satire meets tyranny

take this quote from mark twain

and mix it with last night's daily show iran coverage & interview with Embrahim Yazdi's son (22/06/09)

and, if you feel moved to respond to Yazdi's advice, there's an opportunity as an individual to voice your concern to Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei via an email campaign set up last week on the Amnesty International USA, or take up the alternative actions (e.g. contacting local Iranian embassies) available your local Amnesty site.

::

Caspian Makan, Neda Agha-Setan's fiancee, was interviewed by BBC Persia:

About payment for releasing the remains, Mr. Makan had this to say: "No specific amount has been paid at this time, although hospitals, clinics, surgeons and medical examiners have been ordered by the Iranian security services, based on various orders, not to list 'bullet wound' as the cause of death on the death certificate in order to prevent the families from filing international complaints in the future. I haven't seen the release notice of Neda's remains yet, but I will obtain it from her father in the coming days." (via Nico Pitney on 22/06. italics my own.)

there is a lack of logic to this defensive policy that even a child could spot. this is not 'simply' avoidance of future charges via evidence tampering and supression of truth. in a case of domestic abuse, the use of this underlying manipulation of logic and reality on an adult, let alone a child, would be filed under evidence of psychological abuse. as bureaucratic defense, (as has been so consistently evident in Khamenei's speech last Friday and all other attempts by authorities to deny electoral fraud) it's nothing short of Orwellian.

but then as someone pointed out to me last night, recalling Zimbabwe as just one of so many examples, since when did the insanity of believing of one's own lies ever stop anyone fron running a country for 30 years?

tragically, it doesn't stop there:

12:40 AM ET -- A 19-year-old shot in the head and killed during the demonstrations... and Iranian officials asked his parents to "pay an equivalent of $3,000 as a 'bullet fee' -- a fee for the bullet used by security forces -- before taking the body back." One of the most tragic stories I've read in a long time, by the Wall Street Journal's exceptional Farnaz Fassihi. (Nico Pitney)

i'll be honest and say i read that quote and found it difficult to comprehend, such is the inhumane mindfuck this adding-insult-to-murder represents.

::

i've not been able to get this reader post from the daily dish out of my head. only time will tell if the reader called it right, but whatever is to come, i suspect this'll still win my nomination for best use of motherfucker in 2009.

i find myself unavoidably reminded that looking the other way and saying nothing, or taking more interest in Perez Hilton than global hunger, AIDS, genocide, war crimes and political oppression is a choice granted to those of us who have democratic freedom.
i count myself fortunate to have the undeniable luxury of limiting my cares and concerns solely to the insignificant and peurile if i should so choose, however much that is an arguably wasteful disregard of one's liberty and humanity.

LB

silence and last words

in a city far away someone writes tonight,

“I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It’s worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I’m two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children…”

- an Iranian blogger

::

my nasturtium shoots are thriving. thriving and the lushest green. each morning i open out my window and lean on the sill to see their progress. they never say anything, but they are thriving.

::

"... - not an ordinary silence, silence as nothing to hear, but silence that makes itself heard if you listen to it the way Pilate listens to the silence of the man with the split lip. The Gospel that is truth is good news, but before it is good news, let us say that it is just news. Let us say that it is the evening news, the television news, but with the sound turned off.

...

Truth simply is, and is what is, the good with the bad, the joy with the despair, the presence and absense of God, the swollen eye, the bird pecking the cobbles for crumbs. before it is word, the Gospel that is truth is silence, a pregnant silence in its last month, and in answer to Pilate's question, Jesus kept silent, even with his hands tied behind him manages somehow to hold silence out like a terrible gift. "

- frederick buechner, from telling the truth: the gospel as tragedy, comedy & fairytale. (harpercollins, 1977)

::

i have a recipe card for my mother's banana loaf. alongside the last birthday card she gave me, and the inscription to me on the inside of a bible, it's one of few words i have in her handwriting amongst my belongings.

she would have been 62 this week.
yesterday i took her recipe and adding blueberries and some buttermilk, i made muffins. deliciously moist with blueberry burst, and sweet.

::

i told him through my tears i was angry. that i was hurt. i wanted to hate them. but that i had been thinking. thinking that i might be hit by a bus tomorrow. and i was thinking that if i could pause time just before the bus hit, allowing me one last chance, it is them i would go to, in that slice out of time before the impact, so i could make peace...

what would you tell them?, he asked.

i would tell them that i loved them. more than they would ever know. and i had never stopped. and that it was all going to be alright. i would tell them that they were precious.

he said nothing. he just nodded. because this was the truth.

::

none of us is promised a tomorrow. mindful, we might treat each with the reverence and extravagant truth of our last.

