Tag Archives: creativity

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Friday Link Love

Plenty of choice goodies today for all your Friday procrastination needs:

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Welcome to the Jungle — Luke Lukas

This has gotta be the best version of “Welcome to the Jungle” EVER. Who needs Axl’s sweet licks when you’ve got a kazoo!!

He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.

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Maurice Sendak — Fresh Air 

This quote from an interview with Terry Gross has been making the rounds:

There’s something eucharistic about this.

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Returning to Church, Despite My Doubts — CNN Religion Blog

Although I never experienced that dramatic reconversion moment, I did come to peace with two slow-growing realizations.

First: My doubt belonged in church.

People who know my story ask what I would have changed about my spiritual journey. Nothing. I had to leave the church to find the church. And when I came back, the return wasn’t clean or conclusive. Since then, I’ve come to believe that my doubts belong inside the space of the sanctuary. My questions belong on the altar as my only offering to God.

With all its faults, I still associate the church with the pursuit of truth and justice, with community and shared humanity. It’s a place to ask the unanswerable questions and a place to be on sojourn. No other institution has given me what the church has: a space to search for God.

Read on for her other realization, and more. Amen.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson on Agnosticism/Atheism — The Big Think

Neil deGrasse Tyson identifies as an agnostic:
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1

This video has sparked some serious, and in some cases virulent, debate about what it means to be an atheist. But I think I get what he’s going for. For one thing, he doesn’t want to part of a movement, partly because some aspects of that movement are, well, mean. But I also think he doesn’t want to be claimed by the atheists because belief in God, and disbelief in God, are just not the questions that animate him.

I think Tyson’s saying, God isn’t a part of the picture, not even as the thing I reject. Unless and until evidence comes to light that proves or disproves God, the idea of God is completely irrelevant to my life. 

Claiming Tyson as an atheist is like someone claiming me as a fan of their favorite cricket team.

I’ve often thought we have a language problem here. Atheism is defined in negative terms: disbelief in God. Maybe it would be more helpful in terms of building understanding if there was a word that explained what people are for rather than what they disbelieve.

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Is Evolution a Lousy Story? — Science and Religion Today

Polls show that fewer than half of Americans accept evolution. Most of us still don’t buy it. As the comedian Louis C.K. asked in a bit about people who insist that they can’t possibly be related to monkeys: “Why are you fighting this?”

Dan McAdams offers one possible, rarely discussed reason: Maybe evolution is a lousy story. Actually, McAdams, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, doesn’t think evolution is a story at all. There is no protagonist, no motivation, no purpose—all crucial elements in a narrative, whether it’s Frog and Toad Are Friends or Fifty Shades of Grey.

He mentioned this idea recently during a presentation at the Consilience Conference,which also drew researchers from biology, economics, and literary studies. Afterward, a seemingly annoyed audience member questioned McAdams’s apparent criticism of evolution, countering that it’s in fact a wonderful, elegant explanation of life. McAdams agreed that it’s wonderful and elegant. He just doesn’t think it’s a story.

I found this intriguing, partly because “creationists are idiots” just doesn’t give you much to go on. And, I love thinking in terms of story.

A new site for me, but one I now follow on Google Reader.

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10 Things Your Commencement Speaker Won’t Tell You – WSJ

“Some of your worst days lie ahead,” and other uncomfortable truths.

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Jerry Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret – LifeHacker

It’s very simple: Don’t break the chain.

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Crush the “I’m Not Creative” Barrier – Harvard Business Review

The bad news is that if you don’t think you’re creative, our survey data say that you probably are not. But there is good news: You can actually become more creative by changing your mind-set. Anyone can innovate, if they choose to. Disruptive innovators do it by choice, not chance. Their everyday actions swap out an “I’m not creative” mind-set for an “I am creative” one. And then magical (not mystical) things unfold.

Oh, those hippy-dippy flakes at the… Harvard Business Review. What do they know? :-)

An interesting article, and not just because they love on Evernote, the software that makes my life better every day.

