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Last night I went to bed heavy with the news that Troy Davis had been executed by the State of Georgia. If you don’t know who he is, or why this is significant, read these 10 reasons why he shouldn’t have been executed. That and a Google search of his name should get you up to speed.

This issue, like so many others, has already fallen upon political lines: conservatives are pro-death penalty and liberals are anti-death penalty, therefore everyone has to take their chosen political side in the debate. I think that is terrible for us as a country, and terrible for people like Troy Davis who may have been convicted unjustly and deserved to at least have a retrial before he was executed. The problem, from my perspective, is simple.

Justice as an idea is not an idea for political parties to claim.

We all desire to see criminals brought to justice. And we all want to see innocent people enjoy their life. And therefore, in situations like this, the issue ought not be the death penalty itself, but the significant flaws in our justice system. The fact that not even the highest court in the land was willing to stay the execution and give Troy Davis another chance is, for me, really disheartening.

I’m willing to engage in fruitful discussions of what justice looks like, but first we as Americans must come to grips with the fact that our justice system is broken.  It doesn’t take long to build a case for the injustice that is currently present in American courts and prisons – and to recognize that Troy Davis is not the only one suffering because of this.

Spend some time looking up statistics. The number of people currently in prison in America. The racial breakdown of the prison population. The amount of first time offenders who become second time offenders.

The problems are deeper though. In California, until Governor Brown, it was extremely hard to get parole granted because the governor had to approve it, and what governor wants to risk setting free someone who will commit another crime? Or read the book Zeitoun to find out how the PATRIOT act has given the government sweeping powers to hold people without cause or due process.

If reading and researching is too hard, try listening. Here’s a few This American Life episodes that tell the stories of people who have struggled with the injustice of our current system. Perfect Evidence, an episode about the rise of DNA evidence and how it is showing not just criminal wrongdoing, but wrongdoing on the parts of police and law enforcement officials. Sentencing, on the issue of how to handle first-time drug offenders. And most recent of all, Very Tough Love, a terrible episode about a drug court in Georgia that may be stepping way beyond its power.

Want to watch a film? You could do worse than to watch Erroll Morris’ classic documentary The Thin Blue Line about Randall Adams, a man who was wrongly convicted of murder. Morris’ documentary is actually the reason he was given a retrial, had the film not been made, it is likely Adams would have been executed.

There is so much more information out there, all you have to do is look. You could do worse than to start with The Innocent Project, a non-profit dedicated to helping people who were wrongly convicted. Please don’t keep yourself in the dark.

The death penalty is a touchy issue, but justice in general shouldn’t be. The American Justice system needs a lot of work. Troy Davis is just the most recent and most visible example of this.

Update: Longform.org and Slate Magazine have collected some great longform articles relating to the death penalty. If you are trying to study up, this is also a great resource.

Last night I read a great essay – The Achilles Heel of Anglicanism (In North America and the United Kingdom) – that examined the way our conception of the individual person has changed in the past few hundred years, and how that effects and will effect the church. But towards the end, there is this beautiful statement of the Gospel for the modern person, that I felt was worth sharing:

The picture contained in the larger frame looks like this. Each life comes from God and finds its proper end or point of fulfillment in God. Only in God can the flourishing for which each is created be found. That end can only be pursued in the world God has created–a world that is good precisely because God created it. There is in this world an objective moral order–one not determined by the needs and ambitions of particular individuals. Rather it is an order that defines the nature of true human flourishing. The goods to be found in this order include all forms of human relationship and all forms of human exchange–sexual, familial, cultural, economic, political and religious. Within these forms of relationship and exchange, life is to be ordered and lived. Within them individuals find fulfillment by directing their creative energies toward the good order God has given in creation.

Things are made more complex, however, by two additional factors. First, human self-will and ignorance have distorted and obscured the order of things God intends. As a result, humans must pursue their good within a distorted, even perverted order. Human agents pursue their good in a “fallen world.” They live in an unending tension between the order God intends in creation and the twisted simulacrum of God’s order that defines everyday life. Second, God has entered the fallen world he created both to reconcile humankind to himself and to redeem the creation from the futility brought on by the “fall.” By “coming down” as reconciler and redeemer to the world we inhabit, God has blessed the order he created and opened new possibilities for living in the tension over which his providence presides.

