The music doesn’t all appeal to me, neither does the dance moves they chose for the video. But the very fact of their being there sends chills up and down my spine. You see, I’ve been there. I spent some time in Eastern Europe six years ago, and stood in this very square in front of the Millenium Memorial. It’s an old, patinaed monument–this wasn’t erected at the turn of the millenium, but in honor of the thousandth year of Hungarian history in 1898. And it sits in the middle of a bleak square with an acre of paving stones around it in the heart of Budapest–a city still very much under the shadow of its years of Communism and repression, when Christians were not allowed to practice openly.

This church that started small in those dark days has grown to encompass a significant portion of the community, now holding multiple services of tens of thousands apiece on Sunday morning. I’m not wholeheartedly comfortable with the trend of megachurches in US mainline evangelical circles, but the Lord appears to be doing a mighty work here. For even just six years ago I couldn’t have imagined so many of Budapest’s youth (and older folks, too) standing joyful in one of the bleakest spots in downtown Budapest and dancing and singing the good news. For the song they were singing was particularly meaningful to me, having seen the damage statism and tyranny has done to their country in the past century.

That day will be remembered as the greatest day in history
The fate of the world changed in one glorious moment
When Life triumphed on Resurrection Sunday

The hope of a people searching for life
The day will be brighter
The message of freedom rings in the sky
Spreading the fire
The flag of a nation ready to fly
Taking them higher
The heart of a land that rises to fight
Full of desire
When nothing is as you want it to be
Look up to heaven
Freedom was paid for on Calvary
The chain is broken
Making a way right to destiny
Borders are open
And Jesus has granted the victory
That Sunday morning

Joy in this life time, utterly free
More than the world gives, beyond what you see
For nations its time to rise their hope is in Jesus Christ
If the giants come, just hold on, the advantage is now on your side
Jesus, will take the final fight

A light dawned that Sunday Morning
It broke through the boundaries of time
Hearts start shining, calling to all mankind
Lets celebrate eternal life

When nothing is as you want it to be
Look up to heaven
Freedom was paid for on Calvary
The chain is broken
Making a way right to destiny
Borders are open
And Jesus has granted the victory
That Sunday morning

Joy in this life time, utterly free
More than the world gives, beyond what you see
For nations its time to rise their hope is in Jesus Christ
If the giants come, just hold on, the advantage is now on your side
Jesus, will take the final fight

Watch it. I can’t hear this without crying. For a country that’s been through so much, come through the fires and flames of secular humanism, it is time to rise, and their greatest hope is in Jesus Christ. Jesus will take the final fight!

With great excitement I watched this trailer for the first time–the sea of lilies, the star’s daughter, the beach at the end of the world, the very appearance of the Dawn Treader, and the Dufflepuds…come majestically to the silver screen, and in 3D no less! It was on my second, and third, and fourth rewatching with my fellow C.S. Lewis friends, that we noticed a couple of significant discrepancies…

• Where does Jadis (the White Witch) come in? The shot in the trailer seems to hint at some sort of vision, so I suppose it could be part of the Dark Island sequence, but somehow she looked more…corporeal…than that.
• Where’s Eustace and/as the dragon? Apparently he is in the movie, as an effects house has been contracted to provide 200 shots of the dragon, but he’s not in the trailer almost at all (only one shot, in his bedroom).
• I was incredibly excited to see the sea of lilies, and the beach at the end of the world. But where do Peter and Susan come in? They weren’t supposed to be there! (H/T: I noticed this one only after seeing someone mention it in a Youtube comment…) One other thing–is that Aslan’s mountain behind him in one of the final shots? I can’t wait for the Silver Chair!
• What’s the deal with Lucy and the snow? I presume it’s meant to be another spell she experiments with, but I can’t remember anything like that.

A friend of mine got to see some very advanced footage from VDT over two years ago, early in production–he stated that he was worried about the final film, because it appeared that they have emphasized the darker parts of the tale to the detriment of all else…

I will be very excited to see it, but I’m concerned about what the new director will do to the film, possibly deviating from the original in the disastrous way Prince Caspian did (although PC at least stayed relatively consistent thematically.) December cannot come quick enough!

P.S. My brother correctly identified the music swirling into the final sequences as “Heart of Courage” by band “Two Steps from Hell”. Can’t say I like the name, but it sure sounds awesome…

At least this is the story as we have been able to figure it out.

