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09 Jan 23:55

All Of Us Strangers

The movie All of Us Strangers is a wistful fantasy drama that tells two intersecting stories about different kinds of love: One between a son and his long-deceased parents; the other of two lonely men and neighbors who long for connection. Directed by Andrew Haigh, the film stars Andrew Scott as Adam, a TV writer living a lonely existence in London, and Paul Mescal as his neighbor Harry. Adam's parents are played by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell.

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01 Jan 13:00

01/01/2024

by Jennie Breeden

01/01/2024

Happy New Year!

Good luck.

03 Nov 00:53

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Updated: Fri Nov 03, 2023

11 Aug 13:21

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31 May 12:55

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07 Apr 23:08

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15 Oct 23:12

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24 Jun 11:50

06/24/2022

by Jennie Breeden

My neighborhood moms are The. Best.

 

28 Apr 01:42

Lightsabers

A lot of Jedi romances start with this turning into a Lady and the Tramp spaghetti situation.
14 Jan 15:27

Mike Luckovich for Jan 14, 2022 for 01/14/2022

Mike Luckovich for Jan 14, 2022

Updated: Fri Jan 14, 2022

13 Jan 02:30

Substitute Musician Pay In The Age Of COVID

by Drew McManus

An article in the 1/10/22 edition of marketplace.org by Kimberly Adams caught my attention because it reported on growing tensions between salaried and traveling nurses. Nutshell: due to labor shortages, traveling nurses are earning 4x the pay of their salary counterparts for doing the same work in the same location.

All of this got me thinking about the long-standing issue of pay disparity between core and substitute musician pay.

And yes, I know the labor market between nurses and orchestra musicians is anything but a 1=1 comparison. At the same time, that doesn’t undercut the reality that without substitute musicians, all but a few professional orchestras would fail to operate under the structure of their existing collective bargaining agreements.

That’s a five-dollar word way to say that without substitutes, orchestras are screwed.

I have yet to review the slew of modifications, side letters, and renegotiated agreements with an eye toward substitute pay.

The primary reason is the desire for things to stabilize long enough to see most professional orchestras replace temporary agreements with something longer term. Once we cross that threshold, we can see what might have changed on the issue of substitute pay.

But we can’t wait forever and based on the conversations I have with operations professionals; musician shortages are a big problem…that’s only getting larger.

For now, I’m especially interested in hearing about details from musicians and admins alike. Have you noticed any changes to the way orchestras compete and/or treat substitute musicians?

Take a moment to weigh in with a comment or on social media.

24 Jun 02:36

No, The Other One

Key West, Virginia is not to be confused with Key, West Virginia.
08 Apr 01:35

A Winter Wonder Worldcon

by John Scalzi
John Scalzi

Discon III, this year’s Worldcon, is moving from August — when it was likely to be entirely virtual — to December, when at least some of it is likely to be able to done in-person, including the Hugo ceremony. Some folks are going to get rocket-shaped holiday gifts, for sure.

How do I feel about this? I think it’s fine. Most of the membership (who responded to a polling about it) seem to want an in-person Worldcon this year, and I can certainly sympathize with that; after more than a year of virtual events and conventions and conferences, there’s a pent-up desire for actually being in a room, and it seems by December enough people will have been vaccinated to make it feasible. So, why not? The only real downside will be for any potential Hugo finalists, who will have an additional four months of suspense, but if that’s the major downside, that’s pretty minor, really.

(The actual major downside will be trying to fit Worldcon in to a month already jammed with holiday events and commitments. But inasmuch as several conventions have perennially scheduled themselves alongside Easter and (in the US) both Memorial and Labor Day, nerds are used to accommodating holiday conventions.)

I have a membership for Discon III and assumed that it would end up being virtual, because August is still cutting things close (September is the earliest I’d be totally comfortable with an in-person experience, if it was handled correctly, and in fact I have concert tickets for that month). So now having the option of being there for the thing is nice. And I have a few more months to see where we as a nation are on the road to in-person events. I like having options, is what I’m saying. And if I go I may wear a Santa hat the entire time I’m there. Because why not.

— JS

28 Dec 00:59

The Temptation of Joseph

by Richard Beck

I've been reading W.H. Auden's "For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio" for some of my Advent reflections. 

