Hello, friends!
It’s 7 PM CST, and here are 7 Things…
1. Books: The poet Christian Wiman wrote a new book about despair. I’ve enjoyed his poetry and thoughts on faith over the year. “Faith steals upon you like dew: some days you wake and it is there. And like dew, it gets burned off in the rising sun of anxieties, ambitions, distractions” (My Bright Abyss).
2. Eye Candy: Dr. Albert Einstein was an extreme pacifist. This little film highlights Einstein’s flee from Nazi Germany, to England. “My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred.”
3. Lent is a time of reflection, prayer, and fasting in the Christian tradition. How about using these forty days making better art, and pursuing a better life? If you desire fantastic readings during Lent, here are some from Kate Bowler.
4. Ear Candy: In case you missed it, Tracy Chapman came out of hiding, and did a beautiful rendition of her song Fast Car with Luke Combs. I also took a stroll down memory lane with this road trip playlist.
5. Podcast: I spoke with Doug Howarth, about Hypernomics.
6. I wrote a thing about where ideas come from, and giving permission to steal art. Austin Kleon said: “You don’t get to pick your family, but you can pick your teachers and you can pick your friends and you can pick the music you listen to and you can pick the books you read and you can pick the movies you see. You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences. The German writer Goethe said, "We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.” We are shaped by the things we love.
7. A quote and a question:
“I imagine Lent for you and for me as a great departure from the greedy, anxious antineighborliness of our economy, a great departure from our exclusionary politics that fears the other, a great departure from self-indulgent consumerism that devours creation. And then an arrival in a new neighborhood, because it is a gift to be simple, it is a gift to be free; it is a gift to come down where we ought to be.”
― Walter Brueggemann, A Way Other Than Our Own: Devotions for Lent
What would consuming less and creating more look like for me?
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Grace + Peace,
Ryan