I've been thinking about my anger.
Until a few years ago, I wasn't even aware that I was angry. It wasn't even an emotion, most of the time. It was more a psychic state, where I'd spun out. A mix of alienation and fury, death by 10,000 judgments consumed by cognitive and spiritual dissonance.
It began back in the 1990's when I began to read Church history, taken up in a rapture of re-conversion, convicted and in search of the perfect apologetic. I want to write about this (re)search in detail, but in small increments. I'm not going to start tonight. This coming week I'll start, by first getting to the nub of things in less than 1,000 words. After that, I may have a dozen brief essays about ecclesiology, epistemology and authority in me.
I'll just note that the "problems" proliferate pretty quickly, but that no one is unscathed when it comes to them. Everyone's running around naked pretending to be clothed.
Anyway, this perceived crisis in authority is at the root of, and is the backdrop to, my anger.
The two main axes of my identity - the things I had the most of my sense of self invested in, namely my identity as an American and a Catholic, were both called into profound question. Things I had never imagined could be true, clearly were.
I felt betrayed, lied to and manipulated. Victim of multiple trahisons des clercs.
First, there was the bald treason of our bishops. I do not think that Catholic priests abuse minors at a much greater rate than say teachers do. That's not to say we do not have major issues pertaining to gender and sexuality within the Church or priesthood and religious life. We clearly do. But none of that is the main issue: the fundamental betrayal in my eyes is not in all that.
It's that the bishops conspired to protect the very worst abusers, over and over again.
That the Church is not unique in this sort of corruption, and has been subjected to a scrutiny that should (but is unlikely to) be also applied to other institutions, religious and otherwise, in our society, is also beside the point.
It's that they systematically lied about the violation of innocence, over and over and over again. And that they did it everywhere, in a way that makes it pretty clear that the "strategy" of obfuscation and denial of truth goes to the very top.
The pope himself, the curia. Back decades, centuries.
I am going to write more about this, in personal terms, succinctly, yet in also in a bit of detail. Suffice to say for now that when I started reading about it (in books like Leon Podles' Sacrilege) it destroyed me.
The worst about those I had considered the best was true.
At the same time, my country, that I had also put on a pedestal, was attacked in an inconceivably graphic way.
Like most of us, I was traumatized by it. Unlike most, though, our national response did not make any sense to me. I mean, I understood it on an emotional level. Fear of nuclear terror. Strike back in revenge. Got it.
It was the entire Axis of Evil Shtick that I didn't get.
I have no interest in defending the Ba'athists or Mullahs.
What I resent is being fed obviously fraudulent propaganda lines. I resent turning them into cartoon villains, caricaturing them in ways that are obviously false, that lead us to misunderstand them.
It was very clear from the beginning that we were being propagandized and manipulated according to an agenda that had little or nothing to do with the one publicly professed by our leaders.
It was disinformation and lies on the scale similar to that practiced by Goebbels and Stalin, along with a rationale for violence ripped from the Nazi playbook.
Preemptive war is never just. Iraq, Iran and Korea were not allies and were in no way ever equivalent in any way to Germany, Italy and Japan in 1939. None of them was nor is in any way a real threat to the United Sates, nuclear weapons or no.
The Ba'ath party is not a admirable organization, but let's be clear here: the sorts of things they are guilty of are not that extraordinary. Everyone from China to half of Africa and many of our Arab allies and the Israelis commit similar sorts of torture and violence as the Ba'athists in Syria and Iraq have, all the time.
It offends me when our press and leadership pretends otherwise, and then uses such pretension as a pretext to war.
In fact, we have now done most of the things to Iraqis that we accused Saddam of: tortured with impunity, used despicable weapons such as depleted uranium that will have centuries of devastating consequences for the Iraqi people, and killed tens of thousands of Iraqis imposing our will on their country.
Anyway, I hate being lied to, and I hate gross liars. I also intensely dislike violence, and when we all went on an ecstatic orgiastic binge of it, "shock n' awe" and all that inexcusable cruelty that we inflicted on the Iraqi people..
Well, I'll be honest. My childhood love for my country died in 2003.
I feel like I've been betrayed, and don't really know how to deal with the emotional and psychic consequences of that.
This is merely an wordy explanation for why I've boiled over here these last few days.
I see lies everywhere now, and suspect the very worst is possible.
Because they are, and it is.
---
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Golpes en el Corazon: Los Tigres del Norte
Yo te regalaba todo, todo lo que me pedias
sin embargo me reclamas y te daba hasta mi vida...
pero tu que me has dado falsas promesas de amor...
pero tu que me has dado golpes en el corazon...
Yo te regalaba todo hoy reñimos y te olvidas...
sali mal con mis amigos porque tu no los querias...
pero tu que me has dado todo lo perdi por ti.
pero tu que me has dado solo me has hecho sufrir...
para sanar las heridas voy a buscar otro amor,
casi arruinaste mi vida golpeando mi corazon...
Yo te regalaba todo,
con mi madre discutia me queria abrir los ojos perdoname madre mia...
pero tu que me has dado falsas promesas de amor,
pero tu que me has dado golpes en el corazon...
para sanar las heridas voy a buscar otro amor
casi arruinaste mi vida golpeando mi corazon...
pero tu que me has dado falsas promesas de amor
pero tu que me has dado golpes en el corazon...
pero tu que me has dado falsas promesas de amor....
pero tu que me has dado golpes en el corazon.
---
Golpes en el Corazon.. From the Halls of Montezuma to the Avenida de los Niños Héroes..
On July 17th 1996 I flew down to Mexico, to teach at a prep school down there.
I remember that date for a reason.
The town (which I will not name here) was one of those Sonoran municipalities that had been laid out in a grid by Mormon city planners back in the late 1800's.
One of the streets was named Avenida de los Niños Héroes, as in most Mexican towns. I asked someone who they were, and received my first of many object lessons about history's many possible inversions.
Do you remember 1848? The grandchildren of the last Caudillo do. I've met them. I taught them English. They told me so.
There was this guy I knew there who had been in Army special forces (like a few other people I know) and had done some odd things. One night over tequila after carne asada he told me about how he'd been involved in loading planes with cocaine during a stint in Central America back in the 80's. Could have been b'sing me, but in that context (where I was in a place where half the city was - without exaggeration - living in shacks with farm animals, and most of my students where from families with houses like the ones JR lived in on Dallas - big sprawling modern, trashy neo-classical places with at armed guards at the gates..) it made sense..
When the drug money and violence is in your face, and apparently half your students' families are running chop shop and coyote operations, that sort of admission isn't that weird.
After all, Amado Carrillo Fuentes had died on the plastic surgeon's table in the latter part of that year, and his surgeon's body reportedly was then found chopped into chunks in a trash bag.. One of my student's uncles had been kidnapped and killed a few years before (from very rich agribusiness family with reputedly 100's of millions) and had been killed by the kidnappers. Those fellows reputedly all met very public and grotesque deaths.. This is what happens to anyone who kidnaps a Diaz-Brown..
Merely a foretaste of the violence that was to come.
At the time, I was really still an American evangelist. I was pretty arrogant, and had the gall to lecture my students on how their corruption was doing them in, and how we Americans were in contrast incorruptible, which explained our power.
