Today, Kirstin and I had the opportunity to speak to a group of Cornerstone University humanities students in their capstone seminar. It seems they’ve had quite an adventure this semester, exploring cultural and textual hermeneutics. They had just finished reading Andy Crouch’s excellent Culture Making; we were invited to tell the story of *culture is not optional and our own haltingly clumsy attempts at making culture faithfully.
The students were very passionate and sharp, making the conversation was thoroughly enjoyable. Thank you, especially, to Michael Stevens for the invitation!
Cornerstone University
Festival of Faith & Music 2009
*cino had a display table at this year’s excellent Festival of Faith & Music 2009 (FFM) at Calvin College, organized by the Student Activities Office (SAO). Kirstin and I share a position in the SAO–in addition to our *cino work–and have the distinct pleasure of working with Ken Heffner, the director of Student Activities, who has been doing amazing Kingdom work in the area of popular culture for a long time. The work Ken’s been doing at Calvin was on our radar long before we worked there; in fact, the SAO and FFM were some of the examples *cino has always pointed to as signposts of Kingdom life. So it’s quite wonderful, now, to be a part of something like the Festival in a more intimate way than simply exhibiting.
We’d encourage you to visit the Festival web site for audio resources, photos and information about participants. I’d specifically recommend the incredible conversation between Lupe Fiasco and Cornel West, the Cornel West lecture, and two excellent articles by Marty Garner about headliners The Hold Steady and Lupe Fiasco. Actually, all of the workshops are pretty fantastic, so you should just subscribe to the FFM podcast and download everything. :)
