Blogging Around: The "Finding Religion in Unexpected Places" Edition

Love, Death, and the Communion of Saints: There are Movies for That

Jennifer Fitz had a weekend movie-fest and wound up with a list of recommended movies. I'd never heard of most of these. She gives her impressions with links to the movies so you can go see what they're about. My "to watch" list has grown. Again.

Purity Through Food: How Religious Ideas Sell Diets

Processed food is evil. Natural food is good. These are religious mantras, the condensed version of simplistic fairy tales that divide up foods, and the world, according to moralistic binaries. Genuine nutritional science, like all science, rejects oversimplification. “Natural” and “processed” are not scientific categories, and neither is good nor evil. These terms should be employed by monks and gurus, not doctors and scientists. Yet it is precisely such categories, largely unquestioned, that determine most people’s supposedly scientific decisions about what and how to eat.

The Gluten Lie is a book examining the myths around which many define "healthy eating." What gives this a different twist is that the author is a religion scholar. Here's an interview with him at The Atlantic. (Via Lottie + Doof)

Pete Docter, the devout Christian from Pixar who makes blockbuster movies

Deacon Greg Kandra at The Deacon's Bench noticed an comment by director Pet Docter about using his confirmation money for a youthful purchase.

That sent him down a rabbit hole which wound up uncovering a fascinating interview.

What I learnt from 46 consecutive days in church

Adrian Chiles went to a different church for daily Mass every day of Lent. He saw it as a penance, and to be fair I would too, but it turned out to be a blessing. (As we'd all hope.)

To be fair, church is not an "unexpected place" to find religion. However, the BBC is an unexpected place to find this interesting and heartfelt report about daily Mass that changed one man's life.

From day one, Ash Wednesday, I was captivated. I happened to be in the Swansea area, so I went to St Illtyd's in Port Tennant, a neat little community with rows of terraced houses clinging to the side of a very steep hill overlooking the bay. In every church I went to on this odyssey, without fail there was something to entrance me. It could be anything from the priest's trainers - priestly footwear is something I could write a whole article about - to the majesty of a stained glass window. At St Illtyd's it was the statue outside of Christ on the cross. It was made from some metal that had corroded, kind of creating new stigmata on it. Transfixed, I looked up at it for what must have been ages, until I spotted a couple of teenagers just across the road, cigarettes in mouths, beholding me doubtfully.

(Via GetReligion.)