One of the strangest aspects of religious faith is how old ideas, truths, and lessons are continually reborn with new significance as life is experienced and reconsidered, the arts have a wonderful way of forcing us to pause and take time for this moment.

I am sure I had the ten commandments described to me succinctly when I was 5 years old or so in Sunday School. At that time I most likely was focused on the 5th commandment (4th if you are Catholic) “Honor your mother and father”. The presentation was probably accompanied by some exposition to the pointed application of not talking back to my parents and otherwise being a compliant child in order to fall in line with this positive directive from the overall collection.

Over the years I may have come across a good number of references to the ten commandments in order to enforce a particular point of morality, behavior, or theological inquiry. But more often than not, the ten commandments was not something that I regularly thought about or considered to be even a worthwhile structure for working through my faith… after all, didn’t Jesus get us beyond all those stodgy and definitive statements of the old Jewish religion?

In light of that general posture, I am willing to bet it would have been very difficult for me to even enumerate the ten commandments in the most simplistic list just a few weeks ago. Having recently attempted to do so with a small group of friends, we found ourselves at a questioning loss as to what the definitive collection of the ten commandments actually are. Different religious traditions create slightly different subsets based on the following breakdown, taken from Wikipedia… please forgive my violation of perhaps the 8th and 9th commandments.

This rediscovery of the ten commandments comes through the good fortune of my neighbor speaking very highly of a certain polish film maker who created what many consider to be the only television masterpiece of film work, The Dekalog.

Krzysztof Kieślowski is quickly becoming a distant mentor and example of handling great mysteries with exceptional honesty, respectful care, subjective content and still within the most daring and brave artistic expression.

Each one of these films has an amazing mixture of pointed story telling and still manages to reveal a huge area of honest discourse concerning the ambiguity of living with and without the observation of divine revelation. The timeless nature of the ten commandments reaches well beyond religious circles trying to figure out if the ten commandments are still relevant in a particular form of dogmatism. This is the power of film to weave reason, emotion, history, and story together into something that directs us to the transcendent and forces us to slow down, know ourselves, and perhaps see a glimpse of God’s intent towards and for us.

• The Dekalog on IMDB
• Krzysztof Kieslowski

Categories: Film, Faith, Art, Bible Study
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I watch the subtle movement of the surface of the water, and the watermarks made progressively as the piece dries; it stirs my heart to note details of life that we often take for granted. Beauty often resides in the peripheries of our lives. We walk past such humble miracles, such as the babe in the manger in a little village of Bethlehem, all the time. In the frantic pace of life, we need to slow down and simply observe natural forces around us and create out of that experience. What makes us truly human may not be how fast we are able to accomplish a task but what we experience fully, carefully, and quietly in the process.

~Makoto Fujimura, Refractions

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  Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture
  Author: Makoto Fujimura

I have always enjoyed the attention to detail that the arts bring, when you fully enter into your work… you do lose yourself there. I am just now starting to return to a few art forms that require patience, and everything that is slowly cumbersome about analog processes… but still so much more enjoyable and freeing than watching progress bars creep along in my favorite check box laden graphics application.

Categories: Art, Books
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“The only way to change culture is to create more of it.”

~Andy Crouch, Culture Making

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  Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling
  Author: Andy Crouch

Categories: Culture, Quotes, Art, Books
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I met Gloria a few years ago, and I immediately knew she was special. My first instinct was to work an angle to capture her on film somehow, thankfully that pursuit proved impossible and I had to settle for something much better. I don’t even feel quite right about trying to describe her at all anymore.

Some have discovered her art and poetry, but only a few will have the privilege to walk in her garden.

• www.gloriavalentic.com

Categories: Mentors, Poetry, Neighbors, Art
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The essence of childhood is innocence. The essence of youth is awareness. The essence of adulthood is responsibility. This book is for people and a Christian community on the threshold of cultural responsibility.

