All posts by Phil

Authors, Poetry

“Noel” by J.R.R. Tolkien

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Grim was the world and grey last night:
The moon and stars were fled,
The hall was dark without song or light,
The fires were fallen dead.
The wind in the trees was like to the sea,
And over the mountains’ teeth
It whistled bitter-cold and free,
As a sword leapt from its sheath.

This is the start of Tolkien’s Christmas poem, “Noel,” which was uncovered back in June 2013. The discovery of a copy of it in Our Lady’s School in Abingdon made a stir earlier this year. You can read the whole thing here.

Daniel Helen of the Tolkien Society explains what was found when.

Non-fiction, Religion

The Night You Were My Enemy

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Buried in this twenty-minute podcast of stories of Christian faith is a moving story of two soldiers and what the Lord did to spare their lives. One of the men was Ira Sankey, a singer who would go on to prepare spaces for Dwight L. Moody to preach.

Reading, Uncategorized

River of Books in the Street

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In Toronto, they throw books in the street and call it art to make a statement about congested traffic.

“We want literature to take over the streets and conquer public spaces, freely offering those passersby a traffic-free place which, for some hours, will succumb to the humble power of the written word.”

They laid down this artistic installation on one of the city’s busiest streets.

“Thus, a city area which is typically reserved for speed, pollution and noise, will become, for one night, a place for quietness, calm and coexistance illuminated by the vague, soft light coming out of the lighted pages.”

During the exhibit, people walked on the books, took pictures of themselves on the books, and took most of the books home with them. I don’t know whether Toronto’s traffic congestion has changed since receiving this smite from the humble word.

Music

Worshipping at The Voice

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I heard a local radio host recall his reaction to seeing part of The Voice (season 11, ep. 23) last night. He said the singer was leading worship with “To Worship I Live (Away),” written by Israel & New Breed. He noted the audience’s participation. He said judges were teary eyed.

Here’s how Amanda Bell of Entertainment Weekly described it. “There’ve been a lot of hymnal-style ballads to hit the stage this season, have there not? Christian Cuevas has made no secret about his allegiance to family and faith, and obviously, that spirit of purpose has served him well thus far — his performance last week caught the attention of Lady Gaga herself and the iTunes downloading community.”

For Cuevas to sing Christian praise music in a music competition venue is certainly a witness to his faith. I don’t wish to criticize his choices or motives, but for the radio host to suggest the audience and judges were worshipping the Lord along with him confuses emotion with worship simply because of the lyric being sung. Would he say the same about a masterfully performed Whitney Houston or Rihanna song that brought the audience to their feet? Of course not, and yet the response is the same. Here’s what Bell said when thinking through predictions for next week. “Christian Cuevas… took a big risk on a song that might get his own insides moving and grooving with the holy spirit, but was otherwise pretty unremarkable for those of us who aren’t familiar with the gospel he was singing in multiple languages.”

The Voice is a music show, and viewers will respond to strong performances.

As I remember the story, Jascha Heifetz and George Gershwin were talking about the pop music of their day, saying someone could write a perfectly scandalous song that should offend everyone who heard it (or maybe it was a ridiculous mess of a song, not scandalous), but if it had that emotional pull of the catchiest pop music, it would be a hit. Heifetz wrote the 1946 hit “When You Make Love to Me (Don’t Make Believe)” to prove it could be done.

Modern worship music easily fits this description. Familiar sounds and repeated words guide us through emotional patterns, which in church or Christianized settings we call ‘worship.’ That’s not what we mean by the word ‘worship,’ but let me suggest that’s actually what it is. When an audience is moved by Beyoncé or a cover artist, regardless of the song, they are worshipping. They may be revelling in the look and sound of the singer, the lyric of the song, or the tone and tension of the music. It doesn’t matter what focuses their adoration; it only matters that they are adoring in that moment.

So, yes, Cuevas’s performance did lead the audience in worship, but it was only worship of the living God for some. For most of them, it was the idolatry of music.

The Press

Don’t Read Newspapers

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In 1807, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to John Norvell:

To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, “by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.” Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it’s benefits, than is done by it’s abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables.

