“[Michael] Horton shows how the Christian meganarrative is a ‘counterdrama’ to all of the meganarratives and metanarratives of this passing age,” blogs Justin Taylor.
Publishers Sue Family Christian Stories Over Inventory
Family Christian Stores (FCS) is filing bankruptcy with the desire to claim several million dollars worth of inventory that they haven’t purchased. Publishers, who consigned that inventory to FCS, is suing to have their merchandise returned or purchased.
“As the nation’s largest retailer of Christian books and gift items with 266 stores in 36 states, Family Christian said it needed to restructure its debt in the face of sales that had fallen from $305 million in 2008 to $230 million in 2014,” reports Jim Harger.
Do Christians Have to Be Radical, Missional?
Anthony Bradley has written many articles on the labels that are popular among many in the church today, saying they can be problematic. Communities that push themselves to be “radical,” “missional,” or “organic” may set themselves up for an alternative legalism that measures other believers by their activity instead of looking to our hope in Christ.
“To be fair,” he writes, “the impulse that formed these tribes comes from a good place. They are all seeking to be faithful to what the Scriptures teach and are reacting to real problems that exist in the life of God’s people. The problem is that tribalism can cultivate a debilitating sense of shame and feelings of unworthiness that discourages God’s people from enjoying simple norms expressed in the dynamism of the ordinary.”
He goes on to give seven points of garden-variety Christianity that will change the world. “The good life, then, the one that God has always used in his redemptive mission, is the one that brings glory to God by loving him and loving neighbor.”
The Kellys by Mick Moloney
Here’s a fun song about how there are too many Irishmen in the world. I first heard this on a cassette many years ago. For our younger readers, a cassette was like a hard drive made from black tape, which was held in a tape deck that would play non-digital audio that sounded way better than anything we have today. It was as if you were in the room with the musicians.
Anne Overstreet on Not Becoming a Writer
Poet Anne M. Doe Overstreet describes thinking about when she became a writer.
I come from a family that read hungrily and constantly; there was music—banjo to clarinet to piano—and hikes beside copper-colored ponds, beneath the huff and shrug of spruce at places like Peaks of Otter, reciting the names of deciduous trees. In between, stillness, time to reflect. And within that, Walter Farley’s novels and Webster’s Dictionary, the 1970 edition, I Capture the Castle and World Book Encyclopedia, which opened up the universe and made me hungry to understand why a Tennessee Walking Horse was what it was. But I cannot tease it apart, say, here I begin, here I turn my face toward a different tree line, moving from reader and listener to writer. It doesn’t begin. It doesn’t end.
I attended a reading of her poetry many months ago. I loved the sound of her words. You can read them for free through Noisetrade now, though leaving a tip would be kind. She’s a poet who rewards her audience with beautiful mystery and perhaps inspiration.
Talking the Lewis Space Trilogy
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry read C.S. Lewis’ The Allegory of Love and became enamored with the author’s style, which he says is a dangerous thing. So he picked up Out of the Silent Planet and loved it. The other two books? Perelandra, “the most disappointing of the three” and That Hideous Strength, “clearly the strangest.”
“The overall impression is that Lewis’s heart was never into science-fiction. He decided to get into it for some reason–maybe he perceived the same lack as I did, maybe he wanted a challenge, maybe he lost a bet–and poured all his ideas and energy into the first book . . .”
Will Duquette took a different approach. “Lewis was writing at a time when little was known about Mars and the other planets, and one could still reasonably write about Martians; and it was also a time when it was assumed in much of science fiction that mankind would conquer the stars and would bring a Wellsian secular humanism with them. His great question was, is that really the right thing for us to do? To export our wars and politics and brokenness to the heavens? This theme appears in Out of the Silent Planet, but receives its full treatment in Perelandra.”
The Myth of Creativity
In Kevin Ashton’s new book, How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery, Ashton predicts the demise of the word “creativity.” It’s a relatively new word intended to describe the process of a genius’ insight, as described in these words created for Mozart’s mouth:
“When I am, as it were, completely myself, and of good cheer, my ideas flow best and most abundantly. My subject stands almost complete in my mind. When I write down my ideas everything is already finished; and it rarely differs from what was in my imagination.”
Ashton says Otto Jahn, a Mozart biographer, told us those words were fabricated back in 1856, but people still use them to illustrate “creativity” because, he says, they have little else to go on. Studies that claim to show the spontaneous insight they call creativity cannot be validated, and other studies demonstrate “ordinary thinking” leads to creative results for most, if not all, people.
This appears to follow the pattern Malcolm Gladwell describes in his book David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. He describes how top-percentile students perform at Ivy League schools and second-tier schools. The key to lasting success after college appears to be excelling within your class, not the relative prestige of that class. Students in the top 10 percent of a second-tier university tend to outperform most students in the upper 20 percent of an Ivy League school (I’m pulling those stats off the top of my head, so I may be off a bit). You might think a large percentage of the Ivy League students would outperform all of the students in “lesser” schools, because of the supposed superiority of Ivy League education, but that doesn’t bear out in life.
The moral of the story, Ashton writes, is to see the truth in Newton’s famous statement, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants,” by recognizing “he was standing on others’ shoulders by quoting George Herbert, who was quoting Robert Burton, who was quoting Diego de Estella, who was quoting John of Salisbury, who was quoting Bernard of Chartres.”
My Writing and Editing Continues at a Steady Pace
A year ago I announced my transition into freelance writing and editing, and I remain thankful for the opportunities the Lord has given me. I’ve had a year’s worth of strong, interesting challenges, mostly in the area of writing small group studies for various churches. Those opportunities have come through the good people of Docent Research Group, who have been serving pastors and ministry leaders for many years. I couldn’t ask for a better team.
The Lord has also given me projects through Christian Editing Services, a network of professionals who can take a writer’s manuscript from rough draft to published in a timely manner. Their service listing is comprehensive, from academic editing to writing website copy, illustration to book trailers. I always look forward to receiving a new message from my CES editor in chief.
Last year, I mentioned my connections to a couple websites. I have much less of a connection with them now, but I guess I haven’t ruled them out completely. My largest project from the year came to me through independent channels. I was asked to edit a pastor’s devotional commentary and help usher it through publishing channels. That book is being published this month through Lulu.com. I’ll link to it when the sale page is up. Do join me in prayer that it finds a healthy readership.
Maybe I have something deep broken in me, because I feel both called to this work and completely inadequate for it. Even writing this simple post, I ask myself what I think I have to say and criticize every word I type. But pushing those thoughts aside, I enjoy putting words together and helping writers reach readers. I intend to do more of it over the coming year, if the Lord provides the work. More than ever before, I rely on our Lord for wisdom and daily bread. He has been generous with me, for which I am deeply thankful.
Poe as Odin
Edgar Poe looks Odinesque in this cover, don’t you think?
Book Covers: Allan Poe's "The Raven" (by Emmanuel Polanco) and George Orwell's "1984". pic.twitter.com/ZcW7G2N652
— ✍ Bibliophilia (@Libroantiguo) March 6, 2015
How ‘Person of Interest’ Is Dying
“What do Person of Interest and Eddy/MacDonald have in common?” asks John Mark Reynolds. “They are the Scylla and Charybdis of making art, building a business, or running a church: never forget what got you there, but never become stale or trapped by what got you there. Without a vision the art or the project perish, but being held hostage to a stale vision can be just as bad.” (via Lars on Facebook)