Some things that have caught my eye over the past few weeks.
1.
I believe this whole article is behind a paywall, but James Howell in reviewing a couple of recent translations of the Old Testament made this observation about the value of a stable translation for the whole church:
“It’s not as if we, now, today, finally ‘get’ the Bible after centuries of misconstrual.…At funerals, I watch my congregation recite Psalm 23 in the King James Version without ever looking at the words. While my parishioners never resort to 17th-century English in daily living, the deep resonance of this psalm’s words arouse some memory and hopefulness. They know the words by heart, in the sense that the words are inscribed deeply in their hearts. I worry that with a broad smattering of translations we’re losing the shared phrasings and terminology we deploy to encourage one another and profess our deepest commitments (with verses like John 3:16, Jer. 29:11, and Gal. 5:22). Bray and Hobbins feel the translator has a burden ‘to hold together a community of readers over time.’”
https://www.christiancentury.org/review/books/two-new-very-different-old-testament-translations
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2. Poised as we are between the looming end of the NFL season and the dawning of ‘March Madness,’ may I direct baseball fans to two wonderful documentaries.
On one side of the spectrum is “Fastball.” With interviews of Bob Gibson and Nolan Ryan, of Hank Aaron and Johny Bench, and of many more power pitchers and hitters, interspersed with the science of pitching and the physics of speed, this captivated me.
On the other side is “Knuckleball!” There are pitchers who are never going to hit 100 mph on the radar gun, and so they resort to a pitch that most just cannot hit. Rare is the pitcher who can get it over the plate, and rare the catcher who can catch it. Many knuckleballers are profiled, but the focus is on a failing outfielder turned pitcher named Tim Wakefield. A fascinating story.
Both are available on Amazon Prime Video (not on Netflix).
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3. Speaking of entertainment, my wife and I were surprised to watch John Krasinski morph into an action hero in Amazon’s “Jack Ryan.” Very well done, as this assessment so ably conveys.
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4. My nurse daughter attended a conference in which Hospitalist Dr. Zubin Damania was one of the keynote speakers. When he is not saving peoples lives or speaking on the subject of improving health care (“Health 3.0”), he is rapping and creating music videos under the name ZDoggMD.
His take on making end of life preparations is powerful. Watch “Ain’t the Way to Die” and then, after making sure your living will and advance care directives and such are in order, sit back and enjoy some more of his more lighthearted productions. “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Sepsis” tickled our funny bone.
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5. Finally, I stumbled across a thoughtful essay about Fred Rogers in the Dordt College faculty journal Pro Rege (edited by an old friend, Dr. Mary Dengler). The author, Dr. Joshua Matthews, discusses Mr. Rogers and the recent documentary about him (Won’t You Be My Neighbor) with a critical eye that I’ve not seen elsewhere. It’s worth a read. Here is a taste:
“I couldn’t help thinking about Mr. Rogers the character in today’s terms. If he were on TV here in 2018, would he talk about today’s hard issues on his show? What would Mr. Rogers say to his young viewers about predatory Catholic priests?Would he be so open as to talk about pedophilic school teachers on his show?
“Let’s soften the topics a bit. Would he talk about gay marriage? About what to do if you see a man dressed as a woman in a women’s bathroom?About what it feels like to be called a girl but to feel like a boy?
“The documentary doesn’t address these questions. It remains a mere nostalgic glance back at a more innocent time, one that I think the viewers who have rated it so highly pine for. It offers hope only in a past that is not and may never again be,without the sufficient insight needed to confront the present spirits of our age.”