Jonathan Rogers tells a brief story about vision. “My father-in-law loves his native country; no wonder he planted longleaf. If they take forty years to grow to maturity–well, then, they take forty years. He is a man of imagination and hope.”

“Too often the movie takes the place of the book,” Dwight Longenecker writes, “and when this happens there is a curious change of direction and affection. The dynamic of interaction is totally different when viewing a film as opposed to reading a book.”

He says fantasy is best when it isn’t as materialized as it is in film. When a movie locks our minds into the way a story looks, sounds, and feels as it moves, then we coast with it instead of imagining it ourselves. That dulls our imagination, which is something we need.

“The imagination is the tool not only of creativity, but of worship. It is through the imagination that we meditate and dream and contemplate and pray.”

The Whitney Museum of American Art has a new building, and in connection with the 84th anniversary of the Empire State Building, interpretive lights displayed with the Empire State Building’s crowning LEDs gave New Yorkers something like a slow, quiet fireworks show. The lights intend to interpret twelve iconic works of art in The Whitney’s collection. Considering New Yorkers inability to sit through a single song, I wonder if many of them gave this show much notice.

And yet, I think the world belongs to things many New Yorkers don’t notice.

Filmmaker Franck gives us two and half minutes of beauty in this video of two boys in the French Alps. When you’re ready to take a break from your work, stand up, breath deeply a couple times, and watch this.

breathe from FKY on Vimeo.

More photos of the French Alps can be seen here.

Should two chimpanzees have rights as “persons” under U.S. law? Rod Dreher doesn’t think so, but he does recommend that should the chimps be freed from their human oppressors, they should apply to teach at an American university.

Alan Jacobs writes about Mark Greif’s chapter on Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation,” saying, “Greif has misunderstood this story about as badly as it is possible to misunderstand a story. And he misunderstands it because he simply doesn’t know the biblical and theological context.”

Ron Block explores unbelief in a George MacDonald novel, noting Chesterton’s observation, “The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.”

How Hegel’s concept of a universal mind, a spiritual evolutionary process, gave us postmodernism, deconstructionism, and political correctness.

Over time, Hegel’s pantheism was secularized and his Absolute Spirit was reduced to a metaphor — the spirit of the age, the Zeitgeist. (In German, Zeit means time or age; Geist means spirit.) What remained, however, was the idea that individuals are “unconscious tools” of the Zeitgeist. They are not producers of culture so much as products of a particular culture. Individuals are shaped by the communities they belong to, each with its own shared perspective, values, habits, language, and forms of life.

In our own day, this has led to the extreme conclusion that everyone’s ideas are merely social constructions stitched together by cultural forces. Individuals are little more than mouthpieces for communities based on race, class, gender, ethnicity, and sexual identity.

This comes from Nancy Pearcey’s Finding Truth: Five Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes.

Seven essential lessons from Thomas Oden, an evangelical scholar in a secular academy:

1. Contemporary scholarly methods do not always lead one to truth.
2. Many of the questions raised by modern scholars have been addressed (long) before in the history of Christianity.
3. The quest for originality and newness can be a dangerous one.
4. Scholarly views can have serious social consequences.
5. The modern scholarly community is not tolerant like people think.
6. A faithful voice can have a significant impact.
7. Modern Ideologies will eventually collapse under their own weight.

Jackie Robinson said, “Virtually every time the black stands up like a man to make a protest or tell a truth as he sees it…” Read the full quote through the link. I share this because I believe it, and as a white man, I don’t feel entirely free to share thoughts like this. The politics on this issue are too ugly and complicated to hold my confidence. I suppose this is fertile ground for humility.

MORE: Piper writes from his own experience on reasons white people don’t like to talk about race. One reason is some people’s habit of hamstringing the conversation by trying to kill honest words.