Can You See Your Shadow?

February 4th, 2010

e3b1c237f80dc48eGroundhog Day reminds me of the movie of the same name. The finest analysis of the movie was done by Michael P. Foley:

Groundhog Day is the story of Phil Connors, an obnoxious weatherman at a Pittsburgh TV station who must cover the celebration of Groundhog Day in rural Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Phil (masterfully played by Bill Murray) is egotistical, career-driven, and contemptuous of his fellow man. “People are morons,” he tells his producer Rita, played by an adorable Andie MacDowell. “People like blood sausage.” Phil, in other words, is the typical product of modernity, the bourgeois man who lives for himself in the midst of others. Rita describes him—and us—well by quoting Sir Walter Scott’s “There Breathes the Man”:

The wretch, concentred all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.”

Read the entire review.

Groundhog Day is the story of Phil Connors, an obnoxious weatherman at a Pittsburgh TV station who must cover the celebration of Groundhog Day in rural Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Phil (masterfully played by Bill Murray) is egotistical, career-driven, and contemptuous of his fellow man. “People are morons,” he tells his producer Rita, played by an adorable Andie MacDowell. “People like blood sausage.” Phil, in other words, is the typical product of modernity, the bourgeois man who lives for himself in the midst of others. Rita describes him—and us—well by quoting Sir Walter Scott’s “There Breathes the Man”:
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.Day is the story of Phil Connors, an obnoxious weatherman at a Pittsburgh TV station who must cover the celebration of Groundhog Day in rural Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Phil (masterfully played by Bill Murray) is egotistical, career-driven, and contemptuous of his fellow man. “People are morons,” he tells his producer Rita, played by an adorable Andie MacDowell. “People like blood sausage.” Phil, in other words, is the typical product of modernity, the bourgeois man who lives for himself in the midst of others. Rita describes him—and us—well by quoting Sir Walter Scott’s “There Breathes the Man”:
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonoured, and unsungGroundhog Day is the story of Phil Connors, an obnoxious weatherman at a Pittsburgh TV station who must cover the celebration of Groundhog Day in rural Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Phil (masterfully played by Bill Murray) is egotistical, career-driven, and contemptuous of his fellow man. “People are morons,” he tells his producer Rita, played by an adorable Andie MacDowell. “People like blood sausage.” Phil, in other words, is the typical product of modernity, the bourgeois man who lives for himself in the midst of others. Rita describes him—and us—well by quoting Sir Walter Scott’s “There Breathes the Man”:
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.

A MUST READ: American Babylon. Notes of a Christian Exile

May 21st, 2009

neuhaus.jpgFather Richard John Neuhaus has left us a remarkable book. Looking through it to prepare a review, I saw that I had highlighted almost the entire book!

To whet your appetite, let me quote  the conclusion at length, so that you might hurry off to get a copy

“Through the preceding chapters, these notes from exile have addressed various tasks of hope while living in Babylon. The life of faith has been depicted as a prolepsis of the promised New Jerusalem, the City of God in final tranquility. We examined the distinctively American understandings of life in exile, and the distinctively American ways of deluding ourselves that we have arrived home already. We celebrated progress, and we noted its sobering limits in the realm of morality.

“We tried to engage the atheists among our fellow-exiles in this foreign city whose provisional peace we together seek. And also those who, like Richard Rorty, would distance themselves from hope’s grief by means of liberal irony. In “Salvation Is from the Jews,” we underscored the ways in which our pilgrim path and “the story of the world” are uniquely and inextricably entangled with the people of Israel. Then we explored the politics by which we alien citizens can ameliorate some wrongs and advance a provisional measure of the common good, even in Babylon. Finally, in this last chapter, we considered the impossibility of hopelessness and why it is that to live is to live in hope….

“As Christians and as Americans, in this our awkward duality of citizenship, we seek to be faithful in a time not of our choosing but of our testing. We resist the hubris of presuming that it is the definitive time and place of historical promise or tragedy, but it is our time and place. It is a time of many times: a time for dancing, even if to the songs of Zion in a foreign land; a time for walking together, unintimidated when we seem to be a small and beleaguered band; a time for rejoicing in momentary triumphs, and for defiance in momentary defeats; a time for persistence in reasoned argument, never tiring in proposing to the world a more excellent way; a time for generosity toward those who would make us their enemy; and, finally, a time for happy surrender to brother death—but not before, through our laughter and tears, we see and hail from afar the New Jerusalem and know that it is all time toward home.”

