parables should be the ultimate example to us in storytelling (by storytelling I mean not only novels and the like but also; paintings, ballet, rap-songs, film, Poetry... (the list goes on) in short anything that relates a story), so I think it best if we examine one of our Masters own stories for the answers to these questions (along the way let us see how Jesus makes known the point of his own artwork) incidentally you may be offended by my calling Christ’s parables “Art”, if so than you should know that we are probably working with different definitions of the word Art. Art is not something to be enjoyed by the sophisticated elite only, who happen to have enough money to get into those stuffy museums, rather it is entirely relevant (albeit incomplete) way to communicate truth

The person who separates what the intended effect of a song you hear on the radio (that is, God’s intent) from the intended effect of The Parables of Jesus, has missed the point of art; in this case art has become something what even the smallest schoolboy dreads with a dread that takes years of education and training to overcome: A Museum Piece. Storytelling is to recall a historical event, even if that event has not yet taken place
The fact that I took a shower this morning after getting out of bed, is supposedly a historical event. I will allow that it is historical, but is it real? I think that if you asked Solomon he would say “No of course not!, [edit] Don’t even think it!”
Odysseus’ journey home is more real to me than the historical event in question.
-vanity as history
-allegory less vain; it cuts through the manure spread across reality
-two sides, same cursed coin
-’Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable.’
A real live parable:
“A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop--a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. He who has ears, let him hear.”

Do you object to my usage of Parables as models of Art? So do I. In a way.

Installment Twenty Two...

"For our titanic purposes of faith and revolution, what we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening."

-G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

I Know That I Am Not the Salt of the Earth, But Ain't There No Way To Figure What My Intentions Are Worth?

Hey guys,

Today is Answer Email Day for me, and I have a little under thirty to respond to. I won't be getting to all of them today but I'm going to make a noble effort. I have some emails from as far back as my birthday that I haven't had time read yet, much less respond to. (I'm feeling super-bad about this, in case you're wondering.)

See you later. And remember, floss daily and don't listen to Christmas songs on the radio!

Love,

The Foolish Knight (I put the "The" in there to bug you, Queen Mum)

Post Script: The title of this post is from a Mark Heard song, who can guess which one?