All posts by Phil

Religion

Your Other Brothers

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“When I started to realize that I was attracted to Yoko as more than just a friend, I freaked out. Seriously.”

This is how Kevin Frye begins his frank story of the first year or two of his marriage on a new website focused on helping and connecting Christians who resist the pull into same-sex attraction. The founders of Your Other Brothers say:

Beyond our fellow same-sex attracted believers, we also share our stories for our heterosexual brothers and sisters. We are here to say that this “issue” of homosexuality exists as people here in your midst, and like anyone else in your pews, we are yearning to be heard, known, and loved.

We never chose our sexuality, but we aren’t content to pursue it either. We are locking arms with each other in the belief that our Father has something better intended for His children.

Frye’s story is a hopeful one, but not one that spells out how all of the pain is behind him. It’s the kind of raw testimony I hope every church family has provided a place for, stories of current addiction, recent failure, and dimming hope for recovery. In present-day America, this feels radical, but our society has been sex-crazed for years now. We can’t wish away ugly subjects like pervasive racism, the idolatry of wealth, and homosexuality. We must face them in the beautiful light of the gospel.

Religion

If My People… Will Humble Themselves

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I have often chafed at appeals to 2 Chronicles 7:14 for American health, but I have wanted to believe them too.

The context is Solomon’s dedication of the temple. The Lord comes to him at night, saying, “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:13-14).

Many Evangelical voices tell us that if we, the church, will humble ourselves and pray, then our Lord will heal, bless, rebuke, correct the American people, but as Dr. Moore explains, interpretation like that is corrupt.

When God said to [the original readers], “If my people who are called by name,” he was specifically pointing them back to the covenant that he made with their forefather Abraham. At a specific point in their history, God had told Abraham about his descendants, saying “I will be their God” and “They will be my people.” That’s what “My people” means. God reminded a people who had been exiled, enslaved, and defeated that a rebuilt temple or a displaced nation cannot change who they were. They were God’s people, and would see the future God has for them.

We can’t blur the line on who God is talking about here and attempt to claim divine blessing that isn’t offered. The straightest line to draw from this verse to us will not lead to America, but to Christ.

Fiction

Seeking but Never Leaving Home in the South

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Alabama Sunset

“When I taught English classes at a university in the Midwest,” Sarah Domet writes, “I often turned to William Faulkner’s Absalom! Absalom! as a representative sample of a ‘Southern’ book. . . . At the heart of the novel stands a character who both transcends and is forever bound by his roots.”

Interestingly, I have never taught Absalom! Absalom! in any Southern classroom. Perhaps this is due to my fear of being outed as an outsider myself, my fear of being seen as the dreaded Yankee stereotype who instructs Southerners on the ways of the world. Yet, as I was recently re-reading this great Southern novel, something struck me: My desires to belong to a new region—my anxieties of place, too—are all very Southern, at least in a literary sense. In my fear of not being Southern enough I was playing out the very themes of Southern fiction. Time and time again Southern writers confront the conflicting notions of what it means to live in the South, be of the South, find a home in a place with a complicated history. Time and time again Southern writers have reminded me that misfits and outsiders alike all have a shot at redemption. It is Flannery O’Connor herself who famously notes, “Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.”

Non-fiction

Growing Up with the Cubs

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The most challenging thing about suddenly taking in a 10-year-old who doesn’t start school for three weeks is figuring out what to actually do with them on a day to day basis. There are a lot of hours in a day, and every one of those hours needs filling. It is hard to whip up a busy routine from scratch, and it is doubly important to do so when that 10-year-old has just gone through what is likely the most traumatic thing she will ever endure.

One immediately fun activity involved the Cubs. I found a sports bar that would turn the Cubs games on while we were there, so we began going out to eat chicken fingers and watch the Cubs games. Early on, this meant weekends or the odd afternoon game so she could watch the whole thing. But even that changed, and the baseball became less important.

