The Hound of the Baskervilles ...

... at SFFaudio ... a simply superb mystery. And I had tons of fun talking about it with that simply superb gang of story lovers.

Scott has this great idea for an automated shower, if only Julie would front him a few dollars...

The guys at the bathhouse are not taking sides. We discuss the Chinese movie Shower at A Good Story is Hard to Find podcast.

In which we get to the bottom of the Devil's Nest and the path of romance does not run true.

Chapters 14 and 15 are now available for your listening pleasure at Forgotten Classics podcast.

Well Said: A day may come when the courage of men fails ...

Sons of Gondor, of Rohan. My brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me! A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day! An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! by all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you, stand, men of the West!

Aaragorn, The Return of the King movie

For our brothers in the Ukraine, I fear that day has come.

Just as when Hitler took the Sudetenland and all that was heard were a few bleats of protest from weak leaders, so I see news coverage of Ukraine standing alone against a wolf while weak bleats come from all around ... and my heart breaks for them.

I mentioned this to a friend when the Crimean situation arose and he said, "Tough words."

But here we are with phase two, as I think of it. I can't keep this quote from my mind.

Then this weekend I was looking at the Kindle sample for Churchill's "The Gathering Storm" about the period between the two world wars and was struck by this.

THEME OF THE VOLUME.

HOW THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES

THROUGH THEIR UNWISDOM

CARELESSNESS AND GOOD NATURE

ALLOWED THE WICKED

TO REARM

And now here we are again.

Blogging Around: The Something Old, Something New Edition

Please note that none of these are complete in and of themselves. I'm counting on you to click through and read the whole story if you're interested.

"I’M A PATHOLOGIST ...

... which means that I run the lab, and I’m continually shocked by all the unnecessary lab work that comes my way."

There's more. get it at Humans of New York.

"I WAS SO FOCUSED ON BEING DEAF IN MY LEFT EAR ..."

A life lesson we all need reminding of, from Humans of New York.

BEST REVIEW I'VE EVER READ OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS
If you ever needed an excellent overview to give someone or wondered yourself why anyone would want to read The Lord of the Rings, go to Joseph's piece at Zombie Parent's Guide.

POPE FRANCIS AND THE CHURCH
A gaggle of stories worth reading. Notice how many of these are from The Deacon's Bench? It's my go-to for Catholic Church news and I can't recommend it highly enough.

• Pope Francis on priest sex abuse:

  I feel compelled to personally take on all the evil which some priests, quite a few in number, obviously not compared to the number of all the priests, to personally ask for forgiveness for the damage they have done for having sexually abused children. The Church is aware of this damage, it is personal, moral damage carried out by men of the Church, and we will not take one step backward with regards to how we will deal with this problem, and the sanctions that must be imposed. On the contrary, we have to be even stronger.

• USCCB: nearly 1,000 abuse allegations last year, 136 substantiated
  
• Students ask pope: “What makes you afraid?” — I myself found most interesting the Pope's answer about a big mistake he'd made. Also his comment about the different sorts of fear is one that's come to mind several times since I read this.
• How Pope Francis is rebranding the Catholic Church

WANT TO BECOME A BETTER WRITER?

Copy the work of others says this article from The Art of Manliness, a blog which I find has many articles that are just as good for ladies as gentlemen. They are talking about copying someone else's work by hand.

Copywork, as it’s called, used to be the standard method by which students learned to write, and it is the “secret” to how many of history’s greatest writers mastered the craft. While it may sound unsexy and unoriginal, it really works, and today we’ll show you how to get started.

5 B.S. RENAISSANCE MYTHS YOU LEARNED IN HISTORY CLASS
One reason I like Cracked.com is that they tell us history like it really was, rather than simply repeating what "everyone knows" which so often turns out to be wrong. If you like this one, check out the links at the end of the article for similar myth-busting about other historical periods. Language warning.

GRACE ON A DESERT ISLAND
A high school theology quiz that makes you laugh and makes you think. This is just a sampling and the answer key is in the comments at DarwinCatholic.