It is within the push and pull of creation, fall, reconciliation and redemption that people must now find the way to God’s original and final purposes. To quote W.H. Auden, it is in “the everyday world of darning and the 8:15” that we embodied intelligences, who are persons, selves and individuals, have to practice the art of living well. It is in the good but now less than perfect world that persons who have been reconciled and redeemed must find their true right. In this world, selves must take responsibility for their particular history and that individuals must find their place in a larger whole.

The whole essay is well-worth reading.

In an effort to encourage myself to read more, I’m going to start logging the books I read here on my blog, and including a brief review or some thoughts I have regarding the book. Here’s the first batch, with the books that I’ve been reading in early 2011.

A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole

I love reading fiction where the setting is as much a character as the people in the novel, and this novel wouldn’t be nearly as good without New Orleans. Published post-humously and going on to win the Pulitzer Prize, this work is hard to classify. The book jacket describes it as a black comedy, and that’s true, but it swings so much towards the black that it is much more tragic than one might guess. That said, the characters are all wonderful and the story, while slow in parts, is deep and filled with great insight into the human struggle. I enjoyed it as a story, and on all other levels that fiction speaks too.

Letters to a Young Poet
Rainer Maria Rilke

A lovely, short book from a great poet to someone just starting out. Rilke’s letters are filled with wisdom and wonderful prose about the struggle of creation. The book could be read in a sitting but it’s so dense that I imagine it will take me years to sort out and understand everything that he says. The wisdom and insight in these 10 letters is, for anyone who takes seriously the task of creation, necessary to contemplate.

A History of the English Speaking Peoples
Sir Winston Churchill

I picked up all four volumes of this recently at a used bookstore and decided to try and make my way through it. I keep getting distracted by other books, but I have enjoyed what I’ve read. Churchill is very good at making things flow, at giving insight into where his information came from without footnotes or endnotes, and at painting a broader picture from limited knowledge. Of course I’m still only at about 500 AD so it remains to be seen how it holds up.

Conversations with Chaim Potok

Found this at the Nashville Library recently and decided to check it out. It is fascinating to hear Potok give insight into his history and thoughts while writing novels, but I think it would help if I had read more of his books before reading this. As of now, I’ve only read the two Asher Lev books and a good bit of the content of the first conversation was about The Chosen. That said, Potok was a brilliant writer and it is fascinating to hear his thoughts in conversation form.

Art in Action
Nicholas Wolterstorff

I’m still reading this one, so I don’t have a great deal to say about it. But as someone who has been attempting to understand art/aesthetics from a theological as well as philosophical perspective for years, this book may be the work I have been seeking. It is not too technical and academic but it is also not dumbed down. The book is meant for the serious reader who sincerely seeks to understand how to understand art in a theological framework. I’m excited to keep making my way through.

Culture Making
Andy Crouch

I have not read a book in quite a while wherein the author set out such an all-encompassing thesis and then handled it with a thoroughness and ease. The subtitle to Crouch’s book is “Recovering our Creative Calling” and in this tome he sets out a definition of culture and then explores theologically and practically how we go about making culture, why we do it, and why it is so natural to all humans. I really don’t know how to distill his book down except to say if you have any interest – whether religious in nature or simply out of curiosity – about why Christians should be concerned about culture and what is a proper response to the culture at large and the culture in its smallest forms, this book lays out a pretty solid foundation for some answers that are easy to build upon. Which is to say I loved this book, and I highly recommend it.

Refractions
Makoto Fujimara

Fujimara is a world-renowed visual artist based out of New York who paints using an ancient Japanese technique that involves fine minerals and rare metals. His paintings are striking and colorful and full of layers, and I think his essays fit that description in different ways as well. This book is a collection of his essays on topics mostly revolving around his faith and what it means to him as an artist. The tone of his essays is firm yet humble, words written with insight into life that only a fine artist can bring. Makoto lives just a few blocks from Ground Zero so many of his essays grapple with what it means to live in a post 9/11 era and how Ground Zero has changed things, meaning that even if you aren’t a visual artist you will find many worthwhile thoughts in these beautiful pages.