What is most needed in our time are Christians who are deeply serious about cultivating and creating but who wear that seriousness lightly—who are not desperately trying to change the world but who also wake up every morning eager to create.

I hope friends will read this book and begin to envision their friendships not just as the companionship of compatible individuals but as potentially transformative partnerships in the places where they live, study, work and play.

~Andy Crouch, Culture Making

• 
  Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling
  Author: Andy Crouch

I am looking forward to having a good many conversations shaped by this reading. Very thankful for the voices helping the boy and the cynic find a place where we can both play fair.

Categories: Culture, Creativity, Encouragement, Art, Books
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At the moment of surrender
I’m falling to my knees
I did not notice the passers by
And they did not notice me

I didn’t want to believe it at first, but I think I am finally coming to terms with my feelings. It has happened before, at first its just a bit disorienting and I can’t quite place my first impressions… but then something starts to take hold of me with one song, then another and before long I have to surrender… and it feels real good.

• 
  No Line On The Horizon
  Artist: U2

Categories: Art, Music
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The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

~ G.K. Chesterton; Orthodoxy

Categories: Quotes, Art, Books
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Poetry is words empowered, subjective truth with an objective reality because someone has realized it.

~from “No direction home: Bob Dylan”

Categories: Quotes, Art, Music, Movies
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I consider myself to be very fortunate to have some of the coolest friends around.

Take my friends Sarah and Mandy for example. They took it upon themselves to make custom cheesy Christmas cards for everyone… not e-cards mind you; these are honest to God tangible, authentic, delivered in a paper envelope Christmas cards. Ok, so they printed them at Walgreens… but still. It’s also true that I received a bunch of Hallmark cards this year from various friends and relatives, and I sent out none. But, I said my friends are cool, not me.

Technically I contributed to this cards creation, although I claim no rights to its genesis, I was the photographer of the moment…

Now imagine you are surrounded by thousands of tiny sea horses…. CLICK, ok… I think that’s going to turn out real nice…

Why do I take the time to fire up my trusty blog and write a post about this on the cyberwebs? Well I think this is the stuff of intention that is going to last out the coming subprime facebook induced relational crises of the 22nd century. I am starting to truly believe that we are building networks of “life streaming” that are all together unsustainable and dehumanizing. Thanks for the bail out Sarah and Mandy.

I am on the verge of a new years commitment to write a letter by hand to every friend I have on facebook… numbering near 250 now. I may do some un-friending between now and 2009… its nothing personal… and that’s the problem…

Categories: Friends, Art, Compliments
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Breath

A play by Samuel Beckett lasting for precisely 35 seconds, considered the shortest play ever written. It was first staged in New York in 1969. Originally written for Kenneth Tynan’s revue, “Oh! Calcutta!” Unfortunately, the producer added “including naked people” to the stage directions and Beckett withdrew his piece. Considered to be Beckett’s final comment on our state of existence.

Curtain.

1. Faint light on stage littered with miscellaneous rubbish. Hold for about five seconds.
2. Faint brief cry and immediately inspiration and slow increase of light together reaching maximum together in about ten seconds. Silence and hold about five seconds.
3. Expiration and slow decrease of light together reaching minimum together (light as in 1) in about ten seconds and immediately cry as before. Silence and hold for about five seconds.

Rubbish. No verticals, all scattered and lying.
Cry. Instant of recorded vagitus. Important that two cries be identical, switching on and off strictly synchronized light and breath.
Breath. Amplified recording.
Maximum light. Not bright. If 0 = dark and 10 = bright, light should move from about 3 to 6 and back.

Show me more… »

Categories: Philosophy, Art, Script Ideas
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Special thanks to all the volunteers who made the first annual DWIFF Challenge a reality

• Scott Dunham
• Suzanne Janik
• Sarah Mark
• Nicole LaDouceur
• Denver Rochon
• Billy Whitehouse
• Mike from CCS
• 23 Willing teams of Detroit film makers…

Categories: Competition, Film Making, Detroit, SuperHouse, Movies, Art, Compliments
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