Yesterday: meetings. Lunch: sandwiches and three varieties of salad.
Today: meetings. Lunch: leftovers.
Tomorrow: meeings.
I finally got half of my order from Amazon. The second half should be here tomorrow. Since my family is not here tonight, I watched it. Saints and Soldiers. S and S is a World War II story set amid the snow of the Battle of the Bulge. Having read a little about it on Amazon, I suspected it was Mormon made. The movie reinforced my suspicion, and a little more internet reading confirmed it. The Mormons are fine film-makers. While the movie has some flaws, it is an outstanding film and will be quite useful if I ever get to teach history again. Its PG-13 is for war-related violence. Its themes are thoughtful, spiritual, and not overtly Mormon. In fact, if I had not read about the movie before I saw it, I would not have know. Why do Christians fail to create art that rises above mediocre?
Peace
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
A palimpsest of past, current, and future happenings in the life of a teacher.
About Me
- Splitcat Chintzibobs
- High School History/English Teacher. One son who is nine. One daughter who is six. Two twin boys who are three.
Flickr Badge
Blog Archive
-
▼
2005
(89)
-
▼
August
(15)
- Lord of the Flies
- Looking for Mr. P.
- Miracle Meteorite
- An Amazing Fact
- Monday Miscellany
- Sauce for the Goose
- Pre-Planning, Day Four
- Pre-Planning, Day Three
- Three Movies
- Pre-Planning, Day Two
- Major Malfunction?
- Pre-Planning Begins!
- Friday Miscellany
- Steven Vincent Murdered in Iraq
- Powder Puff Girls Fraud Alert
-
▼
August
(15)
2 comments:
Hey man--your blog reeks! What the heck is a "Splitcat Chintzibobs" anyway?
What, you didn't like "Left Behind?"
Hmm.
Here's a transcript from the most recent Mars Hill (v. 73):
Ken Meyers: For novelist Flannery O'Connor, the standards for good fiction were pretty high, although she strongly disliked fiction that attempted to be uplifting or improving. She complained in one of her essays about fellow Catholics who wanted "positive literature", a desire that she felt was rooted in "weak faith" and possibly also from a general inability to read.
O'Connor was always nervous about fiction that was concerned about right belief but indifferent to the actual shape of lives being lived. She complained "When the Catholic novelist closes his own eyes and tries to see with the eyes of The Church, the result is a another addition to that large body of pious trash for which we have so long been famous."
But Flannery O'Connor held herself and other writers to a high standard, rooted in her religious convictions. She once wrote that for novelists, "our final standard will have to be the demands of art, which are a good deal more exacting than the demands of the Church. There are novels a writer might write and remain a good Catholic, which his conscience as an artist would not allow him to perpetuate."
Art, in O'Connor's view, is rooted in the stuff of reality, and thus a bad artist, while trying to be a good Christian, is no more excusable than a bad plumber, or a bad accountant, or a bad driver while trying to be a good Christian. In all of these vocations, one can only be ethically responsible before God and toward one's neighbors if one is properly engaged with reality as it is, whether it be leaky pipes, arithmatic, traffic patterns, or story-telling.
Whew. I tend to agree.
Post a Comment