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I started this post a week or two ago and left it sitting in my drafts folder to return to after I had finished a few more of the books. Then this past Saturday, after an arts conference here in town, I had the unexpected pleasure of having lunch and beers with Mako Fujimara and Andy Crouch. It was a wonderful time and only cemented into my mind that the books each had written came from genuine, thoughtful souls who had sought long and hard how to understand specific aspects of life and then labored to write down what they had learned. If you read any of the books in this list, and I hope you pick up one or two, I highly recommend theirs be top choices.

Here are Amazon links to all the books in case anything strikes your fancy!

• A Confederacy of Dunces
• Letters to a Young Poet
• A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Volume I
• Conversations with Chaim Potok
• Art in Action: Toward a Christian Aesthetic
• Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling
• Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture

So this week, for the first time in a long time, I’ve had cause to be vague. I’ve posted Facebook statuses like “Today was good. The reason will be public soon enough.” and “OHMYGOSH YOU GUYS! I have big news!” and other similarly vague statements on Twitter. Well, here it is, the big news, in all it’s simple glory, that probably doesn’t affect many people except for my co-workers and my wife.

As of this Friday, February 4, I will no longer be working at cj Advertising. I’ve made the decision to quit and be a full-time freelancer.

I have projects lined up that will keep me busy through mid-March and pay the bills through May, but after that it remains to be seen. There are big dreams in my head of what I can accomplish this year – making some documentary shorts about awesome people here in Nashville, learning Objective-C and making an iOS app, taking a cool domain that I own and trying to turn it into a useful site, as well as continuing to improve my video-making skills on every level and finishing the year having produced the best work of my life.

I’m incredibly grateful for the job that I’ve had at cj for the past two years. In fact, I would not have the skills that are allowing me to quit had cj not taken a chance and hired me in late 2008 to be a “Multimedia Specialist” – a fancy title for someone who shot and edited web videos. Over the time of my employment they have sent me to SXSW and NAB for training and given me the freedom (and challenge) to learn After Effects. I’ve built a lot of friendships at the company and hope that they continue to stay strong and grow. And if you are a Web Designer, Video Producer, or SEO Specialist, they are hiring, see their website.

I’m pretty freaking excited about the potential of this year. It’s been a dream for a long time but I’ve always felt the time wasn’t right. I’m not afraid to give glory where it’s due – it was God who planted the idea in my head and I can only thank Him for the projects I have lined up, none of them involved me seeking out people or selling myself or any real effort on my part. But here they are, and I’m excited to be working on them.

One of the things I plan on doing more now that my time is more in my control is to blog more. I have a lot of faces on the web, but they fall into neat categories, so here’s a list of how to stay in touch:

If you’re interested in seeing what kind of videos I make or, even better, wish to hire me, go here: WinstonHearn.com

If you want to see what I find interesting and noteworthy on the web, I plan on posting often to my Tumblr: WnstnLinks

This blog is reserved for longer thoughts and essays, often about faith and art and film. For scattered links and random thoughts, the best place to keep track of me is on Twitter: @justwinston

Thanks for caring what’s up in my life, and if you have any advice (serious or not!) feel free to leave it below!

Earlier today a former professor of mine linked to an article on World Mag – “Evangelicalism’s Bitter 20-Somethings” that I just can’t let pass without comment. He starts:

Is it me or does it seem that many kids reared in affluent conservative evangelical communities become bitter people in their 20s? I’ve recently read blog posts and articles by 20-somethings reared in suburban evangelicalism that seem to be committed to doing one thing: attacking the very community that raised them and doing it bitterly. I call them “the Bitters.”

From there he leaves no doubt that his starting point in the analysis is “the older generation had things figured out, why are the kids doing so badly?” And his perspective is basically that we, the 20-somethings, grew up in abundance, and because of that we don’t understand what truly matters and thus “Bitters define themselves by what they are not” in a sort of generational rebellion.

Missing in his essay is any sort of introspection, any hint that he wonders whether my generation is doing somethings right in these actions he observes. He paints a picture of a bunch of young rascals trying to define themselves by saying “we are not our parents!” without ever analyzing their parents actions to find out if there might be things worth rebelling against. See here:

The Bitters, who tend to gravitate toward Christian hipster culture, are on a mission to expose the “conservative conspiracy” wherever they can find it (or create it) under the guise of “healthy critique.”

