#6 - More Than Entertained with Brennan Garriques

In this episode, I have a meaningful conversation with Brennan Garriques, one of the founders of MoreThanEntertained.com. The vision of the website is to live in a world where the entertainment industry is used to prompt reflection on the divine. His article Lightning McQueen: What to do With Freedom, drew me in with its in-depth analysis and references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Brennan Garriques quotes:

"The definition of virtue is the habitual disposition toward the good."

"I definitely was in touch with the ache in my chest there's like a painful experience of something, I don't know what.

"As I came into my faith more and more, I interpret now that painful experience in my chest, that something, as being God. Like an invitation, that painful longing, that I experience that I feel is a longing for God and a longing ultimately to be in heaven."

"Maybe write about it and talk about how we find God in secular entertainment; in movies, and music and books and maybe encourage other people too. And show them how we do it so that they might also be able to recognize truth, goodness, and beauty and elements of the divine in every day." - Brennan's idea at the core of morethanentertained.com

"Every encounter with beauty calls us to something, moves us to something."
Greek word for beauty (kalen) means "to call" or "to becon".

Other Meaningfulistic quotes:

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines freedom as “the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility” (CCC 1731).

"All of humanities problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone" - Blaise Pascal

"I asked the sea and the deeps, and the living creeping things, and they answered, 'We are not thy God, seek above us.'" - St. Augustine, Confessions.

"Beauty will save the world" - Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot. For Dostoevsky, "beauty” transcends aesthetics, and is what inspires the best in us, our aspirations for what is good and true, and what connects us to each other.

"There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be." - Venerable Bishop Fulton Sheen

“Good food is like music you can taste, color you can smell. There is excellence all around you. You need only be aware to stop and savor it.” –Chef Gusteau, Ratatouille

"For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man." (CCC 1)

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” - C.S. Lewis