I wanted to share with you a remarkable section from the peice, "the Temptation of Joseph."

To start, many Protestants might not be aware of the temptation of Joseph. In Orthodox iconography of the Nativity, beyond Mary and the Baby, you will see on the edge of the icon an image of the temptation of Joseph. Joseph is talking to an old man, but the old man is really the devil, who is placing doubts in Joseph's mind about Mary's pregnancy. You can see the temptation of Joseph in the icon I've shared here in the bottom left corner. 

Traditionally, Joseph represents all of humanity, how each of us have to make a decision about the birth of Jesus. We have our doubts and have to answer: Is this baby truly the Son of God, conceived of the Holy Spirit? That is our trial. 

In "For the Time Being" Auden takes this moment of temptation in a fresh and surprising direction. 

It has been long observed how Mary and Eve stand in a relationship in salvation history. Where Eve introduces sin into the world, Mary reverses the curse by becoming the Mother of God, bringing salvation into the world. This relationship is evocatively captured in a widely shared image this time of year, of Eve hanging her head in shame with Mary reassuring her as she places her hand upon her womb. The snake tangles around Eve's leg, but its head is crushed under Mary's heel.

Following this parallelism, Auden uses the temptation of Joseph to make a connection between Adam and Joseph.

Specifically, one of the notorious things Adam does to Eve is throw her under the bus, blaming her, when God confronts him in the garden. In the hands of Auden, Adam's sin against Eve symbolizes all of the sins of men against women throughout history. Similar, then, to how Mary overturns the sins of Eve, Joseph has to stand in his moment of perplexity and doubt to reverse the sin of Adam against Eve. In Adam, men blame and stigmatize women. Men don't believe women. Joseph's trial, then, is that a man must believe a women. And in believing Mary, Joseph overturns the sin of Adam.

As Auden writes, "For the perpetual excuse / Of Adam for his fall--'My little Eve, God bless her, did beguile me and I ate'... / you must now atone, / Joseph, in silence and alone."

And Auden describes the many ways men mistreat, use, and lie to women, the sin of "the impudent grin... / That hides a cold will to do harm."

All this sin is gathered and falls upon Joseph. As a man, Joseph must endure the trial of being himself marginalized and excluded: "To-day the roles are altered; you must be / The Weaker Sex whose passion is passivity." More: "You must learn now that masculinity, / To Nature, is a non-essential luxury." 

The temptation of Joseph is passing as a man, and for all men, this trial of marginalization and doubt. To reverse the sin of Adam against Eve, Joseph must accept his peripheral role and believe Mary. Joseph here faces his #MeToo moment. 

As Auden writes:

Forgetting nothing and believing all,
You must behave as if this were not strange at all.
Without a change in look or word,
You both must act exactly as before;
Joseph and Mary shall be man and wife
Just as if nothing had occurred. 

And Joseph, showing men the way, passes the test. In the Christmas story, Mary heals Eve and Joseph heals Adam. And so we, with Auden, petition this season: 

"Joseph, Mary, pray for us."
20 Oct 00:51

"Black Lives Matter": The Gospel as Rehabilitative Honoring

by Richard Beck

Over the summer the leaders of our church shared a statement with our congregation that "Black lives matter." And since then, and really no surprise given that we live in West Texas and the extreme polarization of our politics during an election year, our leaders have had to do a lot of explaining and teaching about what the church means when we say "Black lives matter."

In our statement, we were clear that when we, as a congregation, say "Black lives matter" we aren't endorsing any group, organization, political party or legislative policy. For us, the statement "Black lives matter" was a gospel issue.

How so?

A part of the problem, again no surprise, is that there is a perception that when we say "Black lives matter" we are elevating some lives over other lives. Such a perception tends to elicit the rejoinder that "All lives matter."

And, of course, they do. But the gospel education comes in clarifying that the phrase "Black lives matter" isn't about elevating some lives over other lives. The gospel impulse behind saying "Black lives matter" is, rather, rehabilitative, restoring a lost value, worth and dignity. Saying "Black lives matter" is just another illustration of what Jesus was doing when he addressed the Samaritan woman or broke bread with tax-collectors. Jesus wasn't saying Samaritans or tax-collectors matter more than others. Jesus was rehabilitating a lost humanity, restoring a diminished dignity.

