Just Breathing

"Just breathing was worship."

I've read this multiple times this morning on my trip through the blogosphere of my kindred spirits in Chapel Hill (Abby who was quoting Rachel).

With the delightful autumn thick in the air that phrase has never been truer. What beauty and glory!

Prostitution Ring

Yesterday I read this in my favorite part of The Daily Tar Heel - the opinion page. I love that page because to me it highlights one of the crucial functions of newspapers - community building. The opinion page is a forum for people to not just passively read about the world around them, but to engage with it. (For those who don't know, I also work on ad staff for the DTH. I love the paper, and I love ads...what could be better?)

If you haven't already followed that link, do it. Go. Now. Read this "investigative" column that busts a prostitution ring right here in Chapel Hill.

I'm not kidding, either. Yesterday this column sparked conversation amongst people who didn't even know each other as we were waiting for the bus down at the B-school. But the conversation largely consisted of, "Did you read that?" "Oh my goodness that's terrible!" "He's right, we all knew about it, but we're not going to do anything."

And while I was pleased at the interaction, I am utterly frustrated at the shallowness of that conversation and the lack of desire to enact CHANGE. Now we know something illegal is going on - let's DO something about it...

I know I, too, sit here wrapped up in my own world of class and work and selfish existence. But if people like us could just take a few minutes out of our busy days to care about someone who feels like they have to sell themselves to make money, think of what good could be done. So today after class, I'm checking up with the Chapel Hill Police Department after reading up on some local laws. My heart breaks for these women and longs to see some change...not idle talk.

"Close it! How could it be closed! The door had been opened, and the winds of time were blowing against it, keeping it from closing, almost taking it off the hinges." -An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L'Engle

Madeleine L'Engle was one of my favorite authors. She taught me about the vastness of God and His unfathomable Love. She taught me about fusing faith with creativity and realness, not in a preachy way, but simply because Story is Story. Her work Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art is a must-read for Christians interested in entertainment and the arts. Here is an excerpt from it that I adore:

“Christian art? Art is art; painting is painting; music is music; a story is a story. If it’s bad art, it’s bad religion, no matter how pious the subject. If it’s good art – and there the questions start coming, questions which it would be simpler to evade.
In college I read some aesthetics; Plato, Aristotle; a great chronological jump to Lamb, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Pater, Rusking. Plato spoke of the necessity for divine madness in the poet. It is a frightening thing to open oneself to this strange and dark side of the divine; it means letting go our sane self-control, that control which gives us the illusion of safety. But safety is only an illusion, and letting it go is part of listening to the silence, and to the Spirit."

How ironic then, that her death late last week would be fused with the news that I myself am going to start writing reviews for Infuze! (Check it out at www.infuzemag.com) Along with Madeleine L'Engle, this website and the people affliated with it have taught me so much over the past few years of what it means to be a Christian who is interested in entertainment and art, and how these things are so intertwined.

Winds of time, indeed!

"why do you keep mentioning the year they died?" -david crowder