………………………. There are so many things that pop in my head–nuggets of wisdom if you will–which I would love to share with my son. The problem is that he is only 9 months old and right now he’s focused on learning how to feed himself. So, I will be posting my fatherly wisdom here for…
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Art
Made As Makers: A theopoetic motion picture that teaches us how to talk about the things that matter most.
……………… I was recently asked by one of my favorite educator/poet/theologians, Callid Keefe-Perry, to review his new 45-minute documentary film, Made As Makers. I felt honored. ……………… “Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot name them” ~Dana Gioia To paraphrase the illustrative Peter Rollins, many people of faith feel a desire to…
Things I’ll Tell My Child Someday: Don’t be ashamed of your thoughts or feelings.
………………………. This is a new series I will be writing. To be brief, there are so many things that pop in my head–nuggets of wisdom if you will–which I would love to share with my son. The problem is that he is only 9 months old and right now he’s focused on learning how to…
Why Don’t Academics Talk Like Normal People?!? | Art by Charlene Liu
The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free. ~Spinoza I can always see the question coming. After recommending to a friend that they read a technical, heavy duty philosophical or theological text, I’m asked “why don’t they just talk like normal people, using normal…
Mistook Sign for Signified | mewithoutYou: Ten Stories
Provisionally eyed, practically alive, mistook sign for signified, And so sins have often tried to run him off a cliff like Gadarene swine Inside my wardrobe seem anchor bent, Wondering whether we were someone better then… Or maybe just better able to pretend, And what better means to our inevitable end? You know, I don’t…
Why Teens Get Bored | Art by Smithe, Mexico
Galvan’s experiment was quite ingenuous. She had kids, teens, and adults play a pirate video game while inside an fMRI scanner, with their heads restrained. Their arms were free to push buttons. With each successful turn of the game, they won some gold–on the screen flashed either a single gold coin, a small stack of…
The Buffered Self | Art by Ryan Browning
The modern view of the self, the view that dominates within the psychotherapeutic community, is characterized by what Charles Taylor has called the “buffered self.” For a variety of reasons, which Taylor describes in his book A Secular Age, the modern notion of self-hood became introverted and individualistic, the self as isolated and distinct (“buffered”)…
This is the meal pleasantly set…
Who says my spelling is bad? | Illustration by Justin Mezzell
Consistent spelling was a great way to ensure clarity in the print era. But with new technologies, the way that we write and read (and search and data-mine) is changing, and so must spelling. … The notion that words can and should be spelled only one way is a fairly recent invention. “The phrase ‘bad…
How To Destroy Love: Eros The Misunderstood Love | Art by Amanda Rae Long
“Now EROS makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give.” … “Without Eros, sexual desire like every other desire is a fact about ourselves. Within Eros it is rather about the Beloved.”…