Lord, bring us to our knees. Quiet our hearts. Away from the onslaught of screens and tweets and texts, focus our eyes on you. Abide in our perceptions, as we taste and see and hear that you are good. In the stillness of dusk, on ever lengthening days; serenaded by car horns, engines, buzzing iPhones, birds, distant planes, and the mystical fugues of February vespers... speak to us oh God.
On "Les Mis," "Zero Dark Thirty" & "Django Unchained"
Lately I've been mulling over three films that all made my "Top 10 of 2012" list, but which I have not really written about in depth (until now). Over at Mere Orthodoxy I wrote two articles about these films that you can find by clicking on the titles below.
2012: The Year in Food
Best Films of 2012
Perhaps appropriately, many of the best films of 2012 dealt in some way with endings. In the year in which the world was to end, many masterpieces explored the idea of ending, finality, conclusion—whether the end of slavery (Lincoln), the end of innocence (Moonrise Kingdom), the end of life (The Grey, Amour, Les Miserables, Skyfall, Killing Them Softly, etc.), the end of an affair (The Deep Blue Sea), a manhunt (Zero Dark Thirty) or the world itself (Turin Horse).
75 Best Film Performances of 2012
Best Documentaries of 2012
Christmas Eve Prayer Requests
Oh Jesus- You who took on flesh- Becoming one of us, Knowing our aches and pains, Feeling our pangs and longings, Suffering and lamenting like we do. You didn't have to do that. But you did. In our dark night you are the light that dawns. In our sin and shame you are the arms open wide. Guilty and damned we were, Hopeless and driftless and weary, Until you came. Gloria in Excelsis Deo
Best Albums of 2012
I'm kicking off my year-end list-making as I usually do, with my picks for the best albums of 2012. Below is my list: The top ten albums and then ten more honorable mentions. All of this music can be found on my "best of 2012" spotify playlist. I also created a "best songs of 2012" playlist. Enjoy!
Light And Dark
Christmas has in our culture become associated with all things "cheer," "goodwill," and "merriment": eggnog, Santa Clause, white elephant parties, sparkly sweaters, twinkly lights and tinsel galore. And for good reason. This is a holiday inspired by the coming of the world's salvation in the form of Jesus Christ. Joy to the world indeed. The Incarnation is a reason to take heart, to be joyful, to feel good about life. And yet the Advent season is also unmistakably somber. It has a dark side
On Aging and Advent
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if we could remember as far back as the moment of our birth—that slimy, turbulent transition from the comfort of a warm, dark womb into the unkind cold, harsh bright light of life outside. What emotions, thoughts, hopes, and fears would accompany such a memory? As it is, I can only remember about 27 of my 30 years... my memories begin around age three. When Jesus turned 30, could he recall the moment of his own birth? That epic, heavenly-hosts-rejoicing mystery in which God incarnate dwelled within a teenage girl's womb one minute, and cried and breathed in Bethlehem air the next? Was his memory God-like and infinite, or was it as limited as mine, recalling only shadows and bursts of nascent consciousness from his earliest years?
7 Tips for Gaining Perspective
November Prayer
We ask that you would grant our nation peace, hope, direction, recovery. That you would heal the anger, bitterness, animosity and hate that characterizes so many on all sides. That you would help all of us to move on together, charitably disagreeing but bound by a commitment to a more civil discourse—perhaps even those in Washington D.C.
Autumn Horizon
Autumn isn't really autumn in L.A. Sure, temperatures may drift downward into the 70s and (if we're lucky) 60s rather than the 80s and 90s. And sure, the evenings cool off quicker and some types of deciduous trees (if you can find them) shed their leaves. Sure, Starbucks has their pumpkin spice lattes and caramel apple ciders. One can even find a local pumpkin patch after enough Googling.But for a Midwestern boy like me, it will never feel quite right.
Looper
Movies like Looper give me hope for American cinema. Rian Johnson's film is a tight, stylish, deftly scripted crowd pleaser, a clever film that engages the audience viscerally, cognitively and emotionally. Its also a film that takes a schoolboy's delight in the magic and thrill of cinema. Rian Johnson is film nerd, fanboy, and B-movie genre postmodern in the vein of Tarantino, with a smidge less irony and a bit more Raymond Chandler noir. His films (Brick, The Brothers Bloom) are characterized by anachronistic pop culture pastiche and the merging of multiple genre tropes.
Engaged
What We Know About Malick's To the Wonder
To Everything a Season
I'm in a season of change right now myself, for a number of reasons. I'm finished writing my new book (1 year and 65,000 words later!); I'm enjoying the last few months of my 20s and what is likely my last season of life as a single man; I'm experiencing new friendships and walking with some old friends as they experience their own seasons of change.And I'm also going to be changing my blogging habits a bit.
Becoming an Intouchable
Batman, Dickens, and Resurrection
The impulse toward resurrection is grand motif of human existence: it's the arc of all creation and everyone within it, groaning and aching for the dawn of better days, when all is put to rights and evil is subdued. The hope of resurrection is the thing Sydney Carton takes refuge in before his own death in A Tale of Two Cities, as he rests in the truth of John 11:25-26:"I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die."
Best of the Blog's First Five Years
I started this blog on July 18, 2007, five years ago on Wednesday. It's been a great five years of blogging. 551 posts, thousands of comments, and countless hundreds of hours of writing later, and I'm happy to say I've loved every minute of it. By way of marking the occasion of the fifth anniversary of The Search, I thought I'd look back at some of my favorite and most popular posts. If you've been a longtime reader you'll maybe remember some of them. If you're a newer reader, here are some old favorites I commend to you.