There is so much good happening in the world of theology and the arts. At the end of each week, we’d like to share with you a few of the great things we’ve discovered this past week from around the internet.
New York Time media critic, David Carr, died this week. Carr was an insightful voice in a world increasingly dominated by media, no matter what medium that media was communicated through. One of his final articles, on the joint departures (though for very different reasons) from the media world of Brian Williams and Jon Stewart is well worth your time.
Oddly, Mr. Stewart will leave his desk as arguably the most trusted man in news. And Mr. Williams will find his way back to his desk only if he figures out a way to regain the trust he has squandered.
Maria Bowler, writing for Commonweal Magazine, goes deep, briefly on writer Marilyn Robinson’s dismissal of the categories in which we typically put, well, everything, a dismissal artiulated at a recent lecture Robinson gave at Yale’s Divinity School.
To briefly and inadequately summarize her point, what we separate as objective versus subjective, real and concrete versus “true”, science versus religion, are really one thing: reality. In fact, she began the lecture saying she wanted to “redefine reality” this way, and dusted off her hands like she was setting to work.
Hozier’s “Take Me to Church” is heating up the airwaves recently. In the video above, Russian ballet dancer Sergei Polunin performs to the song.
And if Polunin’s ballet stylings make you curious about the particularly healing power of dance, we’ve got the article for you: Jessica Lipps’ beautiful reflection on dance and recovery for Transpositions.
The five silent days praying about my vocation were grueling but also mysteriously glorious. Gratefully, a very clear encouragement arose: I was to “be” and to dance (among other things). I had known that I was a dancer since I was four even though I went on to train in karate for the next 17 years at the encouragement and sometimes mandate of my father who was also my coach. I knew how to train my muscles, but I didn’t know how to open my heart.
The inimitable Mockingbird featured this video from the similarly inimitable The Work of the People featuring Brene Brown talking aobut when Jesus wept.
Walter Brueggemann is coming to Fuller Seminary in May. In the mean time, listen to this long interview with Brueggemann on On Being with Krista Tippet from December of 2013.
The people we later recognize as prophets, says Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann, are also poets. They reframe what is at stake in chaotic times. Hear a very special voice in conversation to address our changing lives and the deepest meaning of hope this season.
Finally and mysteriously, the internet is full of cats. Most of them are inexplicable. This one helped Svetlana Petrova process her grief over losing her mother. Zarathustra, the cat, photobombed a lot of classic paintings, and the results were cathartic for Petrova and entertaining to us.