I actually delivered that message to them in a lecture, after I caught a bunch of them red-handed cheating. I knew that they were all cheating, almost all the time, but they were good, and I didn't have the wit or energy to catch them most of the time.
(I never told them about Pik and Hartley passing the answers back and forth brazenly in Health Class, or any of that other counter indicative stuff.. One of the many slight hypocrisies I've committed in my time..)
Very Calvinistic attitude, anyhow. We are rich and powerful because we are good.
The prosperity gospel in a nut shell.
I've long since lost that faith.. The last post was merely my shooting the pooch for the last time, and saying it out loud.
How did it happen?
Some point along the way.. Or was it in increments?
Maybe it was when Grover Norquist said that he wants "strangle the government in the bathtub"? Then his boys get elected, they cut taxes for the wealthy and keep on spending, and then squeal how the government is inefficient when the deficit explodes.. This, while massive amounts of public money goes to pork and private business?
Or, when a bunch of Saudis lead by an Egyptian putatively (I love that word, putative) attack us, and our response is to launch an attack on Iraq, the arch- enemy of Salafi and Shiite Muslim extremists.. And also incidentally perhaps the most important oil power left, and the second biggest threat to the Saudis after Iran?
Or, when they overturn usury laws, repeal Glass-Steagall, and then we immediately get screwed in a series of bubbles and fraudulent insurance scams, in which institutions are destroyed, but individual speculators walk away free and filthy rich?
All this, while our oil and banking scion president walks hand in hand with the Saudi "king" across the White House lawn, and then kisses him for the cameras.
When I was in Florida people kept on saying things like "I won't be surprised if they get Obama.. Someone's gonna shoot that bastard.." This, with the implicit understanding that someone shooting the president would be a good thing.
That may have been the last straw.
Is it that cynicism is like never having to say you're sorry..
Or is it that paranoia's just having too many of the facts?
I've lost my testimony. I no longer can tell..
---
I remember that date for a reason.
The town (which I will not name here) was one of those Sonoran municipalities that had been laid out in a grid by Mormon city planners back in the late 1800's.
One of the streets was named Avenida de los Niños Héroes, as in most Mexican towns. I asked someone who they were, and received my first of many object lessons about history's many possible inversions.
Do you remember 1848? The grandchildren of the last Caudillo do. I've met them. I taught them English. They told me so.
There was this guy I knew there who had been in Army special forces (like a few other people I know) and had done some odd things. One night over tequila after carne asada he told me about how he'd been involved in loading planes with cocaine during a stint in Central America back in the 80's. Could have been b'sing me, but in that context (where I was in a place where half the city was - without exaggeration - living in shacks with farm animals, and most of my students where from families with houses like the ones JR lived in on Dallas - big sprawling modern, trashy neo-classical places with at armed guards at the gates..) it made sense..
When the drug money and violence is in your face, and apparently half your students' families are running chop shop and coyote operations, that sort of admission isn't that weird.
After all, Amado Carrillo Fuentes had died on the plastic surgeon's table in the latter part of that year, and his surgeon's body reportedly was then found chopped into chunks in a trash bag.. One of my student's uncles had been kidnapped and killed a few years before (from very rich agribusiness family with reputedly 100's of millions) and had been killed by the kidnappers. Those fellows reputedly all met very public and grotesque deaths.. This is what happens to anyone who kidnaps a Diaz-Brown..
Merely a foretaste of the violence that was to come.
At the time, I was really still an American evangelist. I was pretty arrogant, and had the gall to lecture my students on how their corruption was doing them in, and how we Americans were in contrast incorruptible, which explained our power.
I actually delivered that message to them in a lecture, after I caught a bunch of them red-handed cheating. I knew that they were all cheating, almost all the time, but they were good, and I didn't have the wit or energy to catch them most of the time.
(I never told them about Pik and Hartley passing the answers back and forth brazenly in Health Class, or any of that other counter indicative stuff.. One of the many slight hypocrisies I've committed in my time..)
Very Calvinistic attitude, anyhow. We are rich and powerful because we are good.
The prosperity gospel in a nut shell.
I've long since lost that faith.. The last post was merely my shooting the pooch for the last time, and saying it out loud.
How did it happen?
Some point along the way.. Or was it in increments?
Maybe it was when Grover Norquist said that he wants "strangle the government in the bathtub"? Then his boys get elected, they cut taxes for the wealthy and keep on spending, and then squeal how the government is inefficient when the deficit explodes.. This, while massive amounts of public money goes to pork and private business?
Or, when a bunch of Saudis lead by an Egyptian putatively (I love that word, putative) attack us, and our response is to launch an attack on Iraq, the arch- enemy of Salafi and Shiite Muslim extremists.. And also incidentally perhaps the most important oil power left, and the second biggest threat to the Saudis after Iran?
Or, when they overturn usury laws, repeal Glass-Steagall, and then we immediately get screwed in a series of bubbles and fraudulent insurance scams, in which institutions are destroyed, but individual speculators walk away free and filthy rich?
All this, while our oil and banking scion president walks hand in hand with the Saudi "king" across the White House lawn, and then kisses him for the cameras.
When I was in Florida people kept on saying things like "I won't be surprised if they get Obama.. Someone's gonna shoot that bastard.." This, with the implicit understanding that someone shooting the president would be a good thing.
That may have been the last straw.
Is it that cynicism is like never having to say you're sorry..
Or is it that paranoia's just having too many of the facts?
I've lost my testimony. I no longer can tell..
---
On the Utility of Occam's Razor
So, the simplest explanation is almost always the correct one, aye?
I was just watching the Zaphruder film of JFK's assassination:
(this is graphic, and is appropriately enough preceded by a *Target* commercial)
JFK Kennedy Assassination - Zapruder film - high... by virveli
It's really amusing stuff, actually, because it's very clear that the bullet that kills him by blowing his skull open is definitely coming from his front. The vicinity of the "grassy knoll" and the overpass in front of the car, in other words. The Texas Schoolbook "Suppository" where Oswald supposedly is shooting from is behind the vehicle.
It's simple physics. A body hit by a bullet doesn't blow toward the bullet, but away from it. Kennedy was blown toward Oswald's putative location, and away from the knoll and the overpass. The exit wound on Kennedy's head is in the back, not the front of his head.
The fact that the Keystone cops of the Dallas PD and FBI (who along with the Secret Service so scandalously failed to protect the President that day) immediately get Oswald's description, then arrest him, is also amusing. That Oswald - whose curriculum vitae screams CIA plant - claims to be a patsy to his dying breath, and is immediately off'ed by a mob hitman claiming to be acting from motives of vigilante patriotism, just seals the case.
Who benefits from Kennedy's death? LBJ and his Texas cronies, the mob, the cold warriors who want to escalate the war in Vietnam and action against Cuba.
Kennedy apparently was undergoing a change of heart on all of that stuff, and wanted to undo the CIA, and ratchet down the Cold War, or so rumor has it. Bobby Kennedy was also an activist against the mob, and was becoming a heretic on the Cold War, too. The Boston Irish Brahmin, not a great friend to the Southern establishment Texas oilmen..
