What I Write About

I write about the infinite number of intersections between every day life and the good news of the God who has come to get us.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Grab-Bag Re-entry

Back in the saddle today, here's some thoughts to cover the past three weeks:

*For two of the past three weeks, I was at Rockbridge, IV's year-end, week-long summer conference for students. Students get to choose from a number of different tracks to engage with different topics from learning how to lead small group Bible studies to sharing their faith to studying Scripture more deeply on their own.

Once again but especially this year, I was darn proud to be a part of an organization that offers students quality, thoughtful, thorough, nuanced, creative instruction while allowing good space for students to wrestle with key issues like politics, sexuality, pluralism, and leadership.

I also really loved the group of UNC students we took with us--115 strong, we had lots of fun being together without being too obnoxious.

*I watched two movies of note over the past couple of weeks that I'd recommend: I Am Legend and No Country for Old Men. I was drawn to the former by my love for apocalyptic/survival stories. I enjoyed the latter for how it messed with my head.

*Summer time is here, which makes me happy. I've got lots of good books waiting to be read and plenty of other work to do get ready for the fall. I'm currently reading Lesslie Newbiggin's The Light Has Come, which is his commentary/exposition on the gospel of John. If you're currently or ever reading John on your own, this would totally be worth the investment.

*If you're someone who tracks the blog for family posts, you might have noticed that it's been a while since I've posted any pictures of the kids. This is because of a growing nagging sense that posting pictures of my kids on the internet for anyone to see opens them up to creepy people. I'm hoping to post several pictures of my family from the last several weeks on my Facebook page. That way only folks who I've more or less approved can see them. If you're interested in the family pics (and you're not a creepy stalker), friend me up on Facebook and look for those to come soon.

3 comments:

Liz Hundley said...

#1- Yes, InterVarsity indeed does a great job of letting us wrestle with these things you mentioned, yet always pointing us to Christ for answers. Woot!

#2- Both good movies. Especially the ending of "I Am Legend" and the enigmatic motivations of Javier Bardem's serial killer.

#3- Hope you and the family are having a great creepy-stalker-free summer! :)

Slater said...

rockbridge was great - loved the small group track (though i'm a little jealous of the folks who were in kingdom living - i'm thinking about that for next year)

loved No Country - check out There Will Be Blood, even more messing with the head.

i've heard some people really upset about I Am Legend changing the ending from the book (sorry liz) - you might want to look it up, it's interesting, and explains the title better

Alex said...

hey guys, thanks for stopping by!

liz, yay for a good rockbridge experience! and slater, i totally agree--apart from my love for small group vision, i'd rank kingdom living as one of the best tracks at camp in terms of engaging hard/good questions thoughtfully and well. liz, isn't that where you were?

re: "i am legend"--yeah, i have to admit that i read the synopsis on wick-ped and the alternate ending on the dvd follows the spirit of the original books a little bit better.

re: "no country"--my bro and i talked over the weekend. he proposes that this movie is the "ecclesiastes of the coen brothers films." i totally buy this: the scene with the conversation with the other aging sheriff he says "vanity, it's all vanity!" hope is present in the form of tommy lee jones' character--he's a good cop but never actually enters into the picture, doesn't engage the brokenness and mess of the despair. tommy lee jones' conversation with the guy in the wheel chair (his brother?) he talks about waiting for God to break into his life but he never did. in that same scene the wheel chair guy talks about how all this cycle of death and treachery has always been a part of life inthis country--"nothing new under the sun" you might say. death drives the whole story. chance does, too--the flip of a coin, the random-ness of the car accident at the end. i think that the real story is tommy lee jones' character struggling with aging. the serial killer in some ways is just the backdrop to his struggle, the real story of this being "no country for old men" as the voice-over at the very beginning implies.