1. Tom Hanks is stranded alone on a desert island with only a volleyball to keep him company. He knows that as a member of the Church, missing Sunday mass counts as "grave matter" for a mortal sin. He wants to go to mass, but when Sunday comes around, he doesn't go. Has he committed a mortal sin? Briefly defend your answer. (3 points)

2. Several months later, Tom Hanks is still stuck on the island. A storm comes and washes away his beloved volleyball, Wilson. After weeping over the loss of his best friend, Tom Hanks raises his eyes to heaven and curses God. Despite all appearances to the contrary, he is in full possession of his mental faculties, and knows what he is doing. What kind of sin has he committed? Briefly defend your answer. (3 points)

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO MEL GIBSON? 
I had actually been wondering that very thing when I read this excerpt at (where else?) The Deacon's Bench. The heartfelt piece is from a reporter who used to think Gibson was public enemy number one, which also serves to make it an even more interesting meditation on the power of personal connection.

TESTING FOR THE KILL 
A good piece about the dark assumptions that underlie new developments in pre-natal testing for Down syndrome. The heart of it is at DarwinCatholic who sends you to read the whole thing.

THE SAINT OF THE NICU
A beautiful story of prayer and the way God surprises us with His answers from Jen Fulwiler at Conversion Diary.

Something Funny for Friday

From Catholic Memes

I can't help it. This just cracks me up.

Code Zero by Jonathan Maberry

Code Zero by Jonathan Maberry

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

SHORT VERSION:
WOAH.

This is the worthy sequel to Patient Zero.

At one point, Rudy Sanchez says that "this has done something fundamental to the American people."

I'll tell you this. It did something fundamental to me.

It was exciting, suspenseful, terrifying, and haunted me in my dreams and at random moments in my day.

And it was satisfying. Very satisfying.

I'm not sure Maberry can top this. Though I'm already looking forward to his next attempt to try.

LONG VERSION:
It's been six years since Joe Ledger was secretly recruited by the government to lead a combat team for the DMS,  a taskforce created to deal with problems that Homeland Security can't handle. That story was told in Patient Zero. This was where we met a group of terrorists who had developed a bio-weapon that turned people into zombies.

Every year since then, like clockwork, Joe and Echo Team have returned to battle a variety of seemingly supernatural foes, all developed by villains who are somehow going to make boatloads of cash off of the terror.

The action-packed stories are full of evil super-villains, noble heroes, smart mouthed quips, a smattering of philosophy about "good guys and bad guys" and heart. Lots of heart. All this is told at a roller coaster pace that barely allows you to breathe until you get to the end.

I love them.

In many ways, this book is similar to the rest of the series. Mother Night, a villain you love to hate, is a super-genius anarchist who's strewing chaos throughout the country over Labor Day weekend. She's got the DMS's computer tied up in knots and old evils that were defeated in previous books are now popping their heads up all over the country. Losses are high and the odds are very much against Ledger and his team. We know Joe will win. It's watching it happen that makes it fun.

It is superior to the other books, I think, because the pacing is more measured and there is more character development. I also enjoyed the flashbacks into the DMS's years before Joe joined them.

But in one very important way Code Zero was very different for me.

I felt a level of anxiety that was all out of proportion. Maberry is an expert at ratcheting up the stakes until you just can't see how anyone decent is going to survive the maelstrom. I was used to that. But somehow this felt different. I got a bit jumpy. I couldn't quit thinking about the horrific chaos during the day when I had to put the book down. It stuck with me in a way the other books didn't.

In fact, after I finished Code Zero I had to go find a nice, gentle book to read. I just couldn't face anything hard-edged. (Hello, No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.)

Then I woke up this morning to news on my clock radio about multiple stabbings at a high school. And I figured it out.

Maberry has his finger on the pulse of the evil that Americans today know all too well ... that lurks below the conscious level of our lives ... violent chaos that can strike without a moment's notice. Shootings at Fort Hood, restaurants, schools, and more have changed the mood of our country and made Mother Night's chaos resonate more deeply than usual.