That this is some sort of scandalous "conspiracy theory" frowned upon by the powers that be (the lone nut gunman did it! it's always the lone nut who's to blame..) is simply hilarious. Sure, dudes. It was Oswald acting alone. Sure.
I'll note that George H. W. Bush is an Eastern Banking Brahmin, but of old English and Dutch Yalie stock, who gets in bed deep with the Tejas oilmen.
He is serendipitously appointed head of the CIA "out of nowhere" in 1976. Just a Texas congressman who lucked out, see.
I say that the simpler explanation is that he had been involved in the intelligence community since his days in navy intelligence photography as a pilot during WW II. Yale, George's alma mater, has been at the forefront of providing leadership in the intelligence community since before WW I.
I'll also note that George was apparently in Fort Worth the day of the JFK assassination.
Odd fact, that. Well, everyone who was anyone in Texas politics was in the vicinity that day, right?
Anyway, I say that the assassination fits easily into the larger Machiavellian drama, in which Texas is at the epicenter of power in which oil, weapons and cheap labor as well as drugs like cocaine and heroine are the essential commodities.
Illegal immigration of cheap labor, sex trafficking, drugs and weapons. And oil.
Texas. Mexico. Columbia and Venezuela. Oil, drugs, weapons. Money laundering.
The mob and cartels meld into our intelligence community and "legitimate" business in banking, oil and weapons.
Our foreign policy can only be understood in terms of all that money.
Confused as to why we are going to remain in Afghanistan even now that Osama and "al-Qaeda" are gone? That we are going to stay in Iraq, even now that the place is stable and we've "restored democracy" there?
One thing explains our presence in Iraq: one forth of the world's remaining proven petroleum reserves are there.
Two things explain our presence in Central Asia: Afghan heroin and oil in the Caspian Sea and Central Asia.
Heroin, you say? But we're squeaky clean, we don't have anything to do with that.
Yeah. Okeedokee. In 2000 the Taliban put a ban on production of opium poppies, causing world production of heroin to drop 95%.
The very next year, we've taken them out, and have planted an army there. Opium production soars back up to pre- Taliban ban levels.
This, like every nefarious thing we do, is just an "accident." We can't stop it, see?
I'll spell it out, and paint a quick picture for you:
The Afghan trade in opiates (92 percent of total World production of opiates) constitutes a large share of the worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, which was estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $400-500 billion.
(Douglas Keh, Drug Money in a Changing World, Technical document No. 4, 1998, Vienna UNDCP, p. 4. See also United Nations Drug Control Program, Report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 1999, E/INCB/1999/1 United Nations, Vienna 1999, p. 49-51, and Richard Lapper, UN Fears Growth of Heroin Trade, Financial Times, 24 February 2000).
Based on 2003 figures, drug trafficking constitutes "the third biggest global commodity in cash terms after oil and the arms trade." (The Independent, 29 February 2004).
Afghanistan and Colombia are the largest drug producing economies in the world, which feed a flourishing criminal economy. These countries are heavily militarized. The drug trade is protected. It is well and amply documented the CIA has played a central role in the development of both the Latin American and Asian drug triangles.
The IMF estimated global money laundering to be between 590 billion and 1.5 trillion dollars a year, representing 2-5 percent of global GDP. (Asian Banker, 15 August 2003). A large share of global money laundering as estimated by the IMF is linked to the trade in narcotics.
The Great Game is always on, and having that chit on the central Asian land mass, against the Iranians, Russians, Chinese and Indians is the key.
As for the death of Osama, I say that the evidence says he never ceased being an ISI asset.
I also say that the CIA is allied with the ISI, and that our intelligence community and political elite are engaged in a huge Machiavellian game involving money, drugs, oil, weapons and cheap labor.
Guns and money, drugs and oil. (I'm repeating myself for effect. Chant it like a mantra, throw sex in there once in a while for added zest and frisson..)
They hop gladly into bed with anyone who will give them power over these things.
The Saudis, the Paki ruling class.
The average American, who gets all riled up over religion and patriotism and stuff like gender issues (them dang femanazis!) is a chump.
They keep their Praetorians obsessed with Kim Kardashian's boob job, flush with just enough porn, corn syrup and cash to keep us dumb and happy.
God bless America!
And with that, I need to go make more tea.
---
I was just watching the Zaphruder film of JFK's assassination:
(this is graphic, and is appropriately enough preceded by a *Target* commercial)
JFK Kennedy Assassination - Zapruder film - high... by virveli
It's really amusing stuff, actually, because it's very clear that the bullet that kills him by blowing his skull open is definitely coming from his front. The vicinity of the "grassy knoll" and the overpass in front of the car, in other words. The Texas Schoolbook "Suppository" where Oswald supposedly is shooting from is behind the vehicle.
It's simple physics. A body hit by a bullet doesn't blow toward the bullet, but away from it. Kennedy was blown toward Oswald's putative location, and away from the knoll and the overpass. The exit wound on Kennedy's head is in the back, not the front of his head.
The fact that the Keystone cops of the Dallas PD and FBI (who along with the Secret Service so scandalously failed to protect the President that day) immediately get Oswald's description, then arrest him, is also amusing. That Oswald - whose curriculum vitae screams CIA plant - claims to be a patsy to his dying breath, and is immediately off'ed by a mob hitman claiming to be acting from motives of vigilante patriotism, just seals the case.
Who benefits from Kennedy's death? LBJ and his Texas cronies, the mob, the cold warriors who want to escalate the war in Vietnam and action against Cuba.
Kennedy apparently was undergoing a change of heart on all of that stuff, and wanted to undo the CIA, and ratchet down the Cold War, or so rumor has it. Bobby Kennedy was also an activist against the mob, and was becoming a heretic on the Cold War, too. The Boston Irish Brahmin, not a great friend to the Southern establishment Texas oilmen..
That this is some sort of scandalous "conspiracy theory" frowned upon by the powers that be (the lone nut gunman did it! it's always the lone nut who's to blame..) is simply hilarious. Sure, dudes. It was Oswald acting alone. Sure.
I'll note that George H. W. Bush is an Eastern Banking Brahmin, but of old English and Dutch Yalie stock, who gets in bed deep with the Tejas oilmen.
He is serendipitously appointed head of the CIA "out of nowhere" in 1976. Just a Texas congressman who lucked out, see.
I say that the simpler explanation is that he had been involved in the intelligence community since his days in navy intelligence photography as a pilot during WW II. Yale, George's alma mater, has been at the forefront of providing leadership in the intelligence community since before WW I.
I'll also note that George was apparently in Fort Worth the day of the JFK assassination.
Odd fact, that. Well, everyone who was anyone in Texas politics was in the vicinity that day, right?
Anyway, I say that the assassination fits easily into the larger Machiavellian drama, in which Texas is at the epicenter of power in which oil, weapons and cheap labor as well as drugs like cocaine and heroine are the essential commodities.
Illegal immigration of cheap labor, sex trafficking, drugs and weapons. And oil.
Texas. Mexico. Columbia and Venezuela. Oil, drugs, weapons. Money laundering.
The mob and cartels meld into our intelligence community and "legitimate" business in banking, oil and weapons.
Our foreign policy can only be understood in terms of all that money.
