So it turns out that there’s this website called the Tolkien Gateway, and it links to all kinds of interesting and amazing things. The trove includes over 100 drawings by Tolkien, many based on Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Here’s one of my favorite, “The Shores of Faery.”
You can check out more amazing Tolkien art here. Not a bad way to spend some time.
(hat tip to Open Culture and Greg Thornbury on Twitter)
A few months ago I finally read Andrew Weir’s The Martian. Since then, it’s become the work of fiction that I’ve recommended the most. It’s the simple story of a man abandoned on Mars. And it was utterly enthralling.
Ridley Scott is directing the movie version, which drops this November. The movie has a quality cast, with Matt Damon in the lead role. People magazine and Entertainment Weekly have both posted pictures from the set. You can check out the collection the folks at aintitcool.com put together here and here. Let me encourage you: don’t wait for the movie; read the book. You’ll be glad you did.
I have spent much of the last few months feeling about Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out much the same way I initially felt about Monsters, Inc: total disinterest. I remember well seeing MI‘s first teaser and thinking that the concept, what little was given then, was boring and not at all like childhood toys come to life. The first few teasers of Inside Out left me feeling (heh) like it could be a real beatdown of a movie. Then, today, I saw the most recent trailer. I am glad to say that the movie has a lot more of my interest now. The addition of a “journey” into the mix gives it some narrative oomph that felt lacking in the early trailer. In case you haven’t seen it yet, here you go!
Inside Out drops in your local theater in three weeks.
This is the day Christians around the world celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Peter Leithart recently posted an “exhortation” for the day that sums so many wonderful things. He begins the piece with a simple but always pertinent question:
What do we have when we have the Spirit? We have everything.
All the treasures of God, hidden away in the depths of God from before the foundation of the world, become ours through the Spirit of Pentecost. He is the Gift from the Father and the Son, the Gift above all gifts, the Gift containing all gifts. At Pentecost, God gives God: What more could we ask?
From there, Leithart revisits key moments and actions of the Holy Spirit throughout the biblical narrative.
The Spirit is the Spirit of tongues. He reverses the confusion of Babel and gathers the nations to confess one Lord with one mouth. He is the Spirit of prophecy, who goes from Moses to fill others, who catches up Saul among the prophets, who comes at Pentecost so that old men will see visions and young men dream dreams. Filled with the Spirit, David speaks in rhyme, for he is the Spirit of poetry, the Muse of the Triune God. Relying on the Spirit, the apostles testify to kings and governors; he is the rhetoric of God. Through the Spirit, Mary, Zechariah, and Simeon break into song, for the Spirit is the music of God.
He ends the piece with simple commands taken from the biblical text pointing out the personal possibility of living with the Spirit.
So: Follow the Spirit. Walk in the rhythm of the Spirit. Sing in the Spirit. Pray with the Spirit. Be filled with the Spirit. Sow to the Spirit. Reap from the Spirit. Preserve the unity of the Spirit. Be borne by the Spirit. Cling to the Spirit. Breathe in the Spirit, and breathe him out. Drench yourself in the Spirit. Drink the Spirit, and be drunk by him.
Take a few minutes and read the whole thing here. You’ll be glad you did. A wonder way to celebrate the day.
Eugene Peterson once said that talking about God is often the total of opposite of talking to Him, which can make teaching the Bible a tricky proposition. Replacing the former for the latter is a subtle and constant possibility.
A few weeks ago at church the pastor made a quick nod to what Jesus says to the church in Ephesus (always Ephesus!) in John’s Revelation:
I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. (ESV from biblegateway.com)
I’ve thought about it a number of times since then, especially when the struggle between the institutional and the personal gets hard. How easy it can be to abandon “the love you had at first.” But how simple it can be to move your way back to the better place. That’s why I love the simple prayer of this old song by Jars of Clay:
Music itself can be tricky waters to navigate, especially when it comes to worship and lyrics and personalities. I think, though, that this song perfectly captures the tension between love and truth. That chorus, that one simple sentence, could be a great prayer for the weekend. I think I might just try that.
