Dimly Lit

Melissa and I watched this a couple of nights ago. We started it late and told ourselves that we would only watch 1 hour of it before going to bed. The hour mark came and went as we couldn’t bring ourselves to hit the stop button and turn it off.

Love Song for Bobby Long is one of those rare gems that subtly and beautifully portrays this twisted, fallen, messed up, wonderful, redemptive life. John Travolta surprises (me at least) with his portrayal of Bobby Long; a gray-haired, unshaven, uncouth, drunk - who also happens to be a former English professor. The story revolves around Bobby Long, Lawson Pines and Pursey Will as they interact and fight and form a sort of family brought together following the death of Pursey’s estranged mother, Lorraine.

There were a couple of things that I found particularly striking as I watched. One was the beauty in the midst of brokenness and decay. This was shown not only in the lives of the characters, but in the landscape and architecture of New Orleans. You really get a sense of decay and decadence in the houses and bars in which the film was shot, and yet there is a beauty to the decay in the richness of color and the crumbling walls. I suppose this is another form of common grace - that even in the midst of decay, beauty can be found.

That same sense of beauty born from decay is seen in the characters. They are rough around the edges, mostly drunks and nearly homeless. But there is a true beauty seen in their relationships with one another as they joke and fight and comfort one another. Or perhaps it is that there is brokenness in the midst of the beauty. Relationships are meant to be beautiful, it’s our sin that gets in the way and twists and breaks them. In Love Song for Bobby Long you get a glimpse of the beauty in between the tangled mess of life.

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Fall_Scene,

I spent the weekend on lovely Tablerock lake at my parents so there was no blogging for me. I’m going to try to catch up on a few things and add some thoughts on fatherhood throughout the day today.

It was an absolutely beautiful weekend to spend in the Ozarks. I didn’t actually take the picture above, but it is a pic of Tablerock and it shows very well what the area around my parents place is like.

My father and I spent a good part of the day on Saturday splitting wood which will keep their fireplace burning all winter. My whole body aches, but it is the type of soreness that I actually enjoy. The soreness which comes from a day of hard, physical work. I don’t get that feeling often enough.

Apparenly someone wanted to take the Weasley’s flying Ford Anglia for a spinWeasley’s flying Ford Anglia for a spin. The car can’t actually be driven which means it was either flown away, disapperated, or, much more mundanely was towed.

Filed in: Miscellany

(HT to Kevin at Collected Miscellany)
John Miller over at National Review Online hits one of my hot buttons with “Narnian Order” a look at in what order The Chronicles of Narnia should be read.

Several years ago HarperCollins, the American publisher of the Narnia books, decided to renumber the books so they would be read in chronological order. This puts The Magicians Nephew first instead of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Let me just say that this was wrong, wrong wrong! Beyond that I’ll just agree with Mr. Miller and encourage you to read his terrific article.

Filed in: Books

I just can’t stay away from politics - not with new like thisLewis “Scooter” Libby has been indicted. Libby is Vise President Cheney’s Chief of Staff and has been indicted for making false statements and perjury in the Plame CIA leak mess.

So far Karl Rove has escaped indictment, but we’ll see, he’s still being investigated. What a mess.

Last night Melissa was putting Max to bed and singing to him. Max interrupted the song in order to ask a question. (the following is paraphrased)

Max: Mommy? What’s blessing?
Melissa: You mean like when we pray and ask God to bless our family and friends?
Max: Yeah.
Melissa: Well, it’s when God gives us peace and helps us to be happy and takes care of us.
Max: (long pause) Hey! I’m happy…maybe God is blessing me!

Moments like these have got to be some of the great joys of parenting. There is nothing in the world quite like it.

Kathleen Nielson has a terrific article over at byFaith Online called The Joy of Reading Great Works which I highly recommend. It speaks to many of the things I was trying to get at in my 5 Recommended Books post.

Filed in: Books

My beautiful and very literary wife pointed out to me last night that my list from yesterday was pretty heavy on classic non-fiction texts (and she’s not a big Dostoevsky fan so the Brothers Karamazov doensn’t count). She also pointed out that it is through the story form that God so often works and gets through to us. That’s one reason that Jesus used parables - stories and poetry make sense to us and often speak to us on a deeper level than the non-fiction treatise. She’s right, of course, and my list from yesterday is reflective of my personality my tastes, and probably my ego.

