film | Spider-Man 3, Really?

If I hear another news story about Spider-Man swinging into theaters this Friday, I'll probably start crawling up walls. See, now did you see what I did there? Crawling up walls, clever huh? Well, the only thing worse than the banality of press coverage of such a non-event, is that other films will not see the light of day. So, if I lived in the US, I'd be tempted to go to see a film this weekend, and it would likely be Curtis Hanson's new film, Lucky You. Hanson has directed some quality films such as L.A. Confidential, Wonder Boys, and 8 Mile. What has Sam Raimi done for you recently, well, besides Spider-Man 2? Now, I do believe those who've seen Spider-Man 3 and say it is the best of the three. All I'm saying is that there are options and to me Hanson's film, which looks at the odd world of poker where the skills needed to win are not necessarily the virtues you'd want in a relationship, sounds like a Drew Barrymore film I would enjoy.


Hanson is reported as saying:

"I’m always intrigued by the way things that are real in our culture are replaced by things which simulate authenticity," Mr. Hanson said. "At the same time, there’s also this yearning for reality. That’s why Duvall says at the end of the movie, after L. C. has been hired to make an appearance as a celebrity poker player, ‘They want to pretend it’s the way it used to be.’"

I can't tell you that Hanson's newest film will be good, but it sounds more substantive than Peter Parker wrestling with that dreaded beast called revenge. I'm not a superhero and can't change what the world sees, but that'd be a superpower I'd consider if I had to choose...that, or the ability to fly.

Update:

Washington Post movie critic Ann Hornaday writes: "In an apparent effort to put a stake in the heart of the franchise that threatens to define his career, director Sam Raimi has delivered an overlong, visually incoherent, mean-spirited and often just plain awful 'Spider-Man 3.'"

On the other hand, my pick didn't fare much better as Michael Wilmington, of the Chicago Tribune, writes: "There's something missing in the movie--that extra lift and surge of feeling that might have made it a minor classic. But 'Lucky You' is maybe the next best thing: a relaxed-looking expert piece that immerses us in another world." ...and truth be told, this was one of the stronger reviews.

[America's Young Theologian][Film][Curtin Hanson][Spider-Man 3]

life | Happy Birthday To Me

As of the 23rd of April, I'm thirty years old. I don't care much about numbers that to me seem a bit arbitrary, but I figured that if you ever want to convince others to celebrate you in style, then it might help if your age ends in a zero. I flew down to London early on a Friday morning to meet three friends who were flying in from the US (see below).


The first order of business was lunch and we decided to get a bottle of wine and some food and have a picnic in Green Park across from Buckingham Palace. The rest of the day we walked and talked our way through the city. Saturday reinforcements arrived from Aberdeen (again, see below).


I'll save you from sweaty dance party photos, though I'm sure they'll eventually turn up on my Flickr account.

Sunday some had to fly home and the rest of us stopped by the Tate Modern on the last day of Carsten Höller's Test Site exhibit, a installation of metal slides in the cavernous space of the turbine hall. I had seen the exhibit in December but wanted to take this rare opportunity to slide down a five-story slide. Strangely, this isn't the first time I've posted about a slide.

It was wonderful to spend a weekend with friends and it is clear to me that without them my life would not be worth celebrating. Now, while on the subject of birthdays, some may be familiar with those annoying candles that crackle while burning and cannot be blown out. I don't like those. Anyway, I was much more impressed with the candle that Sophie found for my birthday dessert.


Lastly, I've been reading Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, which was a birthday gift. It's delightfully fun and entertaining while managing to be smart. He discusses everything from Saved by the Bell and the Celtics/Lakers rivalry, to the oddities of the Left Behind series. I thought I'd end with a quote from SDCP as a way of saying thanks for this particular gift. More importantly though, I need to say thank you to all my friends who sustain my life. Oh, and in case this quote makes you worried, there will not be a rapture.

"Many of the Left Behind characters who aren't taken to heaven--in fact, almost all of them--seem like solid citizens (or -- at worst -- "normal" Americans). And that creates a weird sensation for the Left Behind reader, because the post-Rapture earth initially seems like a better place to live. Everybody boring would be gone. One could assume that all the infidels who weren't teleported into God's kingdom must be pretty cool: All the guys would be drinkers and all the women would be easy, and you could make jokes about homeless people and teen suicide and crack babies without offending anyone. Quite frankly, my response to the opening pages of Left Behind was 'Sounds good to me.'"

[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Travel][Art][Chuck Klosterman]

quote | The Theologian I Don't Want To Be

"It is among the sorrows of my life, spent in the search for truth, that discussion with theologians always dries up at crucial points; they fall silent, state an incomprehensible proposition, speak of something else, make some categoric statement, engage in amiable talk, without really taking cognizance of what one has said -- and in the last analysis they are not really interested...For on the one hand they are certain of their truth, terrifyingly certain; and on the other hand they do not regard it as worth while to bother about people like us, who strike them as merely stubborn." [1]

--Karl Jaspers [1883-1969]

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[1] Karl Jaspers, The Perennial Scope of Philosophy, translated by Ralph Manheim (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950), pp. 77-78.

