Today at Tapestry, I wrote about how our culture or worldview affects our reading of Scripture.

"C. S. Lewis wrote, 'The character of evidence depends on the shape of the examination... It determines how much of that total truth will appear and what pattern it will suggest' (Lewis, The Discarded Image, 223). In other words, we understand truth in light of the questions we ask and how we ask them.

Winter Birds by Jamie Langston Turner--a retelling of the story of Ruth (as in the Old Testament), Winter Birds is about Sophia Hess, an older woman who moves in with her nephew and his wife so they can care for her. She asks for a room with a door she can close and bolt. Through the door, she listens to their conversations and their lives--when not watching daytime TV or the birds at her window.

In this podcast, I speak with Dr. Reg Grant, professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, published novelist, actor, and apparently tap-dancer. In this part, Reg shares how two films affected his life (good timing with November's Artuality on movies!), and we begin our discussion of the artist's pursuit of truth.

Dr. Grant taught me about story structure and arc and character development.

This podcast runs four and a half minutes.

(November's Artuality is still open. To participate, click here.)

The other day, I read Exodus 35-40. I wondered, "What does it look like to invite people to create something beautiful in the worship of God?" Here's what I noticed:

God's been leaving Post-it notes around for me. Sacred echoes, Margaret Feinberg would call them.

Yesterday, I read Exodus 35-40.* I'd read the passage before several times before. I noticed before how Moses asked the people for materials and help in building the tabernacle. I noticed how they brought their finest, how all the skilled workers participated. I didn't notice before that they brought so much, Moses had to stop them.

"Troubadours are more important and influential than theologians and bishops."
Brennan Manning, in Ragamuffin Gospel

There is the theology of art and theology in art.

"Every act of creation is first an act of destruction."
Pablo Picasso

Guernica by Picasso

I'd stitched him together so many times, taking him back to the table to fix this leak or put that part back together. Sometimes I'd steal a liver from here or a finger from there. When he hung his legs over the side of the cold, metal table and tried out his legs, he stumbled. Getting up again, he walked stiffly around the room, swinging his legs from his hips, his knees not quite working.

Frankenstein.

(And, yes, I know how Frankenstein walks after a workout a couple weeks ago that left me incapacitated.)

The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O'Connor sets secularism against religious destiny.

I love in The King and I, the king's love of the phrase, "etcetera, etcetera, etcetera." I hear it in my head every time I think of that word.

Today's etceteras: