(Artist’s conception)
Congratulations are due to our friend Roy Jacobsen, of Writing Clear and Simple, who got a place on Universitiesandcolleges.org’s “Top 100 Blogs to Improve Your Writing” list.
The rest of the list is worth checking out, too.
Category Archives: Blogs, Socials
The Culture Alliance
The Culture Alliance can be found here.
The Culture Alliance is based on the awareness that social reform and cultural renewal cannot be achieved through politics alone. Politics rules, but culture shapes politics. People’s basic assumptions come from cultural institutions—the education system, entertainment outlets, the art world, and media—currently dominated by those on the ideological Left. People who embrace classical liberal ideas have largely abdicated these institutions, thus those ideas cannot penetrate the public’s basic assumptions.
TCA has been founded to address this crucial need. Certainly, there are numerous fine organizations attempting to influence culture, but they are a separate and dispersed lot. Our objective is bring people who understand and appreciate the nation’s founding values into the cultural influence professions and create a grand narrative of cultural renewal, to make a case for the development of a Culture of Liberty in the United States today. The Culture Alliance is designed to build synergy and connection among groups and individuals, resulting in an impact, through cooperation and outreach, which is greater than the sum of its parts.
You can sign up for their Weekly Update, which includes what they call Fiction Friday. Rumor has it that a certain good-looking author of Viking fantasies will be featured this week.
Shout Out
Here’s a shout out to Meg Moseley, a writer, blogger, and reader of Brandywine Books. Thanks for stopping by, Meg. I need to read more of those great books too.
The New Conversational
Conversational Reading is now at conversationalreading.com. Accept no imitations.
Rachel Motte reviews Introverts in the Church
Over at Evangelical Outpost, Rachel Motte reviews a book called Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture. Looks fascinating, and (in my humble opinion) it’s long overdue.
I probably don’t need to mention that this is an issue of considerable interest to me (though to call myself an introvert is a gross understatement). I’ve heard of churches where every single member is required, as a condition of membership, to do house-to-house visitation. It seems to me that that kind of one-size-fits-all Christianity is entirely false to the true nature of the church. As the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:14-20, “Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body…. But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.”
A church, as I understand it, isn’t meant to look at its membership and say, “Where can we find people to do this and this and this?” It shouldn’t try to shoehorn members into pre-defined roles. Instead, the leadership ought to understand that God has already given them the parts He intends, for the sort of ministry He has in mind. They should get to know their fellow members, and prayerfully try to set each one to work doing what God has gifted him (or her) to do.
That’s not to say that a certain amount of personal growth isn’t necessary, or that people can’t learn to do things they’ve never thought of before. But I think many churches are in the position of the man who looks at himself in a mirror, decides he’s too short, and resolutely sets about finding a way to be taller. God (one assumes) made him the height he is for a reason.
As I mention in my comment to Rachel’s review, I attended a church years back (in Florida) whose pastor was also an introvert. He preached extremely well, and many people came to listen to him. But he himself admitted that he was poor at the one-on-one aspects of the ministry. He was blessed with an understanding board of elders, who were willing to back him up by finding others, both assistant pastors and laity, to take much of that burden off him. That church was dynamic and growing, one of the most exciting churches I’ve ever been involved in.
Blogging through The Silmarillion
The Silver Key is blogging his thoughts while reading The Silmarillion. I see that he has blogged through a reread of The Lord of the Rings too. (via Books, Inq.)
Some links for your Christmas stocking
First of all, our friend Roy Jacobsen of Writing, Clear and Simple discusses the all-important matter of “crappy first drafts.” I’ve said this before myself, but Roy marshals the awesome authority of Ernest Hemingway in support. And he’s even got an official “Crappy First Draft License” in .pdf format, which you can print out to post in your writing space. (link removed)
I found this fascinating post by Christine at Mirabilis. She links to an article from The New Scientist which proposes what looks to me like a very strong argument as to what the “real meaning” of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is. It all goes back to the author’s being a mathematician. Although I’m hopeless with numbers, the gist of the thing makes sense as far as I can tell. (link removed)
And finally, from the redoubtable Dr. Gene Edward Veith at Cranach, a link to an article from the Biblical Archaeology Review, giving further support to an argument we’ve noted here before–that there’s actually not a lot of evidence for the oft-repeated claim that “Christians celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th just because they took the holiday over from Roman pagans.” Share this with that irritating guy in your church who tells you you’re going to hell because you have a Christmas tree. (link updated)
10 Blogging Mistakes
Michael Hyatt writes about mistakes many people make on their blogs, like posting too much or too little, poor headlines, bad first paragraphs, and other stuff.
He also links to a free e-book called What Matters Now by Seth Godin and several others.
Picasso’s violations
I don’t know why I write about art occasionally. I’m a confirmed middlebrow–if I don’t care for black velvet matadors or Thomas Kinkade, I don’t get Modernism or Abstract Art at all. But I liked to draw when I was a kid. I guess that gives me an illusory sense of comprehension.
Anyway, Joe Carter at First Thoughts posted a short piece on Picasso today that fascinated me, as it confirmed my prejudices.
What begins in the glow of realist love—or at the very least infatuation—ends in the violent disgust of Cubist distortion. Picasso’s love/hate relationship with the visible world was a visual expression of his love/hate relationship with the particular woman in his life at the time. Cubism, according to the evidence in Picasso’s paintings, is less the abstract juggling of shapes and colors than an index of sexual disgust.
Makes sense to me. See what you think.
Meditation on art, by a philistine
Our friend S. D. Smith, over at his blog, meditates profoundly (I think) on the question of limits in art. I agree with him entirely.
In fact, if I had to define art, I think my definition would be something like this— “Art is an endeavor in which an artisan uses some physical medium with sufficient skill that the medium seems to disappear, and something greater than the medium is communicated.” Art is a synergy between artist, material and audience.
That’s what so many modern artists don’t seem to understand. They’ve accepted a subjective definition of art, one that says that art is all about the artist’s subjective feelings and his expression of them—in any form whatever. There are no absolute values. Hang a urinal on a wall? What right do you (philistine that you are) to say it’s not art? Compose a concerto that consists of a period of total silence? It expresses my feelings in ways that you peasants will never comprehend, so it’s art. Lapdancing? If you don’t understand it, don’t judge it.
The true artist struggles with his medium, entering into it intimately, so that he can make it do things nobody ever thought it could. A painting that looks like a photograph—or like a dream. A sculpture that looks like a living being—only the way living beings ought to be, not the way they are in our experience A song that reaches into the listener’s soul and brings up his deepest aspirations and sorrows, so that he weeps just as if he’d just lost—or gained–the love of his life.
Lewis and Tolkien called it “subcreation.” They could call it that because they believed in a Creator. Today’s artists, by and large, don’t believe in a Creator; they believe in accidents. So all they can do is try to re-create accidents.
They do believe in one absolute, universally applicable, value, though—that the public is obligated to pay for their art.