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Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Progress makes...progress


Sorry, still no audio

Pretty close to final on a couple of shots here. The house will have lots more going on when Bokser get's done with some sim. We also need to break up the fence a bit more and add a few more things. Bokser made some pretty cool tools to help animate the house and move pivots during animation

Been busy on a wide variety of things from this sequence above to riding lawn mower research to still combating this poison ivy/oak of 4 weeks now.

Warning! 
Fixin to talk about God and faith here so if you wanna keep to the art skip the following....

Reading a lot as well. Rereading some of the emergent thinkers lately and listening to some of their podcasts. Specifically rereading "A Generous Orthodoxy" at present and don't find it very generous in it's characterizations of some sides. "Strawman" arguments get a little old. Attended a church that leaned that way for about a year. There are many good things I saw there and in the "movement" but I can't quite seem to fully make the jump philosophically. Still not sure how I feel about some of the ideas and what not. Actually that's a part of the problem with post modern theology - it's often hard to get to point of what some of the people are saying in the midst of the the perpetual "Yes and"'s. What that means is they'll set up a yes/no question and then proceed not to answer it. On many questions of the faith (protestant Christianity) I'm in the solid "I don't know" camp which is a long long way from where I once was in high school when of course I knew everything (if my thenself met my nowself and chatted about belief I might well call myself a heretic).

One of my main issues is that it feels like much of the emergent movement seems to be wrapped up in politics and I'm just not a fan of that on either side of the aisle. In as much as the "religous right" has swung to the ride side of the fences, the emergent branch seems to swing just as hard to the left. Frankly, if a preacher starts telling me who to vote for it's time to find the exit. Had some good conversations with some atheist/agnostic buddies when I was in LA and frankly I sympathize with a lot of what they had to say about their experiences with people of faith.

I pray I'm never one of "those experiences."

2 comments:

Benjamin said...

Josh:

I know you didn't solicit feedback (cool animated sequence, by the way. I love the way that the lamp post knocks over the mailbox), but I feel compelled to give some anyway.

Like you, I've allowed my hopes to get up by those in Emergent Village, only to be let down, especially recently.

However, there are some I've found that I really like. Dan Kimball has written a few books that are easy to read, that I enjoy, and that don't suffer (as much) from some of the excesses other voices in EV. Others are scholars who are sympathetic to EV, but are not afraid to critique them. Scot McKnight is one of my favorite New Testament scholars, emergent-like, but also very good on many levels. He's written a few books that are worth reading, and he has a blog that I find wonderful. N.T. Wright is also a friend of EV, but is also very orthodox, and has written some good books (Surprised by Hope is one of them).

I any case, the difference between "emergent" as a broad tent (under which I consider myself), and Emergent Village as an organization needs to be distinguished. We can be one, without having to be the other.

In any case, hope to see you soon!

Ben

Unknown said...

Hey Ben! Always a treat when the void answers back.

We were just in Monroe last weekend and to see Liz's fam and your grandfather.

Long time no see. Thanks for the thoughts and recommendations. Yeah, I've read Bell, Miller, McClaren and Shane something...can't remember his last name. The book was "Jesus for President" if memory serves (not what you think if anyone else out there is reading this). I was actually attending the church the Seay brothers are at and like I said, there were many things I liked but for various reasons it didn't work (not the least of which being we moved out of downtown). :)

I came up through my late teens, early 20's going through the gnostics and finally finding a lot of grounding in Lewis's literary mentor MacDonald as well as a healthy helping of Lewis of course. The idea of being emergent and not in the EV is a welcome one.

I'll add some of your recommendations to my amazon "to purchase" list and add hat guy's blog to my rss reader. :)

Oh, glad you liked the mailbox going down :)

Josh

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