Last night, my wife and I went to see The Dark Knight. We’re a little slow about these things. We loved it, but we were both perplexed that the movie felt so long. At 2.5 hours, it was a little long, but not unusually long for movies these days.

And then, the typical post-movie conversation took place.

ME: I think the movie had too many acts.

HER: Too many?

ME: Well, more than I’m used to. I like three. But that was all over the place. Not in a bad way. But it’s hard to wrap my head around the narrative.

Then we spent a few minutes trying to recreate the plot… and we had a lot of trouble. We got lost trying to figure out how a major character ended up dying. So we gave up.

“It’s like the plot was intentionally a chaotic mess,” I said. “Again, not in a bad way.” Thus began an elaborate discussion (during which I missed the Starbucks exit because I can’t talk and drive).

We decided the chaotic structure of the movie supported the overall theme of chaos and anarchy. But not before we raised the old issue of plot versus character. Are the best stories character-driven or plot-driven? No doubt, both elements are important, but which is the most important?

Is a well played Joker enough to satisfy? Is a clever plot with paper thin characters enough to satisfy?

I’ve talked with folks about plot outlines. Mark David Gerson got me thinking about it again today. And I always come back to the same metaphor. When I start a story, poem, book, or even an essay, I have a destination in mind. Writing is a road trip so get a good map. (None of this crazy On Star stuff!) There will be hundreds, maybe thousands of different routes to get from the starting point to the destination you planned. There will be many, many interesting people to meet along the way, if you have the patience to take things slowly.

And of course, sometimes you get lost (in a good way) and end up settling in a different spot than you had originally intended. Which means you may have to retrace the journey several times to change the reader’s expectations at the beginning of the trip.

The analogy is wearing thin, but the question remains. In a good story, do you emphasize character over plot, or plot over character? Which is the most important to you… and why?

For just a minute, I’m going to adopt the role of pastor here. So file in. Take a pew. Sing a song by yourself. Say a prayer. Is your mind in the right place? Good.

Let’s talk about politics.

It’s that time. Now that both parties have had their convention, things could get heated. Here’s a reminder to folks to behave appropriately. Be careful when you change your status on Facebook to some politically cranky rant. Be careful on Twitter. Be careful when you leave comments.

I wonder if we should make a pact with each other? Let’s be accountable on our blogs and social networks to a higher level of discourse for the next few months with these Ten Commandments of Talking (or blogging) Politics.

(Also, I turned the commments off on this one. But you can go comment on the full post at HighCallingBlogs.com)

Led a poetry workshop at Laity Lodge this weekend during the Michael Card retreat. In light of the coming months, here are some poetic thoughts.

A Voter Reads First Peter

Priests are rare today. So are kings.
We overthrow them–divide the power
between voters and delegates and judges,
trust the rule of law over ruling
monarchs. Crowns melt into coins.
Divide the wealth, dilute the ruler
into rules and measurements. Laws
birth lawyers–weak priests to preach
the rule, to stand us up before
fire and flame, sometimes justice burns
where it will. God save us.

Thomas Nelson sent me a review copy of The Faith of Barack Obama. After reading it carefully and in light of Obama’s speech last night, here’s what I think about the book.

The book is thin but fulfills its promise. I felt a bit like I was reading an executive summary of Obama’s books written by a politically conservative evangelical who is trying hard to be fair and balanced. And for the most part, Stephen Mansfield succeeds at being balanced. I’d expect people on the left to grumble that he favors the right. And people on the right will grumble that he favors the left.

From the introduction, Mansfield gives the reader a clear road map:

What follows in these pages is an attempt to understand the religious life of Barack Obama and the changes in American religious history that he has come to represent… This book is … written in the belief that if a man’s faith is sincere, it is the most important thing about him, and that it is impossible to understand who he is and how he will lead without first understanding the religious vision that informs his life.

First, the book walks through Obama’s personal history from his atheist mother, to his Islamic step father, to his personal choice to become Christian in 1985. Mansfield also offers a particularly helpful summary of the black liberation theology that is preached at Trinity United Church of Christ, Obama’s brief political career, and four theories of integrating faith and politics.