Did Jefferson go on to summarize his thoughts by saying, “If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed”? The Quote Investigator explains.

Non-fiction, Religion

Fred Sanders Can’t Dance the Flow

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In his review of Richard Rohr’s new book, Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation, Fred Sanders explains how it isn’t about the Trinity at all. It’s about the divine flow, a dance within the Godhead that ends up being more important than the Godhead.

The flow is a self-giving exchange of love and life. If you were to ask Rohr whether the flow is primarily something about God, the world, or the human person, he would no doubt answer with an enthusiastic “Yes!” and his twinkling Franciscan eyes would twinkle Franciscanly. The flow overflows the distinction between the Creator and the creature. It flows from God as God empties Godself; it circulates among creatures and binds them together with each other and the absolute; it flows back to God, enriching and delighting that Holy Source who loves to see finite spirits awaken to their true, divine selves. The flow sounds like a noun, but it’s really a verb. Flow verbs all nouns as they flow with its flowing.

That looks like some good verbal dancing on Sanders’ part, but it isn’t the flow. It’s more like keeping his footing solid while the room shakes, which makes for entertaining reading.

Fiction

Cartoon Movie Trend: Junior Knows Best

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Film critic Steven D. Greydanus talks about animated movies in light of Disney’s latest release, Moana. He points to many examples of children following their hearts or a variation thereof in defiance of their parents. “In each case, the child defies the ultimatum — and here’s the crucial bit: In the end, the child’s aspirations are vindicated, leading not only to a paternal change of heart, but to a revolutionary breakthrough in the social status quo.”

Back in 2010, Greydanus identified this trend and labeled it “Junior Knows Best.”

A common note in these stories is parental caution: concern for limits and boundaries which children must break through. The caution nearly always runs the same way; we don’t get stories of parents encouraging cautious children to face their fears. Nor (Cloudy With Meatballs aside) do we get stories in which parental cautions turn out to be warranted. The parents are always the cautious ones — and they’re always wrong.

Bookselling

Lessons in Opening a Bookstore

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Ms. Bagnulo said there were two major questions to consider when deciding where to open a bookstore: Which city neighborhoods are in need of one, and which can support one.

“It’s sort of joking, but the rule of thumb is, if the neighborhood can support a farmers market, the neighborhood can support a bookstore,” she said.

Jessica Bagnulo is one of the owners of two bookstores in Brooklyn, New York. They sold 500 books in their opening weekend.

Down in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, a local publisher is opening a speciality store with rotating literary and local-interest themes.

“Nothing in here is set in stone, and that’s why the community curation part of this is so vital,” Easty Lambert-Brown, who owns Borgo Publishing, said of her new store, Ernest & Hadley Booksellers. “If you can provide me a good, rounded set of people that had a major influence on how we think, let me have it! I’m not an expert in all this, and my goal is to learn something here. If I’m not learning from it, I’m just taking up space.”

Fiction

Richard Burton Reading Beginning of “Under Milk Wood”

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“What Laugharne really needs is a play about well-known Laugharne characters – and get them all to play themselves.”

So Dylan Thomas wrote Under Milk Wood to capture the Welsh voices of this Welsh town. You can hear the beginning of it in Richard Burton’s wonderful tones from BBC4. More about Under Milk Wood here.

Uncategorized

The ‘Backbone’ for Terror Is Broken

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Armando Valladares spent twenty-two years in Cuban prisons. Last year, Marvin Olasky interviewed him on his thoughts of Castro in the beginning and how he survived imprisonment.

What do you say to those who say, “The United States has had an embargo regarding Cuba for more than 50 years and it hasn’t worked?”The embargo was never intended to remove the government in Cuba. The embargo has worked because it has prevented the Cuban government from receiving millions of dollars from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and other banking institutions.

Now that the U.S. government and the pope embrace Raúl Castro, what do you think will happen?The only person who really inspires terror in Cuba is Fidel Castro, even if he’s agonizing in a bed. That’s how it was with Josef Stalin. Raúl Castro is alive because his backbone, Fidel, is alive. The day Fidel Castro dies will probably end the entire process.