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Have an excellent weekend.

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Friday Link Love

We’ve had a lot of new visitors to The Blue Room lately, so by way of orientation: every Friday I post a variety of links to items that interested me over the last week, most of which require little commentary. We cover everything from art to faith to brain chemistry. Some weeks it’s lighthearted stuff, some weeks not.

And now, for all your Friday procrastination needs… Link Love:

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Creative Dad Takes Crazy Photos of Daughters — Jason Lee

Fun with Photoshop. Lots more at the above link.

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Motherhood Mantras: It’s Good Enough — Theresa Cho

Theresa is a rockstar in Presbyterian world. (Yes, I realize the cognitive dissonance there. Work with me, people.) She’s also a righteous babe.

In my ninth week of pregnancy, I had the most vivid dream. My family and I were vacationing in a cabin. While my son and I were hanging out in the backyard, a black panther appeared and began to circle around us. I screamed for my husband to save us, but he couldn’t come. That dream haunted me for months after I found out I miscarried.

After several months had past and I had experienced another miscarriage, I decided to see a therapist for a completely different reason than the miscarriages. But somehow that dream entered into our conversation. After telling her about the dream, she asked me to close my eyes and have a conversation with the panther. Are you kidding me? Talk to the panther? I decided to humor her. The conversation went something like this…

Read the rest. It took my breath away.

This article is part of a series by Mihee Kim-Kort, who is also a righteous babe. I’ve been pondering my own motherhood mantra and hope to participate in this great project at some point.

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Fifteen Things You Should Give Up to Be Happy — Purpose Fairy

Blame, complaining, the luxury of criticism… what do you think? What makes your list of impediments to happiness?

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A Teacher, A Student and a 39-Year Lesson in Forgiveness — Oregon Live

When he was 12 years old, the boy did something he only later realized probably hurt his seventh-grade teacher. It was minor — he was, after all, a kid — but in time, when he was older and wiser, he wanted to find this teacher and apologize.

But the teacher seemed to have vanished. Over the decades, the man occasionally turned to the Internet, typing the teacher’s name into the search box. He never found anything. He never quit looking. A few months ago — by now nearly 39 years after this happened — he got a hit.

It’s not too late. Interesting to read this article in conversation with the one on forgiving and forgetting earlier this week.

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A Thin Toy is a Happy Toy! — Jana Riess

You guys know I write about body image stuff. A lot. Check out this post about how kids’ toys (e.g. Strawberry Shortcake) have gotten thinner over the years. What the heck?

Oh and Jana Riess? Also a righteous babe.

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Just for fun: Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ: The Greatest Craigslist Car Ad Ever — Jalopnik

The owner, Joe, who seems to either have some decent design skills or an easily conned friend with said skills, is offering a 1995 Pontiac Grand Am GT for the low price of $700, marked down from the expected price of $199,999. His hyperbolic rhetoric about the car has an intoxicating effect, and I’m actually feeling like I want– no, I need– this Clinton-era example of what Americans can build at their absolute unfettered best.

We tried calling Joe, but of course his line was busy. Duh. There’s probably a line around his block of people hoping to look at the car, or maybe just lick the oil pan to cure cancer or have their baby breathe some holy exhaust. We’ll update if he gets in touch with us before he’s raptured to Heaven.

He did get in touch with them, and there’s now an interview up at this site. Silly post, silly ad. A bit PG-13. Don’t send me letters.

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And the obligatory posts from my favorite art site, Colossal:

A Wall of Shattered Glass Floods a Benedictine Monastery:

and Ridiculously Imaginative Playgrounds by Monstrum. I can’t possibly choose my favorite, but how awesome would it be for a church playground to feature one of these:

Jonah… go to Sunday School…

“No way, God! I’d rather be in the belly of the whale!”

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Have a good weekend, wherever you may find yourself.

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A Pastor’s Kind of Creativity

The tagline for the Blue Room is “a space for beauty, ideas, creativity, and the life of the Spirit.” I tagged it thusly because that’s the purpose of the Blue Room in our house. It’s my home study, the homework place, the kid arts and crafts room. But it feels high-falutin’ to have that tagline. I don’t feel worthy of it.

