Walden Media to Produce Cinematic Version Of Screwtape

Choral Treasure

If you are at all into church choral music, Gregorian chant, polyphony, etc., the new link to the right, Choral Treasure, is wonderful. It streams choral music 24/7. Give it a listen.

The Presentation of Our Lord

I forgot to post this yesterday…February 2nd is the day that Christians for centuries have remembered Christ’s presentation at the temple i.e. The Presentation of Our Lord. At his presentation, sacrifices were made for Mary’s purification and for Mary and Joseph’s first born son. Thus, Christ, from the very beginning, has come to fulfill the Law. Also, at the presentation, a man waiting for the coming Messiah, Simeon, held the Christ child in his arms. The one through whom all things were made was held by one of his creations. Immanuel, God is with us!

I spoke about The Presentation in chapel on Thursday to my school’s lower grades. Afterward, one first grade teacher jokingly reminded me that February 2nd is also Groundhog Day. We both had a lighthearted chuckle at this fact and went about our days. However, as I thought about it later, her observation did once again remind me of the importance of the church calendar. We have many other calendars–fiscal, academic and otherwise–competing for our attention, and most institutions recognize the easily overlooked fact that we live in time. Thus, they restructure their calendars–the time constraints within which they must function–based on what their corporate bodies are centered upon. Thus, financiers have their fiscal calendars, schools their academic ones, and so on.

The Church’s calendar is restructured to be centered upon the Word made flesh–the One who is our access to the End of all things. By living with and by the church calendar throughout the year, we are acknowledging that the other calendars we must live by during our day-to-day lives are not the ultimate way we interpret time. Ultimately, our interpretation of time does not have at its center money, academics, etc. The Church’s way of living in time–i.e. its calendar–has Christ at its center. The church calendar tells the story of Christ, sin, and redemption beginning every Advent season. As I am more and more convinced that it’s the stories we live by that shape the way we reason about things and feel about our experiences, what better way to keep the story of “the way things are” in our imaginations and hearts than by living through it each year. We can have six more weeks of winter as long as the Messiah has come to us.

Read more about the Presentation of Our Lord.

The Making of a Commercial

I forgot to add this to my post from yesterday. Comes from JT’s blog again…the making of that Sony commercial mentioned in yesterday’s post is here. It’s pretty amazing.

Do you know Jose Gonzalez?

                                                                                                                                                           

I found this link at my friend JT’s blog Exit 78 (BTW: Jt’s blog is primarily a photo blog with some nice shots on it). This is a commercial for the Sony Bravia TV using Jose Gonzalez’s cover of a song entitled “Heartbeats” (by a Swedish group called The Knife?). This is footage of Jose Gonzalez performing “Heartbeats” live. I haven’t heard of this guy before, but I like this song. Very nice and melodic.

You can find Jose Gonzalez’s MySpace Music page here.

The Police to Perform Surprise Gig at 2007 Grammys

Not much of a surprise anymore.

Read more here.

Sean Michel: The Next American Idol

About a week ago, I saw an advertisement on TV for the upcoming episode of American Idol. As the images were flashing by, I thought I caught a glimpse of a guy I knew from college named Sean Michel auditioning there in front of Simon, Paula, and Randy. And wouldn’t you know, sho’ nuff, it is he. I’m a big fan of his beard and he sang Johnny Cash’s “God’s Gonna Cut You Down.” What more could you ask for? GO SEAN! You’re going to Hollywood dawg!

Watch the audition here.

Here’s another link.

Cruise ‘is Christ’ of Scientology

The Messiah?

The Right Not to Know

A few posts back, I quoted Alexander Solzhenitsyn at length on politics and the perils of having a society dominated by only the legal level of reality. I found this interesting article which highlights another part of the Soviet Russian exile’s 1978 Harvard commencement address. The writer of the article, Darryl E. Owens, makes the claim that the media is doing a lot to encroach upon our right to privacy. Here’s a sample:Once, some things were private. But today unmentionables routinely are aired on The Today Show.
But the practice seems all the more disturbing in a case like Shawn’s, yet another reminder of America’s schizophrenic mind-set.
In a day when Big Brother eavesdrops on our chats, satellites can read our tattoos, and our most private moments can earn a very public airing on the World Wide Web, we vociferously bemoan our withering privacy.At the same time, an insatiable, vaguely prurient curiosity has yanked down the veil that once cloaked private life from the searing public eye and replaced it with a clear curtain.

The “Shawn” mentioned above is the Shawn Hornbeck–the now young man who was abducted four years ago in Missouri. Owens is critical of Oprah Winfrey’s having Hornbeck and his parents on her show just days after his being rescued, asking the boy himself if he had been sexually abused. After Shawn opted not to talk about his experience, Oprah went to his parents–she “went there”–and asked if they believed Shawn had been abused.

As America hung on every word, the parents of the Missouri boy looked the Queen of All Media in the eye, slowly bobbled their heads, and answered, “Yes.”Yes, indeed. After all, wasn’t that the burning question that inquiring minds wanted to know? Isn’t it what we deserved to know?

It’s this right to know that bothers Owens, me, and Alexander Solzhentisyn. Don’t we have the right not to know, and doesn’t Shawn Hornbeck have the right not to relive a painful experience on national television. Here are Solzhenitsyns’ thoughts:

Because instant and credible information has to be given [ in the media], it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be rectified, they will stay on in the readers’ memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one’s nation’s defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: “everyone is entitled to know everything.” But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.

One must wonder if Oprah and other journalists who are so quick to nab the story and get the scoop think of what they’re doing in these cases as “gossip, nonsense, [and/or] vain talk.” I think Oprah probably has good intentions, but you know what they say about those.

Human Body Adventure

In China they have this exhibit for kids called Human Body Adventure. Each piece in the exhibit reveals the functions of the body. I think this is what I think it is….Don’t do it kids! It’s a trick!