This week’s episode of The Flash really was a nice return-to-form for the series: the humor level was high even as it had an edge of darkness about it. It will be interesting to see if they can keep that going. I’m also interested in seeing how the season’s “big bad” of the Thinker works out in the long run.
Here’s the preview of next week’s episode.
As an extension of his talk of “the Benedict Option,” author Rod Dreher recently posed the following questions to the clergy who read his blog and who agree with some version of the dire situation in which today’s church finds itself:
Do you tell your congregation the truth? If not, why not? Are you afraid people will bail out? How do you balance concern for the nominal with the needs for discipleship of those who are committed? Are you confident that you are providing the people in your congregation with the tools they will need to remain faithful in the years to come? Why or why not?
Where do you think your congregation will be in 20 years? How about the American church? What, aside from a miracle, might turn things around?
Personally, I hoped for more responses than Dreher received, but beggars can’t be choosers. A couple of responses stood out to Dreher. The second, penned by a Protestant, had one particular section that summed things up well from my perspective. From that blog entry:
In my denomination, I feel almost alone in saying, again and again, “the answer is to be found in congregations.” That’s the part of Rod’s book that I find the most resonance with. Not a wider movement or mailing list, not even a church organization of any sort, but a local congregation that has a healthy regard for the fact that there are reasons why we do things (baptism, church calendar, communion, membership, leadership roles), and that our life together face-to-face is going to be crucial as to whether or not we have anything to pass along to our great-grandchildren.
Many readers, I fear, wouldn’t get past the assertion that the solution is to be found in congregations and not in God, the Spirit, better preaching, or the like. But I think he’s right: there is something about the way a congregation exists together that holds something like a solution. That can be tricky when some churches focus more on the program while other focus more on the liturgy. In extreme versions of both, forgetting the face of the other, the one beyond your family, is easy to do. It’s not just “parish life.” It’s not just “community.” It is genuine relationship.
Last week I spent much of the flight from Amsterdam to Los Angeles reading about expeditions to the South Pole. I hadn’t anticipated that, but I’m glad it happened. And it happened because I was able to buy a copy of Francis Spufford’s True Stories & Other Essays just before leaving Edinburgh. I’ve been a fan of Spufford since Unapologetic. His Child That Books Built almost convinced me to read the Little House on the Prairie novels (which never quite happened). The first two sets of essays in the book are beyond the norm for me: essays about polar expeditions and mid-century Soviet thought. Section three, though, is about his religious writings, which I’m excited about getting into. Even the short introduction to the section packed a punch. An excerpt:
Experience is the common ground; experience is the language that opens other languages; experience is the source for the only verification of an idea that is likely to be accepted, in a time when there is deep suspicion of (and misremembering of) the conceptual vocabulary of faith. To write towards a reader who has no reason to trust you or to be interested, and in whom the cultural inheritance of Christianity has mostly either decayed into the unrecongisable or been anonymised into the self-evident, requires you to make contact with what self-understanding you can muster, the stories you tell of your own, and then to try to join both to the central story, told so it can be heard again, by which the immensely narrative religion of Christianity hopes to interpret all others.
I like the quote because I feel the sense of context that Spufford is writing from. Part of that is because of the classroom. Part of it is because of the temporary vocational stretch that I’m experiencing this year. And then, at the same time, Spufford’s suggestion echoes things said by people like Buechner and Mullins, Peterson and early Miller.
(image from amazon.com)
We’re less than a month away from the release of the third and final volume of James K. A. Smith’s “Cultural Liturgies” series. That series, which started back in 2009, was formative in how I started thinking about worldview and its limitations. And while I found the second book in the series less engaging than the first, I’ve had hopes for this final volume for some time. Here’s the first short video made by the publishers featuring Smith talking about the book, Awaiting the King.
