I believe we need to hold the creeds in one hand and our favorite forms of art in the other. These are films, books, poems, songs, and paintings I return to again and again for some deep reason in my heart. Taking a closer look, I see that they all tell me about some part of the Sacred Romance. They help wake me to a deeper remembrance. As Don Hudson has said, “Are is, in the final analysis, a window on heaven.”
–John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance, p. 204
“
He has set eternity in our hearts,”
the Preacher tells us in Ecclesiastes.
Could it be, then, that as our hearts
are engaged and stirred
(when we hear a song or watch a movie…
or engage any number of artforms),
we are encountering the “eternity” within?
Discussions here can include…
- more academic treatments
(of the ways that Christ and Culture
can intersect… or the ways
that Hollywood and Religion
have clashed) - or, we can proceed to the “heart” of the matter, engaging any number of Hollywood blockbusters — with an eye to the ways they illuminate Biblical themes
Among those films we’ve viewed engaged in past settings are
- The “Godfather” Triology (in a highly edited format) as a basis for reflecting upon the insidious ways of sin-evil
- “Tender Mercies”
- “The Matrix”
- “The Way”
- “Chocolat”
- “Rudy”