In a world where food can be increasingly expensive and people don't share meals with one another too often, dinner co-ops are springing up around the country. Despite their potential problems, this seems like it could be a wonderful way to share the burdens.

Do you know of a church that might be pursuing this within their congregation?

If you can excuse a moment of semi-shameless self-promotion - along with five other accomplished film critics and writers, I'm involved with a new venture called Filmwell, a website interested in cinema off the beaten track and criticism at the margins of the great conversation. We launched today, and below is the press release. Hope you'll check us out.

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Hi,
 
We are happy to announce the release of Filmwell (www.filmwell.org), a new website that will be updated daily with essays, film and DVD reviews, and news on cinema off the beaten track. Founding Filmwell contributors include widely published authors and critics, as well as film festival programmers and educators. Filmwell content is dictated by the whims of its contributors, who frequent national festivals, scour DVD catalogs and screening schedules, and are otherwise always on the hunt for those films that make this great conversation so worthwhile. Yet another film blog? Maybe. But our collective audiences are hungry for an entry point to thoughtful criticism on films they haven't heard about yet.

Somewhere in the middle of the twentieth century, women decided they could have careers, go to college, and do all the things the boys were doing. While that had some definite negative effects (sexual revolution, anyone?), there were good things about it too. Women and men are different, which means that they bring different types of thinking and different views to the table; as a gross generality, women take more easily to detail-oriented work, and empathize more fully (a handy trait in a doctor or a teacher or a social worker). We need both genders involved in building and maintaining our civilization, as well as raising our families.

But somewhere along the way, the baby got thrown out with the bathwater - sometimes literally. Not only were career homemakers sometimes looked down upon by this society of acquisition and materialism, but the entire job of making a home - the cooking, cleaning, child-rearing, and entertaining - was outsourced to fast-food restaurants, frozen-food proprietors, maids, babysitters, television, after-school activities, and restaurants.

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Last week, I was on my way home from a lecture at the Museum of Biblical Art. For those who are unfamiliar with NYC geography, the trip from MOBIA to my Brooklyn neighborhood is not short - about forty-five minutes from door to door. I wasn't feeling well, so I'd tucked myself into a corner seat with my current read and a cup of green tea for the long haul home. People in various states of exhaustion sat listening to their iPod earbuds, staring at the advertising lining the subway car. A crowd of teenagers bundled into the subway at the next stop and started talking loudly and heatedly down at the other end.

About twenty minutes later - somewhere in the Village - I realized that the crowd of teenagers were having a full-blown argument about something. I started to get nervous - you just never know what will happen when people get into heated discussions - but then I listened more closely and realized what was going on.

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This week was particularly busy for those of us at IAM (like Christy, Mako, and Mark - and me!), as the annual IAM Encounter in downtown Manhattan was taking place. My reason to hope this week? God gives good gifts to his children, like espresso.

As Good magazine reported a few weeks ago, carpooling is burgeoning in San Francisco (where it's been a way of life for decades). Though some carpools lend themselves to stern silences, others are more convivial, lending themselves to knowing your neighbors. Meeting new people and reducing the strain that cars put on the environment? Sounds like a good idea to me.

Reason to hope: as we published in Comment several months ago, places like the Laurentian Leadership Centre exist, giving me hope that the anti-intellectualism trend in the church may turn in my lifetime.

A reason to have hope for our culture: an increased interest in the stories of the everyman, which I see as a twofold blessing: it bucks against "celebrity culture", and it reminds us that it takes all kinds of people to make a world. Two great places to hear people's stories are The Moth and This American Life.

Want a whole host of reasons to hope?

Check out the latest print edition of Comment magazine. (If you're not a subscriber, you can buy a copy from our website.) In this edition, we asked writers, teachers, businesspeople, ministers, theologians, composers, CEOs, and seminary presidents what signs of hope they see in our culture. The answers are vibrant, varied, and provocative.

We've also put together a Comment manifesto, chock-full of a Biblical vision for the world that ought to be.The manifesto was published in the most recent issue of Comment, but we've made it available online.

Full disclosure: I am an associate editor at Comment, which is a journal of the Ontario-based think tank

Today, God willing, the highest ranking office in our government will pass peacefully from one man to another - and not just from man to man, but from political party to political party, and under circumstances that would have been unfathomable just fifty years ago.

In 2000, when the election results were decided after a wearying month-long court battle, the results thrilled some and infuriated others. Those results are still disputed. But I recall feeling very proud of my country, because although emotions were running high, there were no riots or flag-burnings, and nobody burned the Supreme Court down. A peaceful transfer of power in the midst ofheated disagreement is something that not many around the world get to experience.