Winn Collier's Blog, page 68

Make the World Beautiful: Autumn Firm

For the next installment of our make the world beautiful collection, here's another recommendation (introduced to me by Rob Johnson): The Autumn Film. I've just begun listening to them, but there is a rich texture to their music that makes me want to listen longer, more intently. Something there reminds me of one of my favorite bands, Over the Rhine, with perhaps a little Snow Patrol or Coldplay thrown in.

Best of all, they are giving away 3 separate EPs right now, 11 songs in total - and the vid

Pinkie Winkie Doo

Any soldier who goes into battle against the Taliban in pink boxers and flip-flops has a special kind of courage. {Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates} from NPR

And ... his shirt said, "I Heart NY"

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Wyatt the Brave

Wyatt, our oldest son, turned 7 today - and he's lived every bit of his 7 years, then some. Recently at All Souls, we passed out those little 12 inch wooden manikins, the ones that have joints and can be manipulated any number of ways. The project was simple, for each of us to paint or construct or do whatever with our manikin to represent our sense of what God is doing in us, redeeming in us, calling out of us. This was to be a reflection of our hope, which is to say - this was another way of p

Torture

A survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that white evangelical Christians are more likely to support torture than people who rarely or never attend religious services. (from CNN)

And we say we live for another Kingdom?

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Because We Started the Conversation...

Once the act of simply reporting or simply observing is exposed as a fiction — as something that just can’t be done — the facile opposition between faith-thinking and thinking grounded in independent evidence cannot be maintained. {Stanley Fish}

Today, Stanely Fish posted a follow-up article in the Times to his piece last week, "God-Talk." I found this week's installment intriguing, but also - it's just rude to walk out on someone mid-conversation.

I think Fish could have left out the little self-

Holy Curiosity Jumps the Pond

It usually take a bit for a book to cycle into the international market. Apparently Holy Curiosity has begun to make its way. Two weeks ag o, I did an interview with Premier Radio in the UK - and this month a very kind review landed in Christianity Magazine, a British periodical.

Also, in other international news, this week I'm in the middle of a three week stint where I am doing six 15 - 20 minute interviews for Open House, a weekly radio program airing on 300 stations with 600,000 listeners. Mai

Silence, Shusaku Endo

After I got past the Japanese use of the passive voice ("the scent of the grass was wafted over the white rock"), this simpl e, haunting story pulled me into a valuable conversation about the character of the gospel: what is the essence of Christian faith? How must the gospel incarnate itself in radical new ways within new, distinct cultures? How much of the gospel has been trapped in Western garb? How much can Christian faith accommodate itself to new cultural forms without surrendering its esse

Holy Curiosity Lands in Delaware

A group from Grace Evangelical Free Church in Newark, Delaware read Holy Curiosity together. Thanks for the picture!

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Being You (and me)

On my last birthday, a friend sent me a card. She said some kind things, but two simple words sunk deep: Be you. I've heard it before, haven't we all? But this time I found my heart grabbing at the words, clinging to them, knowing they were more true now for me than perhaps they've been before.

I live in a city with a load of history, an inspiring narrative - but a narrative that also lends itself to some degree of pretense and self-importance. Like any city, we have gatekeepers and elites and th

Fish and Eagleton

The recent God-debates (Hitchens, Dawkins, D'souza et al.) have, if nothing else, raised again the question: what is Christianity good for? And that is a question any of us who claim the faith ought care about.

Stanley Fish's recent piece in the NY Times, God Talk, interacts with Terry Eagleton's book, Reason, Faith and Revolution. Without adhering to any version of Christian orthodoxy, Eagleton has little patience for the triumphant, absolutist proncouncements of those who dismiss faith to the i