[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Politics][Karl Jaspers]

film | Catch A Fire

Yesterday, I saw Catch a Fire, Phillip Noyce's - director of Rabbit-Proof Fence - drama set in Apartheid-era South Africa. It's a good film, perhaps not a great film, but I'd still say it's worth seeing. One lesson taught by the struggle against apartheid in South Africa is what forgiveness entails. Forgiveness is not a decision. Forgiveness takes time, small practices which move one toward reconciliation, and it requires truth if reconciliation is to take place. Sweeping something under the rug, which is to say forgetting, is never a part of forgiveness. The main character of the film narrates his time in prison saying, "After five years, I found out [my wife] had married again; it took another five years to forgive." This is neither to say that time heals automatically; time can also harbor and harden. After seeing the horrors of a man's life torn by the struggle against white South Africa, one understands that forgiveness cannot be a simple choice. Somewhere between the horror and forgiveness, the truth and reconciliation, I started to cry. I was angry at the displacement of vengeance. I was saddened by the horrors witnessed. I walked to the nearby churchyard. Surrounded by the simple stories of others scrawled on gravestones, tears rolling down my face, all I could muster was a simple prayer, "How long?"

[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Film][Catch A Fire]

theology | Meditation on Matthew 5:6

See also:
Meditation on Matthew 5:4
Meditation on Matthew 5:5

"How honored are those who hunger and thirst for justice, because they will become full."

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The world upside down. To refuse to use force may be one thing, but what is this teaching? What does it mean to be full? A wave of questions as the beatitudes invite us into a world made strange, and call us to imagine things otherwise. Hunger and thirst, or what we might call desire, is for something seen as good but not yet attained. If one possesses what one desires, the desire is satiated. Certainly Chrysostom is right to say that hunger and thirst, typically conceived, can easily slide into avarice, into greed. Conventionally, our honor runs in this direction toward those who have acquired power, status, and achievement (and in late capitalism money is often used to measure). So, we are here shown a world upside down, a world where the honored are those who hunger and thirst for justice, who desire to give each their due. Is this simply a social gospel? In a word, yes, but certainly our sociality always includes God. But what does this justice (or righteousness) that is honored in a world turned upside down look like? Said differently, who decides what one is due? The woes of Matthew 23 give a picture of the all too familiar world as normally structured as we "love to have the place of honour at banquets and the best seats." We like "to be greeted with respect" and endeavor to make it so. And yet these questions, questions of where one sits and with whom, haunt the discussion as Jesus tells the crowd and his disciples that his person, his presence, disrupts how honor is normally paid, unsettles how justice is normally accounted, saying you "are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students." Often the beatitudes were interpreted as a pathway or as being cumulative, meaning that meekness might be a prerequisite to hungering for justice. Living a life where we avoid using force, where we never demand "Do you know who I am?," may be necessary to being able to engage in the work of justice. Giving each their due can begin by sharing our lives with those perceived to be the least. I remember my first night around the dinner table at L'Arche, sitting amongst those who would soon become friends. One woman with developmental disabilities offered a prayer at the conclusion for the meal for those without homes. Still uneasy being around the differences created by disability, I was shocked that she prayed for others. Others, not herself. By taking a seat (cf. Luke 14.10: "when you are invited, take the lowest place") at unlikely tables, with unlikely people, we come to learn that we can be grateful for those who were previously separated from us whether by class, race, or creed. By inviting those considered the least, those who are outcast from our lives, those with whom we would not usually share a table (Luke's catalogue includes "the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind"), and accepting invitations in return, our lives are opened to a sociality that no longer has use for those things that separate, indeed, our lives become hostile to those structures that would separate us from those we have begun to love. If our lives are ones that hungers for justice, our lives will become full -- full of life, full of lives. Our recognition that there is but 'one teacher' reminds us that to give God what God is due, to worship God alone, pushes us toward human fellowship that might seem strange, but only if we weren't living in a world turned upside down.

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[The photo comes from a small chapel in Gegenbach, Germany which graphically depicts the various beatitudes from Matthew. The chapel was a stopping point for pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.]

[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Politics][Justice][Matt 5]

life | Everything You Wanted To Know But...

[Discussed: Fried chocolate, women priests, turning 30,
Morocco, babies, new shoes, and more.]