LB

yup. good people...

pete has this analogous thing (for something philosophically useful but i can't remember what it is right now) where he talks about falling in love. it goes something like this:

you can have a list of characteristics, attributes, traits, talents or interests you want in a person and you carry it around looking for someone who'll fit the bill. but that's not what you fall in love with. you fall in the love with the person. that is, the human that is made up of those characteristics, attributes, traits, talents or interests and maybe a whole lot of other stuff besides. maybe you fall in love with someone other than what you thought you wanted or needed, who doesn't match that list you were carrying round at all. when it happens, whether they match that list or not, the list doesn't seem to matter much anymore. you can't fall in love with a list of characteristics. what you love is a whole person.

as i see it, what you love is the ineffable them-ness.

and sometimes i get to wondering if community, or indeed church, is no different...

HFASS keeping it absolutely Real

for as far away as they may be, i'm glad Nadia and her people are there. for they tick many boxes on the list. and then there's the them-ness.

everytime i think i'm done with it all, i am reminded of what matters most...

LB

rethink

what a difference a week makes...

last saturday it was so warm the blinds had to be shuttered to keep cool. today, woken at around 6.30am by the forecasted heavy rain. not anticipated was the hail that came with it. it's june 6th. and i'm wearing 3 pairs of socks right now as the only place i can pick up wifi, 'til my own broadband gets connected next week, is at my desk with the window open. so this is how we get to be so many shades of green: a rainy 48degrees in june.

this week has filled with much crafts, reframing and hanging artwork, altering and mending clothes. which for the most part has been calm and quiet.

::

the end of a week comes and i'm not surprised to see i wasn't the only one who thought the collection of it's so personal testimonies on abortion would make a powerful and worthwhile book. i admire sullivan for his openness to share his own changing perspective in light of these stories, and the acknowledgement that he, "needs time to think and rethink".

in ikon we have often talked about how the law is always trying to keep up with justice. for every rule...
we all hold postions in the abstract until such time as we either experience the reality or we open ourselves up to hearing the stories of those who have lived the reality.
i have changed this week as i too have been thinking and rethinking. these stories shook me to the core. i have found myself standing at the kitchen sink mopping dishes and suddenly weeping. but i don't regret reading them, or allowing them to help change me.

if g-d is compassion, that which or whom suffers with, then g-d is everywhere in these stories. i have prayed many times this week, wondering where it might take me to.

maybe the apostle paul was onto something when he wrote,

so no matter who you are, if you pass judgement you have no excuse. it is yourself you condemn when you judge others, since you behave in the same way as those you are condemning.

- romans 2, v.1

::

20 years on from Tiananman Square, i am reminded that the names of the majority of those who stand for peace will not be in history books...

::

bricks healing bricks. i love this.

LB

the photo was put through tiltshiftmaker

beyond abstraction

i've spent much of the morning thinking through and writing some thoughts in the aftermath of the death of dr tiller.
for the second time in a month i had received contact from someone asking for my thoughts related to abortion. both openings for conversation came from people i care about, both far away, and whose perspectives in conversation are always not only welcome, but valued, for their substantive and typically compassionate intelligence. and yet, i am struck at how challenging it is when, at such distance, you can't have such conversation in bodily presence, even with folks who know something of the measure of one's heart.

for that very reason, i remain unsure if i am comfortable exploring my views here on the blog, despite having given a lot of committed thought to it of late, (along with the Ryan Report, which is no less troubling), such is the deep sensitivity of the issue. i cannot read your body language and you cannot read mine and we do not necessarily know one another's story.

i am deeply conscious that when i go back to academia in the autumn this will be a curriculum issue for class discussion and probably one of the only feminist conversations i feel actively cautious about having to engage in - such is the need for that sensitivity, especially when one does not know the stories of those with whom one will be expected to debate.

but i will go so far as to say, i think these three offerings are worthy of our time and our consideration... i believe we need a lot more of this kind of nuanced and measured approach in the public square, where up to now there has been so much violent and hate-filled speech:

frank shaeffer on rachel maddow show
andrew sullivan on keith olbermann
and

regina spektor's laughing with - which Pád independently sent me as i was writing my thoughts and, although nothing to do with the issue, it was some kind of artistic salve.

in the aftermath of dr tiller's murder, i find myself once again praying for humility and wisdom - in my listening as well as in my speaking.

i have only once before (briefly) mentioned abortion in these pages. as i said then, it does not occur in a vacuum. and nor do our values or beliefs. or our lives.

