Haven’t you figured it out
There’s a world outside of Hollywood
A world outside the Bright Lights
the Glamor
That Blinds everyone, Forces Jealousy
to their sight

Don’t forget, You’re Hollywood
You mask your pain with Beauty
With the complex Lyrics, the illusive poetry
Their beauty Lies beyond even your sight

That’s what you are, You’re Hollywood
You’re the Factory of all the movies
the hope of all the people who live, who thrive
off pretending to live a life you’ll never live
to blind the world to see what you’ll never be

I once was Hollywood, but that didn’t last
and for that I am Glad
I no longer need to Hide the mysteries, the complexities
that dwell within my being

Never Again Will I be Hollywood or Admire
its beauty and bright Lights
For I would Rather be
Lost, Alone, in a city strange
than Surrounded by a world of Fakes

~unknown poet, found April 2006 Henry Ford Estates

I do a fairly regular bike ride down Hines drive and occasionally I will dip in behind the Henry Ford estate on the east end to hang out for a contemplative moment with the waterfall.

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About 4 years ago I stopped in there when the water was especially low, I think there was a bunch of debris damning it up. Anyway, the stepping stones that usually have a water cascade on top had become visible and dry.

Someone had inscribed the above poem on one of the stones.

It felt like a message just for me.

At that time I was in the moment of trying to begin everything that was an indie film career, well I still am… but anyway, it hit me like this transcendent little drop of what I would normally consider quite conventional wisdom… worthy of a nod of agreement, but perhaps nothing more.

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Somehow the poetic format and the first person tone brought me in touch with this cliche truth in a profound way.

This endeavor… telling stories through a visual medium, film making…

… well, it has a long history of eating people up and dehumanizing them in an especially brutal way.

Bight Lights, Glamor, and Forced Jealousy… was that what I was going to end up creating? Is that what Detroit was courting with the film industry?

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To be sure, I have met dozens of the most generous and kind people I know through the local indie film groups in Detroit… in many ways it is these people that I fell in love with when I started down this path and entered into this world of would be film making.

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I still have no idea what the future holds for the success of my film making aspirations, but I do hope that myself, my community, and all of Detroit can take this trite message to heart and see beyond the beauty that is within our sight.

I am hopeful that such personal injury to one’s soul is not inherent to the medium of film or the story telling process, and perhaps it can be done while leaving Hollywood behind…

Categories: Hollywood, Advice, Poetry, Challenges, Film Making
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Sure, Christians (and perhaps especially evangelicals… those vocal and rowdy bunch) are often times highlighted in the media for scandals of the typical political and celebrity variety; sex, drugs, power abuse, and embezzlement. But it would seem that evangelical Christians themselves are the harshest critics of the movement’s more subtle yet deeply pernicious sins… like not thinking, feeling, or living.

My youth pastor gave me this book about 15 years ago now, Mark Noll’s “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind”. I am still caught up in the whirlwind of trying to figure out what is this “Christianity” that has been thrust upon me from before I was able to think critically about anything. At that moment, the dawn of my adult life, this book was a sign post of responsibility going forward.

The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind…

By an evangelical “life of the mind” I mean more the effort to think like a Christian–to think within a specifically Christian framework–across the whole spectrum of modern learning, including economics and political science, literary criticism and imaginative writing, historical inquiry and philosophical studies, linguistics and the history of science, social theory and the arts. Academic disciplines provide modern categories for the life of the mind, but the point is not simply whether evangelicals can learn how to succeed in the modern academy. The much more important matter is what it means to think like a Christian about the nature and workings of the physical world, the character of human social structures like government and the economy, the meaning of the past, the nature of artistic creation, and the circumstances attending our perception of the world outside ourselves. Failure to exercise the mind for Christ in these areas has become acute in the twentieth century. That failure is the scandal of the evangelical mind.

~Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

• 
  The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
  Author: Mark A. Noll

I have recently caught up again, in bodily conversation, with my youth pastor from yesteryear… it appears that we are still both working out some very old challenges, perhaps we will be doing so until the day we die. Should we go into politics or stay home with the family? Should we go into academia or serve community non-profits.

The balance between thinking and doing is certainly a precarious one. I am reminded of a quote that escapes me now from C.S. Lewis where he suggests that often times the worst response to duty is to write a book (or blog post) about it… that is, we are tempted to simply cogitate on a problem instead of taking the obvious action of work in front of us.

28 Do not say to your neighbor,
“Come back later; I’ll give it tomorrow”—
when you now have it with you.

~Proverbs 3:28

I am tempted by this retreat into the gray tower of critical thinking and I am grateful to the ready challenge of friends and mentors who would call me down and into the fight I would otherwise be satisfied in merely observing from a safe distance. I think MacDonald sums up the call pretty well as follows…

He who does that which he sees, shall understand, he who is set upon understanding rather than doing, shall go on stumbling and mistaking and speaking foolishness…. It is he that runneth that shall read, and no other. It is not intended by the speaker of the parables that any other should know intellectually what, known but intellectually, would be for his injury–what, grasped, perhaps even appropriated. When the pilgrim of the truth comes on his journey to the region of the parable, he finds its interpretation. It is not a fruit or a jewel to be stored, but a well springing by the wayside.

~George MacDonald, The Way of Understanding #108

• 
  George MacDonald
  Author: C. S. Lewis

So here I am again, I think both of these wise Christian mentors are right and have the very advice I need to heed right now.

I don’t believe it is a conundrum that should end in stagnant ambivalence, but rather the two should dance together and form the shape of your life and mind.

So yes; think, feel, pray, do, live… and repeat…

Categories: Thinking, Christianity, Challenges, Criticisms
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1. Pick out an attractive blanket
2. Turn off TV
3. Drape blanket over TV
4. Whimsically forget that you ever owned a TV
5. Enjoy

Categories: Resolutions, Challenges, Television
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By the very act of arguing, you awaken the patient’s reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result? Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favor, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention form the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it ‘real life’ and don’t let him ask what he means by ‘real’.

Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE

I have been wrestling for some time with the effort to put words to my current anxiety. Per usual, I don’t have to; someone much wiser than me has already done so half a century ago. The only thing I think I have to add to this is perhaps some present day context, and the commitment to bring this conversation to the table of my friendships and community.

I believe this is a serious problem, and the sting of the indictment needs to be felt by my generation. I plainly admit that I am chief among sinners in this regard, but it is my sincere hope that such an admission does not detract from the potency of this reproof.

We have been gleefully swallowed up by our technology into a sea of superficial life cataloging endeavors. In this unconscious transaction we have forfeited the depth of our relationships for a paper thin surface of familiarity and before long that familiarity will breed contempt.

They still connect thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning.

In 2009, let us pray for the wisdom to unplug in a profound way.

Go deeper with fewer people.

Start with Jesus.

Categories: Challenges, Confessions, Technology, Relationships, Books
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