John D’Elia on George Eldon Ladd

February 24th, 2009

ladd-book.JPGJohn A. D’Elia’s biography of George Eldon Ladd has rightly been hailed as the definitive look on the American theologian who brought evangelical Christian scholarship to “a place at the table” of the world’s great theologians of his day. Ladd’s books are not only required reading in most seminaries but are also sold in local church bookstores. He was a thinker whose mind attracts all Christians, regardless of the stage of their journey into the Kingdom of God. For once and for all George Eldon Ladd clarified what Jesus meant when he proclaimed that “the Kingdom of God is at hand.”

So powerful and compelling was Ladd’s insight that his theological position has taken shorthand form through out the world – the Kingdom of God is “already/not yet.”

But in A Place at the Table: George Eldon Ladd and the Rehabilitation of Evangelical Scholarship in America, Mr. D’Elia reveals the personal struggles behind the great mind:

“All of [Ladd’s personal problems] – the family issues, the excessive drinking, and the failure to achieve the academic success he craved-did little to alter Ladd’s theological position.” (165)

The biographies of many important men show the opposite – their personal lives playing a pivotal role in shaping ideas and actions. How could George Eldon Ladd’s life acquire so different a character?

The author was generous in answering my questions.

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First the Rock, then the Iron Man

February 22nd, 2009

l7057882289_9588.jpgBillionaire weapons manufacturer Tony Stark’s announcement of his plan to beat his twenty-first century pruning hooks into modern day plowshares causes quite a stir. He freed himself from an Afghan cave controlled by ambitious warlord Raza, by constructing an impregnable, gravity-defying suit of armor from random weapons he finds in the cave. Now Tony sees that the weapons he has made for good have been used for ill by America’s enemies.

Tony, like some Americans, decides that the answer to war is to stop making pruning hooks.

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Gran Torino: The Making of a Modern Relic

February 21st, 2009

mv5bmtc5ntk2otu1nl5bml5banbnxkftztcwmdc3njawmg_v1_sx95_sy140_.jpgWalt Kowalski is the dictionary definition of the angry old man. His wife has just died, his sons are estranged, his neighborhood is deteriorating, the country he fought for in Korea has vanished, except for the horrible memories of the war itself.

Who could guess what God could do with such a man?

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The Dark Knight: A Tale of Two Stories

December 30th, 2008

1184851.jpgWhile watching The Dark Knight with my son and wife, I found myself, at one point, saying aloud: “That’s just like A Tale of Two Cities!” Stefan had been reading the novel for school and I had reread it with him. And, as I finished Tim Keller’s The Reason for God, I found him noting that the climactic substitution in A Tale of Two Cities was just like Jesus’ action on our behalf. So maybe The Dark Knight proclaims the Good News as a twenty-first century metaphor, as A Tale of Two Cities did in a nineteenth century idiom.

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Meditation on Matthew 22: 34-46 – Bates College Chapel – 10/26/08

October 26th, 2008

exteriorphoto.gifMatthew 22:34-46

“But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it:  You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, “What do you think about  the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him,  “The son of David.”  He said to them, “How is it then that David,  in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying,

“‘The Lord said to my Lord,
Sit at my right hand,
until I put your enemies under your feet’?

If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.”

This passage seems appropriate for the time of the year when students and professors are preoccupied with questions and answers – midterm examination time. Students imagine professors devising trick questions, and wonder how they can ever do all they need to do to pass the exam, or possibly learn everything they need to know to pass the course.

In today’s passage, Jesus is asked questions, answers questions, and stumps the great minds of his day with a question of his own.

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Bell Ringer for the Kingdom

September 6th, 2008

nscaadpyggcahon6gdca65×7ofcarokl1zcaaupon4cahyt16acafwfxzzcak4qy48ca8e14udcam58j4bca0gscg2camip7b1cabzjq6jcadoqvupcaktyztccaskiu09caczqjwpca7tljq7ca2lqghb.jpgMy son’s high school reading has again provided an opportunity for God to reveal more about the nature of His Kingdom. Stefan was assigned The Hunchback of Notre Dame,  but I discovered the novel’s actual title to be Notre – Dame de Paris.  And that makes a kingdom of a difference.

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Questions to Take Back to School

August 30th, 2008

images1.jpgTo make the most of our educations, whether formal or “continuing”, as they say, we should come with questions needing answers, not just wait for others to pose questions to us. In The Reason for God, Tim Keller gives us a good list with which to begin:

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Humility: The Key to the Kingdom

August 23rd, 2008

q4cacrxxhgca8xk3s1cauhtms5cauhwh2hca9gn7vkca3eigwgcab7nvw2cadiw0×0ca6aa7umca8mi5oqcab08bqzcakyuvtbcacpddm1ca07esqlca0d4raqcaudhe4ucaduwro9caw4u30fcaa7j1c8.jpgA few weeks ago, listening to a radio interview, I heard  the guest refer to the Bible as “the greatest self-help book ever written.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

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