deviantmonk

Almost Alive

Back in the summer of 2011 I started creating some freelance artwork for bulletin covers, postcards, etc. For whatever reason I never got around to actually posting them here, and was only recently reminded about doing so.

This particular installment is a concept I developed called Almost Alive. I had the idea of a branch that was broken and bleeding, but that had been band-aided back together as a sort of metaphor for brokenness and healing. Megan and I headed down to Heritage Park in Olathe, KS, and found a good spot to break some twigs. The food coloring got a little out of control, but it ended up working out in the end.

I can’t remember if I left the band-aid on the tree or not… keep reading…

Toward the Beautiful

I wrote a guest article for CreationSwap entitled Toward the Beautiful on the metaphysical underpinnings of beauty and how that relates to the role of an artist in the work of creating art. Check it out here.

History — 4 comments
19
Jan 12

The Light That Never Went Out

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the phrase The Dark Ages?

Hordes of barbarians descending over the mountainside, laying waste to a enlightened and ordered society, leaving only violence and lawlessness in their wake?

The utter disintegration of art, learning, science and culture for nearly 400 years?

Unrelenting war, pestilence, savagery, ignorance and barbarity?

The suppression of reason in favor of faith?

The “Dark Ages” (enough of the scare quotes…) are probably one of the most misunderstood periods of history, (an irony, of course, about an age supposedly characterized by ignorance) and often function as a sort of trump card to demonstrate the supposedly disastrous consequences of the age of faith over an age of reason. After all, who wants to be stuck in the Dark Ages?

But were the Dark Ages really all that dark? Edward Gibbon, who is best known for his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, describes what amounts to a veritable Paradisio in the late Roman Empire:

In the second century of the Christian era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valour. The gentle, but powerful, influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence. The Roman Senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government. During a happy period of more than four-score years, the public administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian and the two Antonines.¹

Of course, such a rosy picture is hardly an accurate assessment of this period. Unfortunately, this is the sort of idea that is generally juxtaposed with the intervening period when the Roman Empire as it was (or at least as it was conceived to be- more on this later) would be no more. Europe would descend into a black hole of cultural, intellectual and civil disorder, only to scrape itself out 400 years later with the Carolingian Renaissance, the last gasp effort to bring the Roman ideal back to life.

Or perhaps the light never went out. keep reading…

Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1, Ch. 1, pg. 1 ↩

Family / Life / Poetry — No comments
18
Jan 12

Oh, To Be Awake!

Oh, the pains to come awake;
to part from the fancies of dreams,
and the pleasures of rest;
only to climb out of evening’s darkness.

Oh, the burn of the sun and its rays,
Only first light, so dim compared to midday,
yet still too bright for tired eyes,
How I wish to stay and not look into the sky.

The wakers claim the day,
they speak of the purpose of their toil,
but I don’t want to trade all of my comfort,
only to suffer the joys of a waker’s light.

Don’t they know the satisfaction of a dream?
To control one’s destiny into folly or flight,
And escape with a wondrous thrill?
And to rest in the shadows of the night.

Even if I were to climb the slopes,
and agree to lay aside my rest,
Oh, the great pains I would endure;
The sacrifice I would have to make!

Yes, the light asks so very much,
to come and concede to the daybreak,
and give up all my fancies here,
and to come awake, Oh, and to come awake.

Alas – the sun – it is rising!
The brightness, it pierces me to the heart!
How quickly do my dreams break under the weight,
In a daylight so devoid of the shadows of night.

I catch my breath, as if to breathe for the very first time;
My eyes are alight with the colors of the dawn,
And oh, I come awake! Oh, to be awake!
And have not slept the day away.

——————————–

by Megan Watson

Butchered Quotes — No comments
13
Jan 12

Butchered Quotes #2

Life / Theology — 6 comments
13
Jan 12

Jesus Hates Religion!

Every once in awhile one stumbles across a video that displays such a lack of critical thinking that it’s hardly worth even bothering to dignify it with a response. However, sometimes it is equally entertaining to engage in what might amount to a rather satisfying fisk of the aforementioned video, if not for the reader than at least for the fisker.

I ran across this video on another blog, and after about 30 seconds was ready to turn it off, but decided to suffer through the entire thing. It’s not that it isn’t well produced or that there aren’t some small kernels of truth buried in there. Rather, this video feeds upon creating absurd polarities that simply do not exist and dogmatically sets them against each other, leaving the viewer with little more than a choice between what amounts to two equally ridiculous and fuzzily sketched caricatures.

