Between the Trees

New Wilco album being streamed on their website.
Enjoy.

“There are two ways, artistically, to discredit the notion of redemption in our sadly broken world. One way is the way of the skeptic who claims redemption cannot be found. The other way is the way of the believer who presents redemption as forgettable.”
– Denis Haack

If I could pick one contemporary film maker to meet and spend a day talking to about life, art, meaning, and story… I think it’d be Sam Mendes.
Mendes, whose first film American Beauty garnered well-deserved critical praise and won five Academy Awards, is now back in the spotlight for his latest work, Revolutionary Road, starring [...]

It’s the end of the year so I thought I’d do a couple best of posts… will cover music with this one. Hopefully will cover favorite books, blogs, and blogposts as well. But we’ll see…

Among my many underdeveloped hobbies is writing poetry. I rarely post any of it, but since the end of the semester is destroying my ability to get much up here, I thought I’d put up a poem I wrote a while back. I promise this will not become a regular forum for my mediocre artistic [...]

A few recent songs I’ve really been enjoying:
Unfortunately, I don’t have video for this, but you must check out Derek Webb’s song Crooked Deep Down. Here’s a sample:
There was this girl she was made for me
But stood me up our wedding day
And now that girl runs around on me
And she’s drunk all the time
But I’d [...]

Neko Case’s song Hold On is near the top of the list:

What are some of the things on your list?

If you haven’t checked out Okkervil River’s new record, you really must. Basically, if Eric started a band and they got huge and started touring, I think they’d sound something like Okkervil River.

The fact that The Shack is a bit “theological sloppy,” as one friend put it, is frankly less of a concern to me, in some ways, than the fact almost everyone says it isn’t that well written but it still has become a run-away best seller in the “Christian” market. Those of us who claim [...]

Last week I posted about a song, “Better than Life,” that we sang at the 2008 Desiring God conference and asked people’s thoughts about it. I also mentioned that the question was sort of a trick question, and here’s what the trick was: Psalm 63:3, “Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, My lips will [...]