Confused as to why we are going to remain in Afghanistan even now that Osama and "al-Qaeda" are gone? That we are going to stay in Iraq, even now that the place is stable and we've "restored democracy" there?
One thing explains our presence in Iraq: one forth of the world's remaining proven petroleum reserves are there.
Two things explain our presence in Central Asia: Afghan heroin and oil in the Caspian Sea and Central Asia.
Heroin, you say? But we're squeaky clean, we don't have anything to do with that.
Yeah. Okeedokee. In 2000 the Taliban put a ban on production of opium poppies, causing world production of heroin to drop 95%.
The very next year, we've taken them out, and have planted an army there. Opium production soars back up to pre- Taliban ban levels.
This, like every nefarious thing we do, is just an "accident." We can't stop it, see?
I'll spell it out, and paint a quick picture for you:
The Afghan trade in opiates (92 percent of total World production of opiates) constitutes a large share of the worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, which was estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $400-500 billion.
(Douglas Keh, Drug Money in a Changing World, Technical document No. 4, 1998, Vienna UNDCP, p. 4. See also United Nations Drug Control Program, Report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 1999, E/INCB/1999/1 United Nations, Vienna 1999, p. 49-51, and Richard Lapper, UN Fears Growth of Heroin Trade, Financial Times, 24 February 2000).
Based on 2003 figures, drug trafficking constitutes "the third biggest global commodity in cash terms after oil and the arms trade." (The Independent, 29 February 2004).
Afghanistan and Colombia are the largest drug producing economies in the world, which feed a flourishing criminal economy. These countries are heavily militarized. The drug trade is protected. It is well and amply documented the CIA has played a central role in the development of both the Latin American and Asian drug triangles.
The IMF estimated global money laundering to be between 590 billion and 1.5 trillion dollars a year, representing 2-5 percent of global GDP. (Asian Banker, 15 August 2003). A large share of global money laundering as estimated by the IMF is linked to the trade in narcotics.
The Great Game is always on, and having that chit on the central Asian land mass, against the Iranians, Russians, Chinese and Indians is the key.
As for the death of Osama, I say that the evidence says he never ceased being an ISI asset.
I also say that the CIA is allied with the ISI, and that our intelligence community and political elite are engaged in a huge Machiavellian game involving money, drugs, oil, weapons and cheap labor.
Guns and money, drugs and oil. (I'm repeating myself for effect. Chant it like a mantra, throw sex in there once in a while for added zest and frisson..)
They hop gladly into bed with anyone who will give them power over these things.
The Saudis, the Paki ruling class.
The average American, who gets all riled up over religion and patriotism and stuff like gender issues (them dang femanazis!) is a chump.
They keep their Praetorians obsessed with Kim Kardashian's boob job, flush with just enough porn, corn syrup and cash to keep us dumb and happy.
God bless America!
And with that, I need to go make more tea.
---
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
"Back and to the Left.."
So, our boys simply sailed in and took Osama out, in the heart of Paki power? Without Paki foreknowledge and consent?
We risked accidental cause of war with the world's second largest Muslim (and admitted top ten nuclear) power simply so the NASCAR set can stroke their engines with patriotic lube?
Callin' Bull Fucking Shit.
---
We risked accidental cause of war with the world's second largest Muslim (and admitted top ten nuclear) power simply so the NASCAR set can stroke their engines with patriotic lube?
Callin' Bull Fucking Shit.
---
Monday, May 2, 2011
A Proud Day to be an American, etc.
I realized something today. This is now officially the second time in my life that I've gone on a McDonald's binge. The first, which I think I mentioned earlier here on the blog, was when I was in Cairo, and finally got fed up with the place.
I found myself this afternoon eating at McDonald's for the fifth day in a row.. Ten days in the last two weeks.
There was nothing else that I wanted to eat, other than a ranch BLT grilled chicken sandwich and a couple salads with balsamic vinaigrette.
As I sat down, I heard some people speaking thick Vermont redneck, saying "we finally got the bastard.." I turn, and there there are three absurdly fat Vermonters examining a copy of the Burlington Free Press, the banner headline "Osama Bin Laden Dead."
No way. Really. Finally.
I remember how we drew a red target on Osama's face, and used it as the sceensaver on our computer in our classroom at DLI..
The fat people were reading the story, talking about it in loud tones:
"Two faced Pakistani bastards, we should go in there and slap 'em all good and hard on both faces.."
Yeah, buddy. "We" should definitely do that. You and Seal Team 6. You guys go in. I'll sit here and drink McDonald's espresso, and read about it in the Burlington Free Press.. Know I'm rooting for you all.
You can slap them on one cheek, and then get them to turn the other one. Proper Christian manner of treating Muslims.
I grabbed the paper after they left, and read the story. It's no surprise the newspaper business is dying, the story was a load of crap. They obviously had had no information when they went to press, spent several columns rehashing the events of 9/11 ("three planes hit their targets..")
I was, however, pleased to see that my prediction came out correct: Osama was not in fact in the tribal areas on the Afghan border, but rather in a compound in the heart of the Pakistani power elite's territory. Down the road from their military academy, in a neighborhood with rich and powerful Paki neighbors. I'd said that I believed he was hiding in a well appointed basement somewhere in Riyadh or Islamabad, protected by the ISI and Saudi establishment, and I was exactly right.
The CIA and our own elite are deep in bed with all of those people, by the way. People like the Bushes and all their Carlyle Group buddies are in alliance with them, the worst and nastiest.
That is just to say that the hunt for Osama - now "successful" - was in essence a shadow boxing charade.
That they killed him instead of taking him hostage and putting him on trial is par for the course. Shot him in the head, meaning that there will be no photo of his corpse in the press. Buried his body at sea, within 24 hours.. Putatively because they're so sensitive to Muslim religious sensibilities that dictate early burial.. But with the effect that his remains are now gone, beyond all but the most forensic of propaganda.. Having him in custody would be dangerous, see. An open criminal trial with a public defense was the last thing our elite wants. They need all the events of that once upon a time September day to remain shrouded in confusion and secrecy, because at the very least they failed in their essential charge of defending the country. At worse, they were complicit.
Their great abdication of all accountability - in which the bastards who fail are promoted, and thieves are given bonuses even as they drive their corporations and our economy into the ground - is the true ethos of capitalism.
The cartel must at all costs protect itself.
The rich get richer, the commander is always promoted.
And the American hoi palloi chant USA! USA! and scream that the government is evil even as they drape themselves in the stars and bars while falling into masturbatory raptures over the military.
I think I'll eat at McDonald's again, tonight..
---
I found myself this afternoon eating at McDonald's for the fifth day in a row.. Ten days in the last two weeks.
There was nothing else that I wanted to eat, other than a ranch BLT grilled chicken sandwich and a couple salads with balsamic vinaigrette.
As I sat down, I heard some people speaking thick Vermont redneck, saying "we finally got the bastard.." I turn, and there there are three absurdly fat Vermonters examining a copy of the Burlington Free Press, the banner headline "Osama Bin Laden Dead."
No way. Really. Finally.
I remember how we drew a red target on Osama's face, and used it as the sceensaver on our computer in our classroom at DLI..
The fat people were reading the story, talking about it in loud tones:
"Two faced Pakistani bastards, we should go in there and slap 'em all good and hard on both faces.."