Along the way, he looks at why people choose good or evil. This has been mentioned in other books, but never with so many examples as in this one. Maberry doesn't spell it out much but this conversation between a DMS scientist and Joe Ledger gave the larger context, as well as defining everyone's actions in the book.

"I've watched the tapes of Rudy interviewing some of the people you and Col. Riggs and the others have arrested. Some of them seem so ordinary. How can they commit those atrocities if they have a conscience? Is it their nature? Or is it a nurture thing? Are they from an environment that makes it ok for them?"

Joe grunted. "I asked Rudy that same exact question once."

"What did he say?"

"He said that the nature versus nurture question is fundamentally flawed because it assumes that there are only two possible forces at work on a person. Sure, a person's nature is a factor and that could be a produce of their brain chemistry or whatever makes a person a sociopath or a psychotic or a hero. Just as the forces in a person's life have to be taken into some account. Some abused children grow up to abuse. There's math for that. But neither viewpoint covers all the possible bases."

"So what's missing?"

"Choice," said Ledger. "Rudy thinks that choice is often more important than either nature or nurture. Some people grow up in hell and choose to let others share in that hell. Some people grow up in hell and they make damn sure they don't let those in their care ever glimpse those fires. It's a choice."

"Not everyone can make that choice."

"No, of course not. But a lot more people can than you might think." ...

"Choice," she said.

"Choice," he agreed. "It's what defines us. And it's probably the most underrated power in the world."

Code Zero is full of people choosing to save the world or burn it down. In most of the cases, the motivation comes down to something that Maberry does not name, but which I will make bold to label: love. We want to know we matter, that we make a difference, that someone "knows" us. Not for our accomplishments but simply because our "selves" matter.

Mother Night gives it a different name, and she may not tidily fall into this definition but, let's face it, she's super-villain crazy. I believe that her ultimate fate bears me out. It shows most in Maberry's final scenario at the end of the book as the answer to Rudy's statement that the chaos "has done something fundamental to the American people.

Truly this is a great book, especially for the shoot-em-up genre. It is also probably one that can be read as a stand alone without reading the others that came before.


AUDIO NOTES
I listened to the audiobook read by Ray Porter who was superb, as usual, at portraying Joe and every other character along the way. In this book Porter dialed his urgent, driving, delivery down some and thank goodness for that. The action was intense enough without being shoved over the edge of the cliff by a continually urgent tone. Porter also was more nuanced and thoughtful in his reading than I recall in previous Joe Ledger books. If this sounds odd when considering our heroes are fighting off zombies, it actually worked to make me consider the full horror being faced. Once again, kudos to Ray Porter. He's the reason I always choose audio for the Joe Ledger books.

Worth a Thousand Words: Satyr Riding on Top of Dolphin

Satyr Riding Dolphin
via Barcelona Photoblog

It occurred to me that I hadn't gone digging around in Barcelona Photoblog's archives for some time. Look at the treasure I found in the first month I chose (April 2007). It was hard to make a final choice, believe me. But this photo most of all made me say, "I want to go to there." And I do.

Movie Review: American Hustle

My rating ★★★½

A con man, Irving Rosenfeld, along with his seductive partner Sydney Prosser, is forced to work for a wild FBI agent, Richie DiMaso, who pushes them into a world of Jersey powerbrokers and mafia.

Loosely based on the FBI ABSCAM operation of the late 1970s and early 1980s, American Hustle deals with elaborate con schemes while showing us the sprawling mess that was the conmen's lives behind the scenes.

I was interested in finding out about Abscam which I recall vaguely noticing at the time it happened as headlines would fly by. I was interested in seeing Christian Bale be someone besides Batman. And, most of all, my husband was interested in seeing this. So we watched it.

As with director David O. Russell's "Silver Linings Playbook," this movie was surprising because it had a layer I did not expect. As it says in the beginning, "some of these things actually happened." Those are the details about Abscam, which are mostly in line with actual events. The insight into the characters in the movie are the screenwriters' contribution.