The middle of the book was the most disturbing for me, though. At several points, Mansfield subtly questions the authenticity of Obama’s faith. I guess that’s the point of the book, but it really made me squirm.

For example, in describing Obama’s conversion experience, he writes, “What did Barack Obama become, then, on that Sunday morning in 1985? He became, he says, a Christian.”

I don’t know. I grew up in a tradition that was quick to evaluate the salvation of other people, so this poked a real nerve with me. In a few places like this, the book crosses a line for me. It is subtle. It is ultimately fair, but rhetorically subversive. “He became, he says, a Christian.” Embedding that qualifier, emphasizing that qualifier “he says,” encourages the reader to scoff.

Sure, Obama’s a Christian… he says.

As long as a person’s life is not dishonoring Christ, I see no reason to doubt the sincerity of their faith. Of course, a few pages later, Mansfield concedes this as well.

“Only a cynical heart would refuse the possibility of a lonely black man in his twenties finding faith through the preaching of God’s Word.”

If that’s not a concession, it’s at least a confession. Mansfield may be condemning Obama. Other evangelicals may condemn him, but it is a deeply cynical thing to doubt the sincerity of Obama’s faith. And frankly, it’s a slippery slope. Doubt Obama, doubt other leaders, doubt leaders closer to home, doubt friends, etc. The urge to judge another man’s salvation is something we must resist.

Let me be clear. My desire to take Obama at his word regarding his faith does not ultimately change whether I’m going to vote for him. My vote goes to the man whose policies I believe are best for this country.

Back to Mansfield. Despite my little nit-picky criticism, the book itself is really pretty good. At the very least, it is an excellent compilation of quotes from books, speeches, and articles in which Obama describes his faith.

Whatever your political stance or mine, we need to understand McCain and Obama as we enter into this election season.

This little book from Nelson does a decent job of exploring the authenticity of a new Christian Left—and what that movement might look like over the next few months with Barack Obama leading it. If you like quick political biographies, I’d say the book is worth your time and money.

Our network at HighCallingBlogs.com is quickly approaching 200 members. L.L. Barkat of Seedlings In Stone has been with the network almost from the beginning.

More importantly, L.L. understands what we’re trying to do there. L.L. caught the vision.

And that vision is expressed beautifully in her recent book Stone Crossings. The subtitle is “Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places.” Which makes me wonder. Where has God shown you grace today?

For example, L.L. finds grace in doubt.

When Peter is faced with the reality that Jesus will die a criminal’s death, doubt assails him. The truth is too difficult, too bloody, too dirty to hold… When we see Jesus in a new unexpected way that fails to meet expectations, we are tempted to falter and say: This is hard; who can accept it?

As an example, L.L. tells the story of a former professor, “David D.” He was “an excellent customer service representative,” she explains. “The attendant who goes beyond the company script, who makes you feel you are a person with read needs and concerns.” When L.L. went to his office with doubts about God’s mere existence, David didn’t flinch.

She writes, “An unquestioned faith is questionable… Covering doubt and demanding unexamined allegiance holds its own special dangers.”

So true.

Maybe that’s why I sometimes feel compelled to post crazy doubts and reveal unorthodox allegiances. Thank you to readers here for sticking with me. If I can’t be myself here, I’m in trouble.

Because I’m not one of those people who can put up a special marketing-niche facade.

So. I’ll leave the comments here open on this one. But I wrote a longer review of L.L.’s book over at HighCallingBlogs.com, and I hope you click through to read what she has to say about daily work and sacrifice.

In keeping with the 1980s nostalgia that has captured some bloggers, I started thinking about one of my all time favorite movies: Joe vs. the Volcano.

And I wondered, how many people go to work and feel like the guy in our featured video over at HighCallingBlogs.com?

Poor Joe. He works in a medical accessories factory. They manufacture devices that sound really uncomfortable. I’ll just leave it at that.

And his job looks like hell. I’m being literal. Bad lights that suck the life out of people. Bad bosses that bark inane orders into the phone. Electric hums. Muddy parking lots.