A great example of this practice is found 1 Corinthians 12. There Paul is wrestling with honor/shame issues in the Corinthian church, how some people stood higher or lower on the metrics of value within Roman society. That problem should sound familiar to us given America's racial history. Consequently, unity in the body of Christ, declares Paul, is accomplished by rehabilitating the dignity of those who stand lower on social metrics of value and worth. The gospel demands that, wherever people are devalued, our practice should be rehabilitative honoring. As Paul shares:

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. (1 Cor. 12. 21-26)

For those who stand secure according to metrics of social worth, Paul says such people "need no special treatment." You don't need to go out of your way to say their lives matter. The issue for Paul is "giving greater honor to the parts that lack it." And as should be clear, while this "greater honor" is distributed unevenly across the body, since honored members "need no special treatment," this asymmetrical honoring isn't unjust, unfair or divisive since the goal is restoration and rehabilitation.

The gospel mandate behind saying "Black lives matter" is that the body of Christ is "giving greater honor to the parts the lack it." This asymmetrical practice of giving "greater honor" isn't an elevation of some lives over others. Giving "greater honor" isn't a form of "reverse racism," establishing a new and different hierarchy of value and worth. Showing "greater honor" is restorative and rehabilitative, recovering value and worth where it had been missing. And according to Paul, this practice of rehabilitative honoring--"giving greater honor to the parts that lack it"--is how the church overcomes division and disunity.

Sometimes pictures help, so here's a diagram of the two ways of understanding "Black lives matter": 

To the left, situation A, is the false perception that saying "Black lives matter" is an elevation of Black lives over other lives, prompting the response "All lives matter." As described above, such a response is a mistake because what is actually happening is illustrated in situation B on the right. In saying "Black lives matter" we are engaged in rehabilitative honoring, giving "greater honor to those who lack it," restoring Black lives to that proper place where mutuality and concern for all pour forth.

10 Jun 11:48

Mike Luckovich for Jun 10, 2020 for 06/10/2020

Mike Luckovich for Jun 10, 2020

Updated: Wed Jun 10, 2020

27 Feb 00:48

Truck Proximity

See also: Farm animals and dinosaurs. I am so confident that there exists children's media that involves dinosaurs driving trucks on a farm that I'm writing this without even Googling to check.
29 Sep 11:00

Mike Luckovich for Sep 29, 2019 for 09/29/2019

Mike Luckovich for Sep 29, 2019

Updated: Sun Sep 29, 2019

30 Jul 12:24

Mike Luckovich for Jul 30, 2019 for 07/30/2019

Mike Luckovich for Jul 30, 2019

Updated: Tue Jul 30, 2019

02 Oct 23:29

The News is a Trashfire Today, So Here’s a Rainbow

by John Scalzi

I mean, the news is a trash fire pretty much every day these days. But today, there was also a rainbow by my house. So I went out and got a picture of it. Figured it would be a nice change of pace for everyone. Please enjoy, and I hope the rest of your day is a little better because of it.

02 Sep 12:17

1998/2018: Whatever 20/20, Day One: Cats

by John Scalzi

Over the course of 20 years, I’ve had seven cats, roughly grouped into three generations.

The first generation of cats was a single cat: Rex, who I acquired in 1991 from my sister Heather. Heather and her children came to live with me for about a year when she was getting a divorce from her then-husband and needed a place to live; Rex, a kitten, came along as part of that package. Rex was not stupid and apparently realized that I was the one paying for his kibble, and also, my room in the apartment was entirely toddler-free, so he glommed onto me. When Heather and her children departed, he stayed.

By 1998, when for the purposes of this exercise our story begins, Rex had gotten quite comfortable living with me and Krissy, and had also gotten rather chunky — something like 30 pounds. When he got a urinary tract infection our vet ordered him on a low-fat, low-ash diet with no more than half a cup of kibble a day. That lasted until Rex tried to kill me in the night by climbing up on my bed and suffocating me with his furry bulk as a protest for the diet cat food. I took the hint, fed him what he liked, and expected him to expire in a year or two. Possibly out of spite, he stuck around through 2005.

