Postmodern Renaissance Culture Revolutionary

I am not ashamed to admit that I absolutely LOVE the movie The Greatest Showman. The soundtrack sold me on this movie. I wake up every morning with a different song from the soundtrack playing in my head. The music is catchy and somewhat addictive (for me at least). If there is one song that I come back to over and again, played as loud as possible, it is This Is Me. It is performed by Keala Settle. I had not heard of her before this movie. She performs this song as the anthem of the story. The Greatest Showman is about P.T. Barnum and the beginning of his famous circus. It started out as a freakshow, according to the movie. Barnum collected those whom "polite" society regarded as freaks, oddities, and cast them out. Barnum offers them the chance to be something more. In This Is Me, the Bearded Lady (Settle) is confronted with that polite society as she sings about the life that she and her fellow circus attractions claim for their own. This song hit me hard. It came ...

One of my favorite shows that I am watching regularly is Curse of Oak Island. It is a reality show (which really isn't my style of show) about 2 brothers on a quest to discover the secret (treasure) of Oak Island. If you are not aware of Oak Island, then allow me to give you a brief history. Near Nova Scotia, there is a small island. About 220 years ago, a treasure hunt began on that island. Some boys found a depression in the ground at the base of a tree. From one of the branches, right above the depression, there was a ship's tackle block. It seemed that something may be buried under the surface of that depression. Digging began not long after. And has continued until this day. The Money Pit of Oak Island has been the focus of excavations, treasure tales, and conspiracy theories ever since. I fell in love with the mystery of Oak Island when I read about it in a Reader's Digest collection of stories titled Strange Stories, Amazing Facts . I loved the mystery of it. If ...

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to participate in a meditation on the opening verses of the Gospel According to John. The lectio divina is a Christian meditative practice that is quite ancient. The process of meditation involves a focus on a portion of Scripture. The invitation to focus on the 4th Gospel was timely: I was beginning a sermon series on that book that next Sunday. The preparation for the series had already taken me over the opening verses. And the verses are so familiar, "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God," "the Word took flesh and tabernacled among us...". As I confessed in the opening sermon of that series, I am sometimes guilty of skimming over the familiar. But the invitation to meditate on those so familiar words, to slow down and truly let them soak into my mind, heart, and spirit, brought me to a moment where a clear thought floated to the surface. John 1:3 - All things came into being through him...