Today in Iran Twitter is proving its value as an instant communication and broadcast medium for dissidents in Tehran. Mainstream media sources have nearly ignored recent significant events in Iran, (CNN, BBC Persia, and the NY Times have reportedly covered it to some degree but MSN, Fox, the Washington Post and others are said to have had only perfunctory coverage). A handful of dissidents and students in Tehran are managing fill the gap, however, posting information to Twitter from the ground as events unfold. Some are keeping up 20–30 tweets/hour or better, and their posts are being re-tweeted around the world in realtime. A live search of the #IranElections hashtag on Twitter returns 30 to 80 posts a minute from people on the ground in Iran and discussing the events around the world.

Photos and video are coming from the ground as well. BBC Persia has some live footage of the march, going on its fifth hour in Tehran. One user has been posting links to most of the TwitPic photos going up from the march itself, while ________ (a dissident on the ground) and _________ (a student at Tehran University) posted links earlier to two Farsi-language blogs with photos of the results of the university siege at http://25khordad.wordpress.com/ and http://entesabat88.persianblog.ir/. A video walk-through of a wrecked dorm at Tehran University can be found on Youtube here. Photos of police chasing people and a protester protecting a fallen riot cop are surfacing, as well as a photo showing that Mousavi is indeed in the crowd today, contrary to some reports. A video of a chanting crowd streaming down a major avenue in Tehran will give you goosebumps. Twitpipe and Twitcaps give you live streams of  twitter posts and images, respectively, relating to the Iranian Elections. Twitter and the Internet are changing the way the world works.

Some in the blogosphere stateside are doing a good job translating and syndicating the stream coming out of Iran. Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Dish is live-blogging the Iranian events. He has an excellent rundown of the weekend’s news here, and a particularly haunting post of photos and tweets from the inside here. FiveThirtyEight has an interesting discussion of why exactly the reported election results are statistically hard to believe. And I and thousands of other Twitter users are retweeting and distributing the highlights of the information stream to our followers.

Please pray for Christians and dissidents in Iran–this is a very dangerous situation. Some have already died, and this could turn into a massacre at a moment’s notice. It is a great opportunity though, as well, for a critical change in government to occur in Iran, one of the most closed countries on earth to democracy and the gospel. The newest reports on Twitter are saying that violence is ramping back up after twilight, and the streets are no longer safe. The internet and mobile networks are a tenuous link in a closed country, and we know that the government is actively trying to shut down these information leaks. Pray for freedom for this country, and for the continued health of those trying to let the world know what is happening!

John Calvin Young

Late breaking: Youtube channel of videos from Tehran today at http://www.youtube.com/user/iran09twitter

UPDATE: I can no longer distribute usernames of trusted sources on Twitter, as the government is using cyberwarfare tactics to track down and threaten, arrest, or do worse to those trying to get information out of the country. Don’t retweet raw information from the hashtag stream–there are known fake users posting disinformation for publicity or to muddy the waters. Stay with trusted sources–watch mine and other twitter streams known to use trusted sources, and read any IR twitterers carefully, checking back over their update history for consistency and opposition to the government. The most polemic are not necessarily the most accurate. I regret that the situation has reached that point, but security now demands a different level of behavior. Some things you can do: IR twitterers are asking that users outside the country switch their location and time zone to Tehran (+3:30 GMT) to swell the numbers of “Tehran” twitterers and make the government’s search harder. Also, if you do find a trustworthy source, don’t RT indiscriminately with the username–use “RT from Iran”. These users are more concerned about their lives than about proper credit. An excellent article on the cyberwarfare going on and what you can do is posted at http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/16/cyberwar-guide-for-i.html.  To paraphrase another user discussing security, remember it’s not a game or an internet meme to Iranian twitterers…it doesn’t close when they shut down TweetDeck or sign out of their browser. Many are hunkered down in safe houses or ruined buildings around Tehran, hoping to live out the night. Read, RT, reply, discuss to your heart’s content, but don’t be the one that exposes these brave members of the opposition to the government!

A long-awaited new series of photos of Katie for all y’all. Thanks so much for praying for her!

IHS,
John Calvin Young

This discovery brought new meaning to my family’s tradition of reading the historic poem “Five Kernels of Corn” to remember the historical reason for Thanksgiving. At one point in that sad year, stores had dropped so low that the ration for each Pilgrim was only five kernels of corn. And yet “to Bradford a feast were five kernels of corn!”

