starving jesus film series = complete

After nearly a year, the Starving Jesus film series is complete! Four films in all. It has been an incredible journey and one that I could not have imagined I would find myself on a couple of years ago.

This project would not have been possible if not for the countless people who gave their time, money, prayers, and support. A project like this...where your name ends up on the cover can be misleading because it implies that that person acted as a one-man show. However, there is simply no way I could have created these films alone. Most especially, I could not have produced this without the help of my girl Margaret. As an editor, writer, producer, actor, and co-director, the thing should probably have her name on it as her fingerprints are everywhere. All this to say thank you to all of you who gave to this project!

Many of you know that I have been raising support this past year - for seminary and so that I might continue to have the freedom to create projects like this. This project has been an integral part of my income during this past year, mostly through online sales at places like Worship House Media and Sermonspice. In addition to selling them individually online, we have just released the entire four film series onto DVD which is now available for sale for $19.95 on Difted.com.

Have a look at the trailer below and then head over to the Difted store to pick one up.



Starving Jesus Teaser from blainehogan and Vimeo.

these three things

I have realized lately just how much I love logos and icons. I love how something so simple can suggest something with such greater depth and meaning.

I had a great theater professor once who always talked about getting to the essential meaning of whatever you were working on. You start with a bunch of words, actions, sounds, sketches, etc...and whittle away until you have only the things you need - the essence.

I wrote a couple weeks ago about a new class I was taking - Theology and the Artistic Impulse. The class finished this weekend with an exhibition of our final projects.

My piece, entitled These Three Things, centers around three icons I created for the words "faith," "hope," and "love." When I thought about those three words, I kept seeing water and light, and wanted to create something functional, clean, and iconic. The result was a chandelier constructed with water bottles.

While it isn't entirely complete (I'll be adding more bottles to it in the coming weeks), below is the process from initial sketch to the semi-finished product now hanging in the Mars Hill library.

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."
1 Corinthians 13:13

these three things
july 2007
blaine hogan
seattle, wa
plastic bottles, metal rods, light fixtures, tape

jesus + health care

I don't usually think of writing movie reviews. While I watch quite a few movies, I'm never really compelled enough to write anything that I think people would want to read. Let it be known, however, that I'm not writing this post because I believe you'll want to read it. Rather, I'm writing to convince you to go and see Michael Moore's new film about America's health care system, SICKO.

The film has been out for a couple of weeks and has been getting pretty good reviews. I went today with a couple of friends and was completely moved. Now I will be the first one to say that I'm not always a huge fan of Michael Moore. I think his tactics often get in the way of his message - diluting it to the point of camp and rhetoric. Sicko is something else entirely.

ME + HEALTH INSURANCE
I knew that when I moved out to Seattle for seminary I would be giving up my amazing health care through Actor's Equity, the union for actors. The way health care works for actors is through a point system. After you become part of the union, you begin racking up points or weeks for every week you work at a qualified theatre. To get a year of coverage you must work a minimum of 20 weeks, consecutive or non-consecutive, during a 12-month period. 10 weeks will get you 6 months of coverage. Basically if you don't work enough you don't get covered.

I have been blessed the last three years to be able to work enough to qualify for coverage...which, like I said is amazing. The producers of the qualifying theatres pay into a pot which goes towards covering those actors who qualify. Until very recently, the actors paid nothing except a $500 deductible and a $10 co-pay. Now actors are required to pay $100 per quarter - still an incredible deal.

All that went away when I started school. Many of you who have lost or changed jobs know what it is like to not have any coverage all of a sudden. It can be a scary feeling especially if you are not sure where your next meal is coming from.

Seeing Sicko today was quite apropos, as I had just received a letter from Blue Cross that I had finally been approved for coverage. I had spent countless hours scouring the internet for the best coverage and ended up applying for coverage through ehealthinsurance.com. I am lucky to be a healthy, 20-something, so getting coverage was not that difficult, but frustrating nonetheless.

