I love Oscar season. At the end of each year, numbers of incredible, and sometimes not so incredible, films come out of the woodwork and create buzz for the academy awards. This year, I’ve noticed a small trend among some of the contenders. As I have sat in the theatre, I have noticed that the celebration of art, and it’s history has been a major theme in many of this years top films. Movies such as Hugo, The Artist, and Midnight in Paris, are educating audiences worldwide, and can all be placed in this genre of art history films.

Martin Scorsese’s film Hugo, while it has a great story, is, at its core, a celebration of the history of film and filmmaking. Scorsese, a director whose love for filmmaking is unrivaled, said last year in hid Golden Globe speech, “making films and preserving them is the same thing.” Hugo educates it’s audience on all of the beautiful discoveries that have led to what we know today as the magic of filmmaking, while at the same time, telling you a tale that sweeps you up and takes you away. Hugo is the perfect mix of a story and a history lesson, only to be rivaled, possibly, by Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist.
The Artist is the first major motion picture, silent film to splash onto the American big screen in years. The film follows a famous silent movie actor and his struggle to make the transition to the new film craze, the Talkies. The Artist is a trip back in time, but with all the advancements in story telling and character development that we know today. It is not simply a remembrance of the old, but a partnership with the old, to create even a more spectacular new.

Woody Alan’s Midnight in Paris is, I believe, the most charming film of the year. The story follows a writer(Gil) who is transported by buggy car every night, back to the 1920’s in Paris. There, he is whisked away into the most thriving artistic community the world has ever know, befriending such people as, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Earnest Hemingway, Salvador Dali, Cole Porter, and Gertrude Stein. While working on his first serious novel, Gil takes what he has learned from his new, or old, friends, and applies it to his work here in the 21st century. The film is a celebration of art, the artist, the artistic community, and what we can learn from those how have come before us.

As an artist, no matter what your field may be, it is important to turn to those who have conquered your specific field before you for guidance. Knowing the history of your craft, and where it came from can only aide you in creating something absolutely breathtakingly new today. And do not worry about copying or stealing from what is old, it is about partnering with the old, to create and ever more spectacular new.

-jon

It really is true, the saying, ‘when one has nothing, God becomes everything’. I have never purposefully set aside time only for God, for God alone. I’ve gone on retreats, done mission trips, things like that, but I have never really taken everything away to focus on my Savior.

Even in the past twenty-four hours, as I have been fasting from food and water, I have not taken everything away. But I have come to see that when TV is no longer and option, when working out is no longer and option, when food and water are longer an option and we simply sit, read, worship, pray, and repeat that cycle over and over, God becomes everything.

In that posture, we begin to enter His presence, we begin to catch a glimpse of the potential that a relationship with God has, the potential for communication, for intimacy, for community, for growth.

Often times in our lives, ‘leaving time out for God,’ really means, ‘leaving time out for God, and my phone, and a break for my favorite tv show, and eating, and showering, and checking that email, only for a few minutes’.

When was the last time you really set aside time, even an hour, to get to know, and be known by your Creator just a little bit deeper. We all have time to do this, no matter who you are. For college students, this winter break is a prime time to do that. But even if your schedule is more busy; say you are a parent of young children(who I think are probably the busiest people in the world), why not, instead of getting a babysitter so you can go to the movies, get a babysitter so you can have a retreat with the Lord. It ends up costing less money, and the benefits are much more rewarding.

Whoever you are and whatever your situation I cannot encourage you more, do not wait for the year to get in full swing, because if you’re like me, you will forget about it, and let the opportunity slip by. Schedule sometime in the next week to be alone with God….really. As followers of Christ, there is no other activity that can benefit us more.

-jon

In our culture, something I like to call the ‘general life’ has become more and more popular of late. The life of low commitment, low focus and shallow, general aspirations has become the norm in this new millennium. We live life in a general way, but it is my belief that we still perceive life from the specifics. The memories we hold most dear, the instances that really make an impact on us are not general ideas, but tiny, seemingly insignificant details that for some reason have stuck with us over the years.

For me, I know that I’ll always remember the specific smell of the cigarettes my uncle smoked that filled the kitchen when I visited my relatives. That smell always brings me back to remember the great family memories I had in that house.

It is this same love for specifics that draws us into good story telling. It’s not the fact that the girl has been sentenced to death, it’s the way the author describes her mother noticing the bow on the back of her daughter’s dress as she walks up to the guillotine that breaks our hearts. The specifics take it from a story, to something that’s real, something we can relate to, because it’s what we naturally are drawn to. This love of the specifics stems back to our Creator.

In the biblical narrative, especially throughout the gospels, we see strong evidence of the importance of specifics. God, the original storyteller, comes down in the flesh as Jesus. And what are the things that Jesus stops to notice? He notices one women in a crowd of hundreds, who touched his robe as he felt healing go out of him. He notices a women who cries at his feet, washes the tears with her hair, and then places fine perfume on him. How much more specific can you get? Even Jesus’ death, the crown of thorns, Simon, helping him to carry the cross, the two prisoners hanging beside him, all of these specific things are placed in the story for a reason, to make it more real for us. God knows that the specifics are the way to our hearts, it’s how he wired us.

The story of your life is made up of thousands of seemingly insignificant, yet beautiful specifics that have shaped the person that you have become, and are becoming. For the artist, the characters that we create are no different. The true storyteller tells a story that is shaped and guided by the specifics of it’s characters, because that is the story that God is writing with each and every life.

-jon