Last week Amazon Prime dropped one final trailer for The Rings of Power. Hard to believe I haven’t posted it yet.
And, of course, a trailer-watching experience isn’t complete without a nice “breakdown” from the Nerd of the Rings. Glad he’s thinking that one character isn’t Saruman. I’d like to hope that, too.
For me, Laity Lodge is like an airlock between different environments and periods of time.
My first trip to the Lodge (you can see a picture of it from across the Frio River in the photostream to the right) back in 2018 was amazing beyond imagining. The two speakers (Jamie Smith and Alan Jacobs) were teachers who had seriously informed my thoughts on teaching Christianly. The place had some mystique because I had only heard and read about it. And it was everything I could have hoped for a more.
When I returned in the summer of 2022, I was exhausted and ready to put a particularly demanding time of work and church behind me. A couple of good things came from the retreat: I read Adam Neder’s Theology as a Way of Life and also found myself listening more to the music of Jill Phillips, who I’d been listening two for almost two decades but whose most recent album I hadn’t spent much time with. Some good rest and healing came from that trip to the Lodge.
This summer I returned on more time because Adam Neder (see the previous paragraph) was going to be one of the speakers and the topic was friendship, something I care a lot about. Alas, Neder couldn’t make the retreat because of health issues, but that was okay because the Lodge itself is a blessing (as are the staff and the attendees). Like the second trip, the third visit was a time to put a window of time to rest, to make an intentional release of things I had been trying to understand and make peace with. (You can read more about that here.)
Laity has been like an airlock between two vastly different spaceships for me. Twice not is has been a place for reflection and rest that can be difficult to find in any other (often busy) Christian setting. It’s nice to catch a breath, and to be at a place designed to help with just that. The staff at the Lodge have perfected hospitality and the joy of presence, which is a rare gift.
The weekend’s worship was led by Taylor Leonhardt, who often sings with Mission House. On the last evening, everyone walked down to the Cody Center for a concert, which was great because Taylor is a great storyteller and a great songwriter. Here’s a clip of one of the songs she sang that night (though the video clip is from a concert at The Local Show).
I’m not sure when I’ll get back to the Lodge, though I go there often in my thoughts. I’m grateful for the time I’ve gotten to spend there, to walk and pray and sing and talk to others. Not a perfect place mind you. But definitely a great place for a stop along the journey, a great airlock between different worlds.
We’re well into the new school year, and it’s been some time since I posted anything particularly personal/reflective. That’s not for a lack of reflection, mind you. The absence has been from finding the right place to write from.
The summer went really well. Just was spent on-island. Besides a few hiccups in power and infrastructure, those days were wonderfully consistent. My 9 days in Tennessee went well: a good time with family and friends that had a good, helpful flow (and it helped that the weather stayed nice). My time in Texas went well: one night in Kerrville and then three nights at Laity Lodge. Once again, the weather was great . . . for summer in Texas. I ended up staying an extra night in Austin because of flight issues, so that Sunday evening felt a bit like a Douglas Coupland novel about to be written: nondescript hotel near an airport with some DoorDashed Sonic and some Ted Lasso reruns. When I got back, the neighborhood was quiet . . . by my second evening back almost everyone on the lane was traveling. But there was some socializing along with an attempt to return to routine that was nice. And then, just like that, school was back on.
I’m not sure what twenty-two years at a job is supposed to feel like. Every year is a little different, which is true for this year as much as any other. Classes have gone well: this week is our first set of tests, which is always something of a landmark in the semester. And the administrative side of things has been mostly fine, too. I did spend a chunk of Friday’s holiday in the classroom getting ready for the week ahead, though. It’s the kind of thing that pays off in the long run.
This last weekend itself was pleasantly productive. All the pieces of the regular routine plus some much-needed yard work as well as a chance to catch Alien: Romulus with a friend. The Friday-time in the classroom definitely took off some of the pressure, which was nice. Church was fine, consistent in its own way. And then this morning was back to a five-day week routine.
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All of that to say that getting back into the swing of things hasn’t been too easy. In fact, there have been a few frustrating moments. Part of that is the rush of things, of things going from zero to sixty in a moment because that’s how vacations come to an end. Some of that you can contain, can prepare for. But there’s always a good bit that is beyond your ability to predict and prepare for. But I did come to a realization of sorts:
Sometimes forgetting is the only way forward.
Too often systems aren’t dynamic enough to absorb certain kinds of wisdom or learning or change, and so you either snap back or you snap off. You all but force yourself to forget what you’ve learned in order to survive, to sync back up with the flow of things. I don’t recommend this, of course, and I definitely don’t believe it should be necessary. But sometimes it feels that way. We shouldn’t have to forget in order to move forward.
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Here’s my favorite song from the summer. It’s from Mission House’s live album. They definitely have a style that I like, though I’m not sure it is reproducible in most churches.
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I’ve got a list of things to try and write about this week. Some thoughts on Laity Lodge, some reflections on ideas from Seth Godin, and, of course, some reflections on The Rings of Power before next week’s premiere. Maybe a few other things will pop up, too.
. . . and we’re just living in it.