JESUS + HEALTH CARE
The point of this blog, you ask? Well it's two-fold.

To begin with, I think Sicko is Michael Moore's best film to date. And I would encourage all of you, whether you like him or not, to see this film. At the risk of sounding like some kind of activist, I think that the film poses some very interesting questions about our health care system, and perhaps more importantly about how we take care of one another.

Secondly, I wonder if we'd ever thinking of giving Jesus universal health care. I was struck throughout the film by Jesus' words to us about taking care of the sick. In his parable about the sheep and the goats his says:

For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.
Matt. 25:42,43

He also says:

I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.
Matt. 25:45

Moore's argument is summed up by asking, "What is wrong with us that we won't take good care of each other."

Again at the risk of sounding like an activist, this kind of "universal health care," a system similar to that in Canada, France, and the U.K., where everyone receives care, seems pretty much in line with what Jesus is asking us to do - to take care of the sick.

Certainly these systems have their flaws - people will take advantage of them, private companies will go out of business, people will lose their jobs, etc... While I don't advocate shutting down an entire industry and I might feel different if my mom worked for Cigna or Aetna, I still think that Jesus would like the idea of us taking care of each other in this way.

Let's say Jesus lived on earth right now. He's a free-lance speaker and is self-employed. Chances are good he either doesn't have health insurance or pays extremely high premiums to cover himself and the others in his organization. For argument's sake, let's say he doesn't have insurance and suddenly finds himself extremely ill. Supposing that he decides not to heal himself, he instead subjects himself to our worldly ways of treating the sick. Finding himself too sick to work and in need of serious care he finally heads to his local doctor who treats him and sends him on his way. Months later he is stuck with medical bills that he is unable to pay. On and on it goes until he has to fire all his disciples and quit speaking because he is too ill to work, and too poor to see the doctor.

While maybe a silly illustration, this scenario is played out everyday. Again I am struck by the fact that Jesus tells us over and over that HE is the least of US - and that what we don't do for each other is what we haven't done for him.

When Jesus said, "whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me," I'm pretty sure he meant it. So I guess I wonder...if Jesus were alive today, do you think we'd want to give him universal health care?

art + god

“How much time have we wasted trying to make “bigger and better” or slicker and sweeter messages instead of just being the messengers?”
– Betty Spackman

I struggle with this question a lot. First as a Christian, and second as an artist, who happens to be a Christian.

I’ve just begun reading for a new class called “Theology and the Artistic Impulse.” I’ve listed the course goals and objectives below for your reading pleasure:

Course Goals
1. To expand awareness and understanding of contemporary visual art through learning how to look, then see, then feel, then analyze.
2. To connect this art to the human and cultural realities of our time to be on the planet.
3. To think, speak and write creatively, yet authentically, about the relationships of reality, mystery and poetry discovered in the theological implications of contemporary art.

Course Objectives
By the conclusion of this course you should be able to:
1. Begin a lifelong appreciation of contemporary art as the messy and risky production of living artists, which can bring pleasure, wit, beauty, interest and revelation to a living culture.
2. Think in a dialectical manner in the formation of relationships between visual expressions and ideas.
3. Strengthen Christian belief by risking its application to the questions our culture is asking through its art.
4. Plan, make and present a work of liturgical or “gallery” art for exhibition.

I’m terribly excited to finally be taking a class on art and theology – these two things are the reason why I’ve felt most called here to Mars Hill.

The quote above came from an article I’m reading by author and installation artist, Betty Spackman. The article, Play Time – Finding the Freedom to Imagine and Explore, is essentially about how art and theology do in fact go hand in hand, despite how hard our post-enlightenment minds would like to separate them.

Her quote is in response to a story she tells about a Christian theatre group putting on a production of “Thumbelina,” where they had gone to great lengths to turn the story of Thumbelina (a butterfly loses his life while rescuing a little girl) into a parable about Christ.

