Back (with a Book, a Flick and a Song (or two))

My hiatus from blogging ends today. Back at the end of June, the blog-well had almost run dry altogether, so in the last few weeks away from my posting post, I've spent some time deliberately doing other things: reading some books, watching some movies, listening to some fresh music, and generally letting the water come back up. I'm just about ready to start putting the bucket down again, but I thought, for today, I might start by sharing some of the other things I've been up to in the in-between-time.

Read a good book: The Year of Living Biblically

This book is a gem of a read, and I would enthusiastically recommend it to anyone, but especially to Christians who've grown up with phrases like "inerrant" and "authoritative" tinting their faith-coloured glasses, and want to see the Good Book through an unexpectedly fresh lens. A. J. Jacobs is a self described agnostic (he's actually Jewish, though he says he's "Jewish the way the Olive Garden is an 'Italian' restaurant"); he's also a witty and insightful writer interested in issues related to religious fundamentalism and its impact on culture. The premise of his book: to spend a year following the 1700 or so commands in the Bible as literally as possible, including the most obscure ones like not wearing mixed-fibre clothing, letting his clothing be always white, not taking a mother bird along with the egg, and playing a ten-stringed lyre. He writes about the Bible with an honesty, humility, affection, sense of humour and self-awareness that a good number of "Christian" books I've read never achieve, for all their Evangelical "high view of Scripture". And along the way, the fresh insights and spiritual discoveries he makes-- about this beautiful and baffling Book that has so shaped my life as a Christian-- are sometimes arresting, often challenging and quite refreshing (even the times he left me wanting to scream: "no, you just don't get it!", it was a refreshing impulse).

Saw a summer flick: Inception

I saw the trailer for this movie when I was on holidays, and right away I thought: that looks like my kind of movie. It's the first movie in a long time whose release date I've marked on the calendar. It didn't disappoint-- or mostly didn't disappoint. Thematically, there's a lot less going on there than the premise might have made possible. A "dream thief" who specializes in infiltrating the dreams of others to steal their thoughts is hired to reverse the process and plant a thought in another man's mind through a risky procedure known as "inception." With a plot like that, I actually expected a more Salvador Dali-esque exploration of the human psyche than I got. But, if not quite so surreal as Dali, the movie is at least M. C. Escher-esque, with its contorted dreams-within-dreams-within-dreams and its labyrinthine convolutions of time and space. And as an action movie, it's original and unexpectedly riveting. (While this is not normally pointed out for special mention in a review, I also want to add that the sound production on this movie was exceptional, drawing you into the action almost like an additional character.)

Listened to an inspiring song (or Two): Ending is Beginning (Downhere)

I saw this CD in the library about a month ago, when I was there helping my kids get some reading material. The founding members of Downhere, I knew, were Briercrest alumni, and though I'd never heard them before, I'd heard a lot about them in my time studying there, and thought I'd give it a try. It's been getting a lot of play time over the last month. Eclectic musical styles, hopeful but honest lyrics, engaging songwriting with creative arrangements and top-notch production: it's a CD that rewards repeated listens. And then there's lines like these:

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I'm so far from what I want to be / Oh I really am my own worst enemy / Please don't let me get the better of me / Take this earthly thing and make it finally something heavenly

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It's justice and mercy the old dichotomies / all along the front lines of my heart / in both doubt and belief /the sinner and the saint, the old arch enemies / all at war in me