"My goal, tonight, is to feed our imaginations; to awaken the mind's ear, through art, to a wise and enriching life."

I felt like surely I should at least log this once before the end of the year—though of course, I've watched it several dozen times in the last few months alone.

Long story short: I made a movie! Filmed over summer 2022, I spent nearly 2 years working with 90 hours of footage in post-production to eventually assemble this film. It runs at an hour and 47 minutes, it was shot on BlackMagic Pocket Cinema 4K cameras and edited in Da Vinci Resolve, and it features a musical score composed by my good friend Nate Sheppard.

Our initial premiere on August 29th was at The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, TN—one of my favorite places to view a movie on the planet. It was a truly surreal experience, watching my own film in the 1925 auditorium (the room where I myself first watched RRR!) and getting to have a rich discussion with the audience afterward. Nothing can prepare you for the gift of watching a room laugh together at the little moments you thought might only ever be funny to you, seeing a group gain common ground and shared language through watching the scene you held dear, and hearing people find personal meaning in your movie in ways that you hadn't even anticipated.

Speaking of rich discussion: since August, we've had about a dozen more screenings around the country with the loveliest and liveliest of audiences. Out of every showing, I think my favorite ended up being the one in New York City; the majority of the folks in the room were longtime internet friends I'd never met in-person, and the conversation afterwards was enlivening and meaningful. If you haven't already gathered it, this is a film with a very overt religious and theological component—but it had always been my ultimate hope that those who don't share the same views would still find it accessible and universal in its exploration of the broader human experience. As one character in the film muses: "The questions we deal with are human questions fundamentally, not religious ones." At that particular screening in New York, and several others since, it felt as though my hope had come true; it was a room of people with vastly different beliefs (or lack thereof) who had all found something honest and human to connect them.

The problem with many "Christian movies" (derogatory) is that the filmmakers usually approach the filmmaking process with a particular message in-mind to convey and use the characters and storytelling as mere empty vessels to drive home that message; they do not have honest human questions to explore, but mere religious answers to deliver. This is why most of the truly excellent "Christian movies" are not usually described with that label at all; they speak so eloquently to the broader human experience that the so-called "sacred" and "secular" merge into one category of Reality, and that Reality can often be perceived and felt by people both inside and outside the religious fold because it is fundamentally human. The best of these movies leave you not with one simple answer, but with profound questions and paradoxes to ponder that will linger long after the credits roll.

It's really difficult to blend earnest religious belief into a movie in a way that feels naturalistic and avoids preaching—especially when the audience knows that the script has been written with preaching in mind. I think that's why I've been particularly drawn to the medium of documentaries; to me, it's much more possible depict faith organically and explore questions about spirituality when you know that the people onscreen are real people with real questions, not mere cardboard cutouts invented to make a point. The faith depicted in this movie is not an added component carefully woven-in to convert souls; it is a naturalistic part of the community being documented onscreen. It probably helps, too, that the community we documented only allowed us to do so under the condition that the film would not be a commercial for them or put them on a pedestal; we knew from the start that our goal would be to explore a broader "way of being" embodied by this place but not exclusive to it. As such, we approached the film from a place of curiosity rather than a place of certainty; I knew that I had experienced something powerful at this place in my own story, but I wanted to try to understand how (or whether) that powerful experience could be translated back to my own ordinary life. This film was born out of an earnest wrestle with honest questions...which, ironically, is what many of the characters in the film are experiencing too, with all their varied beliefs and doubts.

I hope that doesn't come across as patting myself on the back; much of the film's universality, I think, comes more from the honesty and emotional openness of its main subjects—which was something I could never have manufactured on my own. There are so many things I like here that were the result of basically none of my own efforts; in fact, I think one of the things I've learned in this process has been when to get out of the way and accept the story presenting itself to you whether you like it or not. Nevertheless, I'll it: I am very proud of this movie and the work that was poured into it. That's not to mention the profound labors of my wife Debbie, my composer Nate, insightful editing consultants like Ben Chinapen, our Kickstarter backers, and the many other resonators and encouragers who helped make it what it is.

Many people have understandably asked me when the film will be available to stream. One of my biggest hopes with this movie has always been that it would eventually be quite easy to access; over the last few years, I've been inspired by a wave of "folk filmmakers" like Joel Haver who openly make low-budget feature films with the intention of releasing them for free on YouTube. The democratization of filmmaking through the internet is a beautiful thing, and I want to be part of the movement of young creators who are demonstrating that great art can come from far outside the studio system. I've always planned that the film would eventually be available online at no cost.

Even so, one of my even more ionate beliefs is about the inherent value of viewing art attentively in a room with other people. That belief has felt even more relevant to this film in particular, which specifically depicts the value of connecting with strangers who are very different than yourself and having conversations about things that matter together. Because of that, I've been doing everything in my power so far to make sure people get to see the film in-person and in community first—that's why we've had a release tour this past autumn, and why now I've offered details on our website about how anyone can host a group screening remotely. Art gains life and becomes fully itself in community, and in a world where so many beautiful and powerful labors of love are dumped into the content mill and ground together into indistinct streaming sludge, I've wanted to do my best to prevent first viewings of the film from taking place on a phone while multitasking.

Maybe that's hyping up this project more than it's worth. This is not Interstellar, after all; I assure you, my ""cinematic vision"" is not so grand that it must be experienced in IMAX. Not even close! But I suppose that's the hill that I've really decided to plant my feet on in recent months: the belief that regardless of its budget or grandiosity, art deserves the dignity and opportunity to be received attentively as a gift, in community with others, rather than thrown on in the background. I hope my language of value around my own film inspires others to believe in (and speak with confidence about) the inherent worth of the things they make—rather than feeling a constant need to apologize for believing in art’s importance.

With all that said: this will be widely available online at some point in the spring of 2025. Until then, I'm grateful to everyone who has helped it to exist, and the countless rich conversations I've had with lovely people throughout the process of showing the film so far. I'm really excited to get to work on what's next.