300 words on Avatar

A disclaimer: I’m a sucker for panorama, spectacle, and sheer wonder, so it took me some time to wake up from an immersion in the Avatar ride. The technical magic and imaginative splendor are beyond my abilities to review. How appropriate that this film ends up first on the list for Into the Dark this year because on one level the film concerns the discipline of seeing. Before you judge the film with instant likes and dislikes, loves and hates, take some time to consider how it sees the world and what it says. If memory serves, early on in the film Jake gets a lesson from Norm on the nuances of the verb “to see” in the new language. To Jake, saying “I see you” is simply recognition of an object: like a “yeah, you’re there.” But to the world he is about to enter, “I see you” plays on different levels of “seeing:” discerning, knowing, grasping, comprehending, seeing from deep inside. That verbal shift hints at the clash between two cultures at the heart of the film: one mechanical, imperial, individualistic, and thoroughly modern – another spiritual, tribal, communal, primal and pre-modern. The former can’t see anything but an object to mine; the latter “sees” the living connection at the heart of all things (and the latter are Na’vi – “prophets” in Hebrew, “seers” even). The point is that we all need to wake up to what we’re doing and what we’re missing. It’s a fair criticism, even if I don’t share the pantheism at its heart.* Nor do I share its polarization.** Jake’s musing narration doesn’t diminish the fact that Avatar tells its story with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. But again – I loved it.

grace and peace - Andy

* That’s a whole other post; holler if you are interested.
** That’s also another post. Suffice to say, reality is a lot messier and we’re all complicit in the way “we” live.

He came here

Last night we hosted a light-hearted post-Christmas party for our student ministry leaders at New Hope. Before they came I tried to think of a few short words to say: something on how our time spent seeking out students seems weak and foolish, yet it contains the magnificent secret of God's gracious love that seeks us out and is with us in Christ. After everyone left and I was washing dishes, I remembered this quote I ran across recently from Karl Barth:

“At this point everything becomes clear or unclear, bright or dark. For here we are standing at the centre. And however high and mysterious and difficult everything we want to know might seem to us, yet we may also say that this is just where everything becomes quite simple, quite straightforward, quite childlike. Right here in this centre, in which as a Professor of Systematic Theology I must call to you, ‘Look! This is the point now! Either knowledge, or the greatest folly!’—here I am in front of you, like a teacher in Sunday school facing his kiddies, who has something to say which a mere four-year-old can really understand. ‘The world was lost, but Christ was born, rejoice, O Christendom!’… ‘God became man for thy good, O man. ‘Tis God’s own Child that binds Himself to thine own blood.’”

It brought much joy to me last night: may it do the same for you as well.
(HT: More Than 95 Theses)

on work

"Let the church remember this: that every maker and worker is called to serve God in his profession or trade – not outside it.”

– Dorothy Sayers, via Scot McKnight in his book, The Jesus Creed