In the previous paragraph he defines my generations as those

who lose interest in organized religion and become increasingly focused on personal spirituality. Economic growth and military security decline in political importance and are replaced by issues like personal freedom, abortion rights, social justice, and the environment. These young adults are less inclined to obey central authority and lose trust in hierarchical institutions. Finally, they harbor resentment for the big organizations that created America’s modern, industrial society: big business, traditional church denominations, traditional family structures, and so on.

And while some of this is accurate, if he’d read the book that he links to (on Hipster Christianity) he’d find that many in my generation are seeking out wisdom and truth in the pre-American traditional church denominations, in the spiritual leaders that pre-date evangelicalism. In fact, what he would find in that book is some answers to the very questions he’s asking.

So what’s my actual issue with his essay? It’s typical old-fogey-ism masquerading as an intelligent attempt to understand generational differences. It is true that many in my generation are bitter and cynical and do many foolish things to establish their separation from previous generations. But someone who truly wishes to find out why the young people are acting this way has to start by asking, “could we have caused this?”

I know that the author doesn’t consider this a possibility because of the ending of the article: “But what I do see is a group of 20-somethings wasting their time on a quest that will never deliver the revolution that it promises.”

Perhaps we 20-somethings are on a quest not for self-actualization as he theorizes, but in response to the former generation who did some things wrong. Perhaps there are so many 20-somethings who are bitter because they were raised in evangelical homes that painted a black and white picture of life, raised in churches that sometimes forgot that the American Dream is not very compatible with the Gospel, and raised in conservative communities that were so focused external symptoms (such as cussing, or selling alcohol on Sundays, or the evils of rock n’ roll) they forgot that these things are merely reflective of the deeper curse that all men suffer and need addressed. Perhaps my generation is bitter (if indeed it is bitterness) because the faith that they were taught growing up does not reflect the reality of the world they find themselves living in.

These are seemingly very valid questions.

To me, the question of “why are so many young people bitter” is not a question that can be answered by creating a generational stereotype and then performing psychological analysis on that stereotype. It is a question firmly rooted in the arc of history, and without an attempt at seeing what the former generation rebelled against in regards to their parent’s generation, an analyst can have no hope of understanding the roots of the current generation’s bitterness. I don’t pretend to have much ground to make an educated guess on this subject, but I don’t think that the author of this article has given us anymore insight either.

Perhaps because I can’t provide a better answer, this response was unnecessary, but the flaws in his logic bothered me too much.

Everyone that knows me would not be surprised to find that I love the new Sufjan album, nor would it shock them that my initial favorite song is the one in which he drops the “f” word. But after wrestling with the lyrics and incessantly playing the song for a week, “I Want to Be Well” is lodged in my brain.

Sufjan is a rare (but thankfully less rare with each passing year) artist who takes his faith as serious as his art and does not apply cultural limitations (or subcultural limitations) to what he can and cannot do. Each time he produces something new it is worth critical consideration and has value far beyond the money it makes. He is, in the best possible sense of the phrase, a Christian artist. But this entry is not about him, it is about the aforementioned song.

In this song he seems to be wrestling with what it means to be a citizen of two worlds, what it means to seek redemption and healing while remaining broken and living with other broken people. And he wrestles analytically in the verses before his anguish reveals itself in two lines repeated for over half the song:

I want to be well. I’m not fucking around.

In the week since I first heard the song, I’ve sung along over and over and also danced and moved to the song. But on a deeper level, my soul has found its battle cry of the moment. Look closely. First, there is the desire, the need, the yearning for redemption. The want to have wholeness, to be healed of the sickness given to us at conception, the recognition that I am broken. This is inescapable for the Christian, and thus, truly, I want to be well. I want to be well.

The beauty of the Gospel is that God too wants us to be well, He has seen our brokenness, He has, as the Great Physician, prescribed the only cure for our malady. Because of Christ, our cry to be well is a cry to God that is achievable.

BUT, the wonder of the Gospel is that we are not made well at once. Christ’s work was finished but His work in us will never be complete while we remain alive. Instead, our cry to be well is met with a promise of eventual completion and an invitation into the process of being made well. This is a mystery of the Gospel, we have to trust that one day we will be made well, but that day has not arrived yet, and thus with each new day we must cry out again “I want to be well” and continue on the journey into wellness.