LB

"terror is easier to face than confusion", he said

i've been reading the analysis of dick cheney's speech to the AEI last week. wondering at the horror of the torture committed in afghanistan, abu ghraib and guantanamo. at the attempts to justify it, deny it.

and feeling powerless despair. we call it inhumane. but it was humans who did it. authourised it. legal-eased it. and there seems nothing but silence with which to respond. wordless in the face of images indicting us with just how far we humans will go to prove our might, our power, our authority, our triumph over the will of another. and as we rob the other of their dignity, strip it, beat it, break it, we lose our own...

i think of my infant nephew and feel the conflict of welcoming him into this world. for there is goodness and beauty but there is so much else besides. so many whose lives are marked by sadness, pain, suffering, horror. for whom this place is hell. i see the images of naked men, hooded, taunted by dogs, leashed, bound, and i think of this tiny boy starting out on his journey and wonder at what he will make of this world. wondering at what his life will be for... and if we can only tell him and his sister that we are present to a kingdom of beauty if we look the other way....

i think of the persisting scandal in the british parliament threatening to topple a government and i think of the abuse of so many at the hands of the irish church, of mass rape and mutilation of girls in Africa, which ilke enhanced interrogation appears to threaten no one. i can't help but wonder that the expenses scandal is but distraction. and matters more to people because it came out of their pocket but does not affect their conscience. it's perhaps not ethic that drives us but (love of) money. ethic should not be found on a sliding scale but this seems disproportionately scandalous... perhaps we choose our outrage by what we are willing to face. by what we are willing to pay attention to.

and in truth i fear all this is little more than a distraction from other things more personal that are pressing in unexpectedly and rubbing at wounds i thought i'd moved past. i feel the all too familiar claustrophobia setting in and i've been struggling not to resort to counting the hours 'til i can run. retreat to safer soil and be away from the triggers currently setting off tiny explosions of grief. it's not funny how the total degradation of strangers never cuts quite as sharp as the mere slights of others against us. even the words and actions we choose to see as slights, whether intended as such or not. and usually not.

but it feels upsetting to feel oneself regressing and in need of retreat. especially when surrounded by lovely, beautiful people. and then grace comes in and i don't know what to do with it either. feeling close to the brink, with it all caught up in my chest, trying to mask the twist of feelings keeping me from breathing easy...

i got to be at tuesday group last night. the unexpected chance to see mo and lynn's soft smiles was balm. we sat and read tobit chapters 3 and 4. tobit and sarah both pray to YHWH to have their lives taken from them, believing it better to be dead than bear the insults of others. both pushed to the brink by scorn and shame. and like them, i pray. in tears. because sometimes tears are the best prayers we have next to silence. i pray perhaps not for death, but for release from shame and anger and hurt.

when i touch the tiny wooden cross at my throat, i think, this is what we do... and i am no different than the rest...

LB

same story

the screen-saver scoops up photographs and creates a mosaic. and as the images multiply, they combine to become yet another photograph - an image of my little nephew, minutes old. swirls of red paint i made last summer with my right hand colour his florid cheek, sylvia meets jonah charging in the bend of his arm... and a favourite moment of you, laughing with head thrown back, melts deep into the black of his eye...

Even if I were to stretch this letter out, God forbid, to a thousand pages, would I ever be able to convey my full story to you? I suspect the answer is no. I suspect that our stories in their fullness will always be hidden from each other and that all those whiskered old men and bonneted old women looking out at us from their photographs in the family album will always remain mysteries to us even if, like me, they happen to have written their memoirs. And yet I believe that all is not lost. Maybe we can never know each other's stories in their fullness, but I believe we can know them in their depth for the reason that in their depth we all have the same story.

Whether we're rich or poor, male or female, a nineteenth-century Swiss jeweler like Isaac Golay in his oversized frock coat, or a twentieth-century American clergyman like me with a penchant for writing books, or a young squirt celebrating his twenty-first birthday in the twenty-first century like you, our stories are all stories of searching. We search for a good self to be and for good work to do. We search to become human in a world that tempts us always to be less than human or looks to us to be more. We search to love and be loved. And in a world where it is often hard to believe in much of anything, we search to beleive in something holy and beautiful and life-transcending that will give meaning and purpose to the lives we live.


- from letter to benjamin, by frederick buechner, in the longing for home (1996)

all witnesses to one another's becoming... it was never your destination i cared about, just as i've long since forgotten the punchline. your laughter made the air vibrate...
i watch you in the transformation...

LB

a moment's pause

so, this is the last time i take the journey south, bound for dublin, on an outbound ticket. next time it'll be a return.
tomorrow i'll back up over the border in a van to move all my worldly possessions.