Basically, the movement is this: Identify a negative thing that can be linked to religion. Granted, ‘religion’ is never really defined as anything concrete or specific, but is left in some kind of nebulous state that serves as a catch-all for everything that is opposed to Jesus. The upshot, of course, is that anyone who identifies with religion (whatever it is actually supposed to be- an institution? rituals? something other than what the poet is?) is automatically polarized against Jesus. Be watching for this consistent tactic, which unfortunately doesn’t really give this video much meaningful content, as it pits some nebulous entity against Jesus, without really allowing for any robust engagement.

Let the fisking begin!

“What if I told you Jesus came to abolish religion?”

I seem to remember Jesus saying something about that in the Gospels. He said something like this:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. ¹

The notion that one could be Jewish without being a part of Judaism was inconceivable in Jesus’ day. While there were certainly plenty of Jews who may not have practiced their religion, (to one degree or another, which is part and parcel of any religion) to bifurcate oneself from one’s religion in this way was simply not something that happened. This belies the video creator’s extreme individualism which was a foreign concept in Jesus’ day. But I digress. keep reading…

Matthew 5:17-18 NIV ↩

Butchered Quotes — No comments
12
Jan 12

Butchered Quotes

History — No comments
08
Jan 12

My Empire for a Pony!

It is a little known fact that the tide of the Peloponnesian War was turned by ponies.

Ok, that is perhaps a bit of an overstatement, but as the Athenians would discover in their utterly disastrous invasion of Sicily, 1200 ponies would bring an invasion force of 45,000 to its ruin.

The war with the Spartans had been going for seventeen grueling years. Despite losing a quarter of its population to a plague, suffering numerous setbacks on both land and sea and expending incalculable amounts of money and manpower in the conflict, Athens had still survived. A dramatic capture of some of Sparta’s elite hoplites had even ensured that the annual incursions into Attica had ceased, leading to a somewhat tenuous peace.

In many ways, Athens was even on the road to recovery, as the horror of the plague began to subside from memory and a rising generation of Athenians looked to a future where the empire could perhaps be extended. Things were not at their worst- Athens still had relative mastery of the seas as the Spartans had yet to be able to enlist Persian support for a fleet to match their enemies, and the relative time of peace had given Athens the chance to replant their crops, refit their armies and rebuild their fleets. Prosperity was not where it had been at the beginning of the war, but seventeen years later many felt the time was ripe for things to turn around. keep reading…

Life / Theology — No comments
05
Jan 12

Made Perfect

Through the years I have been perplexed by a great many passages in the Scriptures, but perhaps none so more than Hebrews 5:5-10. It had always struck me as one that seemingly flies in the face of a lot of theological commitments about who Jesus is, at least on the surface of things.

In the same way, Christ did not take on himself the glory of becoming a high priest.
But God said to him,

“You are my Son;  
today I have become your Father.”

And he says in another place,
“You are a priest forever,
in the order of Melchizedek.”

During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek. ¹

One of the aspects that had always given me difficulty is where Jesus is spoken as being a Son, yet still had to learn obedience from what he suffered. By doing so, the Son is said to be made perfect. Now, one might say that this is referring to the human nature of Jesus being made perfect, but at the same time the human nature of Jesus is hypostatically united with the Son who is perfect, which makes such an answer seem a little too easy. keep reading…

Hebrews 5:5-10 NIV ↩

History — No comments
03
Jan 12

300 (Or, Wearing a Breastplate Keeps You From Being Stabbed.)

As I have been reading through Victor Davis Hanson’s phenomenal work A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War, I have been thinking back on the cultural connotations associated with Spartans and warfare in general.

Perhaps none is more prominent in recent popular culture than the movie 300, which is a heavily stylized account of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC in which King Leonidas of the Spartans led 300 Spartans to hold out against incredible odds to withstand a Persian assault.

Of course, there were more than just 300 Spartans defending the pass- there were also 700 Thespians, 400 Thebans and perhaps a few hundred Athenians, but who’s counting?

I won’t begrudge Hollywood its artistic license by any means, and neither is that the intent of this post. Battle scenes have to be exciting, and so a lot of liberties have to be taken. (And to be sure, 300 has some of the most exciting battle scenes in recent memory.) However, as I have been reading about how a Spartan phalanx actually operated, the truth is a lot further from the fiction, and in the end probably would not have made for a very good movie. In fact, it probably would have been a pretty boring movie. Here’s why. keep reading…