By that time, two members of the second generation of cats, Lopsided Cat and Ghlaghghee, had joined the menagerie at the Scalzi Compound in Ohio. Lopsided Cat we acquired when he walked into the yard while Krissy and three-year-old Athena were tending the garden; he walked over to Athena and when she knelt down to pet him he hopped on her back, and that was pretty much that. He had been someone else’s cat (he had been neutered) but I suppose either he had been abandoned or he had decided to trade up. Ghlaghghee (whose name was pronounced “fluffy”) came to us when a neighbor knocked on the door, said “here’s that kitten your wife wanted,” presented me with a small handful of fluff, and then walked away. In fact Krissy had not said she’d wanted a kitten, but inasmuch as I had taken receipt of the thing, it was too late for takebacks.

The second generation of cats got its final member when Zeus showed up at our garage door on the coldest night of 2008, mewling piteously for food and warmth. We’re suckers and we took him in. Zeus, Lopsided Cat and Ghlaghghee formed a fairly stable trio for the better part of the decade, with well-defined roles: Lopsided Cat was the Cat’s Cat, sort of the platonic ideal of a cat, who kept the house largely vermin free (we’re surrounded on three sides by agricultural fields, and without cats the field critters eventually head indoors). Ghlaghghee was a pretty princess who ruled the house with an iron paw. Zeus was the adolescent comedy relief. Ghlaghghee became world-famous when I taped bacon to her; she was written up in the New York Times and the Washington Post among other places. The other two cats did not seem to mind her fame.

Of the second generation of cats, Ghlaghghee was the first to leave us and did not meet any of the third and current generation, and Lopsided Cat passed away within the same week of us acquiring the first two members of that new generation, Sugar and Spice, sister kittens who we famously dubbed The Scamperbeasts. Zeus, now the sole surviving member of the second generation, rather grumpily took on the role of the elder cat, first schooling the Scamperbeasts and now lately acting like an exasperated grandfather to Smudge, the (we think!) final member of the third generation of Scalzi cats, a kitten who very like Zeus came to us out of a nearby field looking to be rescued, accurately figuring we were too soft-hearted not to take him in.

It means we currently have four cats at the Scalzi Compound, which to my mind is one more than we absolutely need. Three seems to me to be the ideal number. But then I look at Zeus, now the elder cat, and I realize that all-too-sooner than later that “problem” will take care of itself. Maybe in the meantime I should enjoy these furry folks while we have them.

Which is of course the problem with cats, and pets in general: They don’t last. If you’re lucky you get a decade and a half with them, give or take a couple of years. Then they pass along and you have a cat-shaped hole in your heart for a little while. New kittens and cats can help that heal, but you still miss the ones who are gone.

As it happens, Rex and Ghlaghghee and Lopsided Cat are still here with us, in their way. Rex’s cremated remains are in a lovely urn that a Whatever reader made for him, and the other two are buried beneath the oak tree in the back yard, which is appropriate inasmuch as the spent nearly their whole lives in sight of that tree. They’re home. I find that I miss these cats of mine as much as (and in some cases more than) humans I’ve known in my life. They’re all people. And these people lived with me and were part of my family.

Here in 2018, it’s interesting watching the four cats we have configure themselves into their own sort of family unit. Zeus is the cranky elder, Sugar is the standoffish queen, Spice has taken up the mantle of the great hunter, and Smudge… well, he’s still figuring out what he wants to be when he grows up, and in the meantime he runs about with fearless and some would suggest heedless kitten energy, running head first into the other cats whether they want that or not. It’s fun to watch them tolerate him, until they don’t. He doesn’t seem to mind.

The configurations of the cats at the Scalzi Compound over the years, and the dynamic of the generations, have helped to give shape to their time with us, and ours with them. Over the course of these 20 years, we’ve never not had cats, but the cats are not interchangeable. They’re all their own people and have their own personalities. I would never confuse Rex with Zeus, or Ghlaghghee for Spice. I miss the ones that are gone, and am glad for the ones that are here now. Even when one of them is, as Smudge is literally doing right now, attempting to dismantle the chair I’m sitting in with his teeth. It’s not going to work. But it’s fun to watch him try.