The season two premiere of The Rings of Power is about two weeks away. To whet the appetites of viewers, Amazon and composer Bear McCreary have released to musical track for Tom Bombadil, a character Tolkien fans have wanted to see in movies and television for a while. Check it out.
Bombadil also got a good mention in this recent post by Matt Webb, where he writes about how some fictional characters both break and complete their imaginary worlds. Webb also mentions one chapter of The Wind in the Willows- one of two chapters in that book that were so beautiful they were heartbreaking.
The jury is still out on the finished product of Prime’s Bombadil. Here’s hoping he fits into the story well and isn’t just glorified fan-fiction.
Just got back from opening night of M Night Shyamalan’s newest movie, Trap. So it’s a good time to write out some basic principles that guide my Shyamalan viewing.
So what about Trap? It’s difficult to say anything at all without giving something away. I will say that, as always, there are some wonderfully human moments. And there’s some real tension, some real escalation in the story. But once again: see principle #3 above.
I suppose it’s possible to classify Shyamalan movies on how big of a swing he ultimately takes, mostly when it comes to a kind of social or genre commentary. That would make Trap a mid-level swing: some nice social commentary moments with good stakes but not on the same level as, say, Signs. But then that doesn’t seem totally fair. The acting is solid (and surprising, as there were people in the cast that I didn’t know were in the movie until the opening credits- definitely a pleasant surprise). In some key ways, spoiler here, the movie is a lot like Split, particularly in one key moment of dialogue by the movie’s main character. (Speaking of Signs, tomorrow is the day of the year where I show a favorite clip to my students- it’s a great worldview moment that I like to share).
Trap is a good addition to Shyamalan’s filmography. There are a couple of things that set it apart from his other more down-to-earth movies. It might not be the kind of movie you watch over and over again, but it’s definitely a movie worth seeing once, for sitting back and watching unfold. And, as always, to enjoy watching a storyteller do what he loves.
Paramount Plus gave us a nice preview of the still-too-far-off third season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds at Comic-Con. It’s a fun showcase of relational dynamics, which is something the show excels at. True, the clip spoils the season two cliffhanger, but it’s also nice to see the lighter side of things.
We’re one month away from the release of the second season of The Rings of Power at Amazon Prime. Prime released a full trailer this past weekend at San Diego Comic-Con that gives a way a good bit more than the previously-released teaser. Biggest case-in-point: the Ent-wives. Check it out:
The hope is that the slightly-frustrating first season was more of a prologue/stage-setting season that zigged and zagged so that the second season could fly. Time will tell. In the meanwhile, though, here’s the Nerd of the Rings breakdown of the trailer.
At the end of my reflections on Radner’s Mortal Goods, I mentioned that I was pleased that Benedict of Nursia was brought up as an example for faithful living. Erik Varden recently posted a reflection on Benedict’s life. Here’s my favorite part:
St Benedict was an indefatigable builder and a fruitful father. Yet he knew that mere enterprise is short-lived. Not all that long after settling on Monte Cassino, he saw in a vision that the monastery would be destroyed after his death. This did not keep him from labouring on, for he knew that the community’s life would survive the destruction of its walls. Where Christ is present indeed, where lives are utterly given in union with his, death has lost its sting. Eternity is already present. I sometimes worry that the Church in our time has lost faith in this fundamental truth, so seeks to justify herself to herself by espousing a range of subsidiary causes, fine in themselves, but transitory. For prophecies will pass, and tongues, and knowledge, and rallies. Love only remains. Being its own end, love will not let itself be instrumentalised. Our beneficial contribution to our weird times will be in proportion to our surrender, in Christ, to love.
Reflections on Mortal Goods by Ephraim Radner, Part Seven
I find two things particularly encouraging as Radner brings the first major section of Mortal Goods to a close. He has already laid the groundwork for a conversation about “Christian politics” by reminding us that life is rooted in what God gives us, lives of sojourning and beauty in every respect (even in the difficult and chaotic). His last turn, then, is about the “incompleteness” of a life. That “incompleteness” partially manifests itself in our need for others, and of our lives being embedded with the lives of others whether we like it or not. And to make sense of this, he turns to a monk I’m quite fond of: Benedict of Nursia.
I’ve been either thinking about or around the ideas of Saint Benedict for almost two decades now. He became a part of my own faith journey early on in my time in Hawaii. His “rule” comes back around into my orbit every few years in different ways, from different sources. And he comes back around this time through Radner. Benedict has a great vision for what it means to live simply and in community in a way that makes God central. Radner writes:
It turns out, however, that in Benedict’s vision, saving one’s soul, as it were, is just life with others, not a common life as a means but as the very shape of “service” (a great Benedictine term) itself.
And then:
We cannot live without others; we cannot live with them as we choose.
Benedict’s Rule has much to say about such living, most of it “practical” while all of it being deeply “spiritual” in a way that would catch many of us off-guard in our modern way of thinking about community. The monks: they are getting something right, something that we should learn from.
