The first link was sent to me by a friend at work. It shows several HUBO humanoid robots playing The Beatles’ song Come Together as a band. This video was student produced by the Drexel University’s Music & Entertainment Technology Laboratory (MET-lab). The second video shows a solenoid powered, MIDI drumming robot named Steve 3p0, which was created by David Crowder Band’s drummer, Jeremy Bush (B-Wack).

A robot playing an instrument is pretty cool, but it’s the time and effort spent actually building the instruments and programming the robots that impresses me!

After a false start, a successful Kickstarter campaign (also check out this link), and the filming of a dream, Blue Like Jazz will be debuted at SXSW on March 13th! General release of the film will be on April 13th. I hope to see it at the Angelika Film Center (or in wider distribution) in Houston, Texas… Don, are you reading this!?

If you are unfamiliar with Blue Like Jazz, it is a wonderful book written by a guy named Donald Miller (check out his blog here). The book is based on his experience of leaving an Evangelical Christian upbringing in Texas shortly after high school to move to the Pacific Northwest. After arriving in Portland, Oregon, Miller began auditing courses at Reed College, a liberal arts school, where he fell in with a small band of Christian misfits whose goal became to live an authentically Christian life in the midst of “the most godless campus in America.”

Blue Like Jazz is the memoir of an adventure that led Miller to know God more fully, and to strive to introduce this knowledge to a people jaded and weary of religious hypocrites. I hope you all will read the book if you haven’t already, and look for the film in your area after April 13th. Watch the official trailer to the movie above.

Over the past several weeks Relevant Magazine has posted three opinion pieces to their website written by Christians explaining why they believe and vote according to certain political principles. These pieces have all been interesting reads. I appreciate Relevant for giving each of these writers space to explain how Christianity has informed their political identities.

The first of the three posts was entitled The Rise of Christian Libertarians and was written by Caryn Dahlstrand Rivadeneira. The Republican viewpoint was entitled Why I Am a Christian Republican and was written by Matthew Lee Anderson. Why I Am a Christian Democrat was written by David Masciotra. I appreciate Relevant for “printing” these op-eds because it is important for Christians to reflect on how their Faith informs their thoughts and actions in the day-to-day, but also in big thought issues like politics.

The Apostle Peter said, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have,” (1 Peter 3:15). Christians have a responsibility to provide answers; First and foremost regarding their salvation through faith in Christ, but also regarding how this faith in Christ transforms and renews our minds (Romans 12:2). Research has shown that far too often it is a person’s politics that changes a person’s perspective on religion. These op-eds in Relevant help Christians remember that it needs to be the other way around. All Christians need to make sure it is faith in Christ first and foremost that informs their thoughts and actions, and we should ensure that we can explain our conclusions to others.

Left to Right: Randy George, Neal Morse, Mike Portnoy

Randy George, bassist for the progressive rock band Ajalon and contributor to several Neal Morse solo projects, has recently posted a studio diary. This diary records the development and recording of Neal Morse’s current upcoming release (September 2012), tentatively named Momentum. George and drummer Mike Portnoy are each contributors to the release.

George reported that Momentum will be a song oriented album rather than a concept album consisting of six short songs and one 33-minute epic. Song titles, some tentative, reported by George are “Momentum,” the album’s title track, Thoughts – Part 3, Smoke and Mirrors, Weathering Sky, Lunar Creek, and what is intended to be the album’s final track, Freek. George didn’t give the name of the epic.

One of the interesting tidbits George shed light on from the recording process is the amount of time the trio spent revising arrangements so they wouldn’t sound like previously recorded tunes. This is the sixth album the trio has recorded together (Testimony, One, ?, Sola Scriptura, Lifeline, and Testimony 2). I imagine after recording that much music together repetition might begin to creep in.

In addition to Morse’s solo project, the group also recorded an album of cover songs. Titles of the tracks unfortunately were not given. This album will be released in May or June 2012.

The biblical narratives are so poetic, so beautiful, so majestic. Whenever I come across how writers and artists have treated the story of creation in their works I’m always drawn back to the Bible. Two of my favorite depictions in literature of creation are C.S. Lewis’ and J.R.R. Tolkien’s. Each, in their epic tales (The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings), write the fictional universes as being created through singing and music; beautiful and fantastic imagery.

I’m not the only one who loves this imagery of creation through music. Page CXVI, a music group created to breathe life into old hymns, draws it’s name from the page number Lewis’ description of the creation of Narnia is found in the book, The Magician’s Nephew; where Aslan sings the universe and everything in it into existence. A band I recently discovered and have fallen in love with (Gungor), also depicts the universe as being created through music. In the first song off of their latest album Ghosts Upon the Earth, the opening lyrics pour out, “Darkness hovering, grasping everything it sees. Void. Empty. Absent life and absent dream. Let there be (Light).” Lovely.

All of these stories and descriptions, writers and musicians, have pushed me to create a mash-up of sorts. I’ve taken God’s words, Lewis’ words, Tolkien’s words, and Gungor’s music and have attempted to combine them into something new(ish). Below, you will find words from Genesis 1 and John 1, words from  the passages containing Tolkien’s creation of Middle Earth, and from Lewis’ creation of Narnia. Before you begin reading, scroll down to the bottom of this post and start the video, which will play Gungor’s song, “Let There Be.”

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.

Then, in the darkness something began to happen. A voice began to sing, and in the voice was life. It was very far away and hard to tell from what direction it came. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes it seemed to come out of the earth. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise ever heard.

Then two wonders happened at the same moment.

One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. Voices like unto harps and lutes, and pipes and trumpets, and viols and organs, and like unto countless choirs singing with words, joined The Voice in fashioning a great music; and a sound arose of endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into the Void, and it was not void. Never since has any music been made like to this music, though it has been said that a greater still shall be made before God by the choirs of angels and the Children of God after the end of days.

The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. They didn’t come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out – single stars, constellations, and planets. If you had seen and heard it, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing.

The Voice on the earth was now louder and more triumphant; but the voices in the sky, after singing loudly with it for a time, began to get fainter. And now something else was happening.

Far away, and down near the horizon, the sky began to turn gray. A light wind, very fresh began to stir. The sky, in that one place, grew slowly and steadily paler. You could see shapes of hills standing up dark against it. All the time the Voice went on singing.

The eastern sky changed from white to pink and from pink to gold. The Voice rose and rose, till all the air was shaking with it. And just as it swelled to the mightiest and most glorious sound it had yet produced, the sun arose. The true Light, which brings light to every man, had come into the world. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.