I enjoyed watching the con build and build and build to a ridiculous level. I enjoyed seeing the characters flail around in reaction to their own desires, while giving little thought to true consequences. And I enjoyed watching it all come tumbling down.

It isn't a "must see" but it was entertaining and informative. The acting was great, especially that of Bradley Cooper. And it added a new truism to our household, "the more you tell people they can't have something, the more they want it."

Book Giveway! A Guide to the Passion of the Christ

UP Network (Uplifting Entertainment) is airing 21 movies as Easter approaches in their Easter Lives Here series. Check out the link for all the movies they will be airing.

This Sunday, April 13, UP will air The Passion of the Christ in its network TV debut.

As those of us who have seen the movie know, the dramatic events portrayed depend upon a deep understanding of Christianity, and in fact of Catholicism, for fullest appreciation. So it isn't surprising that perplexing questions may arise after seeing the movie.

A Guide to the Passion of the Christ helps you delve a little deeper into some of the movie's profound riches. It’s a NYT bestseller that’s a resource book and scene-by-scene analysis of the film.

And we're giving it away!

Sign up in the comments box for your chance to win. If you don't want to go through the rigamarole of the Blogger comments sign up, you can leave a comment as Anonymous. Just be sure to include an email address so I can contact you if you win.

I'll draw the winner Friday, April 11, at 9 a.m. (central time) and announce it that day.

Book Bingo 5: A Book That is More Than 10 Years Old

Rumpole on Trial by John Mortimer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The bingo challenge gave me another that is familiar ground.

However, I let the decision wait for a few day. Then rearranging and cleaning out books I came across my collection of Rumpole books. I hadn't picked them up for some time, being familiar with the solutions to most of the mysteries.

When dipping into them I remembered the other reason for reading these delightful short stories. John Mortimer's style and Rumpole's personality are so engaging that it really doesn't matter if one knows the solution. These stories transport you to a different time with a rumpled knight in shining armor who just wants to get on with doing the one thing he may be able to control ... his job in getting various villains (and sometimes an innocent person) off of their legal charges.

What a joy it was to pick up this book at bedtime and dip into it before dropping off to sleep.

Well Said: The aim of art

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

Aristotle

This spoke to me after recording the next episode of A Good Story is Hard to Find podcast, which I just finished previewing this morning.

Essentially, we talk about Aristotle's premise. What inward significance, as Catholics, do we see in books and movies? Now, I have to agree with Freud that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But oftentimes, there is more to art than meets our first glance. N'est ce pas?

Firefly References on Castle

I was just thinking yesterday that I needed to rewatch Firefly. It's been a long time since I had a marathon. And then I came across this.




Yeah, it's been too long. I enjoy Castle, but I need the real thing.

Well Said: Conspiracy Versus Incompetence

I find [H. P.] Lovecraft's general paranoia a bit hard to empathize with -- I tend to think of the world as being ruled mostly by benign incompetence, rather than malicious conspiracy.

Alex, Goodreads

Indeed. I was struck by this when I saw it a few weeks ago on Goodreads. I'd recently had a conversation with someone who I really respect but who flabbergasted me by saying that he thought the Catholic Church was a vast, malicious conspiracy. Oh, and that the conspiracy began very soon after Jesus' death. This was supported by all the reading he had done.

I have to say that my experience of the Church ... and indeed of most organizations, whether secular or religious ... tends to fall in line with Alex's quote above. Yes, you do get evil sometimes. Hitler's and Stalin's legacies alone testify to that and we all wish those were the only two of their kind we could point to.

But for the most part, most people are generally good at heart. We're just not as good at being competent as we all think we are. And neither is the next guy.

Worth a Thousand Words: Goldcrest

Goldcrest
taken by Remo Savisaar

As always, to fully appreciate Remo's incomparable nature photography, click through and examine the image in full size. I just don't know how he gets these shots. I only know I'm grateful he shares them with us.