Even though the book doesn’t drop until November, you can read small chunks of it through sites like Amazon. There you can read the book’s introduction, which reveals more about how the book has changed since inception. I’ll post a few more videos of Smith previewing the book prior to the release. I do think the book could be one of the most significant of the year.
This week saw the return of super-heroes to the CW. And while ratings were down for three of the four DC Comics shows (Legends was steady with last year), The Flash shows some real potential to move forward this season. A big part of that, I think, is because the opportunity for humor has returned. Here’s the preview for next week’s episode, “Mixed Signals.”
And here’s another, extended trailer that hints at stories and characters that will soon make their way onto the show (with a nice “couples therapy” framing device).
I’m hopeful that the show can recover from last season’s “doldrums.” The Flash works best when he’s the brightest.
Best pic from our last day in Scotland? Maybe so.
This morning we said goodbye to England. This afternoon we said hello to Scotland. Here’s a panoramic picture of our hotel in the Lake District: the Whoop Hall Inn. It was great being back there. This time included a stroll or two in the area public walking path and a couple of good shots of our second sunset in the area (pictured above).
I type this in Edinburgh, where our night ended in some good Italian food and a nice walk around the city (with beautiful shots of the castle and with music provided by a local bagpipe player). More on that later, though.
Our fifth day of travel (or fourth, if our first travel day is not included) took us to York, which is always a fun, historical romp. This day brought a ride through the country before entering the walled city with York Minster at its heart. The day wasn’t too busy, which is always nice. Beyond that, there’s a “new” store selling Harry Potter store in the “Shambles” area of the city, which is the part that inspired Diagon Alley in Potter-lore. I got to eat in my favorite little pizzeria and walk the area between the Shambles and the Minster. Before dinner, though, we attended an evensong service at the Minster. It was sung service, which isn’t quite my favorite. Still, it was good to be in a place of silence and song. The Old Testament reading was from the time of Elisha. The New Testament reading was from Jesus’s talk of a kingdom divided against itself. Here’s a picture of the Minster from just before the service.
The third day of our tour took us to Stratford-on-Avon. As with the previous days, there was a certain sense of “always returning” about the visit. One new thing in particular was nice: we went inside Holy Trinity Church, which is where Shakespeare was buried. We have often gone to see the graveyard, but never gone inside. We were there at a time with good natural lighting. I also go to sit in on a part of their morning prayers.
There’s one thing that we get to do each visit that always chokes me up a little bit. At the end of the walk through Shakespeare’s birthplace, we get to listen to actors present scenes upon request. As last time, I requested Propsero’s final speech in The Tempest, which always brings a tear to my eyes. Then I requested some banter from Much Ado About Nothing that was brilliantly funny.
We ended the night with a play by Christopher Marlowe, Dido, Queen of Carthage. Not exactly my cup of tea. Lots of talking. Lots of high emotion. And lots of special effects that were both brilliant and a little frustrating. Wonderful acting, though.
A few days behind posting anything trip-related here. WiFi has been a little sketchier than I had anticipated, so I’ll try and get a few things ready for the next bit.
The second day “on tour” was a morning at Stonehenge and an afternoon in Oxford. It’s interesting to see how things like time and timing work out in situations, particuarly if you’ve been there before. Stonehenge was good, as always. It’s easy to forget that lighting is a big thing for locations like that. Here’s the closest thing I got to a picture that I really like:
It’s a nice blend of blue and green and grey, all a little muted. It was a beautiful morning.
After a quick lunch at Stonehenge, we made our way to Oxford, where we had a great walking tour by a recent Oxford student. We covered most of the places I had a seen before and then some. We also go to see a small free exhibit that had a copy of a Shakespeare First Folio and one of JRR Tolkien’s Father Christmas Letters (which ended up being the only thing you couldn’t take a picture of. We didn’t get to spend any quality time in the Eagle & Child, which was unfortunate. I did get to run in, though, only to find that the back section had been turned in to a fine-drinks bar. Ah, well.
Space Enough, and Time 