blip : Being Lonely In Paradise :

The man in black… Johnny Cash. I’m sure many saw that new film: Walk the Line. I loved it. What is striking about the filmakers is that they frame Cash’s story with Folsom Prison. At the beginning of the film, Johnny Cash is waiting in a back room listening to the prisoners stomp and clap [...]

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Via verbum ipsum I came across this word cloud generator and thought it was geeky and cool enough to warrant a post. My favorite part is the small “yeah” in the bottom middle. Who knew our Californian accent came through so strong? That “bush” was so big was a bit of a mystery at [...]

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Music has always been important to my friends and me. If nothing interesting was going on, we’d head to Zia Records and wander up and down the aisles of new and used CDs. Maybe someone would buy something, but not necessarily. It felt good just to look around and talk about music. Songs were part [...]

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As Rowan Williams writes in the preface, his latest book called Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another is “a modest contribution to the discovery of a church renewed in contemplation” (xi). But unlike many contemporary attempts at techniques for a flourishing spirituality, Williams doesn’t think he has anything necessarily new to offer. His [...]

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Here’s a great quote from Basil. The Christian life, for Basil, is a contemplative journey into the life of God poured out all around us through the gift of Christ. And this spiritual journey is an invitation into newness, into new life, the unceasing wonder of God’s continuous revelation:
“the person looking at the divine, invisible [...]

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My current class at Fuller seminary is The Religious and Cultural Environment of Early Christianity, taught by Prof. Scott Bartchy of UCLA. One of the points Bartchy has made numerous times is that Jesus defines God, not the other way around. Sounds rather banal at first, doesn’t it? I mean, what’s the [...]

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A friend of mine brought up an ethical question today that I’ve been mulling over. It’s a sensitive and tricky question and I feel like I’ve yet to arrive at an answer with which I’m fully comfortable. Here’s the situation:

A cousin of yours is getting married, and has asked you to attend her [...]

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Bono showed up for the National Prayer Breakfast this past week and preached to the president. You can read the full sermon at DATA. This guy is amazing. Nothing can stop him. Time Magazine asked a question on the front cover of their magazine a couple years ago: “Can Bono Save the World?” Maybe. He’s [...]

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A while ago I had a discussion with someone about Hauerwas and Stoutian criticisms (look here and here). Well, I’m reading Jeffrey Stout’s hot book on democracy again for a class on radical democracy, and found a quote that I don’t mind too much. I might even say that I dig it. Maybe it stuck [...]

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