Catholic by Choice by Richard Cole

Catholic by Choice: Why I Embraced the Faith, Joined the Church, and Embarked on the Adventure of a Lifetime by Richard Cole

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I read this for the Patheos book club after they approached me because they needed more bloggers to participate.

Originally I thought, "another conversion story ... I've read so many, do I need to read another?" I forgot, of course, that every conversion story is the same, a love story. And every conversion story is unique because each of us is uniquely different. As it turns out, this was a very engaging reading experience, to the point where I read it in 24 hours.

I really enjoyed reading Richard Cole's very honest account of his internal struggles after it became clear that God was tapping him on the shoulder to invite him to a closer relationship, through the Catholic Church. I appreciated the way he'd tell sitting down at the kitchen table to ask honest questions about things troubling him and then would relate Jesus' answer. Usually direct, often surprising ... and that all rang very true to me.

I also appreciated Cole's honest accounting of dealing with his wife about faith. Interestingly she was in the process of moving away from Catholicism to new age spiritualism. This troubled Cole and led to several conversations which showed two people trying to move into greater relationship with God through very different paths. It seemed especially relevant to our times when so many people are moving away from the faith (or lack thereof) in which they were raised and find themselves adapting to "mixed marriages."

I would be curious to hear the author's wife's reasons for giving her husband that three-day gift certificate to a retreat at a monastery, which is what kicked off his conversion process. Since she herself was in the process of moving away from Catholicism it was a generous and interesting gift but those reasons aren't given in the book.

Cole was a lot more directed in his conversion that I was in mine. I'd just go along, something would happen to get my attention and I'd respond and then go off in whatever new direction seemed indicated, happy and oblivious until the next attention-getting bop on the head from God. Cole worked on his as if it were a Divine Assignment he'd be graded on, with a lot of worry and attention and introspection that would have worn me out.

Not that my own enthusiasm and gung-ho attitude probably didn't get wearing for my own family, it is just that I didn't work it like a program with boxes to check off a list. I might not have been thrilled about the idea of RCIA classes, but I just figured if that was what God wanted, then that's what I'd do. No wonder my spiritual progress during that time was a surprise to me, a welcome one to be sure but still not something I'd expected or worked to get.

And that's what makes each conversion story both different and the same, in some sense. This one is definitely worth reading. Ultimately it focused me on thinking about Jesus' own interactions in my own life, in a different way than I'd been doing lately. And that's a good thing. For me anyway.

NOTE ABOUT THE INTRODUCTION:
For some reason the introduction has a lot of details about how the author's life and family have turned out after his conversion. This was rather off-putting and left me in a distinct mood of not being interested in reading the actual book. Obviously, this was overcome with the first chapter, but there's no reason to put yourself through that. Skip the intro and read it after the rest of the book.

REVIEW COPY PROVIDED FREE
The review copy was provided by the Patheos Book Club. Publishers pay for Patheos to feature their books. My review is my own based solely on the book's merits.

Noah ... the Movie ... the Controversies - MORE UPDATES

I've been pretty excited about the upcoming Noah movie ever since I heard about it. Then I saw the trailer and got even more excited.

This looked like a classic Bible movie, the likes of which I loved watching as a kid. The Ten Commandments. Ben Hur. You know what I'm talkin' about. Eye popping special effects, miracles, heroic struggles, bigger-than-life stuff.

The fact that we were completely secular and didn't give God a second thought had nothing to do with it. These movies rocked.

I was ready for Noah to rock my world in the same way.

Then I began hearing swirling discontent coming from people who were afraid the movie wouldn't be purely Biblical enough.

Probably.

This is a Hollywood movie after all.

Film makers have lots of other considerations and even when they've loved a story since their youth, they make trade offs. This was recently called to mind when rewatching all of The Lord of the Rings movies for A Good Story is Hard to Find podcast recently.

Director Peter Jackson made some choices I agreed with and some I didn't. He mentions in the extras that he actually got lost down the wrong track a few times and was able to return to the original message only at the last minute.

