SMITCHing

NPR ran a piece on its web site examining the issue of a celibate Catholic clergy. While the program is interesting, what really caught my attention was a posted comment. S C (AboutTime) wrote: I felt sad when I heard this story. Here is a man who has dedicated his life to others, who has had a key part of his life stolen from him by the church. When he realizes it, he is ostracized and suspended by the clergy. It is time to realize what faith really is: a disorder that requires treatment. Mon May 11 19:38:36 2009 According to SC, religious faith, and I presume Christian faith in particular, is a disorder requiring treatment. In other words, faith is reduced to cognitive belief in unreality—where a fundamental dichotomy exists between faith and reason. But is SC taking up a fully formed Christian view of faith? Sadly, according to some, he is. The protestant church at large tends to lend tacit agreement to SC's view, wherein a mind-to-mind connection defines faith. "I belie...

Last Saturday I was asked to give a talk by New Wine, New Wineskins on art and business at their Created to Create day conference. My first thought was to talk about what it's like to be an artist working mostly for commercial concerns. A talk like that would be easy. A war few stories. Some observations about the utility of art in commercial service. 5-10 minutes for questions. Good to go. The more I thought about the opportunity, the more I wanted to test drive some of the ideas in my last two posts. There's nothing that compares to presenting ideas to real flesh and blood. You either get affirmative nodding, or the equivalent of a Golden Retriever's "Huh?" head cock. At worst, you get no response, but regardless, you learn something about the stickiness of your ideas. I presented four ideas stemming from the assertion that art is serious business. First, art is used by business to move trillions of dollars in consumer goods. A full 70% of US GDP is consumer ...