Then yesterday I listened to Creativity and the Everyday Brain, an interview with neuroscientist Rex Jung on Being. And it encouraged me.

You can read the whole transcript, but here’s the pertinent bit for me, and I suspect, for many of you who plan worship, education and mission in the church. Prior to this, Krista Tippett and Rex Jung had been talking about Einstein’s term, “spiritual genius,” and what it meant:

Ms. Tippett: One of the people I’ve interviewed is Jean Vanier. Are you familiar with him? He started the L’Arche Movement, which is a global movement of communities centered around people with mental disabilities, especially Down syndrome. I think, if Einstein had known him, he might have said ‘there’s a spiritual genius.’ But even if you put that language to one side, I think that’s a form of creativity — there’s socially useful, novel and useful, creativity.

Dr. Jung: Yes.

Ms. Tippett: Right, that — that fits your definition, but it’s not immediately what comes to mind. We think of artists, we think of scientists.

Dr. Jung: It’s not, but I totally agree that that is a form of creativity and a very valuable form of creativity and perhaps something that we’re moving towards in our increasingly complex society. It’s not just going to be a product. It’s not just going to be an artifact like a painting or a dance number. It’s going to be moving groups of people together and motivating groups of people in certain ways, and that’s a creative endeavor in this L’Arche Movement that you’re talking about. This is a kind of — sounds like a new creative endeavor that we should start to recognize.

Ms. Tippett: Yeah. I mean, people think differently and live differently as a result of this.

That’s the goal, isn’t it, of that kind of creative endeavor? That people think and live differently. That’s why we worship leaders pore over books to find just the right prayer of confession. Or comb our archives looking for a quote for the bulletin cover that will set the right tone. That’s why groups of pastors fly off for a week of lectionary study with other trusted colleagues every year. (OK, one of the reasons.)

The transformed life is the artifact we’re looking for.

But works of spiritual genius also happen on a level that’s beyond us and our efforts. During Sunday’s service I saw at least three people with tears in their eyes. That’s not all that unusual, in my experience. Church is a place where people can tap deep wells of emotion. You don’t force it or manipulate it. You just create a space where it can happen.

What was a bit unusual is that all three of these people were big strong men. It was holy ground.

In my work with NEXT Church, I’ve sometimes felt an insecurity among pastors of mainline churches. Are we dinosaurs because we offer a more traditional worship experience? Sometimes, yes, if it’s not indigenous to the people we serve. But it’s like we equate spiritual genius with tattoos and funky glasses. I feel this sometimes myself. I am in awe of the way some people think. I am creative, but within a form. I’m not nuking the Presbyterian order of worship, as many have (faithfully). It’s the sandbox I’m playing in.

For others, there is no box.

But artistry comes in many shapes and sizes. During the NEXT conference, we sang a setting of “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” that was utterly fresh and new, with guitar and percussion. And the music we made was like a wall of sound—I’ve never heard a congregated people sing that song like that. And at the end of the conference, the organist played the Widor Toccata, and dozens of people stood and soaked it in… even came up into the chancel to behold an artist at work.

Both experiences were traditional. And both were of the moment. Both were moments of spiritual genius.

Be of good cheer, friends who work in the church. There is an artistry to what you do.

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Image: from the New Yorker article referenced in the On Being program, about how brainstorming doesn’t work. Off topic for this post but worth a read.

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Friday Link Love

A more random assortment than usual:

The Best and Worst Places in the World to Be a Woman — Belfast Telegraph

In honor of yesterday’s International Women’s Day:

1. Best place to be a woman: Iceland

Iceland has the greatest equality between men and women, taking into account politics, education, employment and health indicators. The UK comes in at 16th place, down one since 2010. The worst is Yemen, and the most dangerous is Afghanistan.