Yeah, buddy. "We" should definitely do that. You and Seal Team 6. You guys go in. I'll sit here and drink McDonald's espresso, and read about it in the Burlington Free Press.. Know I'm rooting for you all.
You can slap them on one cheek, and then get them to turn the other one. Proper Christian manner of treating Muslims.
I grabbed the paper after they left, and read the story. It's no surprise the newspaper business is dying, the story was a load of crap. They obviously had had no information when they went to press, spent several columns rehashing the events of 9/11 ("three planes hit their targets..")
I was, however, pleased to see that my prediction came out correct: Osama was not in fact in the tribal areas on the Afghan border, but rather in a compound in the heart of the Pakistani power elite's territory. Down the road from their military academy, in a neighborhood with rich and powerful Paki neighbors. I'd said that I believed he was hiding in a well appointed basement somewhere in Riyadh or Islamabad, protected by the ISI and Saudi establishment, and I was exactly right.
The CIA and our own elite are deep in bed with all of those people, by the way. People like the Bushes and all their Carlyle Group buddies are in alliance with them, the worst and nastiest.
That is just to say that the hunt for Osama - now "successful" - was in essence a shadow boxing charade.
That they killed him instead of taking him hostage and putting him on trial is par for the course. Shot him in the head, meaning that there will be no photo of his corpse in the press. Buried his body at sea, within 24 hours.. Putatively because they're so sensitive to Muslim religious sensibilities that dictate early burial.. But with the effect that his remains are now gone, beyond all but the most forensic of propaganda.. Having him in custody would be dangerous, see. An open criminal trial with a public defense was the last thing our elite wants. They need all the events of that once upon a time September day to remain shrouded in confusion and secrecy, because at the very least they failed in their essential charge of defending the country. At worse, they were complicit.
Their great abdication of all accountability - in which the bastards who fail are promoted, and thieves are given bonuses even as they drive their corporations and our economy into the ground - is the true ethos of capitalism.
The cartel must at all costs protect itself.
The rich get richer, the commander is always promoted.
And the American hoi palloi chant USA! USA! and scream that the government is evil even as they drape themselves in the stars and bars while falling into masturbatory raptures over the military.
I think I'll eat at McDonald's again, tonight..
---
Sunday, May 1, 2011
And the feelin' comin' from my bones says find a home..
I'm gonna fight 'em off,
A (seven) nation army couldn't hold me back.
They're gonna rip it off,
Taking their time right behind my back.
And I'm talkin' to myself at night,
Because I can't forget.
Back and forth through my mind
Behind a cigarette.
And the message coming from my eye
Says leave it alone.
Oh, leave it alone.
Leave it alone.
Uh huh.
Don't want to hear about it,
Every single one's got a story to tell..
Everyone knows about it,
From the Queen of England to the Hounds of Hell.
And if I catch ya comin' back my way,
I'm gonna serve it to you.
And that ain't what you want to hear,
But that's what I'll do.
And the feelin' comin' from my bones
Says find a home.
Yeah, find a home.
Umm, umm, find a home.
I'm goin' to Witchita,
Far from this opera forevermore.
I'm gonna work the straw,
Make the sweat drip out of every pore.
And I'm bleedin' and I'm bleeding and I'm bleedin'
Right b'fore the Lord.
An' all the words are gonna bleed from me
And I will sing no more.
And the stains comin' from my blood
Say go back home..
Oh go back..
Oh yeah go home..
Go back home.
---
Thursday, April 28, 2011
For Man's Ingenuity was Fine, Yet After All 'twas Not Divine.. Essential Texts: Robert Frost, A Lone Striker (1933)
This here blog's poet laureate, mine & this blog's leitmotif & song:
(Click here for the audio.)
He knew another place, a wood,
And in it, tall as trees, were cliffs;
And if he stood on one of these,
‘Twould be among the tops of trees,
Their upper branches round him wreathing,
Their breathing mingled with his breathing.
If - if he stood! Enough of ifs!
He knew a path that wanted walking;
He knew a spring that wanted drinking;
A thought that wanted further thinking;
A love that wanted re-renewing.
Nor was this just a way of talking
To save him the expense of doing.
With him it boded action, deed.
The factory was very fine;
He wished it all the modern speed.
Yet, after all, ‘twas not divine,
That is to say, ‘twas not a church.
He never would assume that he’d
Be any institution’s need.
But he said then and still would say,
If there should ever come a day
When industry seemed like to die
Because he left it in the lurch,
Or even merely seemed to pine
For want of his approval, why,
Come get him.. they knew where to search.
---
(Click here for the audio.)
He knew another place, a wood,
And in it, tall as trees, were cliffs;
And if he stood on one of these,
‘Twould be among the tops of trees,
Their upper branches round him wreathing,
Their breathing mingled with his breathing.
If - if he stood! Enough of ifs!
He knew a path that wanted walking;
He knew a spring that wanted drinking;
A thought that wanted further thinking;
A love that wanted re-renewing.
Nor was this just a way of talking
To save him the expense of doing.
With him it boded action, deed.
The factory was very fine;
He wished it all the modern speed.
Yet, after all, ‘twas not divine,
That is to say, ‘twas not a church.
He never would assume that he’d
Be any institution’s need.
But he said then and still would say,
If there should ever come a day
When industry seemed like to die
Because he left it in the lurch,
Or even merely seemed to pine
For want of his approval, why,
Come get him.. they knew where to search.
---
A Lone Post Modern Striker: Musings on Love & Ideology
I've been meditating lately on how people talk and think about politics, which is to say economics (creation, distribution and use of wealth) and religion (what binds us together, sacred narrative, myth, ritual, culture, history, the etiology of desire) and how silly our discourse and thought often is.
These last ten - no scratch that - last twenty years have been educational.
There's a stupid trope that's been making the rounds in the so called conservative circle-jerk for at least that long, usually attributed to Winston Churchill that keeps getting recycled, that goes something like this: "If you're not Liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not Conservative when you're 35, you have no brain."
People of a certain age like to repeat that like a mantra, as a means of soothing themselves for have gone on that drug and sex binge from 1967 through 1975, and then having "grown up" and "seen the light." Seeing the light usually means having "accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior" in an encounter with God while smoking that last jibber in 1977, finally getting that CPA and real estate license, moving back to the suburbs and having two kids, then registering Republican and voting for Reagan in 1984.
That's been a common American life trajectory these last 60 years, and somehow even teaparty trogs seem to sense in their undulating rotund weightwatched guts that it's not a pretty one.
"I mean the commune, we were young, idealistic, you know? Then I woke up and realized I needed to get a job."
"Liberals suck! Keep your hands off my Social Security!"
Whatevah hoss. We all gotta do what we yabba dabba doo.
Being that I used to call myself a conservative, and almost joined Pat Buchanan's campaign for president back in the mid- nineties, but now find myself watching Democracy NOW and reading the likes of Hunter S. Thompson, Naomi Klein, Michel Foucault and Marx with immense pleasure and suppressing the urge to get a baseball bat and plant it in the set every time someone turns on FOX news or anyone from rags like the Weekly Standard or National Review starts flapping their gums on any channel, I find that quote immensely amusing.
