I started running about a year and a half ago, more or less seriously (with some weather-induced breaks), and a little over a week ago I ran the New York City Half Marathon, my fifth race at that distance. It was very cold, and the course was challenging, and my time wasn’t quite as good as I’d hoped. But I was still proud to cross the finish line. I’ve written about running before from the perspective of learning to work... Read more
There’s a whole bunch of movies about doppelgangers (someone’s exact double) coming out in the next month or so. Over at The Atlantic, I wrote about that, and speculated on why this may be (hint–maybe the Internet has something to do with it): That mainlined update on everyone else’s life, I think, taps into the root of our newfound doppelgänger obsession and fear. Many of us are afraid that we’re simply not enough as we are—that we’re not cool enough, pretty... Read more
I wrote a little blog post over at Relief Journal‘s blog about the movie Her and how relationships make us mature: In the days since I saw the film the second time and noted how the film lingers, at the end, on a shot of Theodore and Amy, I’ve thought about whom, exactly, the titular Her is. Maybe it’s purposely left ambiguous. But it’s made me think about how if we’re doing it right, if we’re really living, we’re always growing up, our whole lives.... Read more
Two weeks ago, the news broke that the College Board is changing the SAT, the test that nearly every high school junior and senior takes (and that decades of high school graduates remember with either rueful fondness or PTSD). Over at The High Calling, Marcus Goodyear considers productivity tips gleaned from the switch: No one can tackle a mile of paperwork. No one can grade 1.4 million essays. And no one has to. As an AP reader, I didn’t even need... Read more
My friend Stephen started a review of Christian Wiman’s memoir My Bright Abyss a year ago, and finished it a few weeks ago. The result is a beautiful melding of the personal and the critical: On this trip to Kentucky, I’m staying in a small cottage overlooking the pond at the back of Bethany Springs (the Thomas Merton Retreat Center), rather than at the monastery itself. Partly because of something I felt with renewed force when I finished reading Merton’s memoir... Read more
I saw the Oscar-nominated film The Great Beauty a few weeks ago, and as I told some friends, I hated it halfway through and then loved it by the end. So I enjoyed this consideration of the film at The Curator: Athens and Jerusalem, the sacred and profane, discipline and dissipation—they impress us most when they are gold-plated. Some may resent that this film is about rich people, but I go to movies to enjoy them, and it’s more fun to watch... Read more
The answer may surprise you: “Although the bookstores are now crowded with alternative versions, and although several different translations are now widely used in church services and for preaching, the large presence of the KJV testifies to the extraordinary power of this one classic English text,” Noll commented in the IUPUI report. “It also raises most interesting questions about the role of religious and linguistic tradition in the makeup of contemporary American culture.” Here’s the whole piece at Christianity Today. Read more
Casey N. Cep recently wrote about Abbie Reese’s new book Dedicated to God: An Oral History of Cloistered Nuns at the New Yorker. The book contains essays and photographs about an order of nuns in the Corpus Christi Monastery of the Poor Clare Colettine in Rockford, Illinois: In a time when abstaining from social media for a few days passes for asceticism, the lives of poverty, chastity, obedience, and enclosure to which the Poor Clares make vows seem especially worthy of our... Read more
What will you remember of this chapter of your life? Over at Q Ideas, Micheal Hickerson recently asked that question after reading Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs: What if someone had asked Grant to write his memoirs in 1859? What would he have said about himself? A professional soldier with an undistinguished career, retired at 32, now trying to make it—and failing—at the simplest kinds of work. No one, especially not Grant himself, would have imagined that six years later, he would... Read more
Mark D. Roberts
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Sitting at the SXSW Table
Some of my friends from Fuller Theological Seminary were at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, and one of them – Nate Risdon of the Brehm Center – wrote at QIdeas about what they were doing there. The article includes some great considerations for those who are interested in engaging with culture in a meaningful way: In one of my early courses at Fuller, my professor asked us to read through the Gospel of Luke through a particular lens:... Read more