Let us read and reflect on our heritage–we all should be thankful that the Pilgrims survived that first winter, whether we carry Pilgrim blood or not. If that settlement had failed as the Roanoke Island colony had in North Carolina, our country would have very likely not formed in the same way, established on the same values as it did. And let the nation give thanks for five kernels of corn!

Five Kernels of Corn
April, 1622
’Twas the year of the famine in Plymouth of old,
The ice and the snow from the thatched roofs had rolled;
Through the warm purple skies steered the geese o’er the seas,
And the woodpeckers tapped in the clocks of the trees;
And the boughs on the slopes to the south winds lay bare,
and dreaming of summer, the buds swelled in the air.
The pale Pilgrims welcomed each reddening morn;
There were left but for rations Five Kernels of Corn.
Five Kernels of Corn!
Five Kernels of Corn!
But to Bradford a feast were Five Kernels of Corn!

“Five Kernels of Corn! Five Kernels of Corn!
Ye people, be glad for Five Kernels of Corn!”
So Bradford cried out on bleak Burial Hill,
And the thin women stood in their doors, white and still.
“Lo, the harbor of Plymouth rolls bright in the Spring,
The maples grow red, and the wood robins sing,
The west wind is blowing, and fading the snow,
And the pleasant pines sing, and arbutuses blow.
Five Kernels of Corn!
Five Kernels of Corn!
To each one be given Five Kernels of Corn!”

O Bradford of Austerfield hast on thy way,
The west winds are blowing o’er Provincetown Bay,
The white avens bloom, but the pine domes are chill,
And new graves have furrowed Precisioners’ Hill!
“Give thanks, all ye people, the warm skies have come,
The hilltops are sunny, and green grows the holm,
And the trumpets of winds, and the white March is gone,
Five Kernels of Corn!
Five Kernels of Corn!
Ye have for Thanksgiving Five Kernels of Corn!

“The raven’s gift eat and be humble and pray,
A new light is breaking and Truth leads your way;
One taper a thousand shall kindle; rejoice
That to you has been given the wilderness voice!”
O Bradford of Austerfield, daring the wave,
And safe through the sounding blasts leading the brave,
Of deeds such as thine was the free nation born,
And the festal world sings the “Five Kernels of Corn.”
Five Kernels of Corn!
Five Kernels of Corn!
The nation gives thanks for Five Kernels of Corn!
To the Thanksgiving Feast bring Five Kernels of Corn! 
                                                    –Hezekiah Butterworth

Giving thanks,
John Calvin Young

That brings me to the topic of my current post. The Lord recently provided an awesome new camera, a Canon SX10 IS, through a special technology scholarship at my school. I’ve since been enjoying shooting photos of our campus, reputed to be among the prettiest in the United States.

Last Sunday night I was busy on a Music History paper due the next morning at 9 and was up most of the night–in fact, I had only 1.5 hours of sleep when I walked into class that morning. The upside to this really long night was that I got to see a spectacular sunrise the next morning at a quarter to seven–the photos below were just taken off my dorm steps twenty feet from my room.

R.E. Lee Episcopal silhouetted against the sunrise.

A little wider shot with the Lee House and Davis Hall in the picture, taken across the BDG Quad.

I’m home for the moment for Thanksgiving and greatly enjoying finally getting enough sleep, despite having a major political philosophy paper to write over break. Sleep, politics paper, food and more sleep cover most of my priorities for this week. And then back to school for one more week of class, then finals and Christmas break! Lord willing I should be able to post some more pictures soon, especially over the Christmas holidays. And now to bed, for it is plenty late already…

Today I connected my laptop hard drive to another computer with an adapter and was able to upload the current R3 version of the script. Enjoy!

http://www.youngchristianstudios.com/hitlerslaw_r3.pdf

In His Service,
John Calvin Young

At long last, it is time to announce our latest project–“Hitler’s Law”! It will be a 7-minute “tactical” short drama targeted at the current deplorable struggle between the German government and Christian parents over the control of their children’s education. We hope to shoot during the month of August, 2008, and complete postproduction in time to submit it to the 2009 San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival.

The History

Hitler’s National Socialist (Nazi) Party passed a series of “cultural purity” laws between 1937 and 1939. Among these were laws specifically mandating state-run public instruction for all children so as to prevent the formation of so-called “parallel societies”. The whole purpose was to force a homogeneous culture in Germany. The Nazi policy-makers understood that to influence the next generation, they had to control the children.