2. Best place to be a politician: Rwanda

Rwanda is the only nation in which females make up the majority of parliamentarians. Women hold 45 out of 80 seats. The UK comes in at 45th place, behind Pakistan and United Arab Emirates. The worst countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Qatar, Oman and Belize, have no women in parliament.

More at the link.

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And while we’re on the topic…

The Census Bureau Counts Fathers as “Child Care” — NYT

…when they are caring for kids when the mother is working. Srsly?

If, every morning, I go off to work and my husband stays home with a child, that’s a “child care arrangement” in the eyes of this governmental institution. If the reverse is true, it’s not. I asked Ms. Laughlin if the Census Bureau collected data on the hours mothers spend offering “work support” to their husbands. “No,” she said. “We don’t report it in that direction.”

How’s about we call both of those things “parenting” and get on with life in the 21st century, OK?

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Fresh Guacamole — YouTube

So clever:

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The Exit Polls Tell the Story — McSweeney’s

Because you’ve got to embrace the silliness sometimes:

Romney was the overall winner among ascot-wearers.
Santorum won among the subset of voters wearing denim ascots.
Gingrich was the pick of those wearing gravy-stained ascots.

Heh.

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Lenten Epiphany — theskyislaughing

Susan Olson does it again. Wise and heartfelt.

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Lists of Note

What a fun site to browse. The latest list (as of this posting) includes 17 books that Hemingway ”would rather read again for the first time [...] than have an assured income of a million dollars a year.”

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How Far Apart on Iran Are GOP Candidates, Obama? — NPR

Last week’s Link Love included a link to NPR’s new ethics policies, in which they try to get away from gotcha, false-equivalence pieces. This story is a perfect example of that. It’s actually a real news story, not a puff piece about the horse race. They even correct a factual error that one of the candidate made.

Encouraging?

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That’s all I got today. Peace be with you.

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Harvesting from NEXT: Open Space

One of the most interesting happenings at NEXT was Open Space. After a presentation that included a description of the topic, people shouted out topics they wanted to discuss, then people clustered to the conversations that interested them and we were off! There were probably 30-40 discussions going on around the room.

We’ve implemented Open Space in our presbytery, National Capital. Here is a good description from our website. Note that the purpose of OS is not to deliberate on an issue or to seek consensus on something. The point is for people to come together to share ideas and potentially even form partnerships. (See the video at the NCP link about “flipping the presbytery.”)

Robert Austell had a good “friendly critique” of the process at NEXT. Some of his comments reflected limitations of the conference: the space was not ideal, and it’s hard to start from a place of trust when you don’t know one another. Some of the discussions were better facilitated than others. However, his post provides a good overview of what we did and some ways it could be better.

Rather than provide a broad description of Open Space, I want to share two moments I witnessed in OS recently, one in our own presbytery and one at the NEXT Conference. I share them for people who may be looking to implement Open Space. They are not huge moments, but I found them revealing in their own way:

1. After our first OS at National Capital, we had one of the crankiest meetings I’ve ever had the misfortune to experience. (There’s a reason I call us National Crankypants, but this was cranky even for us.) People were pulling out all the Roberts Rules of Order stops: Division in the house! Substitute motions! I think we were even wordsmithing a motion en masse at one point. Blech. Now granted it was a contentious issue we were dealing with (I can’t even remember what it was) and there was some confusion too. But I am certain that Open Space played a role in this dynamic. It’s like things were so unstructured that people just clamped down afterwards.

Some people find Open Space exciting and refreshing. Others find it scary in its sheer open-endedness. If you get a bunch of Presbyterians in a room together and ask them to be open source… to go off the agenda… to meander around in a topic to see what generative stuff might result… there is going to be blowback. It is such a different way of being that some folks will overcorrect. That is basic family systems stuff right there. We should have anticipated it and planned for it in our meeting, in retrospect. (I say that as a member of the committee that plans presbytery meetings.)