In light of that, I’d like to offer a second list of fiction or poetry that has deepened my faith and to which I still often turn.

1. Son of Laughter by Frederick Beuchner - I could actually list several of Buechner’s books, but this was the first I read and was completely bowled over.
2. Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry - Beautifully written prose examining the role of community in the shaping of character and faith.
3. Til We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis - I am a Lewis fan so it’s hard to rank his books, but this retelling of the myth of Cupid has to be one of his best.
4. The Moviegoer by Walker Percy - Wonderful southern fiction which follows the protaganist through his search for purpose.
5. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien - Come on, this isn’t a surprise is it?

Naturally, there are several more that I could very easily add. In fact for #5 above I originally had T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, but I couldn’t possibly leave LOTR off 2 lists of recommended books!

This all got started over at Hugh Hewitt’s latest idea for a blogversation called One True God. Hugh asks a weekly question and has invited a few heavyweight types to converse - so far there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of activity.

Question # 5 was as follows:

Please recommend the five books you would have a Christian college student read who was interested in deepening his or her faith but who also had all the time constraints and background education of most college kids today. (In other words, no Summa Theologica or Institutes.)

Unfortunately it only garnered 1 response from David White on that site, but then Tim Challies picked it up and gave his own list (which I have some serious reservations about, but I’ll get to that later). Challies post was picked up over at the Boars Head Tavern resulting in some good discussion there, and now it’s my turn.

First, the question itself. The recommendations are for a Christian college student so I assume the goal is to challenge the mind as well as build the faith. The recommendations also must take into account the time constraints and background education of most college kids today which I take to mean that college kids don’t have much time and very possibly don’t have the ability to read well (in the How to Read a Book sense). If those assumptions are true, they do limit to some degree what you can ask them to read. Hugh’s examples are fitting, unless you’re majoring in something that would require you to read them it would be a little much to expect any college student to spend the time and effort necessary to read the Summa or the Institutes.

Having acknowledged that however, I’ve got to say that Challies list is just poor. It seems to me that one of the reasons that you would have to add the qualifier about background education to a question like this is because noone requires kids to actually stretch their minds enough to read the primary sources. Instead we feed them the thin, baby food gruel of text books that simplify, explain, and utterly neuter the great books that have shaped history. Is it any wonder that so many people think reading anything more challenging that John Grisham is boring? The little they’ve learned about Plato, Augustine, Shakespeare, or Dante is from a dry text book that tells the poor kid exactly what he’s supposed to think! Ideas become exiting when the mind is pushed to grasp them.

Any college kid that truly wants to deepen his faith is going to have to wrestle with this world and one of the great ways to do that is by engaging with the great minds that have gone before.

Now let me be try to be clear. I don’t have any real problem with the books that Tim mentioned in his post. I’m sure there’s probably some good stuff in them and that I would very probably enjoy some of them. The reason Tim’s list is poor is that these books have not withstood the test of time and have not, yet at least, shaped the world in which we live. We’re talking about college students here, these kids are supposed to be bright enough to engage the great minds of history. I don’t want to engage in a reverse chronological snobbery and come across as though I believe that if it’s older it must be better, but some of these works are called classics for a reason.

So what about my 5 recommendations? Off the top of my head I’ll go with the following (not in any particular order):

1. Phaedo by Plato - I agree with White’s reasoning here, being able to think about the soul in todays world is very important.
2. Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis - As far as devotional literature goes, this is about as good as it gets.
3. Confessions by Augustine - This touches on every area; philosophy, theology, and devotional.
4. Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan - Still a beautiful allegory of Christian faith.
5. Brothers Karamazov - This will challenge and force one to think about the sinfulness of all men and the nature of faith.

I could easily see this list shift and change as I spend more time thinking it through. Already I can tell you that it’s hard for me to leave off Moby Dick and several of C.S. Lewis’ books. These are all books that I think should be accessible to any college student and, with the exception of possibly the Confessions, won’t overwhelm a students time.

I’m a few days late in mentioning this, but Jared Wilson of Thinklings and Cinema Veritas fame, has given Mysterium Tremendum an very nice updated lit-blog look. The look is very nice and the content tends to be even better. After all, anyone who can manage to bring together Dante and Eggers must be pretty good.

Filed in: books