http://www.jslweb.com/blog Thoughts on life, art, and religion Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:13:09 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I once read an interview with a guitar player-can't remember who, maybe U2's The Edge-who said that he could tell the difference between the kind of solos he played after a full day of travel and the kind he played after having a day off to read great books and ... http://www.jslweb.com/blog/2010/02/18/the-fiddlers-gun-on-feeding-the-gnome/ My friend Matthew's new book releases today, and I just posted a review over at the Rabbit Room. Here's how it starts: In his new book Hear No Evil: My Story of Innocence, Music, and the Holy Ghost, releasing February 16th from WaterBrook Press, Matthew Paul Turner tells the ... http://www.jslweb.com/blog/2010/02/16/the-time-god-told-me-to-write-about-the-evils-of-rock-music/ I just wrote a new guest post for Matthew Paul Turner over at Jesus Needs New PR about a sermon I listened to recently. Here's an excerpt: I thought of Matthew's interview [with Wally from WAYFM] one day last week when I found myself listening to recent sermons on the ... http://www.jslweb.com/blog/2010/02/12/fundamentalist-logic-meets-the-ozone-layer/ One day last week, I stumbled across the website of a man who pastored the church I grew up in from the time I was a baby until I was about eight or nine years old. Noticing he had the audio for one sermon up for promotion, I decided ... http://www.jslweb.com/blog/2010/01/27/your-own-magic-genie/ As I've complied a list of my favorite movies, books, and music of 2009 over the last couple weeks, I've gone back and reread some of the reviews of those entries from my favorite critics. Joe Henry's Blood From Stars, my second favorite record of 2009, received its best ... http://www.jslweb.com/blog/2010/01/04/andy-whitmans-review-of-joe-henrys-blood-from-stars/ At the opening address of the 2009 General Convention of the Episcopal Church this summer, the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the presiding Bishop, had this to say: "The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy – that we can be saved ... http://www.jslweb.com/blog/2009/10/13/the-great-western-heresy/ Talk about discouraging people from seeing a movie. In one of the first write-ups about 500 Days of Summer that was posted on a blog back in January, the reviewer compared it to Slumdog Millionaire, Juno, and Little Miss Sunshine. Slumdog Millionaire was a terribly overrated piece of ... http://www.jslweb.com/blog/2009/07/30/500-days-of-summer-a-story-about-love/ A couple weeks ago, I posted a review on the Rabbit Room of Peter Rollins' new book, The Orthodox Heretic: And Other Impossible Tales, along with one of the parables, Finding Faith. Discussion on the post continues, including a couple mentions of, you guessed it, heresy. Some of ... http://www.jslweb.com/blog/2009/07/26/peter-rollins-on-parables-and-resurrection/ At the Christian Scholars Conference I attended a couple weeks ago, Barbara Brown Taylor presented a talk on, "The Power of Narrative in the Age of Twitter."  She talked about the need to privilege certain narratives,  saying, "I was attending to so many other narratives, I was losing track of the thread ... http://www.jslweb.com/blog/2009/07/21/the-sacred-texts-around-which-we-shape-our-lives/ At this point, it's become a tradition. Almost every year since I first read this essay by Bob Hyatt back in 2003, I've posted it on my blog. As much as I've changed my views on different things in the intervening years, I still think he hits the ... http://www.jslweb.com/blog/2009/07/04/profoundly-disturbed-on-the-fourth-of-july-3/