100 miles seems very far today. but as i stood on the platform at holywood with my suitcase and looked out over the lough, feeling my throat choke up and my eyes prick at the corners, i realised i felt relief mixed with the anxiety and sadness of such a significant day. relief at having a different view in the future. of how the past 4 years (almost) have been against this backdrop with so much sadness and loss. each time i have looked out over the water, that was in years before shared and home, having then changed irrevocably... each time looking out over the water acted as a reminder of things i'd rather forget.

i'm moving so that i have a different view. a life less scarred by memories. the memories i associate with dublin are older. and having been in belfast for 8 years, i have been able to leave much of the past it holds to rest. so that now it feels like a new place. so here i am, on a train, leaving the past behind.

as i sit here on the train as i have done so many times in recent months, and as i hold back tears, all i can say with conviction is, i want the future to be different.

::

later....

as the train passed Newry and crossed the border the sun finally appeared, and a feeling of leaving turned to going toward...

tomorrow i will have some, "see you soons" that will catch in my throat. but for now, the view from my parentals' balcony is of hills and trees exploding in spring green and there's dinner on the stove. so i'll be thankful. for tomorrow will be a long day with a 200 mile round trip in the van and moving as much stuff as it'll take and there won't be time to pause and take in the beauty. and then a weekend of unpacking awaits.

::

the writer's almanac for today tells me it's annie dillard's birthday. which is worth a pause in itself in which to feel good about the world. it's a better place for her having been in it.

also from the almanac, Leisure, by William Henry Davies. which i haven't read in years. hard to argue with...

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

::

as an old Irish saying goes,
not one of us is promised tomorrow.

LB

au revoir, beloveds

with tomorrow night as my last night sleeping north of the border, tonight marked my last night, for a while at least, at the tuesday table.

i am so grateful, and always will be, for the deep connection i have forged with the folks around that table. those who challenge me in a way i have never been challenged anywhere else. because, as i said to them tonight, these distinct voices around the room, i carry in my mind like a prism. each one has a unique take on the world and together their voices make for harmony.
it has been a real gift to have their individual and collective presence in my life. and i realise now just how much i will miss them, their constancy. miss the reflecting i get to do each week as i replay our conversations and look at the scribbles in my notebook and feel them adding shape and texture and colour to the themes that unfold.

i don't think any of them know just how much influence they have had on me over the years. i realised too tonight that the sharing of a journey together has been so valuable, so important to me, in a way i don't yet fully see. we have shared memory and that strikes deep for me. i value it more highly than i can find adequate words for. and i'm not even sure why that is so important. perhaps... perhaps because they have stayed true as much as they have stayed constant. they have my trust.

as i move back to the town that was home for many years to connect with my biological and blended family and do the work of allowing myself to be a part of that just as i am, i know i have my family of choice back here. a table to come back to. and wherever team fury or i am in the world, they will always be family to me.

so, with deep deep love and immense gratitude for getting me to here, for making tuesday the new sunday and for always holding on,
it is with a smile and with some tears, i finally hear myself saying, this really is it. i'm moving.

thanks family.
i'll be back soon.

c,xo

sacred questions before this 21st century cross

interrogate everything
- ikon, lessons in evanDelism, '08

i've been listening to david's talk at ffm 09. which is about as frustrating a thing as a person can do for pleasure of a rainy sunday. my brother said he enjoyed it because it's like having david in the room. a comfort in a familiar voice. and that's why it's frustrating. david peppers all his talks with, does anyone have anything they want to throw in on that?

and david means it. which is one of the reasons i like him so much, why he's one of my favourite people to be in conversation with. he's got, what seems to me, something like an instinctual Ricoeur thing going on. it's all about the space inbetween, in the exchange, in the Q&A, the back and forth of that inbetween where things get electric. that to me is the space of divine happening.
so i'm speaking to the laptop. saying, yes, i do... i wanna talk about this. wonder around this. i want to see the space spark and breathe. i want how i envisage it to be expanded. see its edges perforated, where my limitations only now see solid boundaries. i want cracks to appear so that more light comes in... but all i have is the laptop and me responding to an audio recording...

perhaps when we have a space in between that's closed, small... claustrophobic, only reaffirming of what we already think or finding ways to reaffirm what we desire to achieve, then the possibility of divine happening is being squeezed out. it's the kind of space in which politicians sit with lawyers and find doublespeak loopholes that will make, pervert, justice to be synonymous with brutality. that's a space that's not opening up room for revelation, for truth. in those spaces, people become bodies. and we become God, rather than G-D being revealed... and i don't know what to do with that... not a fucking clue other than to pray... and praying to G-D i pray is outside of my head... the G-D that suffers here:















david quotes Marx,

religious suffering is at one at the same time the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.
religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature the heart of a heartless world and the soul of souless conditions.

the man who also said, "religion is the opiate of the masses"... and david poses a question about how we define religion. global consumerism as religion perhaps...?

and so i'm there speaking back to the laptop and asking, what happens if we say it's democracy that's the opiate of the masses? or maybe, the drug's a two party system played out in the media as a false dichotomy of left v. right, that reduces what should be moral action to mere party political?

what is it that's keeping us asleep?

because religion, when it's weak, when our G-D is weak, by which we might mean self sacrificing, might help us speak to power... i'm trying to make sense of how interrogate everything without adding to the brutality... faced with this cross, what do we stand for...? what will i stand for?

i was reminded of this:

If anyone asks: "How did Jesus raise the dead?" kiss me on the lips, say:
like this!