And this is why Sufjan’s song strikes me so deeply – he is wrestling with the troubles involved in being made well, he is admitting that it is not just difficult but at times unreasonable – as Christians we are constantly required to do things that make no sense from an earthly perspective and can only be understood in a Heavenly context. Sufjan, in this song, has wrestled with this and truly desires to be well and thus he crosses the cultural line of propriety (the Christian line of decency, of good and safe language) to emphasize the weight of his desire, and says with all the weight he can muster “I’m not fucking around.”¹ The very line that makes this song off limits to rule-abiding Christians is the one that resonates so deeply in me as a Christian – if I truly want to be well, and I truly do, then I can’t be fucking around. Each day I must cry anew “I want to be well.” No more fucking around.

¹I make this judgement about his lyrics because of his care with lyrics in all his songs. He doesn’t toss language around and he does not make a habit of vulgarity in his songs, so this appears to me to be intentional and weighty. See also his song “John Wayne Gacy Jr.” about the serial killer, in which he utters “Oh my God” in such a way that it seems not to be a flippant tossing around of God’s name but instead a deep cry to the Lord, a recognition of the horror and evil in the tale he is relaying.

Freya and I bought more books this weekend. At least a dozen more. What was the occasion? Well, truthfully, it’s the same occasion that we always celebrate – we walked into a used bookstore. That’s all it takes, and we better have $30, $40, $50 or more sitting in the bank because we’re going to spend it whether or not it is there.

What is it about the printed word, specifically the vintage printed word that makes us lose our sensibilities? For each of us a good vintage book creates a longing and desire stronger than any other product I’ve ever created. It’s not simply a desire to have something, it’s that within aesthetically pleasing used literature is an experience that cannot be gained from anything else in life. There is wisdom, knowledge, but even more there are scents and textures and designs that we have never before laid eyes on. To a book lover, each new book is a new world to explore, in the grandest Victorian explorer sense. In their mind, opening a book is starting an expedition.

This weekend we obtained Churchill’s 4-volume “A History of the English Speaking People’s,” beautifully bound copies of Anna Karenina and Mark Twain’s Complete Short Stories, an ancient and beautiful copy of Ben Franklin’s Autobiography, and a collection of Montaigne’s essays selected and illustrated by Salvador Dali, and quite a few other books. But we feel that much richer because of the books obtained.

What I wish I had time to craft words to say though – is the feeling of walking into a good used bookstore. The way my soul feels lighter. Newton said we see farther because we are standing on the shoulders of giants, and a bookstore or a library is as physical a representation of those shoulders that I can find. The scent of old books combined with the pages and pages and tomes upon tomes of what humans have known, now or at one time in the past, and what humans have done, both creatively in fiction and as recounted in the history books. A used bookstore is for Freya and me both a depressing and euphoric place, as we recognize how little we’ve read and how little we know while at once feeling an overwhelming joy that there is so much to explore and know.

We may have spent $40 at The Book Company this weekend, it may have even been $40 out of savings since we didn’t quite have it in the budget, but for us it is a no brainer that books are always worth the cost.

Afterword: I must thank the imitable Phillip Johnston for commending me to visit The Book Company. They sell books at wholesale prices to customers, meaning that everything was easily half the cost it would have been at any other used bookstore. Their selection is fantastic and, Phillip tells me, they know everything they have including in all the boxes in the back, so that if you want a specific volume they can find it for you. Worth the visit next time you’re in Chattanooga.

The more truth and beauty I glimpse, the more I am poisoned against American culture.

I often get attacked for making generic statements about American Culture or The Modern Church because surely there are good parts and good people in them and how dare I make such an accusation, who do I think I am?

And so, surely it is true, there are good people doing good things in America. And I don’t ever intend to argue that Americans are actively attempting to do bad things or intentionally seeking to praise value-less products, ideas, and ideals. Instead, I think the vast majority of people living in this country have bought into the mindset that there is nothing higher to attain to, there is merely opinions and self-interest. God is dead but handily, he has resurrected in the form of me.

The more truth and beauty I glimpse, the more I am aware that passivity is the poison of American Culture.

I don’t want to spread the disease.

Also, it’s Monday.

Freya and I had a bit of a discussion recently about what she calls my “movie snobbery.” She claims I have officially crossed over from having high standards to being untrustworthy because I outright dismiss most Hollywood films. She may be right.

