Brett McCracken's Blog, page 9

Where Water Meets Rock

"All waves speak, but they speak in tongues, and we can't interpret their speech. That's probably because it's too simple, like God's. Maybe all they're saying is I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU until the end of time. Like God...." -Peter Kreeft

I am writing this from a hotel next to the Pacific Ocean. The view is spectacular, and I can't stop looking at (and listening to) the dynamic coastline... where the liquid of the vast blue sea meets the solid of the vast brow...

Sofia Coppola, "The Beguiled" and the Delicacy of Depravity

Since her stellar 1999 feature film debut, The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola has distinguished herself as a visionary and gifted auteur. Quite apart from the cinematic pedigree of her family, Coppola has established herself as a major director behind some of the best films of the 21st century (particularly 2003’s Lost in Translation).

Coppola’s sixth film, The Beguiled, is a Southern Gothic genre gem, based on a Civil War-set novel (and also a 1971 film version) about an all-girls school in V...

The Existential Allure of Amusement Parks

Every night at 9:30 p.m. we hear the Disneyland fireworks. Our Santa Ana home is just five miles from the tourist throngs of Anaheim, and the nightly ritual of thunder-like booms is strangely comforting. Whatever is happening in our lives, whatever is happening on Twitter, there will still be fireworks in Disneyland, delighting thousands of revelers, young and old, on the crowded streets around Sleeping Beauty's Castle.

At approximately 9:46 p.m. the fireworks end. The throngs disperse and a m...

“How it Fits Me” is the Wrong Criteria for Finding the Right Church

If we always approach church through the lens of wishing this or that were different, or longing for a church that “gets me” or “meets me where I’m at,” we’ll never commit anywhere (or, Protestants that we are, we’ll just start our own church). But church shouldn’t be about being perfectly understood and met in our comfort zone; it should be about understanding God more, and meeting him where he’s at. This is an uncomfortable but beautiful thing. As nineteenth-century preacher Charles Spurgeo...

The Heavens Declare

The heavens declare the glory of God,
    and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
    and night to night reveals knowledge. (Psalm 19:1-2)

The heavens declare. The stars speak. They bear witness to the glory of God. But what do they say?

I remember looking at the stars as a kid, searching for shooting stars on warm Kansas nights and lying on my back in the grass at camp in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, pondering the immensity of the heavens and the mystery of God's love...

The 17 Best Films of the Last 17 Years

Inspired by the New York Times' recent list of the "25 Best Films of the 21st Century," and because it's always fun to draw attention to masterpieces of cinema that people should see, I decided to compile my own list of the best films of the century so far. 

I limited my picks to 17, since we are 17% of the way through the century thus far. That does not mean I picked one film from each year, however. Some years don't have any representation on my list (2010, 2014, 2015), and some years have s...