confession

Do you know yourself?

By Cindy Koch –

It is a terrifying thing to consider that you don’t really know yourself. As far back as you can remember, your voice inside your own head has been your friend and council, unbeknownst to the world outside. You have had silent conversations in the middle of actual conversations within your own heart, soul, and mind. Trusting your familiar voice within has been the only constant in this ever-changing lifetime. Everything on the inside is safe and protected until the day someone says it. You have been lied to. You don’t really know who you are.

Continue reading →

Rams

By Tim Winterstein –

First of all, in another life, I would have wanted to be an Icelandic shepherd. Second, Rams (streaming on Netflix) is a beautiful—truly—meditation on family, place, and history. There is the dark humor that comes with two brothers (Gummi and Kiddi) who live next to each other, doing anything and everything they can to avoid actually speaking with each other—up to and including training the dog to take messages back and forth.

Continue reading →

Minimalism and the Church

By Hillary Asbury –

“To appropriate: to take for oneself; take possession of; to steal.”

While at the theological symposium in Saint Louis last week, I had the rare pleasure of meeting a fellow liturgical artist. Kelly Schumacher is the founder of Agnus Dei Liturgical Arts in Saint Louis, Missouri. She is a talented creative with a theological foundation for her work that is as elegant as it is intelligent. Her passion for what she does is unwavering, and her enthusiasm is infectious.

Continue reading →

An Anxious Artist

By Hillary Asbury –

I think I may have mentioned this before, but traveling with my artwork is nerve-racking.

I’m a bit of a type “A” personality, which I’m often told is odd for an artist. I have high anxiety. I like things to be just so. I don’t want to be on time; I want to be five minutes early and perfectly presented. People sometimes comment that I am a skilled artist. I often answer that I am a perfectionist who happens to make art.

Continue reading →

Running from God

By Paul Koch–

I was a Vicar at Peace Lutheran Church in Bremerton Washington 17 years ago. I remember, with astonishing clarity, driving down to church early in the morning and listening to some bewildering news on the radio. An airplane, no, make that two airplanes, had struck buildings in New York. Upon arriving at the church Day School office for morning devotions I found all the teachers and staff huddled around the computer watching the news as it was unfolding. It was a bit sketchy and disjointed as the reports came in but the picture began to develop; this was no accident but an attack.

Continue reading →

Memory is Treachery

By Tim Winterstein –

Memory is a strange thing. Last week I wrote that I had seen The Machinist during my second summer at college, the first that I did not return home between classes. In one of my periods of sleeplessness last night, I realized that couldn’t be true. As clearly as I seemed to remember picking up that movie at a video place and watching it then, it couldn’t have happened then because I was in college from 1998-2002. The Machinist came out in 2004, which means that if I saw it soon after it came out, I couldn’t have seen it before my third year at the seminary (my vicarage, or internship).

Continue reading →

Confessional Freedom

By Paul Koch –

Do you confess the Unaltered Augsburg Confession to be a true exposition of Holy Scripture and a correct exhibition of the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church? And do you confess that the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, the Small and Large Catechisms of Martin Luther, the Smalcald Articles, the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, and the Formula of Concord—as these are contained in the Book of Concord—are also in agreement with this one scriptural faith?

Continue reading →

Guilt and Rest

By Tim Winterstein –

If Hitchcock remade Fight Club, it would probably look a lot like The Machinist (2004). If you haven’t seen it, but you’ve seen Fight Club, then I probably gave away the major plot twist. But even if you know the major twist, this is a devastating film about the destructive power of buried guilt. I had seen The Machinist before, but I honestly didn’t remember much except that he works in a machine shop and is struggling with something. I probably watched it on a VHS rented from a Blockbuster (RIP) in Washougal, Washington during a summer when I worked the night shift at a Safeway and then in a hot, dusty, stifling concrete plant in Portland. Not much else to do during my first summer not returning home from college.

Continue reading →

We Are Not Our Own Saviors

By Tim Winterstein –

[SPOILERS, BUT YOU CAN PROBABLY GUESS THEM ANYWAY]

That seems like far too important a title for thoughts about a dinosaur movie, but underneath the fantastic and seamless CGI, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is claiming to be far more than simply an adventure movie with dangerous animals. The tired part of the movie is that people always do stupid things when it comes to dangerous animals about which they really know nothing. Yeah, we get it: If you’re ever in a room with a caged dinosaur, do not open the cage, no matter how much you want a trophy or a closer look. Don’t pretend to be Chris Pratt if you’re not.

Continue reading →

Revenge or Atonement?

By Tim Winterstein –

[SPOILERS]

Another recent film is often compared to Taxi Driver, but it’s both better and worse than First Reformed. I had a free Redbox rental, which is as good as Movie Pass for seeing movies on which I’m not sure whether I want to spend actual money. So I rented You Were Never Really Here, a story that I liked more than First Reformed, though it’s not nearly as beautiful. I will watch almost any movie that features Joaquin Phoenix, because he’s brilliant. And he needs to be in this movie, because it’s so understated that anyone unwilling to think a little will lose patience very quickly (as many reviews on IMDB prove).

Continue reading →

Learning to hate VBS

By Cindy Koch –

Yes, that’s right. I know it’s that time of year when we all send our kids off to a week-long adventure in loosely related Bible themes. I also know that is close to a mortal sin to not participate in at least one VBS a year, at least in my community. But every year at this time I begin to write this blog, then reconsider and delete the whole thing. It’s been building for quite a while now: I have learned to hate VBS.

Continue reading →

Identity in the Depths

By Hillary Asbury –

Lately I have been reflecting on the unique challenges one faces when maintaining a creative career.

It’s a little odd, building a business by manufacturing products based on one’s private thoughts and feelings. My thoughts are inspired by many things—by experiences and certainly by Scripture. Those thoughts coalesce into a vision, and that vision eventually becomes a piece of artwork, which I will likely sell. Sometimes it feels as though I am selling my heart, my mind, my soul. It’s why, as a young artist, I found it difficult to let go of my work or sell it. It’s why many artists struggle to price their paintings.

Continue reading →

Angry at the Gospel

By Cindy Koch –

Just when I thought everything was OK, someone comes along and says those unexpected words: “I forgive you.” Immediately, something turns in my stomach. The dread of exposure washes over me. Someone else has seen my dirty secret. Someone else has recognized that hidden path that I have been following. I didn’t even know I was doing it. And someone else just called me a sinner—right to my face.

Continue reading →

A (Not So) Wild Story

By Tim Winterstein –

On the one hand, Wild Wild Country (six parts on Netflix) is about as strange a religious story as there is in the United States. On the other hand, it’s not very strange at all. The divisive nature of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (a name I would be okay never hearing again), the completely opposite stories told by the Rajneeshees and everyone else, and the weird, magnetic pull of the Bhagwan’s personality make this a compelling story. It’s salacious, with the (accurate) rumors of a sort of sex cult, but it doesn’t seem that the Bhagwan was all that involved in the sexual aspect of his commune, as you might expect a sex cult leader to be!

Continue reading →

A Little Art Goes a Long Way

By Hillary Asbury –

I have yet to encounter a single church body that does not utilize a logo or image of some kind to represent them. It may be a simple cross or dove, perhaps just a square of color overlaid with the church’s name. But there it is, a symbol of the church’s identity; it communicates their heart and mission, who they are as a congregation, how they want to be seen by the world. It’s a big task for a small piece of art, but its value is unmistakable.

Continue reading →