She says,

“…at rehearsals we found we were very good at portraying the evil crows and the lusty frog but very bad at portraying the innocence and beauty of the child and the butterfly. It all came across as unbelievable, stupid and sentimental – a kind of shallow ‘feel good’ fable that was neither good theatre nor a true representation of Christianity."

She goes on tell of one possible solution which would have been to drop the Evangelical spin all together and just tell the story with truth and authenticity.

Which takes us back to her quote at the very beginning…

”how much time have we wasted trying to make “bigger and better” or slicker and sweeter messages instead of just being the messengers?”

A new friend of mine recently gave me a great bit of advice for artists in the church. He was telling me how he thought our role should be mirrors and not teachers. As artists, we should be given the task and responsibility of mirroring back to the church its present state and its relationship with the world. I think many people would be very uncomfortable with a bunch of weirdo artists going around “mirroring” things and not providing any kind solution…so of course, some common ground would have to be found. (Please excuse the logistics…this is a new idea!)

Often as artists in the church we’re asked to tell the truth in very clear and precise ways so that the “average guy in the pew” will get the message, in other words, teach. Now I’m not saying that we shouldn’t take all people into account when we’re preparing something like a film, a song, a painting, a dance, or a play. But if we have created the piece with the expressed purpose to only explain and teach, we have suddenly become biased and thusly complicated things a great deal more than if we had just created…just because.

My girlfriend works at a large, mega-church in Chicago. We often talk about the difficulty an artist has working in an evangelical institution. Thankfully, this particular church does place a high value on the arts. However, oftentimes the “average guy in the pew” argument beats the artist’s original conception because someone believes the “average guy” won’t “get it.” Now we could go back and forth about what is more important…either everyone logically understanding everything that might be going on in a piece of art, or the feelings of wonder, beauty and awe that the piece of art created. (For the record, I don’t believe that those things are mutually exclusive!)

At any rate…back to our post-enlightenment minds…I think most of us believe in the separation of art and church whether we know it or not. Betty Spackman writes,

“Whether one is an artist or not, I think as Christians we are all implicated in the horrendous deficiency of imagination, the visual illiteracy, the dispassionate celebrations of “the joy of our salvation,” the uncaring lamentations of our sorrow for the oppressed and wounded, our lack of protest for the destruction of our ecosystem and the consumerist kitsch that is the predominant expression of faith in most of the Christian community.”

This is a scathing indictment of the state of art in many of our modern-day churches. I don’t claim to have the answer, though Spackman’s words do seem to bring with them an air of the prophetic…what if we were just the messengers?

Click here to read the whole article by Betty Spackman

re:beginnings

It has been quite awhile since my last post. As I was awaiting the switch from the beta version to the new blogger, as well as a new, cleaner design...I simply stopped writing. That combined with classes, papers, relationships, projects, etc...this blog really took a backseat.

Now that I'm back in Seattle for summer classes, my hope is to pick up where I left off. Though it does feel kind of weird to start writing on this thing again. You wonder if anyone still reads it and then there is the "blogger-guilt."

I have a few friends that run online communities and find that sometimes their entire lives are focused on constantly producing new content. Because in the online world, if you don't have new content you basically die.

Despite months of nothing new, I stand alive.

For the two (hi mom!) of you who still read this, I thank you for your patience!

Consider this my humble, re-beginning.

new starving jesus film - 'where is the love?'

Where Is The Love is the new film in the Starving Jesus Series, by DIFTED Films.

Taken from a real-life encounter, Where Is The Love asks the question, "if we were made in God's image...made by love, to love...why is it that we have such a hard time really loving?