2. Following the NEXT conference Open Space, there was a report back of “harvestings.” These were supposed to be short sentences that reflected some aspect of the discussion. One person got up and, instead of sharing the results of the discussion, launched into what felt a lot like a public service announcement. It felt like talking points. Don’t get me wrong; the information was really important. But the difference between this report-back and the others was obvious and it shifted the energy palpably. I found myself wondering what that group’s discussion had been like.

Not sure what the takeaway is there, though it seems related to number 1. You can’t shift a culture overnight. There will be pockets of resistance. And resistance doesn’t always appear as frowny crossed arms. Sometimes resistance is friendly, but still speaking the old language.

It’s OK. But be aware of it, plan for it, correct and redirect as necessary… but don’t let it stop you either.

Image: the rules of Open Space.

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Friday Link Love

Away we go:

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Speed Creating — Dominic Wilcox

I included a link to this earlier in the week, but Wilcox’s stuff is so cool I just had to post it in Link Love. Whimsical! Practical! Genius!

At left is the foil bust.

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Where Am I? The Middle Class Crisis of Place — Christianity Today

To exist at all, we must be somewhere. And as embodied creatures, we are implaced in specific contexts. Yet in contemporary culture, this aspect of human existence is threatened by what Bartholomew calls a “crisis of place” created by several elements of our technological society. To fully flourish as human beings—and to flourish as entire communities—Bartholomew argues, we need to recover the lost art of placemaking.

I especially like the spiritual/incarnational practices he suggests to recover a sense of Place.

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How “Not Giving a ****” Can Really Help You a Lot — Improvised Life

Interesting videos with George Carlin and Louis C.K. (one of my favorite comedians) about truth-telling, authenticity and creativity. Obvious warning: both have potty mouths. If that bothers you, don’t send me letters clutching your pearls. Just don’t watch.

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The Illusion of Choice — An Infographic

The statistics in infographics always needs to be taken with a grain of salt. However, the basic assertion is this: despite a dizzying number of media options today, 90% of what we read, watch or listen to is controlled by just six corporations.

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And another graphic, Highways as the London Subway Map — Good Design

h/t Keith Snyder. I love maps, and this one is especially fun to look at.

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I’m off to Big D on Sunday for the NEXT Church conference. I’ve been so focused on getting my workshop ready that I haven’t had a chance to get excited about seeing old friends and getting inspired for ministry. It’s going to be great! And if any of you Blue Room readers are coming, be sure and say hello.

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Friday Link Love

We’re all over the place this week:

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Barbie Trashes Her Dreamhouse — Carrie M. Becker

1/6 scale hoarder’s house. Awesome and disturbing:

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Aurora 2012 — Vimeo (video)

Amazing. Good job, God.

Aurora 2012 from Christian Mülhauser on Vimeo.

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Why Morning Routines Are Creativity Killers — Time

Imaginative insights are most likely to come to us when we’re groggy and unfocused. The mental processes that inhibit distracting or irrelevant thoughts are at their weakest in these moments, allowing unexpected and sometimes inspired connections to be made. Sleepy people’s “more diffuse attentional focus,” they write, leads them to “widen their search through their knowledge network. This widening leads to an increase in creative problem solving.” By not giving yourself time to tune in to your meandering mind, you’re missing out on the surprising solutions it may offer. (If you happen to be one of those perky morning people, your most inventive time comes when you’re winding down in the early evening.

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Show and Tell: Six Ways to Teach Your Children the Faith — U.S. Catholic

“The” faith is the Catholic faith. But these simple approaches can be adapted for other contexts:

Try asking your kids what they thought of the Sunday homily. (If they answer, “It was the most boring thing I ever heard!” and you agree, consider saying so. Avoid insincere praise, which they can spot in a minute.) Ask them what they might have said about the gospel if they’d given the homily that day. They might surprise you.

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And finally, just for fun… Parsing the President’s Spotify Playlist — Maddow Blog

There’s been plenty of snickering on Twitter and pop-culture blogs about the inclusion of not one, but two songs by former Hootie and the Blowfish frontman Darius Rucker. I think of them as the playlist’s equivalent to the Affordable Heathcare for America Act: so bland and watered-down that you can’t believe anyone’s as worked up about them as they are. (And let’s be honest: you know these are some of the ones Obama selected himself. We like to think he’s Mr. Super Cool, but don’t forget, this is a guy who keeps his cell phone in a belt holster.)