Last Friday we went and saw Toy Story 3 in a theater. We caught the last showing before 5, which in the old days meant we caught the last Matinee, but not now, because a Matinee showing is anything before 3. We avoided the 3D and saw the old-fashioned 2D version and yet our tickets were still $21.00 – $10.50 apiece. For a Pixar film I would probably pay more (and multiple times – I hope to see Toy Story 3 again before it leaves theaters) but $21 is a lot for an hour and a half of entertainment. It’s high enough that when I pay that much I am not willing to risk an crappy film.

Ever since I got married, well, probably even before then but more so since, I have tried to be very intentional about how I spend my money and on what. This applies to everything from food to entertainment to furniture. And in attempting to wrangle in my foolish spending habits developed through years of being a mindless consumer, I’ve realized that a lot of what I spend my money on does not give me benefits that justify the cost.

There is a hidden dilemma for the modern consumer that corporations work hard to hide; the dilemma of what standard of living your income allows you to have. What I mean is that Chinese factories and low cost big box retailers have made easily available to us a great deal of luxuries that until about 50 years ago weren’t within reach for the middle class. But the tradeoff is that most of these consumer goods are really shoddy – they don’t cost much but they don’t last long either.

Freya and I have a lot of books so this year we went looking for a new bookshelf. The first thing we found was that no one sells bookshelves much any more, apparently they aren’t in demand. But the second thing that we found was that we had two choices – very affordable bookshelves that were primarily made of particle board or rather expensive bookshelves that were made from solid wood or metal. This choice is one that is presented to us regularly but we just don’t realize it. We can save money and buy something cheap that will have to be replaced once it inevitably breaks, or we can pay lots of money for something that won’t need to be replaced for a long, long time.

The choice comes in the form of food – of cheap fast food that kills us more quickly and tastes the same no matter what part of the country you are in versus healthier food that tastes better and is good for our health. The choice comes in the form of clothes – of having lots of cheap clothes that you change out because of new trends or of spending a bit more money on clothes that fit well and last a long time and aren’t subject to trends. The choice comes in many forms.

Upon recognizing that viewing my purchases from a long-term perspective changes everything, I soon realized that it applies very much to entertainment, and ever since I’ve had a much harder time justifying most entertainment purchases. There are a lot of people out there looking to make a quick buck off of me (or a quick 21 bucks) by making me think that the entertainment I receive will be worth it.

The truth is, most entertainment is shit. Not because it contains offensive content, but because it is created and marketed merely to con me out of my money. And I’ve realized that for years I bought into this, I told myself the lie that it is occasionally nice to just “zone out” and be entertained. I would pay good money to go watch a bad movie because I just wanted to be entertained.

But as soon as I realized I was being taken for a sucker, I wasn’t entertained any more. Hollywood has realized that if they make a crappy movie and take all the funny parts and put them in a trailer and feature a famous person or 3, they can make millions. And we don’t even notice! We have decided that it’s more worth it to watch a dumb movie now than to hold out for something worth our money.

And so I’m fed up. Hollywood is worthless. They are selling us the same lie that nearly every large corporation in America sells us every day – that short term instant gratification is just as good as intentionally seeking out that which is good, even if it requires a sacrifice or extra expense. This is a lie, and once you recognize it, it is rather infuriating how stupid these corporations think you are. They are very confident they can sell us anything. I for one, have decided not to buy.

The best part about this though, is that the local indie theater in Nashville – The Belcourt – is incredibly antithetical to the Hollywood machine. They play first-run independent films from all around the world that are hand chosen, along with regular retrospectives of great filmmakers, classic films, and more. Rather than constantly trying to feed me the crap that Hollywood is selling, they attempt to provide good films to the Nashville community. And they do it at a phenomenal price – $8.50 if you aren’t a member but $5.75 all the time for members. Now that I’m a member, I can see a movie anytime I want that is almost guaranteed to be good (which doesn’t mean I’ll like it, but it means I can respect it) for under $6.

When I have that choice – under $6 for a good film versus more than $10 for any generic, formula-based Hollywood film, well why would I ever consider them? They just can’t compete. Unless they are Pixar, in which case, well, Pixar isn’t trying to sell me anything except the best film they can possibly make. And they happen to be really good filmmakers.