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Recently, I posted the first part of The Other Journal’s podcast on celebrities.

That was only the beginning. (more…)

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I love getting messages from Thomas Merton. He always knows just what I need to hear.

Check this out… (more…)

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I hope I’ll see some of you at this amazing place this weekend. (more…)

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Americans sure love to talk about religion. And many are riled about about whether or not they think the U.S. is, or should be, a “Christian nation.”

If they knew what they were talking about, they might even make a difference. How many of those in the debate have ever actually read and studied their scriptures? (more…)

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The great Andy Whitman has a few things to say about Calvin College’s decision to cancel the New Pornographers concert. (more…)

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The story is almost ready, but something’s been missing.

I’ve been searching for a scene.

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I hope you enjoy this presentation of my visit to Encounter 10, the 2010 arts conference hosted by International Arts Movement.

This talk was my response to a question posed to me by the IAM team. I had the privilege of sharing thoughts in response to the question “How Then Shall We Tell Stories?” (This followed my ” IAM conversation” with the sensational Christy Tennant, which you can listen to here.)

It’s a variation on an evolving presentation that I’ve shared at Seattle Pacific University, Calvin College, Biola University, Northwestern College… and most recently The Glen Workshop (or “Glen West”, as the Santa Fe event is now called), where I expanded the presentation to almost an hour.

If you enjoy it, you’ll find many of these ideas and anecdotes in my book Through a Screen Darkly.

Encounter 10: Jeffrey Overstreet on the how of storytelling from International Arts Movement on Vimeo.

I’m disabling comments on this post (partly because my new book deadline is keeping me too busy to moderate comments promptly). But if you email your comments and questions to me at joverstreet@gmail.com, I’ll be glad to respond by email or in an upcoming “Ask Me Anything” post.

Oh, and by the way… (more…)

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This is the most thrilling stuff I’ve read at Christianity Today in a while.

Great interview. I wish they’d made this a cover story. It’s one of the most important conversations this magazine could offer its audience. But according to this, it’s a web-only feature. I don’t understand. Oh well… I guess they know better than I do what is important enough to put on the cover of the magazine. Why draw people’s attention to a Pulitzer-Prize-winning author’s profound views on reconciling science and religion? Who would want to read that?

Read the whole thing here.

Here’s Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead, Home, and Absence of Mind:

Christianity should be itself. Christians acting like Christians would be the most effective possible evidence for the truth of what they profess. And here I am referring to the Sermon on the Mount, to Matthew 25 — those hard teachings that run so strongly against the impulses toward judgmentalism and exclusivism that assert themselves whenever any group decides to feel threatened. If Christians believe what they claim to believe, that the church is the body of Christ, how can they think any “culture wars” are necessary to its survival? Its wars, past and present, are the most telling charge brought against it. And Christians should care for what is true in every sense of the word true. This emphatically includes good science — understanding always its necessarily hypothetical workings.

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I’m grateful for this guest review submitted by Kenneth Morefield from the Toronto International Film Festival. Morefield has generously contributed reviews to this site from previous festivals, and I’m glad he thought of including LookingCloser.org in his coverage.

Here, he writes about one of the films I’m eager to see for myself: The Illusionist…

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