 

13 Apr 11:22

Mike Luckovich for Apr 12, 2018 for 04/12/2018

Mike Luckovich for Apr 12, 2018

Updated: Thu Apr 12, 2018

05 Feb 23:55

Mike Luckovich for Feb 05, 2017 for 02/05/2017

Mike Luckovich for Feb 05, 2017

Updated: Sun Feb 05, 2017

31 Mar 21:23

Mike Luckovich for Mar 31, 2016 for 03/31/2016

Mike Luckovich for Mar 31, 2016

Updated: Thu Mar 31, 2016

27 Sep 13:44

New Mike Luckovich for 09/27/2015

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Updated: Sun Sep 27, 2015

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23 Sep 02:36

Nobody Likes An Asshole (Except Maybe Other Assholes)

by John Scalzi

Adam-Troy Castro has a post up called “Writers: The Long-Term Benefits of Not Being An Ass,” which I encourage you to read, with the awareness that the advice has works equally as well when you substitute any other profession for “Writer” (or indeed, you can also substitute “human” and it works just as well).

Also, let me just second nearly all of what Adam-Troy is saying there. Folks, the fact is that people’s tolerance for working with complete assholes is pretty low. In the field of writing, in my experience, being an asshole is generally neither here nor there in terms of how an audience sees you (they’re focused on your output, not your personality), but it has a lot to do with how much slack those who have to work with you will cut you. And when no one wants to work with you, it makes it harder for your audience to find you.

And yes, if you sell millions of books, then you probably get to be as big of an asshole as you want to be and people still have to put up with you. But not many people sell that much. The list probably doesn’t include you (sorry. It doesn’t include me, either). It’s been interesting recently to watch writers who sell relatively little who have nevertheless decided being a complete asshole to other people in the industry was a winning move. They are either extraordinarily confident they will never be dropped by their current publisher (which is not a smart thing to assume when you sell relatively little), or they hope self-publishing will save them (also not smart).

(Or they’re simply convinced that it’s not them who’s an asshole, it’s everyone else. In the latter case, well, you can believe that, but if everyone else outside your tightly-sealed little group disagrees with you, then you still have a problem.)

Or, and this has been suggested to me before, there’s the theory that being a complete asshole is a marketing strategy to build an audience. My thought on this is, well, okay, but the sort of person who gets off on watching you be an asshole is probably an asshole themselves. And while I suppose that an asshole’s money spends just as well as anyone else’s, I’d still be uncomfortable actively cultivating that particular market. Again, generally your audience doesn’t care about your personality, but if you make being an asshole a selling point, to the particular market of assholes, then that’s the market you’ll be stuck with, you know? Then you’ll always have to be an asshole. And, you know. I can be an asshole just like anyone else. But I try to limit the total time I am one. It’s tiring. I can’t imagine having to do it all the time.

So, yes. Listen to Adam-Troy. Try to be a decent person, to the people you work with and even the people you don’t; Remember how you treat people on the way up is how they treat you on the way down; Maybe you can be an asshole if you sell millions, but you probably don’t and even if you do, you should still try not to be one. People remember. And people talk. And people choose who they want to do business with, and who they want to help.


19 Jul 15:36

New Mike Luckovich for 07/19/2015

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13 Jul 03:07

Ellar Coltrane Speaks Of Growing Up On Screen In 'Boyhood'

Film director Richard Linklater's latest movie, Boyhood, was shot over 12 years. NPR's Tamara Keith speaks with the star of the film, Ellar Coltrane, who spent over a decade shooting the movie.

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25 Apr 12:50

Batlam born in Norway

by arbroath
Batlam was born at the Science Garden in Nærbø on Monday, along with his brother Robin.



He stands out from the other lambs on the farm.

Batlam was born with two identical black patches around the eyes.



The first few days of Batlam's life have involved mainly drinking milk and staying close to his mother.
22 Dec 14:29

Piss Christ in Prison: An Unlikely Advent Meditation

by Richard Beck
The fourth Sunday of Advent.

This last week out at the prison bible study I led the inmates through an unlikely advent meditation. Our focus was on Piss Christ, the controversial photograph by Andres Serrano.

As I describe in my book Unclean, in 1987 the photographer Andres Serrano unveiled his controversial work Piss Christ. Piss Christ was a photograph of a crucifix submerged in a mixture of blood and urine. The work broke into public consciousness in 1989 when members of the US Senate expressed outrage that Serrano had received $15,000 from the American National Endowment for the Arts. Senators called the work “filth,” “blasphemous,” and “abhorrent.” One Senator said, “In naming it, [Serrano] was taunting the American people. He was seeking to create indignation. That is all right for him to be a jerk but let him be a jerk on his own time and with his own resources. Do not dishonor our Lord.” Later, in 1997, the National Gallery in Melbourne, Australia was closed when members of a Christian group attacked and damaged Piss Christ.

