The naturalistic conventions of moviemaking are so second-nature to us that we often readily forget that they weren’t always so. Just watching a Jimmy Stewart picture from the 1950s will easily cure us of that notion. But even directors in our own day occasionally try to subvert those conventions to show us something bigger than those conventions will allow. Nowhere is this more apparent than in The Tree of Life, directed by Terrence Malick.
Vigilante Copyeditor
As an editor by trade, I see printed words all around me that don’t conform to the standard conventions of grammar, spelling, and punctuation. It doesn’t particularly bother me. I am more amused than bothered: I simply can’t be that persnickety. Plus, I know enough about the history of the English language to know that errors can sometimes be revealing like defects or imperfections in the mirror of everyday experience. But in this New York Times video a vigilante copyeditor has highlighted those imperfections in an unlikely place, raising editorial fastidiousness to new heights. It’s a hymn to unintended layers of language in a quiet courtyard.
Ascension Day
Today is Ascension Day, the 40th day after Easter. In the words of the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (1997), it marks “the solemn close of the post-Resurrection appearances and signifies the rule of Christ in the present (cf. 1 Cor. 15:25).” My preoccupation today is why Christians seem to emphasize the first half of this definition more than the second?
I’ll hazard a guess, rooted in my own experience, that most of us are oblivious to its significance. We’ve simply never given it much thought. We read the accounts of the Ascension as the denouement to the passion narrative in Mark, Luke, and John. We all-too-readily locate the climax of the narratives in the death and resurrection of Jesus—the resurrection simply being too dazzling, too earth-shattering, for us to take much notice of the adjacent and final act of Jesus in which he “was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God” (Mark 16:19).
Christ the King!
In my inaugural post, I simply want to proclaim, “Christ is King!”
It seems right and good to begin with a statement that contextualizes everything else, gives everything else its meaning and significance.
In subsequent posts, I hope to “note and query” aspects of the Christian faith and the Bible — and of poetry and literature, books and publishing, and the good life.
I take as my guide the words of St. Paul, when he wrote:
Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
May this blog be evidence of those things—and give glory to Him and his grace, which exceeds our understanding.
Note & Query 