. . .  Baseball season ended, but Thursday night chicken fingers did not.

Uncategorized

The Struggling Farmer

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“This story is important to me because people in America aren’t aware that black farmers are still around,” Mr. Santiago said. “People don’t know what their struggles are and that they are still being discriminated against. For the most part, whether they are black or white, the farmers get pushed down and end up having to sell their properties because they can’t get loans. Small farms are denied because they don’t usually have any collateral to get a loan. Through my research I’ve learned if you’re looking for stolen black land, all you have to do is follow the lynching trail. That’s how it started to happen. Black farmers were killed for their land.”

Uncategorized

Atlas Obscura, Good for What Bores You

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Your guide to “the world’s wondrous and curious places” now has everything on one map, “the definitive map of the world’s extraordinary sights.” Atlas Obscura invites you to at least consider planning a trip to the Royal and Ancient Polar Society in Hammerfest, Norway, not too far from the Sorrisniva Igloo Hotel, which is made of ice. If you like cute animals, perhaps you’ll like Japan’s Cat Island or Zao Fox Village, both near Sendai. But if obscurity is really what pops your doldrums, check out the Paul A. Johnson Pencil Sharpener Museum of Logan, Ohio or the Spam Museum of Austin, Minnesota.

Authors

Seeing With Rather Than Through the Eye

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Flannery O’Connor’s desire to help us see.

Critic and editor Christopher Ricks suggests that this process is actually a good litmus test for determining the literary quality of a sentence, image, or phrase: if the words come to you, unbidden, as you are driving down the road or drinking a glass of water, then the writer has succeeded. Personally, after reading Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” I cannot look at a bare tree on a bright winter day and not admire the play of light through branches: “The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled.” So, too, Saul Bellow’s description of a water glass in his novel Seize the Day is now firmly etched in my mind, and I find it true of even bottled water when the sun hits just right: “And a glass of water is only an ornament; it makes a hoop of brightness on the cloth; it is an angel’s mouth.”

“To believe nothing,” she says, “is to see nothing.” (via Prufrock News)

Fiction

Bulletproof Luke Cage in 2016

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The Luke Cage stories of 1972 Marvel comics are not what you see in the new Netflix series. The new writers deliver a more mature story than their source material, Sam Knowles says, in many ways.

One clear improvement is apparent to anyone who happens to see cover art from the old comics. Luke was known as a ‘hero for hire.’ He used his abilities as a way to earn a living, which in the real world makes some sense, but what other superhero does this? The mercenaries are usually the bad guys. The good guys are heroes for the sake of justice. Knowles states,

Luke’s identity as a self-proclaimed ‘hero for hire’ sets him up in opposition to white superheroes, whose racial privilege enables the narrative of ‘superhero-ness’ to be about altruism. As a result, others look down on Luke’s attitude–most obviously Dr Noah Burstein [the scientist who gave Luke his power]: “I’ve heard how you’ve helped neighborhood merchants against Syndicate protection men. For a fee / Bit disillusioning from a so-called hero, isn’t it?”

http://www.aaihs.org/luke-cage-and-the-evolution-of-the-superhero-narrative/?utm_content=buffer8e65f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

The Netflix story explicitly drops this idea early on. In the beginning, Luke doesn’t want to get involved at all. His father figure, ‘Pop’ Hunter, urges him to use his gifts to help others and later suggests he hire himself out, but Luke refuses. Though he struggles with whether his efforts to help amount to kicking the criminal hornets’ nest, he continues to help those he can because it’s the right thing to do. He loves the people of Harlem.  Continue reading Bulletproof Luke Cage in 2016 →

Music

Romanian Choral, Folk Music

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If Halloween turns your thoughts to Dracula’s Transylvania, then I have a bit of a remedy for you. This is a recording of part of the Suită Corală din Ţara Oaşului by twentieth century Romanian composer Dariu Pop. This may be only one of the folk songs in the original suite of songs, but both sound and visuals are wonderful.