Purewow for the week:
“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we’re uncool,” he said. So we mourned film’s coolest “uncool” person this week.
What it means when the Pope lands the cover of Rolling Stone Mag.
By now you’ve recognized our affinity for place and localized imagination. (Our name is House after all!) This brief article “How Place Fosters Art” invokes a similar spirit. We recall Annie Dillard: “Some unwonted, taught pride diverts us from our original intent, which is to explore the neighborhood, view the landscape, to discover at least where it is that we have been so startlingly set down, if we can’t learn why.”
We all sort of yawned and twitter-hated our way through this year’s superbowl, but the theological and political commentary around the event has sparked interest. Does God participate in the National Football League? What is “feel good jingoism?” and how does the NFL play into it?
The twitterverse was alight with controversy over Donald Miller’s confession (and follow-up confession blog) in which he stated he’s not a regular church attender. One commenter suggested that it’s a little like finding out your politician doesn’t vote. Regardless, we learn a lot from Don and think he’s a good and distinct voice in the kingdom.
Donald Miller can thank Bill Nye for distracting the chattering class with a #creationdebate this week. It’s estimated that over half a million people watched as Nye went (power)point to point against Ken Ham. There were several great conversations that stemmed from the debate, like this one from Jack Levison, Rachel Held Evans, and another by Terry Mattingly. Here Mattingly suggests that the overly-reductionist labels “creationist” and “evolution” are indicative of a less thoughtful and label-quick culture:
Which simplistic term commonly used in mainstream articles about these debates — “creationism” or “evolution” — is best used to describe this soon-to-be-official saint’s perspective on God, man and creation? Which label, as commonly used by way too many journalists, deserves to be stuck on the forehead of John Paul the Great?
If there is one thing that your GetReligionistas do not like, at all, it is the degree to which the mainstream press accepts the use of vague, simplistic labels . . .
As much as we enjoyed the creation debate(?), we were relieved that the folks over at MissioAlliance directed our attention to the New Creation.
Okay we’ve never been so cold, poetically speaking: “Cultivating a Mind of Winter”
Brain Pickings posted a great read on the psychology of trust. So this is us trusting you’ll enjoy it as much as we did.
Lastly, a moving story over at Good Letters this week about one women’s enduring song:
But partial deafness, like any brokenness, now seems like part of the human condition. As I have shared my struggles, I have grown closer to people. The erosion of my hearing—one version of the inevitable changes of every life journey—has made me tender.
For me, a surprising aspect of deafness has been its “interior music.” When I remove my hearing aids at bedtime and sit quietly, it often seems that I hear something, a two-toned hum. It is not the sound of my quiet house or the animals whose tracks I find in morning snow. Is it my own blood and breath? I do not know.
I was recently shocked to read that composer John Cage posited that there was no real silence. Cage thought that music was limitless, lasting after death. The Book of Silence notes the “music of the spheres,” the low hum of the universe.
Whatever it is, I hear something.