The scary thing is that these laws did not quietly go away. Although the majority of the Nazis’ policies were summarily ended with the unconditional surrender of the Reich in May 1945, many of these measures stayed on the books. Recently this particular law has been revived by the government as part of their program to stop the loss of their unique heritage. Christian homeschool families have been especially hard-hit. Many families have fled to Austria with only the clothes on their backs, mere hours ahead of the police, just as they did in Hitler’s day. Homeschool parents have been fined, placed in prison, their property and children confiscated for trying to teach their children at home. One family has even had to flee Europe for Canada to escape the long arm of the government, which in the EU can even reach them outside of Germany’s sovereign borders. The situation is very bad in Germany, and getting worse. We who enjoy freedom in the United States need to pray for our brethren in Germany, who still suffer under Hitler’s Law.

You can read our news alert blog at http://hitlerslaw.blogspot.com/, and feel free to send news items to news@hitlerslaw.com.

The Film

Hitler’s Law is the newest short project of Young Christian Studios. The story follows Herr & Frau Traugott, German parents in the summer of 1938 who must make a painful decision when the local SS officer demands their children be placed in the state schools. Will they cave to the officer’s demands and place their children in the schools, possibly losing their hearts forever? Or will they flee in the night from a town and a house where their family has lived for two hundred years with the clothes on their backs and nothing else? They have only a few short hours to decide…

The film then makes the connection to the present day, where the same laws designed to promote a homogenous society in Nazi Germany are being used to force Christian parents to place their children in the state schools. We are hoping that this short film will wake up American Christians and homeschoolers to the terrible plight of their brethren in Germany and will help to bring an outcry of public opinion against Germany’s restrictive education policies.

To complete this project, we need help in every area: funding, equipment, casting, costumes, locations, and post-production. If you live in the Triangle area of North Carolina or even if you don’t, and are interested in assisting us with this project, please email us at producer@hitlerslaw.com.

We will have a production blog up soon, Lord willing. In the meanwhile, you can read the initial draft of the script at http://youngchristianstudios.com/hitlerslaw_r1.pdf. The upcoming R3 draft will include certain changes, such as conversion of the “Priest” character to Lutheran minister, but I can’t get that draft up until I am able to get back into my laptop, which is having trouble.

Please pray for us, even if you can’t help with this project. We have an extremely tight time schedule to shoot it in, and it’s going to be a challenge. We believe it’s a story that really needs to be told, but usually that means that there will be a struggle to complete it.

In His Service,
John Calvin Young
Writer/Director/Producer, Hitler’s Law

Young’s Corollary for Publicly Promoted Announcements: If a definite time for an announcement or a release is made, events will conspire to make it ludicrous or plainly impossible to try to meet the deadline.

Yes, I am here. I am not dead. I am not even dead tired. But there will be no announcement tonight. I registered the domain, I picked the images for the splash screen. I even opened Photoshop and began the layout. That’s when my iffy-but-working AC power supply for my laptop decided to fail, apparently irreparably.

30 minutes of fiddling later–still not working. No problem! Web work is by definition portable–I’ll just move over to one of the other computers. (BTW, you don’t begin to appreciate something like Adobe Photoshop until you have had it and suddenly don’t.) So I fired up the trusty-and-free GIMP to finish the job and suddenly it crashes. With an unexplainable error. I download and reinstall GTK+ and GIMP 2.4.6. Twice. With no better results.

Rather than attempting to do it with Microsoft Paint, I decided to have another go at fixing the laptop. 45 minutes, three rubber bands, a piece of aluminum foil and a Norton Anthology of American Literature later, the power blinks on!

Joyfully I power up the laptop, open PS, and am importing my images when it decides to quit. Going back once more to GIMP, I reinstall it again, witness it crash AGAIN, and seized by some kind of desperation, begin disabling any .dll in my system32 folder that comes up with an error message. Finally, at 11:58, I belatedly conclude that apparently I am not to get this announcement out before midnight.

That is the comfort of being a Calvinist–the Lord must have a purpose of some sort behind this–who knows, possibly forcing me to get some sleep so I can get up and get to work in the morning. So I shall. The announcement will come tomorrow or the next day when the Lord enables me to get my electronic world put back together. Apparently it is also time to buy a new AC adapter…

Until then, a teaser…
What occurred on July 6th, 1938 that would have repercussions for the next 70 years? Hint: it’s been in the international news a lot lately.

In His Service,
John Calvin Young

Hint: it’s about a new project. It won’t be a big one in budget, but anticipate larger-than-average ripples in the pond.

Until tomorrow…

In His Service,
John Calvin Young