Well that didn’t go quite like I thought it would.
The first season of Barry Allen’s The Flash just came to an interesting conclusion. Most of the episode was talking, Barry weighing out whether going back in time to change things was the right thing to do. It’s an interesting conundrum, for sure. And he ultimately chose wisely, I think. Then Eddie did what Eddie did and you’ve got to wonder what’s next.
Things of interest for (comic) fans: the appearance of Jay Garrick’s Golden Age Flash helmet, the mention of Rip Hunter and his time sphere, the images inside the Speed Force (including a shot from outside the Flash Museum), and a relatively ambiguous last shot. What if time can, indeed, be rewritten? Now it’s not just about what the future holds; it’s also about what new things happened in the past. And did anyone else catch that mention of “cobalt” by Harrison Wells?
Here’s the teaser for the next season. Nothing particularly new. It’s a nice way to cap off the season, though.
Over the last three months, I’ve tried my best to post at least one thing a day to this site. I didn’t have any initial intention at the time, really, but it was something I read in James K. A. Smith’s “I Believe in Magazines” that gave me the nudge.
Smith’s take on the significance of magazines falls in line nicely with Alan Jacobs’ look at commonplace books and Andrew Sullivan’s thoughts on blogging. Originally given as a talk to “the Augustine Collective” of college journals with a Christian perspective, the essay lays out nine encouraging thoughts on why magazines are an important medium. And as so many things of worth, it starts out personal. Smith asserts:
Sometimes our callings know us before we know our callings.
From there, he revisits the significance of being an editor of a magazine in his own way in connection to BMX biking as a teenager. Now Smith edits Comment magazine, which is tied to his work as a teacher at Calvin College.
Smith sees magazines as a way of “filling the earth” with good things (in a nod to the creation account in Genesis 1). Magazines are ways to “extend the sacramental” like bodies extend the thoughts of the individual and the community. He encourages magazine writers and producers to create “conversations to be overheard” and to “always be editing” as those conversations take place.
But it’s his insistence that magazines are a way to “curate the world” that struck me as particularly significant. When Andrew Sullivan stopped blogging a few months ago, even those who served as his most vocal pushback were sad to see the end of what had become a way to massively curate the online world (something that blogging at its best does). But curating has a slant. Smith says:
Influential little magazines set the tone, chart a path, put issues on the map. In some ways, a good magazine “curates” the world from a stance of conviction. That means you need to have conviction; but it also means you need to be looking out on and engaging the world . . .
Invite your readers to see the world through the lens of your editorial vision, one that should be honed by the one who is the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15). A magazine is an ongoing way to cultivate a worldview by curating our perception of the world.
And so as juvenile as blog posts about comics or television or movies might be, it’s at least a small way that I can bring some things together and repackage them from my own perspective.
I encourage you to read the whole article here.
The television season is winding down, as is the current school year. I hope that means more meaty posts, more pointed thinking. We’ll see. That’s a big part of what blogs . . . and magazines . . . are about: what you see and showing what you see to others.
By this point you’re probably asking yourself: what’s this guy going to post once this television season is over, especially with The Flash done Tuesday? Well, before we get to that, here’s the final “sizzle reel” for the season. It’s a nice summation of the season so far (and in less than two minutes).
Here’s the one-minute preview for Tuesday night’s season finale of The Flash. There’s a lot less pressure on it (in my view) now that Legends of Tomorrow won’t drop until 2016. Still (and as any fan of the Doctor knows), time travel is a tricky proposition. I’m expecting (and actually kind of hoping for) major fallout from the episode. We’ll find out in three days.
Here’s the final “print” preview of next week’s season one finale of The Flash. Doesn’t give much away, but it definitely gets the sense that the kid gloves are off.
Tomorrow I’ll post the minute-long trailer for the episode. (hat tip to comicbook.com)
Space Enough, and Time 