From Ashes to Light
This Lent, I decided to create a musical companion for the season: a curated week-by-week collection of classical and sacred works to focus on from Ash Wednesday through Easter. I should say upfront that I’m not a classical music scholar by any stretch, although I am lifelong listener and appreciator of it, and I know what’s moved me over the years.
What I’ve put together here is partly a listening journey and partly a self-education mini-course for my own learning. I started with pieces I already know and love, and then filled in the gaps with help from Wikipedia, ChatGPT, Claude, Google, and a few other resources along the way. What’s emerged is a curated musical journey that I hope will deepen my, and perhaps your, experience of this season.
I was recently listening to one of my new favorite podcasts, The Literary Life Podcast, and the hosts were talking about their 2021 reading challenge, called 19 in 2021. I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to level up to that, but here’s my running list of what I’m reading this year.
As I’m publishing the first draft of this post, it’s the middle of 2020, 5 months into the new world of pandemic lockdown. Like 
The 2nd Commandment teaches us that we are not to make image or likeness of anything in heaven and earth. So what does that mean for the creative process? In lesson 5 of Ike Reeder’s Christ and Culture series, we’ll explore what God has to say about artistic intentions, the pitfalls of creative idolatry and how, as Paul instructs us in Colossians 2 and 3, we are to stay rooted in Christ.