SPARC

It's that time of year again at Brook Hill (the school where I teach) when we take a week off from typical courses and all dive into "alternative" courses. We call it SPARC, which stands for Spring Potential and Reality Courses.

The premise is that each teacher comes up with a class they'd like to teach for a solid week and advertises it to the student body. Then, students sign up for what interests them. This year there were courses that ranged from educational trips to Washington DC, NYC, London, south Texas, and California, to courses on campus ranging from digital scrap booking, coaching, photography, film making, military tactics, gun safety, and cooking (well, GRILLING!).

The past two years I have taken a bicycle trip around East Texas, but this year I wanted to offer something on campus that was inexpensive and open to middle schoolers. I thought through all my interests and decided to create a course on comics. I thought, "I DO read a lot of graphic novels. I could turn that into a class of some sort." So I came up with Understanding and Creating Comics.

And ten people actually signed up.

I was pretty thrilled about it, because I was thinking it would be a bust. So this week with my handful of students we've been
1. Discussing the basic art/theory/philosophy that goes into comics.
2. Discussing (and watching videos) that explain the general process of scripting, penciling, inking, lettering comics.
3. Reading graphic novels and writing brief journal entries about our discoveries and thoughts of our selected books.
4. Working on our own original stories.

After three days of this, I see that much of what I planned had less to do with me instructing about comics and to do with the students exploring and discovering what comics really are and what they like or dislike about them. I'm not sure of what the students exactly think about what we're doing this week; however, I DO see that the ideas they're coming up with and the stories they're actually producing are varied, fun, creative, and, quite honestly, impressive. By week's end, each student will have something to show for their time in the class--something that shows the results of their learning (I hope), but also of their creativity and efforts.

Be on the look out: I'll post the stories here as we have them completed.

ANOTHER ANGLE is Kindle Ready

Well, I didn't get much feedback over the weekend, so I'm reposting this. Pardon the self-aggrandizing push, but I am psyched that Another Angle, my experimental look through the "art" lens at the sacraments, is now Kindle ready.

Inside, you'll find two essays, around fifteen poems and a novella.

An odd mix, no? That's why I said it was an experiment. The general argument is that Christians need a theological component to their world view, yes, but we also need an art component. My chosen object of inquiry is the sacraments, namely baptism and the Lord's Supper.

So part 1 very briefly examines the theological implications of these sacraments.

Part 2 examines the nature of viewing reality through an artistic lens.

Parts 3 and 4 attempt to demonstrate a look at the sacraments through art, specifically written art, poetry and story. (This assumes, of course, that what I've written is "art." I don't claim to be one of the "masters," yet I am a man, made in God's image, and thus I have creative capacity. This capacity allows me to offer art as a means of making experience concrete.)

If you're interested, click on the cover below. It'll take you over to Amazon.com.

 

