Berry and the Interlocking World

Posted on March 3, 2014 by awtraughber

I really like how N. T. Wright thinks of heaven and earth as a kind of “interlocking reality.”  Both are important, essential in the way things are made.  And I especially like how Wendell Berry catches something like it in the first poem in his 2006 “Sabbaths” collection.

If there are a “chosen few”
then I am not one of them,
if an “elect,” well then
I have not been elected.

I am one who is knocking
at the door. I am one whose foot
is on the bottom rung.
But I know that Heaven’s
bottom rung is Heaven
though the ladder is standing
on the earth where I work
by day and at night sleep
with my head on a stone.

You can read more of Berry’s “Sabbaths 2006” here.

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February Finished (All These Things)

Posted on March 1, 2014 by awtraughber

Four weeks full of posts: not bad.  They weren’t all classics, but that’s okay.  Showing up and persisting, those are good things.  And so a “classic” from the Killers to commemorate the end of February and the start of March.

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Waiting for Muppets Most Wanted

Posted on February 28, 2014 by awtraughber

2011’s The Muppets was a real “shot in the arm” for a significant but flagging pop culture franchise.  It balanced sweet and edgy, nostalgia and new, well.  We’re just under a month away from seeing the sequel, which is unfortunately Amy Adams and Jason Segel-less.  Hopes are high, but concern is there. Thanks to this “UK music trailer,” we get a better glimpse at what to expect.

Good music.  A healthy dose of self-awareness.  I do wonder how much the human actors will sing in this one.  That was definitely one of the nice touches in The Muppets.  Muppets Most Wanted Drops March 21.

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Mal Reynolds and the First Rule of Flying

Posted on February 27, 2014 by awtraughber

I found the complete series of Firefly on sale for $10 at Wal-Mart a week ago.  I hadn’t watch the series in some time, since I found my original discs had gotten scratched up some.  So I’ve spent the last few days rewatching a series that didn’t connect at all with me when I saw a few episodes upon their original airing.  The story wraps up in the feature length movie, Serenity.  It’s a doozy, but it’s a doozy with heart.  Here’s the last scene from the movie.  It doesn’t give much away plot-wise, but it says something important really well.

In the end, Mal sounds a lot like the Apostle Paul.  Heh.

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Changing Minds

Posted on February 26, 2014 by awtraughber

Been thinking a lot about thinking for a few years now.  It’s something built into some of my curriculum, and it’s something that I see happening (and not happening) all the time.  A key part of thinking well is communicating well.  It seems more and more we’ve become a culture that communicates without connecting, that speaks at one another instead of speaking to.  Over the last 24 hours I’ve seen it in print and in person.  And so some thoughts from James K. A. Smith on “the lost art of persuasion.”

Persuasion is not necessarily the same as proving or merely demonstrating. Persuasion is as much art as science, as much a matter of aesthetics as logic. You can win an argument without necessarily persuading your interlocutor. It’s not justwhat we say; it’s also how we say it. In a little known tract called The Art of Persuasion, Blaise Pascal notes that, while demonstration is important, in fact most of us are persuaded in regions of consciousness that operate below the intellect. “For every man,” he observes, “is almost always led to believe not through proof, but through that which is attractive.” This is why “the art of persuasion consists as much in pleasing as it does in convincing.”

This is not a brief for telling people what they want to hear, as if one would be “persuasive” by just being a mushy flatterer. To the contrary: to engage in the art of persuasion is to have a persuasion in the second sense of the term: a conviction, a settled assurance, a commitment to a particular vision. Only if you have a persuasion can you then take up the task of persuading others. Persuasion will be characterized by what Richard Mouw describes as “convicted civility.” So when Pascal talks about persuasion being “pleasing,” he means that successful persuasion will be logical and beautiful, coherent and convicting, well-thought andwinsome. The art of persuasion appeals as much to the gut as it does to the head. To be persuaded is to not only be convinced; it is to be moved. See how beautiful are the feet of those who bring such good news.

