Welcome! Please help yourself to coffee and snacks Please make a - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Welcome!

 Please help yourself to coffee and snacks  Please make a name tag for yourself  Please fill out the information card on the table  Please consider serving:

Sign-up to bring refreshments to a class

 As you watch the movie

clip, consider the following questions:

 What elements of culture

do you see here?

 How is Tolkien acting as a

“Culture Maker?”

 https://www.youtube.com

/watch?v=IrOqnZdvI6M

Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo's hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in

• judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all
• ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some

part to play yet, for good or ill before this is

• ver. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of

many.

“Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened. Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil.”

 Fought in WWI

 Trench Fever  Lost two close friends

 Philologist  Lover of Nordic and

Anglo-Saxon myths

 Professor of Anglo Saxon  Led C.S. Lewis to Christ  Literature instead of

scholarly argument.

 On Fairy-Stories

 Humans as Subcreators  Eucatastophe: The joy of the happy ending  The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the

happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn:” . . . . this joy, which is one of the things which fairy- stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially “escapist,” nor “fugitive.” . . . It is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur.

 It does not deny the existence of

dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.”

 The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind

which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: “mythical” in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment

• f Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of

Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy.

http://www.rivendellcommunity.org/Formation/Tolkien_On_Fairy_Stories.pdf

In Paradise perchance the eye may stray from gazing upon everlasting Day to see the day illumined, and renew from mirrored truth the likeness of the True. Then looking on the Blessed Land 'twill see that all is as it is, and yet made free: Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys, garden nor gardener, children nor their toys.

Evil it will not see, for evil lies not in God's picture but in crooked eyes, not in the source but in malicious choice, and not in sound but in the tuneless voice. In Paradise they look no more awry; and though they make anew, they make no lie. Be sure they still will make, not being dead, and poets shall have flames upon their head, and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall: there each shall choose for ever from the All.

http://home.ccil.org/~cowan/mythopoeia.html

 First Four Weeks: 9/20, 9/27, 10/4, 10/11

 Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling  More Abstract  Asking Questions  Discussions

 Seven Weeks: 10/18, 10/25, 11/1, 11/8, 11/15, 11/22, 11/29

 Team: Heaths, Galanes, Englesons, Sandy Smith, Val

McGowen, Sean Devereaux, Lily Kaufmann

 Areas of Culture  Personal Stories  Discussions

 Final Week: 12/6

 What we make of the world

 Physically  Interpretationally

 Cumulative  Horizons of Possibility and Impossibility

 Publicly  Through Shared Goods  Multi-culturally  Within Spheres  On Different Scales  Adds Diversity

 What strikes you about what you’ve just heard about

culture: what it is, what defines it, how it operates?

 Did anything surprise you?  What matched or differed from our discussion of

culture at the beginning of class?

 Amos 5:18, 21, 22a, 23a, 24: “Alas, you who are longing

for the day of the Lord, for what purpose will the day of the Lord be to you? I hate, I reject your festivals, nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer up to Me burnt offerings, I will note accept them…. Take away from Me the noise of your songs…. But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” NASB

 God’s Due  Inescapable

 What does this aspect of culture/cultural artifact:

 Assume about the way the world is?  Assume about the way the world should be?  Make possible?  Make impossible or very difficult?

 What new forms of culture are created in response to

this aspect of culture/cultural artifact?

 What does this aspect of culture/cultural artifact:

 Assume about the way the world is?

 Cars, fuel, unified land, engineering, maps, wealth, need, support

 Assume about the way the world should be?

 Smoother, faster, safer, straight distance, removal of obstacles,

uniformity  Make possible?

 Distance travel, cheaper goods, new commerce, commuter jobs

 Make impossible or very difficult?

 Sustain population growth without fuel, local jobs, small business,

monetary support

 What new forms of culture have been or are being created

in response to this aspect of culture/cultural artifact?

 PhillyCarShare, electric cars, tolls, Smart cars, EZ pass

 To take away from today’s conversations:

 What spheres of culture am I a part of?  Have I thought recently about the presumptions

inherent in the cultural artifacts which surround me?

 Do I think/believe I can influence culture?  Is God calling me to be a culture-maker?

 Q Commons Event at the Watertown campus (9/24, 7-9p).  Q Commons is a live-stream event that also includes local

presenters discussing how to advance the common good in

• ur cities and communities.

 Presenters include:  Author Os Guinness, discussing our societal differences  Neurologist Dr. Caroline Leaf, speaking on mental health  Our very own Cynthia Silva Parker, continuing the

conversation on racial reconciliation

 An interview with Michael Flaherty