It's not as if my essential loyalties have changed, mind you: I'm still both anti-abortion and anti-war, because I still believe in mercy as an ecstatic and immanent actuality. I still am a practicing Catholic who takes his faith seriously (perhaps still too seriously..) I still love my Country. Love my family, my friends, my tribe, my people, my language, my home.
It's just that my ways of thinking about all of these things, the prism through which I understand them, are changed.
I still believe in a supple and lyrical (even elagaic) orthodoxy, in truth, but I no longer feel like I can utterly control it with my mind. I feel like I can express and defend it poetically, somewhat, not with the rank certitude I used to.
I know longer really know what to think, I only know what I believe, want, hope..
What I love.
It seems to me that love is a species of humility. I wrote a brief post a couple days ago, where I wrote that desire is its own consummation and parody. I wrote that without thinking too much, out of my heart, as a sort of metaphoric impressionistic aphorism..
What I meant is that love and desire are in and of themselves satisfactions, yet also crucifixions.
It's in the tension of desire, not in pleasure, that I find my meaning.
Why do I want what I want? What am I wanting? Who do I want?
Dante wrote in detail about hell and purgatory. He could describe it all.
In heaven though, he was silent. There was nothing that could be said.
Some people mock heaven as boring, imagine eternal love as tedious.
The same way they find seem to find masturbation ecstatic and the cubicle secure.
I know only enough to pity them.
I'm not wise, smart or holy enough to teach anyone anything, probably. I can only dissent.
I'm on strike.
Me, you'll find contemplative in these woods mulling a rainy day mantle of mist wrapping smudgy ethereal swathes about the trees from my study, a fire in the pellet stove, my dog on my feet, earl grey in the mug, my books in stacks on every table and in cases on every wall, home of glad ferment (especially in the basement) and with a heart of quizzical gratitude and ever less frazzled bemusement.
I mean, if anyone cares to come look.
---
These last ten - no scratch that - last twenty years have been educational.
There's a stupid trope that's been making the rounds in the so called conservative circle-jerk for at least that long, usually attributed to Winston Churchill that keeps getting recycled, that goes something like this: "If you're not Liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not Conservative when you're 35, you have no brain."
People of a certain age like to repeat that like a mantra, as a means of soothing themselves for have gone on that drug and sex binge from 1967 through 1975, and then having "grown up" and "seen the light." Seeing the light usually means having "accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior" in an encounter with God while smoking that last jibber in 1977, finally getting that CPA and real estate license, moving back to the suburbs and having two kids, then registering Republican and voting for Reagan in 1984.
That's been a common American life trajectory these last 60 years, and somehow even teaparty trogs seem to sense in their undulating rotund weightwatched guts that it's not a pretty one.
"I mean the commune, we were young, idealistic, you know? Then I woke up and realized I needed to get a job."
"Liberals suck! Keep your hands off my Social Security!"
Whatevah hoss. We all gotta do what we yabba dabba doo.
Being that I used to call myself a conservative, and almost joined Pat Buchanan's campaign for president back in the mid- nineties, but now find myself watching Democracy NOW and reading the likes of Hunter S. Thompson, Naomi Klein, Michel Foucault and Marx with immense pleasure and suppressing the urge to get a baseball bat and plant it in the set every time someone turns on FOX news or anyone from rags like the Weekly Standard or National Review starts flapping their gums on any channel, I find that quote immensely amusing.
It's not as if my essential loyalties have changed, mind you: I'm still both anti-abortion and anti-war, because I still believe in mercy as an ecstatic and immanent actuality. I still am a practicing Catholic who takes his faith seriously (perhaps still too seriously..) I still love my Country. Love my family, my friends, my tribe, my people, my language, my home.
It's just that my ways of thinking about all of these things, the prism through which I understand them, are changed.
I still believe in a supple and lyrical (even elagaic) orthodoxy, in truth, but I no longer feel like I can utterly control it with my mind. I feel like I can express and defend it poetically, somewhat, not with the rank certitude I used to.
I know longer really know what to think, I only know what I believe, want, hope..
What I love.
It seems to me that love is a species of humility. I wrote a brief post a couple days ago, where I wrote that desire is its own consummation and parody. I wrote that without thinking too much, out of my heart, as a sort of metaphoric impressionistic aphorism..
What I meant is that love and desire are in and of themselves satisfactions, yet also crucifixions.
It's in the tension of desire, not in pleasure, that I find my meaning.
Why do I want what I want? What am I wanting? Who do I want?
Dante wrote in detail about hell and purgatory. He could describe it all.
In heaven though, he was silent. There was nothing that could be said.
Some people mock heaven as boring, imagine eternal love as tedious.
The same way they find seem to find masturbation ecstatic and the cubicle secure.
I know only enough to pity them.
I'm not wise, smart or holy enough to teach anyone anything, probably. I can only dissent.
I'm on strike.
Me, you'll find contemplative in these woods mulling a rainy day mantle of mist wrapping smudgy ethereal swathes about the trees from my study, a fire in the pellet stove, my dog on my feet, earl grey in the mug, my books in stacks on every table and in cases on every wall, home of glad ferment (especially in the basement) and with a heart of quizzical gratitude and ever less frazzled bemusement.
I mean, if anyone cares to come look.
---
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Film Review: Of Gods & Men
Absolutely Loved it. Thumbs way up, A+. 5 Stars out of 5.
First, immediately and for the record, this is one of the best films I have ever seen.
It works on every level: the screen play, though slow and leisurely in its pacing, is perfect for the story. It lets us into the life of the monastery, and gives a marvelous feel for what it is like to live in a religious community. The acting is simply perfect, especially that of Lambert Wilson who plays the abbot, and Michael Lonsdale who plays an elderly monk who is the monastery's doctor, whom runs their clinic which takes care of the people of the area, whom are too poor to get access to other medical care.
The story is one that is pretty well known in it's bare bones in Catholic circles.
If you were paying attention back in 1996, you know what is going to happen to these men. Which makes everything very poignant. The fact that this film is not primarily about the violence (though that violence does erupt very graphically once or twice in the film) but more about how the community reacts and evolves in reaction to the looming threat, is wonderful.
(This is that context if you are interested. )
This larger looming political context is at first only gently inferred. The fact that Algeria is embroiled in a civil war only becomes a part of the story when the Army shows up and demands that the monastery accept military guards. The abbot peremptorily refuses, and throws them out. This causes a debate amongst the brothers, since most of them were upset he didn't confer with them first. He tells them that he made the decision and it's non- negotiable because the monastery and Church cannot be seen as taking sides in the war, which is what allowing soldiers onto the grounds would do..
There's a beautiful scene where Michael's (the old doctor) character is talking with a young Algerian woman who comes often to see the monks, and often works with them in their gardens. She is struggling with some relationship that the movie does not explain. It's that sort of film, in which people come casually into the story a few times, and yet somehow they still become real, but without any exposition, merely on the strength of the tone and performances.
She asks Father if he had ever fallen in love. Father looks at her seriously with kind smiling eyes, and says "Of course. Many times. Then the greatest love took me, and I have been in love ever since."
That was only one of the many times this movie had me tearing up. In spite of all my struggles, and all my failures and problems, at the end of the day I'm in love like that, too.