Music by Sleeping At Last

movement five

to mars and beyond

The things we are called to here at Mars Hill have helped me continue to flesh out my hermeneutic in way that is much more full than I could have ever imagined. We're being called into our created-ness. We’re being called to become the people we were born to be; back to Eden; back to our original states and our original hearts that can see and hear through the haze of evil and of this world. God's spirit calls us forth to live transformed lives, to be continually changed, and to live radically wild lives following a radically wild king. Because I see more than facts, I am able to see glory, majesty and authority everywhere. I attempt to see the face of God in all whom I encounter and I also attempt to see the face of God when I look in the mirror. And there is something about that that just isn’t right. It doesn’t seem fair that I could be allowed to reflect the glory of God. But I do. My face reflects the glory of God. While this may be a fact, it is much, much more – it is truth. Again facts can only change my mind, and only truth can change my heart; and it is the truth that sets me free.

movement four

coming to see

Growing up in the Catholic faith, I knew very little about the Bible. While I was familiar with the famous stories, the Bible’s depth was mostly lost to me. To be honest, not much has changed. Though I am familiar with the message of the Gospels, I have not made reading the Bible a regular activity. I have, for much of my life, been turned off by safe, “god-in-a-box” theologies, something I’ve attributed to bible readers. However, as I dive deeper into the Bible, I’m finding that which is most biblical is usually the least safe. At this point I have to make it known that I am aware how my artist-eyes read into the Gospels and come out finding the dangerous message Jesus speaks of. It is also because my artist-heart is desperate to be a part of something greater than myself; to be a part of something I’m willing to die for.

movement three

the problem with our eyes / the problem with our hearts

If I’m honest, I want to believe that my interpretation is the right or better one. There is something that happens to us when we are “right.” Quite simply, it feels good. Augustine would say, however, that when the argument or conversation centers around which interpretation is correct instead of which interpretation best glorifies God and our neighbor, we have perverted the dialogue and stunted our growth. If we’re only arguing for what is right, we cannot move forward. Making well-stated cases for this or that theological point just doesn’t go far enough. If facts are where we start and stop I have to wonder then if we believe facts can transform a human heart? Again, it is my heart that needs to change, not simply my mind. Having experienced a change of heart, I find that my vision changes also.

Unfortunately, upon having new vision, things don’t always become “clearer”, in fact, they usually get muddier. And so what do we do when we have been told that things will become clearer when Jesus says that they won’t? This may further paint me as a postmodernist at this point, but I am often struck by preachers who profess that life with Jesus is easier; and while I believe the way of Jesus is the best way to live, I certainly don’t find things easier. Instead I’m left seeing things much less clearly, and with usually with more questions.

movement two

the problem with interpretation

So if this "dot of hope" is my hermeneutic, we begin to see the huge complications of interpretation as we realize that everyone comes to the table with their very own, equally complex hermeneutic. We approach the author and text with a set of circumstances that include life experience, church background, family dynamics, skin color, and socio-economic status. This list is by no means exhaustive, as the lenses that color what and how we see are infinite. The first stance we must take in beginning to understand the interpretive process is being aware that we all come to the conversation seeing something different.

the problem with seeing

Thankfully, I have discovered that I am not alone in my unseeing. And so I am compelled to ask, what is it that keeps us from seeing clearly? Obviously it can be that our own hermeneutic clouds our vision at times. But even if this weren’t the case, I wonder whether or not I would want to see clearly. What does seeing “clearly” actually mean? Does it mean that I’m seeing “rightly,” “righteously,” “holy,” or “biblically?”

So how should we see? Perhaps the most important question and one that I don’t hear spoken of much is, how were we made to see? If all we’re doing is attempting to divine the correct interpretation, I wonder if that prevents us from pausing to consider how God built us to see. If we can agree that we were created in the image of God, and that our faces reflect the glory of God – then what does that say about our eyes? If our faces reflect – what do our God-eyes see?

