Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Song of Solomon, textures on September 22, 2007| 1 Comment »
Dan Fogelberg, that troubador of emotive angst, sang memorably that …
There’s a song in the heart of a woman
That only the truest of loves can release.
The love of the Shulamite’s Solomon has with regard to this woman’s song done exactly what Fogelberg exhorts: ‘Set it free.’ (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged music, reseña, Tracy Chapman on September 21, 2007| Leave a Comment »
For Tracy Chapman, ‘you … and reality’ are not synonymous. Rather, the aggrieved architecture of her lyrics claims that ‘there is fiction in the space between you .. and reality.’ (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged Berliner Philharmoniker, classical music, Herbert von Karajan, Ludwig von Beethoven, music, reseña on September 21, 2007| Leave a Comment »
One feels sometimes as though the presence of the great ones still lingers about the house, bumping into things and taking their place at the family dinner. Having grown up with the music and images of Herbert van Karajan in the mix, it is not too difficult to allow the imagination to see the diminutive Austrian assuming an avuncular place in the proceedings. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged 2 Corinthians, biblical reflection, Corinthians, textures on September 21, 2007| Leave a Comment »
Anyone inclined to doubt that the apostle Paul was a complex man who enmeshed himself in the most complicated relational webs need only peruse 2 Corinthians 12 to be set right. In a discourse impregnanted with the most dazzling emotional transparency, Paul struggles to articulate the relationship that makes restoration of equilibrium between him and the Corinthians a non-negotiable objective. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged Athol Fugard, reseña, theater on September 21, 2007| Leave a Comment »
Hally does not know who he is. The single white character on stage in South African-born playright Athol Fugard’s one-scene work is the friend of his mother’s two black employees when they tend to St George’s Park Tearoom in her absence. But he is also their ‘Master Harold’-reluctantly but inevitably-when the stress of his crippled, alcoholic father’s homecoming impels him into an emotional space that one simply does not share with black folks. Perhaps is it the burden of dealing with human beings on the multiple levels that racism forces upon those who resent but ultimately accede to their required roles that embitters Hally beyond redemption. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged finances, Howard Dayton, reseña on September 21, 2007| Leave a Comment »
Two parts warning about the corrosive effect of debt, one part encouragement that such slavery can be overcome, Howard Dayton’s manual to a better way of living is an almost constitutional document in the Christian financial ministry movement. Dayton is the founder of Crown Financial Ministries, the benchmark institution in what has become an effort to counteract the personal indebtedness that increasingly pervades Western economies. (more…)
Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged Middle East, reseña, Thomas Friedman on September 21, 2007| Leave a Comment »
Friedman wraps up his book by talking about four dead men and what they must do if peace is to come to the troubled slice of land still fought over by Israelis and Palestinians. Yitzhak Rabin, Yasir Arafat, Hafez Assad, and Jordan’s King Hussein were very much alive a decade ago when Friedman wrote an appendix to this still-riveting work, though the shadow of Rabin’s assasin was almost upon him. This casts an eery veneer over Friedman’s sensible thoughts on shifting power and the need for all partners to ‘buy a ticket’ if peace has any hope of overcoming the region’s deeply etched pessimisms, even if one now needs to shift the burden of choice to the successors of these four men, only three of whom had the good fortune to die in their own beds. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Song of Solomon, textures on September 21, 2007| Leave a Comment »
It must be asked what a work like this Song says of the community that embraces it and of that people’s God. A splendid eroticism pervades its lines, eroding the conventions of pious discourse in its exuberant longing for intercourse. There is no voyeurism here, it is true. But the appreciation of a splendid and holy eroticism is blushworthy for readers who have been patiently weaned from such desire and its out-loud articulation. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged film music, John Williams, Minority Report, music, reseña on September 21, 2007| Leave a Comment »
You only have to listen through John Williams’ intensely spooky score a few times to realize that it is the emotional potency of film music in the Williams style that makes Tom Cruise and his colleagues on this Spielberg sci-fi flick seem as edgy as they do. The acting without the music would be another matter, good but not great, tense but not heartstopping. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged reseña, travel on September 21, 2007| Leave a Comment »
Man, this is getting tough. It used to be so easy to pick up a thick glossy weighted down in Bimmer and Movado watch ads and get right down to the business of sneering at the vanity of it all. (more…)
Canter Bridge 