- Rumi, Like This, translation from Rumi's Divan by Fatemeh Keshavarz

when i heard this:

justice is what love looks like in public
- cornel west, ffm09

that's about as religious statement as i've ever heard. we need this space for the apocalyptic, for the conversations from the war room to the campus to the check out aisle to the hospital room waiting room to the prison to keep being broken open with our questions, out interrogations. i know i need it, 'cause i don't know what to do with all of this.

and so by way of cornel west and solomon burke and all the other poets, i find those edges of the conversation that david and others keep bringing to the table, that i talk to as i stand at the kitchen counter with coffee and scrambled eggs... those edges are pushed out wider for me... this, i say, i believe:

it's not the religion of Jesus that keeps me numb... that's what keeps me hoping there's something impossible around the corner... that justice, which is beyond any impeachment, but looks like heart rending change in the name of full force goodness... it keeps me questioning everything, even when i'd rather sleep easy and not have to look this cross in the face.


::

this i used to believe. 4 very different stories on this american life. all worth hearing.

edited to add: as is this sobering conversation between bill moyers and co-creator of the wire, david simon on the truth about what he calls the war on the underclass.

"If you don't need 'em, why extend yourself? Why seriously assess what you're doing to your poorest and most vulnerable citizens? There's no profit to be had in doing anything other than marginalizing them and discarding them."

::

thy kingdom come
thy will be done

LB

(photo from this in the daily dish.)

love: when loneliness is shared

shirley and i went to the movies last night and saw, let the right one in.

what follows are some wonderings in the aftermath...(no plot spoilers, but *lots* of thematic ones)



shirley and i both loved it. it really is as good as they said it'd be. and it left one with so many questions... questions about untold stories within the story... the title alone is open to layers of interpretation, full of ambiguity, and the ending is an almost perfect "..."

was it scary? yes. is it horror? yes. but not gratutiously so. a great deal is left to the imagination. i was ready to cover my eyes numerous times but i think only once did i actually look away. i struggle with gore, but this is not a slasher film. the violence is portrayed and concealed in some clever ways. the scariest moment was for me not even a moment of violence but downright creepy in the way the ending of the japanese horror movie, ring is creepy, or the monster with eyes in his hands in pan's labyrinth is creepy. nightmarish.
funny? yes. in a way that the horror genre often is. and poignantly sad and beautiful without ever descending into mawkishness or melodrama.
this is perhaps one of the most restrained horror films i've seen. it's a dark, DARK, fairytale. it's a children's story made for adults and filmed very much from a child's perspective.

for me, science fiction and fantasy at their best are deep with metaphor, pushing at the edges of reality so as to make comment on what we call 'normality'. when the everyday meets the fantastical we have to question how we would react if we were in the same circumstance but we've been unhoused in order to be provoked. something is put off kilter. the line between the real and the unreal messed with.
the vampire myth is in large part about the psychosexual, where sex meets death, sex being equated with both violence and a life force, hunger, and not being able to have what you want without someone else paying a price. but where the vampire myth deals with what we do with our perverse desire, this takes a totally different route...

so we find themes of difference... of love... innocence... what it is to be a child... cruelty and manipulation... aging... need... love without sex... and a fascinating provocation about gender ambiguity... not for a second do i mean that to not 'fit' the assumed heteronormative is to be equated to being a vampire, ie to be not-human, or a monster. this film somehow managed to deftly avoid such an equation, while at the same time placing gender ambiguity as absolutely central to the story, as is the companion theme of being an outsider, overlooked or bullied by society, of being excluded and to experience deep loneliness, of wanting to be something other than a victim, of wanting to love and be loved...to be invited in...to let someone else in...of not being able to change who you are...

there is something very challenging about how we confuse sex with love and needing to sexually fit in order to experience love and partnership. that the characters are pre-pubescent (or right on the cusp) allows this to be exposed. sex for them is something apart, distant, not yet... if anything sex is something to be feared, for it is both unknown, and will get in the way of love... and one wonders where there story will go after the credits roll... that tragedy is yet to strike... that what they share is potentially impossible... because it's going to get complicated and upsetting the moment full sexual desire kicks in... love will inevitably turn to perversion...

