We still get to talk about the New Year until the end of January, right? Okay, good. In Art House America, Jessica Brown wrote about a prayer for the new year: Twelve years ago in the little gift shop of St. Mary’s church in Oxford, I found a tray of laminated prayer cards. Assuming “An Ancient Country Prayer” would be about sun and harvest, I was surprised and delighted to read the first line: Give me good digestion, Lord, and... Read more
Businesspeople, creatives, theologians, and others have long said that our imaginations are vitally important to showing us why, and how, we do the things we do. But what vision animates your imagination? For more on this, you can watch a short talk from Gabe Lyons of Q which asks an important question: what vision of the future influences you? In his talk, Gabe challenges Christians to help shape the cultural imagination. You can watch it here. Read more
It may seem frivolous, I suppose, but thinking about punctuation is one of those things that writers and teachers love to do. I spent a half hour in an upper-level college writing class recently explaining what difference it makes to a reader whether you use a comma, a colon, a semicolon, a dash, or some other form of punctuation in a sentence. I’m sure I looked crazy, running around, gesticulating wildly, but that’s what teachers do, I guess. Anyhow (ahem),... Read more
The whole issue of “wearable technology” has been around a long time, but it’s starting to become a hot topic with advancements like Google Glass and Fitbit. So over at The High Calling, Marcus Goodyear is asking, “Does it matter if people see technology before they see each other?” Forget about the big TVs. The new wearable technologies are cause for serious reflection. Let’s consider the two biggest moves into Wearable tech: Google Glass and smart watches. Darth Vader wore his... Read more
The Oscar nominations came out late last week, and there were plenty of reactions all over the internet from movie lovers, critics, and more. But in a move that surprised nearly everyone, the Academy nominated a song from the movie Alone Yet Not Alone for Best Original Song. The shocker for many was that the film—which didn’t get wide theatrical release—is a film made by and for evangelicals, and the title track is sung by Joni Eareckson Tada. You can read more... Read more
I had the privilege of hearing Jeanne Murray Walker read several times from her memoir-in-progress, The Geography of Memory, while I was a graduate student in the M.F.A. program at Seattle Pacific University (in which Walker is one of the poetry mentors). The book examines both family history and personal memory alongside the story of Walker’s caring for her mother, who has Alzheimer’s disease. And it’s beautifully written. Over at The High Calling, they’re reading The Geography of Memory together, and I... Read more
An interesting take on the millennial generation’s burgeoning interest in liturgical workshop over at The American Conservative: Yet all three say the high church has presented them with a sense of community they would not have experienced otherwise. For Gingerich, the seasons of feasting and fasting taught him to suffer and celebrate with the church in a way he had never experienced. “I was re-taught compassion,” he says. Cone’s Orthodox family now stretches from coast to coast and has supported... Read more
Over at Image’s Good Letters blog, Stuart Scadron-Wattles is reflecting on the value of curation in our info-saturated world: In other words, I get to read what I already have read. Amazon gets to sell me something, and—assuming I repeatedly click the right button, my reading life begins to resemble life in these American suburbs: safe, familiar, smooth roads, with pre-approved credit limits, brand names, and architecture to match. The Internet could do better than that. In fact, it already does,... Read more
Over at The High Calling, Karen Swallow Prior writes about transitions – in life, and in writing: The lack of proper connections is, I’ve been noticing lately, the root of all kinds of trouble. Weak or missing transitions account for the greatest problem in the writing of my advanced students. One paper in particular comes to mind. It deftly addressed heady philosophical ideas, each point brilliantly nuanced and skillfully applied to the material at hand. But these points were strung together like... Read more
Two of my friends from church (who are married to one another) have a website that I recently discovered, called Industry of One. In it, they explore different people’s personal style and work habits – two topics that interest me greatly. And it’s accompanied by terrific photography. Reading the website made me think of a few things: one, that each of us is so wonderfully unique and creative, and that we can celebrate that. Also, it seems like there’s some... Read more
Mark D. Roberts
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