Read more > >

In our GodblogCon.com conversation with Andrew Jones (Tall Skinny Kiwi) last week, we talked about life streaming. That’s something a lot of people on the front of technology are predicting will become more common.

As more and more devices connect online, it is easier and easier to turn a series of text messages into a micro-blog (Twitter) or a series of phone messages into a podcast (Skype + Podomatic).

That got me thinking during my web 2.0 time today. First, I logged into Facebook to think about social networks as a location where someone might start life streaming.

You can read more about this over at our latest blogging tip on HighCallingBlogs.com. I’m closing the comments here, so you’ll go there to comment.

Well, you know. Done enough for the kids to play in at any rate. This seems like the sort of thing that could be tweaked and accessorized indefinitely. Here are some pics for fun.
Continue reading →

Earlier this week, I had a chance to talk with Andrew Jones of TallSkinnyKiwi.com in preparation for GodblogCon and BlogWorld in Las Vegas next month. I’m proud to say that TheHighCalling.org is one of the event sponsors this year!

Andrew has been blogging since the mid 1990s, back when other folks were still trying to get on board with email. He’s also a key player in the best parts of the emergent movement–which is to say he understands the movement’s roots in the science of emergence, rather than in goatees, candles, and neo-denominationalism. That said, I wouldn’t really consider myself emergent. I’m just a guy following Jesus, nurturing a marriage, raising my kids, doing a job, and playing around with technology and poetry and stuff.

(And I’m not even sure what “neo-denominationalism” is. I just made that up for fun.)

Definitely listen to the audio if you get a chance. You can download it to your ipod, stream it online, or whatever.

Remember: It’s not too late to register for GodblogCon! Let me know in the comments if you’ll be there.

That’s the joke in my house anyway. Other guys grab a beer, sit on the couch, flip on the TV and respond to every question with grunts:

“Uhhnnnhhh Uhhnnnhhh.”

I grab a beer, sit on the couch, flip open a book of poetry and respond with grunts:

“Uhhnnnhhh Uhhnnnhhh.”

The stack of books on my nightstand is getting rather large, but I got my friend John Poch’s new book the other day. It won a big national prize. So of course, I dropped everything to read it–and grunt at my family. (The truth is I read at night in a cave of covers with a book light while my wife sleeps. Like a kid in middle school or something.)

John’s book Two Men Fighting with a Knife is my kind of poetry. (Here’s the book direct from the publisher.) Like all books of poetry, I only marked half of the poems on the first read. Some I marked “FUN!” Others “sad…” One “wow.” And lots of underlined phrases like this one about the speaker’s father:

A god some nights, he carried me up our stairs,
my feet bumping the wallpapered halls, my prayers
let slide for murmurs. He laid the angel’s shields
over me and let them glisten as I slept.
He woke me for chores, for school. Later, he left.

It kind of chokes me up to read it, you know? That’s from “The Angel on the Lamp.” There’s also an astounding sonnet crown dedicated to his surgeon. My favorite poem in the book, though, is a fun sonnet about swatting mosquitoes while on vacation in Mexico (among other things).

Lots of sonnets in the book. John specializes in structured verse, particular forms with rigid rules of rhyme and meter and argument. You can see hints of that in the excerpt above “stairs/prayers,” “slept/left.”

I know the book is good because as soon as I finished I wrote a poem. Good poetry has that effect on me. It’s beautiful and finely crafted, but also inspiring and empowering. In short, John Poch is a master of sprezzatura. So here’s the poem I wrote (which you can hear me read in a new podcast episode):

Shutting Down
for John Poch

I hear a cricket in my room, chirping
in time to the flashing cable modem light.
My ears fight the sound, the constant insect flirting
with my mind to take flight together tonight.
Not quite in my room, though, I think it’s outside
our window back on the porch–behind the grill
or underneath or even, God forbid, inside
on the cold, dirty rack where meat and rust still
decay. Like the day in my mind disintegrates
into static from scratching legs or electronic
squeaks from data packages arriving too late.
The monitor’s glow motivates me with chronic
cricket cries to mouse clicks. Shut down. Window’s
symphonic sigh brings silence I suppose.