The secret of seeing is, then, the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep if forever I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sound. The literature of illumination reveals this above all: although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise. Finally with a shuddering wrench of the will, I see clouds, cirrus clouds. I'm dizzy, I fall in. This looking business is risky.
- Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek

a personal hermeneutic - in five movements

Sitting here a few days before we really launch into the spring trimester, I'm struck by all of the papers I wrote last term. I find that as I get them back, I've actually forgotten that I wrote much of what I wrote. Not that I forgot the content, per se - but amidst the mess of this place I simply forgot that I had set myself down and tried to put my thoughts on paper. Amazingly some of my thoughts feel new even to me.

All along we've been asked to explore our personal hermeneutic. I was just as confused by that term when I started as many of you might be now - so I've created a diagram. I've also congealed my personal hermeneutic down into five movements. Over the next few days I thought I'd go through it movement by movement. Movement one begins now...

movement 1 - the beginning

KABOOM!

The world has been spoken.

A single heart breaks.

A great wind comes.

Thousands of pieces are scattered across the universe.

A blanket of fog covers the tiny planet.

Silence.

With a weary soul and some very worn out shoes, I have begun the search to recover the pieces of my heart. The problem is that most of the time I cannot see exactly where I am going. My vision is impaired; I cannot see clearly. I am confused and unsettled.

I am an artist.

Through the fog, I am inclined to see the world in terms of beauty and despair. It's an artist's job to constantly observe and explore new things and to discover new ways to look at old things. I am an explorer, forever wondering how things can be done differently or better. My heart beats fast when I consider the idea that we could be more than we are. I believe that God is wild, creative and mysterious, so the God I see doesn't make much sense. I am in love with awkwardness and while I'm not always comfortable with God's craziness, I am inspired and awed by it. My heart sees both humor and sadness. My heart sees the light and the dark. I do find that this place of seeing can be rather lonely, however. In a world that demands comprehension, especially concerning unseen deities, I often find myself in a place of aloneness for I want to experience God, not explain Him. While an explanation can change your mind, only an experience can change your heart.

Because I have experienced some abuse in my childhood, my hermeneutic is pervaded by feelings of justice, advocacy, and protection. I seek to challenge those that are in power and rise up those who are not. I long to protect those who are unable or unwilling to protect themselves. I feel called to be an advocate for hearts that feel they don’t have a voice or have been told not to speak.

In the end, my hermeneutic is coated with the tension between hope and fear. I have found that I seem to have more hope for others than I have for myself. While this ratio continues to level itself out, I am fearful to have more hope than I already have. My fear is that if I have real hope and things actually change, that I will then be held responsible and accountable for that change. My hermeneutic centers around this idea in what I refer to as my “dot of hope.” It is a little white dot that sits in the center of my heart calling me back to who I was made to be. Thus, I cannot help but see the texts I encounter in light of my little white dot. While my dot of hope may not seem like much, according to Jesus, it is all that I need.

join the wrestling team

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a god-shaped box

We want guarantees. We are desperate for them. We long to have faith in something that is unshakeable. A solid rock. A firm foundation. Something to stand on. Something to stand for. While I don’t believe that there is anything wrong with wanting these types of guarantees, a question must be asked: What are we really seeking by demanding a guarantee? I would argue that the simple answer to this complex question is our need for control and understanding. As a result, our insistence on guarantees and certainty has successfully sucked out much of the mystery of the gospels. We are left with a watered down, over-simplified, “If I do A, then God will do B”, “value-meal”, modern theology that has me not asking where the guarantee is, but asking instead, “Where is God?”

I think many of us who claim to be postmodern would say that in order to find God we must first look in the box that modernity has placed Him in. Upon opening this box, we find God missing - not even a trace of pixie dust has been left behind. Did he escape? Or could it be that He never found His way into the box in the first place? Just because modernity placed our Lord Jesus Christ in a box doesn’t mean God agreed to it.

“He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.’ And he closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Luke 4:17-21

Aw, snap! Just a regular day in the temple and then this guy walks up and says, ‘Hey, I’m the One. I’m God. Deal with it!’ How do you take a God like that and throw Him in a box marked “a safe, simple, guarantee”?
This critique is not to say anything about our very real need to try and understand God. We can all agree we have limited understanding and that our boxes or something similar to them are needed to process our feeble attempts to comprehend God. Where modernity has gotten sticky however, is how the box very quickly has become God.