it is therefore ironic in an unsettling way that the movie was preceded by an advert for a sparkling orange drink. it featured two dolls in a very basic stop motion animation - think action man and barbie - they are in the act of foreplay. they touch and kiss. but when the towel the male doll is wearing drops, barbie is horrified to find he lacks genitals. they lie side by side in bed, her on her side away from him, him on his back. the tagline appears...

some bits are crucial.

now i get it. this soft drink prides itself on having orangey bits in it. we were meant to laugh and think, oh, yes, that's clever. but instead, shirley and myself both turned quizzically and said, "What the...?" imagine they were not dolls but real people... and the film proved to be a welcome (albeit inadvertant) response...

what bits are crucial...? what bits of you are the ones that love another? is innocent love without sex an impossibility? a fantasy? what is it that is lost when we grow up? none of this is answered, but is provoked... when we love someone and want them to be our most special of friends, what are we looking for? what is it that is being shared? loneliness perhaps. and what does true love (if such a thing exists) overlook or accept?

if wikipedia is anything to go by, the novel from which the film is adapted, seems to have been very different, or at least, more definitive, more complex than the screenplay (written by the author himself), which left aspects wide open to audience interpretation. now knowing the back story from the novel puts a completely new spin on certain characters and scenes. but it says something about the difference in translating a novel to film - they are entirely different mediums. i can't decide if i want to read it or not. there's an american remake of the book about to get underway(rather than a remake of the film - which i take to mean the screenplay will be different) and one can only imagine it'll be a very different take on the story.

the film is beautifully shot. at times it is almost like a graphic novel - the camera held steady, frozen. the lighting is incredibly used to great effect. brilliantly original. standing in an empty train station after the movie was downright creepy. it is the use of electric light against snow and concrete as much as the darkness that is unsettling. the score is beautiful too.
but the real beauty is down to the lead actors who give seemingly effortless embodiment of their characters and show a subtlety that most adult actors would love to achieve.

and at the centre of the film is a scene of such quiet beauty, both visually and in terms of the script, that i found myself choking back tears at the vulnerability and acceptance it expressed in both the central characters. one of those moments when you know this is the scene on which everything else hangs. i found myself making associations with moments in both boys don't cry and don't look now. of showing what physical and unapologetic, emotional tenderness looks like.

if there's a lasting question embodied in these characters, it is perhaps, what is it to love despite difference? what is it to accept another as they are? this is a love story about two children who are in different ways vulnerable and lonely. and perhaps that's what makes this horror tale so compelling, that neither of them attempt to conceal their outsiderness from the other. they are different from others and from each other. and they love anyway. is innocence lost the moment we dehumanise the other? when we push the other away because they are different, because there are things they don't want us to see in them, when we reject...? how do we accept someone who feels rejectable?

the vampire gore of this film is not the real horror of this story. the violence is part of the package. that might be problematic on one level, but beyond the blood, this beautifully captures the enduring power of the vampire-mortal love myth and does something really fresh with it. it gives us two characters who draw compassion from the viewer and reminds us that it is a tragedy to be trapped in eternity without growing old. we fear death, but to not have death is not a gift, but a kind of hell.

what bits of me are crucial to who i am? to make me worthy of your love? to make me human? how often is the unspoken subtext of human relationship, if you knew who i really am, would you love me anyway? will you share this loneliness with me?

the innocent love in us ignores the in-spite-of, and says, yes. in that moment love is more powerful than death, and sex. and such love is therefore horrifically, tragically and yet still beautifully blind... it ignores difference, the external body and even the fear of death, and defiantly says,

i know. but can we go steady anyway?

which reminds me of this line from neil gaiman.

right, back to packing boxes i go.

LB

note: the version released on dvd in the usa does not feature the original theatrical (english) subtitles. apparently a new version is going to be brought out following complaints at the simplified and inferior translation.

judas recalled and some rambling thoughts

pete's posted up a summary of ikon::recalls Judas, including our recordings of the reflections.

the live version of mine ended up being more like as i intended it - more pitching and heaving, fast paced and well... angry than the earlier recorded version. that said, the table was so crowded with folks that there was no room to gesticulate. my body felt like a coiled spring and there was no room to physically express as i'd have liked. jonny was behind doing the live mixing underneath our voices and commented afterward, it's a shame you couldn't stand. and this is what i love about the whole collaborative experiment, that we try stuff and it's okay for it not to be perfect...
(i toned it down to a much more meditative level for the audio-only version. but, as an experiment, i'm glad we have kept a record for once. )

in the '08 gathering, Satisfaction, and in our workshop at gb08, lessons in evandelism we recognised that it is disatisfaction that keeps artists making art, not success. you keep trying to make it better and learning as you go.
it was a real treat to back at the ikon table after leaving the cyndicate 6 months back and taking a break. i loved what everyone brought to the table, it really provoked me. i can't wait for whatever we're gonna try next.
even as an ikon::recalls, this was *so* different from the 2002 version of Judas, that it was still a one off.
we prepare, we do it and we move on to the next... Sunday night really got close to embodying what i think theodrama might be about...