I’m listening to it right now…

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Friday Link Love

Just a few today:

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Joy of Books — YouTube

I cannot fathom how long this took… but I’m glad they spent the time.

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NOW we're talkin'!

New Playgrounds Are Safe… And That’s Why Nobody Uses Them — Atlantic

I couldn’t agree more. I can’t count the number of times I’ve stood at the bottom of a lame plastic slide just in case one of my kids flies off the bottom—because it happened to me when I was a kid—and then realized, “Who am I kidding? They’re going to grind to a halt halfway up and have to scoot their way off. Childhood today sucks.”

And while I’m on the topic, why do parents say “Good job” when their kid reaches the bottom of a slide? “Way to be subject to gravity!”

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How Do We Identify Good Ideas? — Jonah Lehrer

The inconsistency of genius is a consistent theme of creativity: Even those blessed with ridiculous talent still produce works of startling mediocrity. (The Beatles are the exception that proves the rule, although their subsequent solo careers prove that even Lennon and McCartney were fallible artists.) The larger point is that mere imagination is not enough, for even those with prodigious gifts must still be able to sort their best from their worst, sifting through the clutter to find what’s actually worthwhile.

…But this raises the obvious question: How can we sort our genius from our rubbish?

The answer may surprise you… and it has implications for Sabbath, in my opinion.

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Free Cabin P0rn 

I wish it weren’t called that, but whatever.

We talk a lot in our family about the idea of a “self house.” Caroline came up with the name at Christmas several years ago. She told Robert she wanted to give me my own small cabin in the backyard “where Mommy can go when she’s feeling mad.” Sigh. I was half dismayed that Mommy apparently gets mad often enough to need a whole separate building to contain it, half blown away by her idea, which let’s face it, is spot on. Who wouldn’t love a self house?

This site is full of self houses, and the story snippets are fascinating, the pictures arresting. I was reminded of my friend Karen, who recommended a book years ago about desert spirituality called The Solace of Fierce Landscapes. OK, I then bought the book and never read it. But don’t you see the solace of fierce landscapes when you look through these photos?

Oh and Caroline, if you ever read this, here’s the one I’ve picked out:

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And speaking of a space of one’s own, I’m off to Montreat on Sunday for a week of Preacher Camp. It’s an intense week socially, academically, and… gastronomically. (We eat out a lot.) But every night I retire to my own “cabin” of sorts, and it’s very very nice. And then by Friday I’m very happy to get back home to the chaos.

My papers are written and I can’t wait. Take care.

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Friday Link Love

The Cult of Collaboration — Fernando Gros

Just jokin'. Sort of.

…We often need to collaborate in order to solve really big problems. And, as humans, we also need to work alongside other people to satisfy more basic emotional desires for community and belonging.

But, the hard slog of creating, innovating and thinking is something we largely do alone.

That’s something I totally agree with. And, it worries me that in many parts of society, including schools, we are not encouraging people to develop the skills required to work alone, for extended periods of time, on complex problems.

Add in the fact that smartphones mean that we need never be alone again, and this is an issue worth thinking about. Alone. Or together.

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Religion for Atheists — Alain de Botton

We are far more desperate than secular modernity recognises. All of us are on the edge of panic and terror pretty much all the time – and religions recognise this. We need to build a similar awareness into secular structures.
Religions are fascinating because they are giant machines for making ideas vivid and real in people’s lives: ideas about goodness, about death, family, community etc. Nowadays, we tend to believe that the people who make ideas vivid are artists and cultural figures, but this is such a small, individual response to a massive set of problems. So I am deeply interested in the way that religions are in the end institutions, giant machines, organisations, directed to managing our inner life. There is nothing like this in the secular world, and this seems a huge pity.

The above link is to an FAQ about Botton’s TED talk on Atheism 2.0, which is outstanding and available here.

