American Wheeze

Any group that willingly or unconsciously side-steps creativity and human expression gives up their effective role in the society in which they live. In christian terms, their ability to be the salt of that society is greatly diminished. - Franky Schaeffer

Those who know me know how passionate I can get over the general North American Christian culture and it's lack of recognition of true artistic merit, and production of flat bland trinkets instead. Yesterday, while chatting with my father as we cooperatively scrounged through our kitchen for some savory late night bite of food he said something that surprised me. "I can't listen to CHVN. I don't like it," he said sincerely in a way I've come to realize I've adopted as my own, "the songs mean nothing. They have no meaning." I don't know why it surprised me so much. I know my father and what he chooses to listen to for music. I guess that it was that I had never heard him express distaste for certain music based on artistic merit. The same distaste that I had expressed myself so many times for the same reasons. He then continued talking about a musician named Evie that he had listened to from the 70s and how God had blessed her to be a song writer. I didn't hear all he said because I was so overwhelmed by the feelings of pride and connection. I am perhaps more my father's son than I realize.

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I repeat: art, creative human expression, and the enjoyment of beauty need no justification. The ultimate justification is that they come as a good and gracious gift from God above. - Franky Schaeffer

There is a longing within each one of our hearts. There is a longing. Listen to what DH Lawrence said, “ We want to delude ourselves that of the problem of our emptiness love is at the root. I want to say to you it isn’t. Love is only the branches, the root goes beyond love. A naked kind of isolation. An isolated me that does not meet and mingle and never can. It is true what I say. There is a beyond in you and a beyond in me which goes further than love. Beyond the scope of starts just as some stars are beyond the scope of our vision, so our own search goes on beyond the scope of love. And at least I think that it is at the root going beyond love itself.” Lawrence in one of the few occasions he writes is absolutely right here. It is not just love. I have a family that I love dearly. I cling to them past anything else that I possess. But there is a point at which you look for something more. You may be completely in love with another human being who fulfills the deepest desires of your heart except one desire that the human being cannot fulfill. There is always that haunting sense of emptiness that mankind cannot fill. Who put this there? This is an existential struggle. This is why I think the arts will always be so powerful in our existence, because the arts give us the privilege, as it were, of creating another reality. But it just assumes it is another reality. What it is is the reality in here. -Ravi Zacharias

In looking at the diversity of the Scripture in its content and form, one can hardly imagine that the Bible has anything to do with the present narrow theological sloganeering aspects of evangelical Chrisitianity. It seems to me that if the Bible had been written along the lines of what much of evangelical Chrisitanity represents today, instead of being the full comprehensive wonderful Book of diversity, beauty, knowledge, truth , wisdom, it would be a three-page pamphlet printed probably in words of one syllable, preferably on pink paper (because pink sells), possibly with a scratch and sniff section on the back to stimulate some spiritual experience while reading it. In contrast, the real Bible, the Word of God, is solid, human, verifiable, divine indeed. - Franky Schaeffer (zing)

something pretty for your eyes

Sisters - Kelly Vivanco