So is our present state to simply pit the modern against the postmodern and spend decades battling out the correct interpretations or the correct boxes of understanding? This line is futile and again seems to take out the mystery of God. Kevin Vanhoozer in his book, "Is There Meaning in this Text?" goes back to Augustine to help us begin to remedy our troubles: “Augustine’s chief hermeneutic maxim is to ‘choose the interpretation that most fosters the love of God and neighbor.’” Easier said than done but at the very least by doing so we begin to see again the great and devastating mystery that is God.

In the end we are bound to create boxes. They are how we begin the process of grasping this un-graspable God. However, we must be willing to let go of our boxes at any moment, realizing that the contents contain only our understanding, not the actual God. The truth is that God is unshakeable. He is a solid rock, a firm foundation; it is our boxes, which are not as safe.

a dot of hope

10 days until the close of my first semester here at Mars Hill Graduate School and I’m finding it hard to put into words how I’m actually feeling. More than just being physically tired, I have discovered that it is my heart that is weary. My heart is tired of breaking, thinking, weeping, and growing. I am overwhelmed. I am anxious. I am exhausted. And then I think – Stop. Sit. Breathe. Sometimes this works, most of the time it doesn’t.

However, in middle of all this chaos something comes that I hadn’t expected: hope. And not just the kind of hope that says that everything is going to be all right; it is hope of a different brand all together. This hope has come in the form of something I’m beginning to refer to as my “dot of hope.” It isn’t big, not much to look at, in fact. But to me, this single, solitary dot of hope calls me to hope for an even bigger dot…a deeper dot…a wider dot…a dot without end.

The real truth is I’m not sure if I have much more than my little dot of hope right now. Like I said it isn’t much, but for me, right now, it is everything. It sits in the center of my heart, it is tiny and white, and it is calling me. Calling me back to my story, calling me into this very moment, and calling me forward to a future story with an unknown ending.

And so I am left with my dot and a question. What would happen, if even for one moment, I to chose to stay in this unknown chaos and tension? What would happen if I truly began to write a new story with my Creator?

I suppose that is what I am here to find out.

starving jesus dvd now on sale!

Our grip is tight. Our hands are clenched. How do we let go? starving jesus takes a closer look at the dirt we all hold in our hands. The things we hide. The things we hold onto. And the things that hold onto us.

Buy the starving jesus dvd for only $12! [preview film here]


Click here to buy!

snowing in seattle

It snowed three inches today and I missed it. Oh, I was there alright. I saw it snowing, but still I missed it.

God's blanket of white, pure white, gently pressing down the pause button of our busy, busy souls. All he wanted to say was, "See, look what I can do. Don't you think it's lovely?"

Wildly I flung my hands about. Beat my chest. Screamed a ton and then began furiously shoveling off the snow that threatened to depress my heart's little switch.

No, no I do not think it's lovely. No, I say. I will not be stopped. I will not look. I will not see. I have a life to live and these three inches are about to give me a panic attack. I do not want to be stuck. Stranded. Stopped.

So, please...pack your snow back up and drop it on someone else's heart who might care - who might actually stop and give you praise for interrupting their perfectly busy lives.

It snowed today. Three inches in Seattle. And I missed it. It was beautiful I'm told. It was a Tuesday.

[photo by bob harrington]

starving jesus - a new short film

This film was shot this summer for the Starving Jesus Tour. It shares some more of story and my struggles with letting go.song by brandon heath
edited by stephen j. buchanan
shot by j.r. mahon

Click here to buy!

red harvest

I spent much of my fall break in a corn field in Indiana shooting a short film called RED HARVEST. Here a few production stills.

sitting

[a sketch]

sequence of events

[a drawing]