on a not unrelated front, i haven't watched all the videos, but in thinking over Easter about what the heck it is i actually mean when i say, i believe, i came across this theopoetics site, which i'm really enjoying exploring. and in a way, this gets the closest yet to articulating how i understand my belief, without making me feel boxed by the technicalities of labels such as Christian Agnostic or a/theist. this breaks something open for me. this video on bruggemann's dialogue with the emerging church really did it for me. i kind of want to pull up a chair with david and sarah and this guy, and several folks besides. actually, no kinda about it.

i've been wondering for a while what would develop from my journey through deconstruction and the psychoanalytic, and have been in increasingly finding suggestions of narrative and the unsystematic and the poetic coming out of my mouth... embryonic unformed questioning attempts with several nouns and adjectives increasingly taking on a verb form. which probably stems from exploring in '07 the idea of "G-D as event" (rather than as being) in The God Delusion. and i think it's also been an attempt to wonder what category to put what i did at Vanderbilt last October into... i've been filling out a college application and trying to describe what i've been up to on the ikon journey has been wrecking my head.

the experience of ikon is very often doing something that i don't know how to describe. and i'm willing to confess that it can be bloody intimidating when the kind of people who typically describe what you're doing are philosophers like Jack Caputo. (there's a reason why when someone approaches and says they've been reading Pete's work and Caputo's and they're a big fan of ikon although they've never been and would love to talk about what we do that i typically respond, "let's get a pint". thank G-D we do a lot of stuff in pubs!) i love the conversations but man do i have to work hard at them. and i don't say that to imply i'm stupid or ignorant, or that i have a problem with the philosophy that's been used to describe and inspire ikon. it's just i'm more comfortable with, and have been in want of, an alternative language set that allows for all the provisionality but which flows more freely rather than making me feel tongued tied beside the academics.

i suspect of a fair few of us collaborators in ikon have at this stage enough knowledge in our heads and have done the stuff enough times to get an honourary PhD in Philosophy but don't realise it because we are doing it without the need, or indeed in some cases desire, to articulate or even understand it philosophically.

so anyway, all that is really meant to say, some helpful dots are being joined through this theopoetic stuff... this all intrinsically seems to make sense to me in a way that feels potentially liberating and worth exploring more. and my brain's not hurting.

Reknitting our creeds light in hand
We are liberated by our uncertainty
Our fragile belief
where G-D is the wound, the hole in the weave
We discover the world
We face the other
Undergoing, Listening, Wondering, embracing
Asking, Is this how it could be?
...

Let our stories unravel and be told without conclusion
Let us knit our lives together
With meaning that cannot be grasped by our words

(from the liturgical poem i wrote for The God Delusion. seems to fit. somehow.)

Brook, if you read this - l'engle gets a mention on the theopoetics site, which brought you to mind.

LB

Easter

happy easter... as i write the bells of the local church are pealing.

last night after a lovely meal and company hosted by Pádraig, he, Willow, Mark and i headed round to Clonard for the Easter Vigil. Will Crawley was there to film the vigil for an upcoming BBC programme on religion in Northern Ireland, and i'm pretty sure the cameraman must have been pretty delighted with the scenes on offer.
the vigil began outside the church with a fire being lit in a brazier from which the Paschal candle was lit. from this in turn the candles held by the congregants were lit and then the light passed from candle to candle throughout the crowd as the people followed the Paschal candle into the darkened church.
inside, a traditional Irish litany was sung by a priest and when the congregation sang the refrain of praise the candles were lifted up high. it was beautiful. each time the candles were lifted it was as if light was being breathed into being. it wasn't til after a reading of the entire creation story in Genesis that the electric lights in the church were slowly turned on to reveal Clonard's rich interior. we later relit our candles for the baptism of a South African man, Philip. the congregants were invited to renew their baptismal vows and once Philip had been baptised several priests moved through the church with bowls of holy water, dipping evergreen branches, ("palm leaves" from Palm Sunday) into the water and annointed the people. i've been in Clonard and masses in general enough times to not mind that i can't remember the entire liturgy. the vigil was a feast for the senses. but i left the service with a sense of incompleteness and questions, lightly held, but suspended within me and seeking resolve...