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Pomodoro Technique

If you’re not familiar with the pomodoro technique for time management, it’s incredibly simple and very effective. I wrote Sabbath in the Suburbs primarily using techniques like this one.

Poke around the website to learn more about it, though for heaven’s sake, I don’t know why you’d need a $26 book to understand it, let alone the tomato-shaped timer, although it is cute.

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And along the lines of time management:

The Biggest Myth in Time Management — Harvard Business Review

In a nutshell: That we can get it all done. (Comments are interesting, trying to diagnose “Brad’s” problem in the article.)

I think this simple realization has profound spiritual implications, way beyond simple time management. But then again, I would think that, I just wrote a book about Sabbath…

Have a good weekend. It’s a long weekend for us, what with teacher work days on Monday and Tuesday. We have our congregation’s annual meeting on Sunday, after which the kids and I head to Johnstown, Pennsylvania for a short visit with Robert’s grandmother.

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Friday Link Love

Where did the week go? Oh yeah, to Baltimore for a planning meeting for the NEXT Church. Now that’s a group of folks with some big dreams for the church! Stay tuned… and if you are of the Presbyterian flavor, register today for the 2012 conference!

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Nothing is Impossible — YouTube

Beautiful and inspiring:

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Physics, Miracles and Witchcraft: 50 Years of A Wrinkle in Time — Big Think

I recently read A Wrinkle in Time to the girls and was re-astounded at its beauty, complexity and depth:

What [L'Engle] seems to have intended to do is add a new twist (wrinkle?) to C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books. Those, too, combine fantasy with a religious message; The Magician’s Nephew even includes an element of planet-hopping sci-fi. But while the Lewis of Nephew was a veteran children’s author who knew, metaphysically speaking, where he stood, the L’Engle of Wrinkle was a relative newcomer, and there’s something less slick and complacent about her universe. Blend pagan myth with Christian themes and you’re repeating an old formula; stir in large quantities of secular literature and modern science, and you get a more intriguing, more volatile chemistry.

There’s also a discussion of a pivotal scene in the book (one of my favorites), which may be ”the single most outrageous scene in classic children’s fiction.”

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Most Runway Models Meet the BMI Criteria for Anorexia — Daily Mail

A magazine dedicated to plus-size fashion and models has sparked controversy with a feature claiming that most runway models meet the Body Mass Index criteria for anorexia.

Accompanied by a bold shoot that sees a nude plus-size model posing alongside a skinny ‘straight-size’ model, PLUS Model Magazine says it aims to encourage plus-size consumers to pressure retailers to better cater to them, and stop promoting a skinny ideal.

Lots of very arresting photos of a beautiful “plus-size” model.

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Tackling “Wicked” Problems — Faith and Leadership

There are hard problems, and there are wicked problems:

Steve Jobs was a master at dealing with wicked problems, and when he came back to Apple [in 1996], it was in a very bad place. They had the success of the Macintosh, and then they really struggled.

Most CEOs would come back and say, “How do I sell more computers? We’ll have to expand the number of consumers who are interested in my products. We’ll have to hire a chief marketing officer.” It’s a hard problem — “How do I sell more computers?”

Jobs came in and asked different kinds of questions about what could that company even be. He famously said his objective was to make a dent in the universe. He asked, “How do I transform how people interact with each other and the devices that enable them to communicate?” It’s a totally different kind of thing.

I talk about this all the time in the church. We are very good at avoiding the wicked problems by asking the wrong questions: how can we halt membership decline? How do we get young people back to church? Wrong questions.

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Mike Rowe Answers Your Questions — Reddit

This is a couple years old, but couldn’t help but share. We love Mike Rowe and Dirty Jobs in our house:

Oodles of fun anecdotes, commentary, and yes opera singin’. Also, his answer to “Is there any chance you’ll stop having sex with my wife in her dreams? It’s getting pretty old, Mike” is so elegant, it would have made Archimedes jealous.

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May you all have a dreamy weekend.