blip : Beefcake Living In a Poof :

I haven’t seen the movie, but I read the Pullman trilogy 4 or 5 years ago. They took me into another world—or, I should say, worlds. Absolutely creative. I’m usually not one who reads science fiction or children’s literature. But Philip Pullman’s books were addicting; I read one right after another: Northern Lights (also called [...]

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Up until a few years ago I was not a big fan of movies.  Not because I thought they were bad, but I just didn’t see why the two hours wouldn’t be better spent reading a book, and not because I am some great literary aficionado, but because I saw books as being more meaningful.  [...]

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The world cup came to a shocking finish on Sunday. I am sure this is old news to most everyone out there. The shock didn’t come from some electrifying, game-winning goal in the last minutes of the match. Rather, the global audience of the final game could not believe their eyes when this World Cup’s [...]

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This week is wedding planning week for me. That means I can’t take to time for some substantive engagements with all the interesting stuff on the web these days. Instead, here’s a couple links to some great reads.

First, check out Eric Lee’s piece on Stanley Hauerwas. Eric gives us a great window into Hauerwas’ political [...]

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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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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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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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I started receiving Christianity Today (CT) this past October. There was a free trial offer and I thought it might be a good idea to swim in that evangelical world for a bit. For me, the most helpful thing about the magazine is that it gives a window into Evangelical America. I mean, where [...]

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In my previous post I defended Harry Potter as a book Christians can read despite the plethora of witches, wizards, and other magical creatures it contains. In this post I want to put forth some of the benefits of reading fantasy books, specifically Harry Potter. In other words, I want to suggest why Harry Potter [...]

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Sojourners has a good op-ed piece on the roots of the recent bombings in London which navigates a middle ground between the liberal explanation (that it’s due to social forces, such as poverty) and the conservative explanation (that Islam is an inherently violent religion) with this explanation:
I suggest that the misguided young men responsible for [...]

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