to have been raised in what were for the most part ecumenically minded Presbyterian congregations i am used to communion being preceded by a very intentional welcome to all. what i write here i write without rancour or resentment and i know enough about the monastic community at Clonard and its ecumenical activities to know that had i chosen to receive communion i could have done so without fear of reprisal or judgment. i was present several years back at a Presbyterian communion at which one of Clonard's priests took his first public communion in a Protestant church - it was a *deeply* moving occasion of ecumenical friendship. so this is not about Clonard or its people. but as the liturgy unfolded i was struck by the absence of the explicit welcome i expect to find weaved into the liturgy...

the Roman Catholic liturgy does contain these lines,

Priest: This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those who are called to his supper.
All: Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.

in conversation after the service, Pádraig noted these lines as being the basis of welcome, that i could have participated, and i had heard them. but i wasn't the only one in our group who heard the absence of the welcome we are used to our own traditions. i believe that not sharing in the Mass was my choice. i did not desire permission in order to partake. through lack of belief in transubstantiation, or feminist principle, or as one who is divorced, i might have found various reasons to not partake. but it came down to this... to have come from a denomination in which one can measure the theology of the church one finds oneself in by how the welcome is phrased (and in my own tradition were it absent or delivered in a way that inferred exclusiveness, i would not take it) last night, not being on 'home turf', i found myself not being one of the 'welcoming' but one seeking explicit invitation as a visitor.

i have shared communion, although not in recent years, non-attending backslider that i am, in both the lowness of Presbyterian tradition and high Anglicanism. the mass liturgy is no different from these in showing the limitations as much as the rich beauty of liturgy.

i haven't taken mass when at the midnight Christmas eve vigil in Clonard. but this Easter vigil... something was different. it mattered in a way that it had not before. i left the church, grateful to have been there but with a sense of there being a gap... there was something i did not receive. the choice was mine to not step across that threshold, and so i write all of this, not to criticize but to question... what does it mean to feel welcomed to the table? what were the words i needed to hear?

i hold these questions lightly. they do not feel like a burden. perhaps they are an invitation of their own... to understand better what belonging at the table means to me...

::

today, Easter Sunday, marks a moving from orthodoxy of the vigil to what some might call heresy and others think of as theodrama. as i sat in the church last night i contemplated several times on what is to come in the ikon gathering, Judas. Pete's been recording the reflections, which Jonny's going to mix with music and then they'll be posted online. he recorded mine yesterday morning.

i believe in G-D as the ear that hears all human hearts... and is witness to both our suffering and our resurrecting
the homily delivered last night sealed for me why i feel complete peace with what we will be exploring. for the boundaries we are pushing at, the story we are trying to break open... even though some of my own words might be recieved by some as a kind of blasphemy...

here it is, paraphrased... (how to spot the Presbyterian in a congregation: the one taking notes in the sermon ;) )

when we move from self-centredness and focussing on our own happiness to giving to others,
resurrection is happening. new life is emerging.
when hopelessness and despair turns to hope, resurrection is happening. new life is emerging.
when we are released from addiction into freedom, resurrection is happening. new life is emerging.
when we find a way through to heal dispute, resurrection is happening. new life is emerging.
when in chaos, we find meaningful sense, resurrection is happening. new life is emerging.
when we are suffering and we find a place of acceptance and even meaning, resurrection is happening. new life is emerging.
in survival of hardship, resurrection is happening. new life is emerging.
when we find purpose, meaning and happiness in unexpected places, resurrection is happening. new life is emerging.

find resurrection in your life. and share it. with those you love. and perhaps even with those you might hate.

if you are still at Good Friday, still at the cross, then hold onto trust, that Christ is risen and brings new life.

Judas has remained in a perpetual Good Friday... his legacy - a long anguished cry throughout history, as the one who is scorned as betrayer and does not live to see resurrection. i believe in a G-D of welcome and invitation. who stands with Judas and all others in pain of Good Friday, and who being outside time is waiting on Easter Sunday, inviting us to be surprised by resurrection. to hold on to trust... that all things are possible. to have hope in darkness for what is always to come. G-D is both the cross and the empty tomb. and i believe we are held wherever we are. and perhaps in truth, we are all of us living in Easter Saturday, in the place inbetween for much of the time. neither there nor here. i believe in G-D who is present in that inbetween - in the vital wrestling space between endings and beginnings. the space of daily resurrection. where we might defy death with hope, however fragile. On Good Friday, there is an Easter Sunday that never ceases to be coming, just as we are always emerging...

may we hold on to trust... and may we emerge into welcome... to allow those parts of ourselves and our lives that are caught, like Judas, at the place of suffering to be heard, so they might be healed.

LB