If you visit my blog regularly, then you may have noticed my irregularity in posting. After being in the hospital for two weeks at the beginning of March, I've been playing catch up while trying to maintain my normal schedule. One might think it odd, for example, that I didn't post anything on Easter. I suppose I could have directed you to last year's Easter post, or a friend's post that I rather enjoyed, but I was too busy. So, here's an all-in-one, scatter shot, blogging miscellany:

I celebrated a wonderful Easter vigil at All Saints Episcopal Church and spent Easter morning at St. Andrews Episcopal Church, both in St. Andrews, Scotland. Both services were lovely, but the latter had the benefit of seeing a friend's child baptized. [I also appreciated that they had a man in a wheelchair process with the cross and sit in the front of the congregation.]


With no child's easter basket to raid for chocolate, I headed over to a local fish and chip shop after the Sunday service and had my first fried Mars bar. I parted ways with Mr. Lent, sat in a lovely courtyard ringed with daffodils, read Adorno and munched on my gastronomical fate worse than doughnuts. If I'm dead tomorrow, you'll know why.

I'm at the age that when I get an email from a friend and the subject line reads "big news...", I can pretty much flip a coin on whether it is marriage or baby. People, after all, don't use "big news..." for death or divorce. I got one of these emails recently and while recounting the deliberation that went into accepting his proposal, she wrote:

Marriage is about trusting your husband to make choices before God that is best for the family and I either trust [him] with that or I don't.

Well, marriage certainly involves trust, but I'd want to say the same about wives and I'm not sure she would. Regardless of how far my friend would want to take such logic, I was reminded that there are still Christians in the US who talk in such terms, which is to say read their Bible in a way that defines gender roles that at best seem anachronistic. For the record, such notions almost elicit a hermeneutical and humanistic gag from me, as do accounts that would keep women out of pastoral roles. Generally, I don't have the energy to have a worthwhile discussion with those who disagree with me, and frankly, often I find others lack the ability. Generally, it boils down to someone arguing that what the Bible meant is what the Bible means, a position that brackets altogether the role of tradition in reading her scriptures. Still, I'm going to start sending all my emails with subject lines that read "Big News."

This Friday I'm catching a 6:30am plane down to London. I'm meeting three friends who are flying in from the States to celebrate my birthday. I'm turning thirty [though technically not until April 23rd]. So, since I'm living in Scotland, turning thirty, and almost left my current Ph.D. program to take a doctorate in political theory, one could certainly question the accuracy of my blog's title. But as it was never a serious title, I think I'm okay. Saturday, three friends from Aberdeen will fly down and will gather with my friends from London for what should be a memorable weekend.


Monday I'm headed to Morocco for a few days, before returning to Aberdeen.

Amidst all this, I'm working on a paper that re-examines the disagreement between Karl Barth and Oscar Cullmann over their conceptions of temporality as a way to discuss my own reservations with Barth on this point. In addition, I'm reading Heidegger's 1962 lecture "On Time and Being," Giorgio Agamben's early work Infancy and History, and plenty of other texts that will be grist for the mill. I hope to finally answer some questions that I started asking in 2005. On a slightly different level, I simply hope to finish the paper by May.

On a completely different subject, I've purchased new shoes. I don't shop a lot and I don't buy a lot, but tend to replace all of a particular item at a single time. I tend, for example, to buy all my athletic socks at one time, so they tend to wear out at the same time. I do the same with shoes. I won't bore you with too many details, but I've replace my brown leather sneakers made by the design-centered Medium footwear, with a pair of brown shoes from J.Shoes (see below). I prefer smaller companies doing quality and interesting work. I like the new pair so far, but will miss the pair from Medium, which I've had since early 2005 and has taken me everywhere from Germany, Spain, D.C., Scotland and all those points in between. Both companies are worth checking out.

[l to r: new J.Shoes, old Medium]
Though I've decided to remain in my current Ph.D. program, I may be back in the States as a visiting student in the fall. Sadly, for those who were hoping I'd return to Princeton, I'll not be rocking Jersey. Though, not to worry, I'm sure I'll pass through. Once my plans are settled, I'll have more to say about this.

Currently spinning: I'm From Barcelona's album "Let Me Introduce My Friends"
Most recent film: Danny Boyle's "Sunshine"

[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Travel][Music][Shoes]

podcast | Jeffrey Sachs at UChicago

Required listening: "Ending Global Poverty," a lecture by Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute and Professor of Sustainable Development and Health Policy and Management at Columbia University and the author of The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. From the World Beyond the Headlines Series. Cosponsored by the University of Chicago's Human Rights Program, the School of Social Service Administration, Rockefeller Chapel, and Chicago Promise.

It's worthwhile to subscribe to the The World Beyond the Headlines podcast, and while you are at it, start listening to Voices on Genocide Prevention, a podcast from the The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

If you're interested in some of the simple solutions that Jeffrey Sachs discusses in his lecture, see the Malaria No More website.

[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Politics][Jeffrey Sachs][Hope]