In fact, that's not a bad place to start when considering how stories must be adapted to move from one medium to another. Since the Bible was originally oral and then written down, Jewish tradition often chose to keep everything even when it conflicted. They didn't want to throw something out in case it was important in a way they couldn't see at the time.

And from that arose the tradition of midrash. Midrash is a traditional Jewish way of trying to understand the underlying spirit of scripture, sometimes connecting it to modern life, by creating parables. This allows for some imaginative storytelling as rabbis look for interpretations that are not immediately obvious but are nevertheless held within the original text.

I figured that as long as we got a good, entertaining movie Noah would, at the very least, be an interesting modern midrash on the story's applicability to our times.

Steven D. Greydanus, respected movie critic for the National Catholic Register, devout Catholic, has invested a considerable amount of thought into the flap over Noah.

Whatever the movie looks like, I expect some pious moviegoers, especially biblical literalists, will be upset or angry about anything in the film that goes beyond the biblical text, or that contradicts their own ideas about the story, or that doesn’t dovetail with their conception of the message of the Bible.

Is this really necessary? I don’t think so. By way of providing some perspective, here are a few points that I think thoughtful Christians, particularly Catholics, should consider in evaluating Aronofsky’s film and others like it.

We all grow up with this version of the story, we read it to our own kids, and many of us never look at the text any other way. (For example, picture books invariably stick with the “two by two” motif, ignoring the verses that refer to seven pairs of “clean” animals.)

There’s nothing wrong with this familiar version of the story. But we shouldn’t mistake it for the canonical story itself — nor should we be too quick to reject interpretative or imaginative approaches to the text that challenge our assumptions. A retelling that defamiliarizes the story, that makes us rethink what we thought we knew, can be a valuable thing.

Greydanus hits the nail on the head. He's got several good pieces which I read with interest as they came along. If you are curious about why the movie is worth watching, despite not being what might be called "strictly Biblical" then these may interest you also. Heck, they're interesting no matter what.

• Everybody chill out about the 'Noah' movie — this where the above excerpt comes from and he develops this theme quite well.
• Interview: ‘Noah’ Writer-Director Darren Aronofsky and Co-writer Ari Handel — this had to be fun for Greydanus because Aronofsky and Handel had read his "Everybody chill out" piece and loved it.
• SDG Reviews 'Noah' - I haven't read this yet. But SDG's reviews are always thoughtful and good.
  

Here's another piece (WSJ: Ark-itectural Digest) which has nothing whatever to do with controversies, but has everything to do with how the filmmakers combined digital and physical elements for the special effects. For instance they actually built the ark to Biblical proportions. The ultimate test was when Hurricane Sandy came along.

In a clearing within a woodsy arboretum on Long Island, on dry land, Mr. Friedberg's crew spent about six months erecting the front entrance and sides of an ark about 60 feet high, out of steel and foam designed to look like logs. For scenes in the ark's interior, they built a three-story set to the same scale inside an armory in Brooklyn.

"We decided that it would be built to biblical proportions," Mr. Friedberg explains. That means it isn't a seafaring ship but a large rectangular box intended to keep Noah's family and the menagerie afloat, specified by scripture to be 30 cubits high, 50 cubits wide and 300 cubits long (a cubit is the distance from human elbow to middle fingertip). Sunk in a cement foundation, the "ark" was framed in I-beams.

In October of 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit like some kind of cosmic message and flooded parts of New York. "The ark did fine," says Mr. Friedberg. "It enjoyed its chance at some real weather. It did better than some of our own houses."

I can't wait.

UPDATE
Other Christian reactions to Noah, all via Brandywine Books.

• Phil Cooke: Why I'm Recommending Christians See The Movie Noah
  He's got many good reasons, but this was my favorite:

  9) Do we as a Christian community really need to “protect” ourselves from a movie that isn’t 100% Biblically accurate? Would the Apostle Paul have run from the challenge? Rather than withdrawing from the discussion, I suggest that we seize the moment, turn the tables, and use this to our advantage. Pastors should be preaching messages on the Noah story. Let’s use the film to share our faith with friends and co-workers. Like the Old Testament’s Joseph, who rose to remarkable heights in an alien and hostile culture, let’s not shy away from these opportunities, rather, let’s use them to demonstrate the power of God’s Word.