To me, the fact that I can say I share that with such men.. To be associated with such love, with such heroism. It gives a vivid demonstration of why I unashamedly venerate them.
I will find an icon of them to add to my shrine.
Here's another picture of what they looked like in real life:
It occurred to me while watching this film that the logic of imputed merit in the theology of indulgences is now very clear to me.
This is the treasury of the Church. The merits of her saints. By grace, even a poor fool like me shares in their and her greatness.. I too share in their immense merit, though possessing little or none of my own. Their love and faith, and the graces they receive come also to me. The overwelling fecundity of the economy of grace, the consuming mystery of love.. Their sacrifices, their love, their prayers, their imitation of Christ and participation in his crucifixion.. It's not merely their story that inspires, it is the sacramental nature of their sacrifice that confirms and strengthens the Church. Including me.
No greater love a man than this, to lay down his life for his friends.
Thank you so much, my fathers. Pray for us.
Christ to them, they to me, the Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son to us all.
It seems merely too great a gladness for me somehow to bear.
Know that this movie is no sentimental hagiography, though. It is not in the least bit saccharine or stereotypic. The life of the monastery and their interaction with the surrounding community is richly and gently depicted. You get a sense of the men and their personalities. Their fears, weaknesses, their struggles.
You see how communal life is, how they are challenged by their vows (I believe Trappist Cistercians take the normal three: chastity, poverty and obedience, as well as the Benedictine promise of stability to the community, meaning they are in normal circumstances to remain in the community they make vows in) .. Of how sometimes there are tensions and dissension.
You see them interacting with the local people - both Christian and Muslim - and even attending a Muslim marriage and discussing religion very kindly and openly with them.
I was thinking how their lives - their vow of stability, their emphatic humanity, how they all kept returning to the nature of their vocation to live their lives there, then, with those people, in that place and time. That is the logic of the Incarnation. Christ is not some gnostic new age archetype, but always uniquely experienced, personally, specific to each individual's time and place.
This is sacramental and carnal scandal of Catholicism: He came and dwelt amongst us. He loved them, there. He died and rose, and they saw him and touched him. Not figuratively, but actually.
That's what they do in the film. This is our place. God has called us here, to love one another not in some abstract idealist fashion, but in the fear and temptations of this very moment.
Like in Galilee and in Jerusalem. There. Then. Now in every tabernacle throughout the world, at every single of the hundreds of thousands of masses offered everyday, hundreds of masses in very instant, throughout the world. The sacrifice of Christ made perpetual, eternally now, but yet uniquely present to each one of us given the extreme grace and privilege of receiving him in an intimate and singular encounter of the Eucharist.
This is what it means to be a Christian. What it means to be a human being. Each of us are a unique theophany, an iconic encounter with the divine image.
That they so consciously embraced that vocation, and did not run away even though they were afraid and tempted..
It was Mary, Mary and John on Calvary.
I also really, really appreciated how the mass and liturgy of the hours was presented by the film in an authentic fashion. Most of the time Hollywood botches things sloppily. The fact that the details seemed all correct made the story flow.
Unlike Into Great Silence,
(Another film about another French monastery, a documentary of Cartusians in the Alps, also beautifully shot and maybe educational for non-Catholics, or people who have never been to a monastery.. )
This film actually moved me to prayer.
Into Great Silence had no narrative. It was just the film maker shooting in the monastery while the monks went about their work and prayer. I said in my last review below that the only other film I remember falling asleep in was The Matrix and that Ice Ice Baby flick, but I just realized that I fell asleep in Into Great Silence , too. Carthusian monks don't talk much. They take a promise of silence, and they generally only open their mouths to chant and eat porridge. It wasn't exactly a moving cinematic experience.. I mean, I fall asleep at adoration or early morning prayer all the time. Dim the lights at liturgy and start chanting and I'm out in 15 minutes.. And that's when I'm there in the presence of God myself, and praying too. Sitting watching other people pray for two hours is just nonsensical. It's like watching people eat or sleep. Not amusing.
This film is very different. There was prayer and mass throughout, but in snippets. Not only that, most of it is in French. Most of which I know myself from living and praying with Eucharistein for a year. I caught myself praying along sotto voce with them in the film. It was sublime. There was also Latin and Arabic in the film, which also was fun.
I kept on thinking of things I haven't thought of for a while.. missing people.. Of how those men remind me of amazing friends I've been privileged to know. And love.
Gloire à Dieu, au plus haut des cieux,
Et paix sur la terre aux hommes qu'il aime.
Nous te louons, nous te bénissons, nous t'adorons, nous te glorifions, nous te rendons grâce, pour ton immense gloire,
Seigneur Dieu, Roi du ciel,
Dieu le Père tout-puissant.
Now to wrap this up, the only negative criticism I'll make is that the larger historical context of those monks being in Algeria was not really explored. There were a few references to French colonialism, and it was clear that the Algerian Army and officials they interacted with wanted them gone.. The reason for that hostility isn't really explored.
I kept thinking of all the conversations I've had with Arab Muslims and Christians in which the colonial, medieval (Crusade and Islamic expansion/jihad) as well as ancient history is very very explicitly in people's minds.
One of the reasons I've come to despise Americans - and I need publicly to confess this anger, because I still boil with this after ten years - is how damn clueless and callously ignorant 99% of us are.
History - even the bulk of our own relatively recent past - is largely meaningless to us.
Take for example the odd fact that Saint Augustine is from Hippo.. Just for example, a random indispensable fact that some Americans might have as a trivia response.. But I know from talking to Arabs and Frenchmen that those monks definitely had St. Augustine very much in the forefront of their minds while living in Algeria, believe me.
Such details never seem to occur to Americans - not even our politicians - as being relevant. I mean, the likes of Huckabee and maybe even Romney probably can talk good game about Joshua, the Canaanites, and the Book of Daniel's supposed lurid relevance to Israel and Iraq and crap like that, but the intervening 2600 years is lost on them.
And I hate them for it. This is one of the main sins I am struggling with. My fury over their pusillanimous warmongering bigoted stupidity burns and distorts me, even now.
I seriously need to get away from it all somehow. Maybe I should go to Algeria, too.
I'll close by noting that the Wikipedia article I link to above states that the final tragedy in the film, though it was claimed to have been committed by Islamic rebels, may in fact been actually committed by Algerian intelligence and military forces..
There's no hint of that in the film, but the story is so full of normal, sane and humane Muslims that it is still very clear that this film is not making any propaganda points about Islam.
Which is to me - someone who has lived a few years among the Believers in Turkey and Egypt, and traveled throughout the Middle East, was very comforting. I'm sick of propaganda by fools who know nothing about Islam or Muslims splashing their lurid fantastical fears in the media.
This film, on the contrary, ends with a beautiful voice over meditation that is apparently from the abbot's actual letters or journal, about how whatever happens no one is to blame Islam or Muslims for their fate. That they had come in peace to live there, and had been welcomed by the people with love.
And that is about all there is to say. Pray for us, Father.
---
First, immediately and for the record, this is one of the best films I have ever seen.
