Category: Michael D
Adventure Literature?
I’m not sure what to make of books and films like the “Hunger Games.” Here is a paragraph from an article in The New Yorker Magazine about the “boom of dystopian fiction for young readers.”
The youth-centered versions of dystopia part company with their adult predecessors in some important respects. For one thing, the grownup ones are grimmer. In an essay for the 2003 collection “Utopian and Dystopian Writing for Children and Young Adults,” the British academic Kay Sambell argues that “the narrative closure of the protagonist’s final defeat and failure is absolutely crucial to the admonitory impulse of the classic adult dystopia.” The adult dystopia extrapolates from aspects of the present to show readers how terrible things will become if our deplorable behavior continues unchecked. The more utterly the protagonist is crushed, the more urgent and forceful the message. Because authors of children’s fiction are “reluctant to depict the extinction of hope within their stories,” Sambell writes, they equivocate when it comes to delivering a moral. Yes, our errors and delusions may lead to catastrophe, but if—as usually happens in dystopian novels for children—a new, better way of life can be assembled from the ruins would the apocalypse really be such a bad thing?
Read more: http://goo.gl/P1aI
A Paragraph from SSCSJ
My companion, Rev. Dr. Lisa W. Davison, and I write weekly commentary and exegesis for persons that create the children’s sermon (moment) for their congregation. Ours is not a typical idea or help book with object lessons or words to use. It is not a cookbook of recipes to follow. Rather, it is another piece of the study puzzle if you follow the Lectionary texts for preaching and worship. Some use it with adults more than for their study and work with children. Some use it with Sunday school classes with youth. We hear that some read it devotionally. Each week, I’ll post a paragraph or two from one or more of the sections from Sacred Steps: Children’s Sermon Journal. To learn more about this resource visit our site: www.sscsj.org
Here is the first paragraph for 2 Cor 4:13-5:1 which is the epistle reading for June 10.
Is Paul a persuasive character in the New Testament? Is he more interesting to study than Jesus of Nazareth or the First Testament from which Jesus drew his understanding of God and model of faithful living? The answer for many believers is “yes” which is why, I think, many ministers try to model Paul’s preaching or base their call to ministry in something similar to Saul/Paul’s story. For good and for ill within Christendom, Paul’s story, his writings and the writings of those that claimed Paul’s name, have shaped and are now shaping Christianity for many believers. Why is he persuasive, maybe more persuasive than Jesus of Nazareth? Two thoughts. First, Christianity has cocooned Jesus in a divinity that celebrates him as part of the God-head and stripped the power of his humanity, along with his teachings, away from a historical person’s witness as a Jewish peasant within the Roman empire. Jesus commented on religious life and cultural existence always pointing to God. Paul, post Damascus road, goes about asking “WWJD”, trying to be “Christ-like” by preaching, starting faith communities, living grace-fully, and pointing to Jesus Christ as if pointing to God. Paul’s popularity, now, can be located in this 2 Cor reading.