Book Realease! ~ Another Angle

This past weekend I released a new book called Another Angle: Sacrament and Life through Poetry and Story. As it's a bit of an unorthodox approach for a book, I have included most of the introduction below. If you're interested, click the photo of the cover or the link to the right.

~~~*~~~

I have a vision problem. I think I know and understand—that I “see”—so much about life and purpose and fellowship with God. But the truth is I see little and know and understand less. The funny thing is, “the eye is not satisfied with seeing” (Eccl 1:8) and I do, indeed, long to see more, yet I’ve settled for seeing little while fooling myself into believing I see much. I’m like those folks C. S. Lewis once described, the ones who have contented themselves with making mud pies in their ghetto slum because they just don’t understand or can’t imagine God’s offer of a trip to the seashore. Yes, sadly, I’m also much like Isaiah’s audience, the people who kept on hearing but didn’t understand, who kept on seeing but didn’t perceive (6:9).

What I need is new eyes. I need my way of seeing crafted—sharpened and then continually shaped and sculpted by the living God. Thankfully, this is what theology does, what the preaching of God’s word does, what the study and discussion of God’s word does. This is what the administering and partaking of the sacraments does. This is what fellowship does. And, I’ve discovered and would like to argue, this is also what art does. But I get ahead of myself.

My guess is, most of us don’t see as clearly nor as fully as we could and as we long to see. Thus, my goal here is to pursue new eyes, at least in part, and to bring you along with me. More specifically, I’d like for us to consider life more fully, but we need some lenses through which to make our observations. And, we need something specific to observe, something that encapsulates and demonstrates the essence of life, for trying to look at all of life without any focal point would be maddening.

Is there any such thing as this, any such focal point? I think there is. The sacraments encapsulate the essence of life for they embody for us union and communion—community—as God intended humankind to experience in this world. In other words, in the sacraments we are given a picture of life as God created it to be, a “world miniature,” as Peter Leithart says. It follows that the better we understand the sacraments, the better we will understand how to live in the union and communion which the sacraments picture. Period.

So I’d like to invite you to see the sacraments in a new light that we might see the world in a new light. Ah, but here’s the catch: I don’t want to approach this exploration solely by way of mere theory or ideology—by theology--alone. Theology is necessary, of course, but constructing an entire worldview based only on rigid theological systems and ideals, devoid of imagination, tends to beget a stale and stagnant view of life. At least this is what I have observed in myself and the church. (Yes, I’m guilty of trying to live by theological constructs alone.) Seeing only through a rigid theological construct limits our vision and hinders us from grasping life more completely, more wholly. Hence the vision problem I mentioned earlier.

Thus, the pursuit of this book is to peer into the sacraments—and thereby into life—through the lens of theology as well as through the lens of art and imagination. We can’t help having a theology, a worldview, a lens through which to interpret and understand reality. Everyone has a worldview, regardless of whether he or she knows it or not. We can’t turn it off, nor should we even attempt to do so. For Christians the Bible forms and informs our worldview, our perspective and understanding of God, man, and creation. At the same time, as creatures made in the image of God and thus possessing a creative capacity, we also need to acknowledge the importance of art and imagination. We ought not ignore or turn off this creative human capacity, for it informs our understanding of life as well. Both theology and art are essential means of grasping and articulating what is often beyond our reach and our words. Both are necessary if we are to see and understand the world more wholly.

Because my desire—for myself and for others—is a more complete grasp and understanding of life as God intended, in Another Angle I will first look briefly at the sacraments through the lens of theology. Then, with this theological foundation, I will add the lens of art, specifically poetry and story, and look at the sacraments and life through it. This will give us another, more complete, angle on life.    

Another Angle

I'm finishing up revisions on a book entitled Another Angle. Here's the general premise:

Many of us Christians have a vision problem. We struggle to see the world in ways other than through our strict, systematic theological lens. But what if there another lens? What if there's more to see? 

What if there's another angle?

My plan is to focus specifically on union and communion as experienced in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper AND on the day to day life to which these rites point. I will argue that ART is one of these other lenses--a lens that is often neglected by Christians.

But here's the catch: this book will explore this other angle by way of essay, poetry and story. The first essay will briefly explain what the sacraments are from a theological point of view (we do need a foundation, after all, and we can't turn off our theological worldview). The second essay explains and explores how art works and how we ought to at least add the art lens to our theological worldview lens--we ought to peer at life through both. Then the poems and the novella demonstrate the perspective we can gain on life through the creative arts themselves.

So here are my questions--and please comment if you have even an inkling of an opinion on the matter: Does such a project like this make sense? Is it something you'd be interested in exploring? Please let me know.

Sacraments from several angles

I'm finally getting around to working on putting some books together. I have several manuscripts that need polishing and submitting, so I figured it was time to get around to it.

One project I'm working on is a bit unique. It's about the sacraments, but I'm looking at them from four angles: through the lenses of theology, philosophy (sort of--I'm trying to explain that we should look at them through art), poetry (my attempt at lyrical art), and story (my attempt at narrative art). My goal is to offer an exploration of the sacraments and the life they depict, but I want to do so from several perspectives in order to offer a more complete picture of them.

I'm not sure how this will go over, since placing such a book on the shelf in some sort of category will be difficult. 

Anyway, here are a couple of the poems that will be in the book.

I

Individual heads, hearts and bodies

Most miraculously made into one…

And yet, we live like we’ve been dissected,

Laid out around the table all undone.

The same unstained blood pulses through our veins,

Taken hold and organized organic.

Diverse body parts seamed—quick—together—

At table the wounds heal, for the water’s thick.

II

We gather around wood

Unique

And yet united

We take and eat the food—

Our need,

From us divided.

We taste, we see it’s good—

We feed:

Our body’s braided.

I'll let you know how the project progresses. If you get the chance, let me know what you think about such a book--one with a couple of essays, fifteen or so poems and a novella. Does something like this even work? Make sense?