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Re: Most Influential



and one almost on time post: 

<< So what is your most influential CD, book, and/or movie? >>
CD:
Mark Heard: Second Hand.  This was the first time I heard a Christian being 
totally up front about regret and doubt.  Helped me to see that a huge part 
of integrity as an artist is being brutally honest about our lives, no matter 
what world view they have.  Mark had it in spades.

books:
early on: Tolkien's LotR (really opened up my sense of wonder for the first 
time as a young teenager and instilled in me a life long desire to never lose 
it - to answer why people keep coming back to LotR I'd say, as least for me, 
is that it helps keep wonder alive)

as a new believer in my mid-20's: Francis Schaeffer: The God Who Is There 
(the idea that within the Trinity the philosophical need of there being unity 
within diversity is answered blew me away.  Also the idea that Love itself, 
needing an object, can only be eternal if there always has been an object 
rests in the Trinity too set me on the path to faith in a Triune God after 
dabbling in everything from atheism to eastern religions to...)

later in life ( Buechner's Alphabet of Grace: Broke me out of the 
'conservative/have all the answers' frame of mind that I was trapped in into 
one that realized that every moment of life is filled with mystery and wonder 
and to drain the mystery is to kill the wonder and shrink God down to our 
size -- link to Tolkien lesson.  The God of my understanding is just not near 
big enough.  Also opened me up to the realization that the myriad religious 
views cannot only have validity but actually compliment eachother.

I guess Vonnegut's Player Piano as a teen had a huge impression on me too as 
it made me a bit of a Luddite for a number of years.

Movie...I don't know, perhaps It's a Wonderful Life.  Whenever I feel like my 
impact on the world about me is pretty much zero I go back to it and it gives 
me hope that I have, in some way, touched a few.

But my favorite movie is Buckaroo Banzai!

kevin 
(the only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once)
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