The second thing that I find encouraging as Radner brings this section of the book to an end is the added detail about his own life: his growing up, his missionary service, the “evolution” of his understanding of life across the years. He speaks soberingly and realistically, which is a nice contrast to other writers who say great things but don’t necessarily root those things in their own lived experiences. Radner does that here to a proper amount, and it is encouraging.
The shape of this life, my life, is hardly clear in light of this. But just because of this comprehensive inclusion of us all in the wide spin of God’s creation, we are placed within a wider act of God, a defining relationship of receipt. I am willing, therefore, to offer this life, though it seems so formless in its pieces. Grace holds it together, even as the formless “it” is still something given over to me and seems to constitute all I have. Though I alone can offer it, dislocated and incomplete as it is, my life’s jagged form is my own kind of grateful gathering of those I live with. My life— and thus my offering— takes in my mother’s and my sister’s lives (and deaths), my children’s and my friends’, my spouse’s, and all the smaller and greater joys and catastrophes of their existence. My offering rephrases them all, articulates their forms in a singular and intentional fashion.
And so all of the threads, the good and the bad, are redeemed in their being brought to God as the offering of a life. Not something taught often, even for Radner, but now being taught for others (those like his own children). Near the end of the section’s final chapter he writes this:
We shall need to learn to live with all the upendings of our tiny spheres of life, endure them, find light within them, and then offer them up to God. And someone must teach us how. This is what any Christian political responsibility bears most heavily as a calling.
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This is a good and necessary stopping point for these reflections, for me and for now. These last few posts have been highlights of the book for me. I’ll definitely revisit the ideas of the book, though not as part of this “series.” For years I have felt the importance of the little things, the regular things, in life (first thanks to writers like Frederick Buechner and now through writers like Ephraim Radner). It’s the stuff of “ordinary time” for me. I’m grateful for the way Radner sets the stage for conversation, sometimes provocatively, always interestingly. And I’m glad he “lands” with some more biography and with a mention of Benedict, who I always think has much to teach us about Christian life together.
Reflections on Mortal Goods by Ephraim Radner, Part Six
Much of the first chunk of Ephraim Radner’s Mortal Goods is an attempt to “get the lay of the land.” God gives us life to live, but the days in which we live them are evil days- goodness in the context of both love and loss, joy and pain. And we have the Biblical Story as revelation and resources for what that can look like us.
I mentioned previously some connection to the Ancient Greek concept of eudaemonia, which is something we cover in class at the beginning of our discussion of ethics. Along with eudaemonia, of course, must come a discussion of the virtues. For Aristotle, the virtuous life is the good life. We don’t hear much of virtue unless we engage with pictures of chivalrous knights, which is really to our loss. Our day-to-day living could be greatly enriched by terms like prudence, fortitude, justice, and temperance (the four classical virtues). Christian Scripture and tradition would add three other virtues into the mix: faith, hope, and love. And so into his discussion of the good life, particularly with the “beauty of limits,” Radner draws out the idea of virtue. He writes:
Virtue emerges not in the perfection of our following but in the struggle to do it at all. Virtue comes to be, then, usually only in the midst of a difficult and often unrealized attempt to navigate that which subverts our obedience— testing, suffering, frustration, anger, and despair. But just here the scriptural center of the good life— the beautiful life— comes into view. For the navigation of evil days, in its details, is itself “beautiful” insofar as these details follow the divine design of the world that the Scriptures themselves embody. The Bible is, in its historical format (which includes the lived realities that form the content of legal and prophetic scriptural texts), the presentation of this navigation, better and worse in its skill and outcome. Cain and Abel, Noah’s children, the patriarchs and their families, Israel, the judges, Saul, David, Solomon, the kings and queens of the people, and the prophets in their midst— all these display the shape of engaging the “testing” that comes to all (1 Cor. 10:13). The recognition of these accounts as our own, just in this identification, stamps our lives with the beauty that God would grant them.
And so we come closer to “playing our roles fittingly” in the Biblical Story since
. . . lives of obedience or habituated attitude are truly virtuous only insofar as they press our recognitions and naming of this as that, my life as Scripture’s life.
One thing I like about Radner’s view here is the reminder that virtue does not come easy. How great it would be if we made every decision right at the first attempt! But life is often, if ever, like that. And so we live and learn and live some more and nudge our way closer the a conformity with Scripture.
After many beautiful words about the form of the virtuous life (and also the vicious one), Radner returns to his “political” concern, since politics should be concerned with what is right in front of us, in the things given by God during fleeting and evil days:
If politics cannot make us better human beings or give us a better world, then politics will have to be reframed so as to give us what is already here: our selves, in their true form, their form that is God-given and thus God-taken.
I have argued that a beautiful life is indeed possible in any day, for our days are beautiful insofar as we receive them from God as God’s own offering.And in this reception we offer them to God in thanks. Such offering is a process by which we come to see our days as ones of God-given miracle (hence as humanly untethered and impermanent), recognizing their gifted form, whatever their mortal burdens, in their simple divine enunciation— that is, in the Scriptures. That is good, that is beautiful, and that is the truth of our lives.
And, once again, such skills of “seeing our lives as God’s gift and recognizing their gifted form as God’s scriptural word about them” must be taught and learned.
Space Enough, and Time 