Beyond the content of the photograph what really offends is the name, the juxtaposition of the word "piss" with "Christ." What is blasphemous is the contact between something holy and something defiling.

Piss contaminates the Christ.

This is an example of the attribution called negativity dominance in judgments of contamination. That is, when the pure comes in contact with the contaminant the pure becomes polluted. The negative dominates over the positive. The power is not with the pure but sits with the pollutant. 

This is why the Pharisees see Jesus becoming defiled when he eats with tax collectors and sinners. The pollutant--the tax collectors and sinners--defiles Jesus, the pure. The negative dominates over the positive. The pollutant is the stronger force. Thus it never occurs to the Pharisees, because it is psychologically counter-intuitive, that Jesus's presence might sanctify or purify those sinners he is eating with. Because pollution doesn't work that way.

Thus, in the contact between urine and Jesus in Piss Christ we instinctively judge the negative to be stronger than the positive. Thus the shock. Thus the blasphemy.

But the real blasphemy just might be this: That we think urine is stronger than Christ. That we instinctively--and blasphemously--believe that the defilement of our lives is the strongest force in the universe. Stronger even than God.

It never occurs to us that Christ is stronger than the "piss" of our lives.

I looked at the men in the study and said, This is the scandal of the Incarnation. This is the scandal of Christmas. That God descended into the piss, shit and darkness of your life. And the piss, shit and darkness did not overcome it.

I know, I told the men, that this is so very hard to believe. That Jesus goes into the darkest. most disgusting, most defiling corners of our lives. This, all by itself, is hard to believe. But even harder to believe is that Jesus is stronger than that polluting, shameful, defiling darkness.

That is the scandal of Christmas.
John 1.14a, 5
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
I have no idea what Serrano was trying to do with Piss Christ. He was, most likely, trying to piss off Christians. If so, he succeeded in that.

But the story of the incarnation is more subversive than the most subversive art. It's hard to be more transgressive than Christmas. Consider Beth Williamson's analysis of Piss Christ:
What are we to make of this work: what are we to understand by it, and how can we interpret it?

Most obviously were enraged by the combination of the most iconic image of Christianity—the Crucified Christ—with human bodily fluid, and felt that this work set out deliberately to provoke viewers to outrage. The artist almost certainly aimed to provoke a reaction, but what reaction?

The fact that urine is involved is crucial here. But was the use of urine simply intended, as some of Serrano’s detractors have claimed, to cause offense? Had the artist deliberately set out to show disrespect to this religious image, by placing it in urine? Some felt this was tantamount to urinating on the crucifix.

I would suggest that, even if some viewers and commentators feel that it was the artist’s intention, or part of his intention, to be offensive, there are also other ways to interpret this work...

The process of viewing the Crucified Christ through the filter of human bodily fluids requires the observer to consider all the ways in which Christ, as both fully divine and full human, really shared in the base physicality of human beings. As a real human being Christ took on all the characteristics of the human body, including its fluids and secretions. The use of urine here can therefore force the viewer to rethink what it meant for Christ to be really and fully human. 
God had a body. That is about as transgressive as you can get. So transgressive that many Christians, now and throughout history, have passionately resisted and banished the thought. It's the same impulse that will cause many to denounce this post.

Christmas is so hard to believe that most Christians don't believe it.

But the Word became flesh. God dwelt among us. And still does. Even in the piss. Especially in the piss.

Immanuel.

I looked at the men in the prison and paused. I wanted them to hear this. Because there is some real darkness in their lives. Darkness we rarely speak about.

I looked at them and said:

The meaning of the Incarnation is that God has descended into the piss and shit of your lives. And that God is stronger than that darkness.

Do you believe this? Because I know it is so very, very hard to believe.

You want to believe that your foulness, all the shit in your life, is the strongest thing there is. The greatest and final truth about your life.

It's so hard to believe what I'm telling you because it feels like blasphemy.

But it's not. It is not blasphemy.

It is the story of the Incarnation. It is the Word becoming flesh. It is the story of God's love for you.

It is Christmas.