I’m sure there’s a lot more that goes into working together and communicating well than simple persuasion.  But it’s “guts and heads” for everyone.  We ought to be careful of winning the head and losing the heart.

You can read the rest of Smith’s editorial from Comment Magazine here.

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DFW on “Reading Something That is Good and Real”

Posted on February 25, 2014 by awtraughber

A large chunk of my reading time this past December was dedicated to reading through Stephen J. Burn’s Conversations with David Foster Wallace.  The book is a collection of interviews that spans Foster Wallace’s career and that represents each part of his professional journey.  It’s fascinating, really: getting to see glimpses of DFW’s development in thinking  about the morality of literature.  Here’s an interview by ZDFmediatek from 2003 about literature.  Love the last thing DFW says in the clip.

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About a Long Way Down

Posted on February 24, 2014 by awtraughber

This past weekend, NBC premiered About a Boy a sitcom based on a movie based on a book by Nick Hornby.  The premiere episode was a nice, pared-down update.  Whether or not the premises gets fleshed out into a viable weekly will be interesting to see.

Which brings to mind another adaptation of a Hornby novel coming soon to the big screen (at least in the UK).  A Long Way Down was one of the first Hornby books I ever read (definitely the first in hardback).  It’s a wonderfully twisted take on the importance of community.  Not sure when or if it will make it to the States, but the trailer dropped a few weeks ago.  Check it out.

About a Boy airs Tuesday nights after The Voice on NBC.

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Blogging as Impressionism

Posted on February 23, 2014 by awtraughber

A friend recently asked if I blogged as a way of processing in public, which is interesting to me because there was a time where I thought that kind of thing was possible and really important.  When I started (my version of) blogging ten years ago, it was with the intent of informing people on the mainland of my life in Hawaii.  Over time, that either shifted or never really became the main point of my writing.  And while I’ve toyed with being more personal online, it’s something that’s always been awkward.

I guess I see blogging as a kind of impressionism: lots of different strokes that hopefully form a picture.  Culture, of course, inspires and informs me.  When things resonate or bring me hope, I think it might shine through in my weak prose.  There’s a lot more going on underneath the surface, and I’m sure it’ll bubble through.  But for now, and February for sure, bits and pieces and snippets.

Calvin and Art

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In Praise of Martin Freeman

Posted on February 22, 2014 by awtraughber

Just in from what will be my last viewing of The Desolation of Smaug (at least until the extended version DVD drops), and once again I am reminded of the acting brilliance of Martin Freeman.

Which is funny because he doesn’t get nearly enough material in Desolation.  In the first Hobbit movie, you get a sense of Bilbo’s growth as a character.  Even though he’s spot on in Bag End,  things don’t really click until Bilbo meets Gollum under the mountain and chooses pity. All the way through, though, his sense of physical humor shines through with his mannerisms.  You only really get to see it in Desolation in his confrontation with Smaug.

Which is funny because there he’s acting against Benedict Cumberbatch, who is Sherlock to Freeman’s Watson.  If there’s one thing that season three of Sherlock showed us, it’s that Freeman really can hold his own in the full spectrum of acting.  From funny to fighting, Freeman brings it.

Bilbo Baggins.  John Watson.  Arthur Dent (can’t forget Dent, Arthur Dent).  One of the five from The World’s End.  Freeman’s had his hand in a lot of my favorite stories.  I’m really looking forward to what he does with the end of The Hobbit and beyond.

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“Did We Lose Don?”

Posted on February 21, 2014 by awtraughber

We really are quite fortunate to live in a time where we have such easy access to so many different ways of thinking.  So many ideas out there competing for attention.  And yet sometimes it feels like people aren’t quite engaged with one another as they used to be.  So I’m glad for the chance to catch a video conversation with Donald Miller through Relevant Magazine.  It’s quite timely, as it was done a few days after the recent kerfluffle over his comments concerning church and learning styles.  If you’ve got some time, check it out.  You don’t even have to watch the video.  Just turn up the volume and listen while you work on something else.  It’ll give you a good glimpse at why so many appreciate Miller just as there are so many who are concerned by and for him.

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