• Gregory Alan Thornbury: Darren Aronofsky's Noah.
  It's a long, thoughtful piece that you need to go read for yourself, but let's let this give the overall tone:

  Aronofksy's Noah is a way of putting ourselves before the Bible's "dangerous question" as Barth put it. The grim, gritty, and supernatural antediluvian biblical world takes us back into ancient history, of origins. Who are we? What has gone wrong with the world? Where is justice? Is God there? What does he have to say? That ancient world sets us back on our heels and forces us to take stock in this strange new world inside the Bible.

YET MORE UPDATES
Steven D. Greydanus is turning into quite the authority on the Noah movie. He's being interviewed everywhere, asked tons on questions, and has a couple more pieces written. I'm not reading either of these until I've seen the movie, but wanted to share these links.

• The Noah Movie Controversies answers the many questions he's being asked. If there's a misconception out there, he's addressing it.
• Noah: A Theological Reflection. Here's the description of the piece: Darren Aronofsky’s controversial film is sometimes divisive and divided, but is also deeply serious about Scripture and essential questions.
  

AND ANOTHER UPDATE

• Father Barron's take on Noah ... What is significant is that Noah remains utterly focused throughout, not on his own freedom, but on the desire and purpose of God. God, creation, providence, sin, obedience, salvation: not bad for a major Hollywood movie!
• Darwin Catholic's review ... which comes down halfway between Greydanus' enthusiasm and (as Darwin put it, taking the words from my mouth) "Barbara Nicolosi's bizarre rant." (Note: Nicolosi's piece made me long for Roger Ebert's witty, erudite reviews of movies he hated. Nicolosi is no Ebert.) At any rate, Darwin is always worth reading and I'll go past his spoiler alert once I've seen the movie.

Worth a Thousand Words: Shadow Play

Schattenspiel (Shadow Play)
by Edward B. Gordon

I simply love Edward B. Gordon's artistic style and the fact that he records everyday life in the city. This painting exemplifies both those traits.

Worth a Thousand Words: Trevi Fountain

Trevi Fountain detail
taken by Joseph at Zombie Parent's Guide

As I've mentioned before, I am thoroughly enjoying Joseph's pictorial records of his family's travels while they are living in England. I'm getting views of places like Pompeii and Rome, among others, that I might never get to see in person.

Book Review: The C. S. Lewis Bible

C. S. Lewis Bible: New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) by C.S. Lewis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I've never understood the enthusiasm for study Bibles on a single theme or with a single person's commentary. Obviously, they are popular because you can see them everywhere. When this Bible came to my attention, I blanched.

However, it seems as if 2014 is fast becoming my "year of C.S. Lewis" as I work my way through his books in audio format. So I took a closer look on Amazon where I found Brandon Vogt's review, which I encourage you to read. I trust Brandon's judgment a lot from having read his blog. His thoughtful comments also showed that he, too, was leery of this sort of study bible. He pointed out that, with care, one can view such a work as having midrash available on scripture and that opened up another way to consider it.

I'm not crazy about the NRSV translation but that is a matter of personal taste admittedly. Catholics will note that this is a Protestant Bible and so has fewer books than a Catholic Bible would. The committee who put this together does seem to have done an impressive job of carefully matching Lewis's comments in the appropriate spot without overdoing it. It is definitely a Bible first and foremost, with occasional C.S. Lewis comments from a wide variety of sources. It quickly became a favorite morning read.

I do want to mention that except for the cover, this book is a work of beauty. The typesetting, format, and overall look are gorgeous. The cover ... well, you can see that for yourself. Nothing can make it anything except ugly. But once the cover is opened, the interior is beautiful. This is the book that proves the old adage. Don't judge this book by its cover.