It works on every level: the screen play, though slow and leisurely in its pacing, is perfect for the story. It lets us into the life of the monastery, and gives a marvelous feel for what it is like to live in a religious community. The acting is simply perfect, especially that of Lambert Wilson who plays the abbot, and Michael Lonsdale who plays an elderly monk who is the monastery's doctor, whom runs their clinic which takes care of the people of the area, whom are too poor to get access to other medical care.
The story is one that is pretty well known in it's bare bones in Catholic circles.
If you were paying attention back in 1996, you know what is going to happen to these men. Which makes everything very poignant. The fact that this film is not primarily about the violence (though that violence does erupt very graphically once or twice in the film) but more about how the community reacts and evolves in reaction to the looming threat, is wonderful.
(This is that context if you are interested. )
This larger looming political context is at first only gently inferred. The fact that Algeria is embroiled in a civil war only becomes a part of the story when the Army shows up and demands that the monastery accept military guards. The abbot peremptorily refuses, and throws them out. This causes a debate amongst the brothers, since most of them were upset he didn't confer with them first. He tells them that he made the decision and it's non- negotiable because the monastery and Church cannot be seen as taking sides in the war, which is what allowing soldiers onto the grounds would do..
There's a beautiful scene where Michael's (the old doctor) character is talking with a young Algerian woman who comes often to see the monks, and often works with them in their gardens. She is struggling with some relationship that the movie does not explain. It's that sort of film, in which people come casually into the story a few times, and yet somehow they still become real, but without any exposition, merely on the strength of the tone and performances.
She asks Father if he had ever fallen in love. Father looks at her seriously with kind smiling eyes, and says "Of course. Many times. Then the greatest love took me, and I have been in love ever since."
That was only one of the many times this movie had me tearing up. In spite of all my struggles, and all my failures and problems, at the end of the day I'm in love like that, too.
To me, the fact that I can say I share that with such men.. To be associated with such love, with such heroism. It gives a vivid demonstration of why I unashamedly venerate them.
I will find an icon of them to add to my shrine.
Here's another picture of what they looked like in real life:
It occurred to me while watching this film that the logic of imputed merit in the theology of indulgences is now very clear to me.
This is the treasury of the Church. The merits of her saints. By grace, even a poor fool like me shares in their and her greatness.. I too share in their immense merit, though possessing little or none of my own. Their love and faith, and the graces they receive come also to me. The overwelling fecundity of the economy of grace, the consuming mystery of love.. Their sacrifices, their love, their prayers, their imitation of Christ and participation in his crucifixion.. It's not merely their story that inspires, it is the sacramental nature of their sacrifice that confirms and strengthens the Church. Including me.
No greater love a man than this, to lay down his life for his friends.
Thank you so much, my fathers. Pray for us.
Christ to them, they to me, the Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son to us all.
It seems merely too great a gladness for me somehow to bear.
Know that this movie is no sentimental hagiography, though. It is not in the least bit saccharine or stereotypic. The life of the monastery and their interaction with the surrounding community is richly and gently depicted. You get a sense of the men and their personalities. Their fears, weaknesses, their struggles.
You see how communal life is, how they are challenged by their vows (I believe Trappist Cistercians take the normal three: chastity, poverty and obedience, as well as the Benedictine promise of stability to the community, meaning they are in normal circumstances to remain in the community they make vows in) .. Of how sometimes there are tensions and dissension.
You see them interacting with the local people - both Christian and Muslim - and even attending a Muslim marriage and discussing religion very kindly and openly with them.
I was thinking how their lives - their vow of stability, their emphatic humanity, how they all kept returning to the nature of their vocation to live their lives there, then, with those people, in that place and time. That is the logic of the Incarnation. Christ is not some gnostic new age archetype, but always uniquely experienced, personally, specific to each individual's time and place.
This is sacramental and carnal scandal of Catholicism: He came and dwelt amongst us. He loved them, there. He died and rose, and they saw him and touched him. Not figuratively, but actually.
That's what they do in the film. This is our place. God has called us here, to love one another not in some abstract idealist fashion, but in the fear and temptations of this very moment.
Like in Galilee and in Jerusalem. There. Then. Now in every tabernacle throughout the world, at every single of the hundreds of thousands of masses offered everyday, hundreds of masses in very instant, throughout the world. The sacrifice of Christ made perpetual, eternally now, but yet uniquely present to each one of us given the extreme grace and privilege of receiving him in an intimate and singular encounter of the Eucharist.
This is what it means to be a Christian. What it means to be a human being. Each of us are a unique theophany, an iconic encounter with the divine image.
That they so consciously embraced that vocation, and did not run away even though they were afraid and tempted..
It was Mary, Mary and John on Calvary.
I also really, really appreciated how the mass and liturgy of the hours was presented by the film in an authentic fashion. Most of the time Hollywood botches things sloppily. The fact that the details seemed all correct made the story flow.
Unlike Into Great Silence,
(Another film about another French monastery, a documentary of Cartusians in the Alps, also beautifully shot and maybe educational for non-Catholics, or people who have never been to a monastery.. )
This film actually moved me to prayer.
Into Great Silence had no narrative. It was just the film maker shooting in the monastery while the monks went about their work and prayer. I said in my last review below that the only other film I remember falling asleep in was The Matrix and that Ice Ice Baby flick, but I just realized that I fell asleep in Into Great Silence , too. Carthusian monks don't talk much. They take a promise of silence, and they generally only open their mouths to chant and eat porridge. It wasn't exactly a moving cinematic experience.. I mean, I fall asleep at adoration or early morning prayer all the time. Dim the lights at liturgy and start chanting and I'm out in 15 minutes.. And that's when I'm there in the presence of God myself, and praying too. Sitting watching other people pray for two hours is just nonsensical. It's like watching people eat or sleep. Not amusing.
This film is very different. There was prayer and mass throughout, but in snippets. Not only that, most of it is in French. Most of which I know myself from living and praying with Eucharistein for a year. I caught myself praying along sotto voce with them in the film. It was sublime. There was also Latin and Arabic in the film, which also was fun.
I kept on thinking of things I haven't thought of for a while.. missing people.. Of how those men remind me of amazing friends I've been privileged to know. And love.
Gloire à Dieu, au plus haut des cieux,
Et paix sur la terre aux hommes qu'il aime.
Nous te louons, nous te bénissons, nous t'adorons, nous te glorifions, nous te rendons grâce, pour ton immense gloire,
Seigneur Dieu, Roi du ciel,
Dieu le Père tout-puissant.
Now to wrap this up, the only negative criticism I'll make is that the larger historical context of those monks being in Algeria was not really explored. There were a few references to French colonialism, and it was clear that the Algerian Army and officials they interacted with wanted them gone.. The reason for that hostility isn't really explored.
I kept thinking of all the conversations I've had with Arab Muslims and Christians in which the colonial, medieval (Crusade and Islamic expansion/jihad) as well as ancient history is very very explicitly in people's minds.
One of the reasons I've come to despise Americans - and I need publicly to confess this anger, because I still boil with this after ten years - is how damn clueless and callously ignorant 99% of us are.
History - even the bulk of our own relatively recent past - is largely meaningless to us.
Take for example the odd fact that Saint Augustine is from Hippo.. Just for example, a random indispensable fact that some Americans might have as a trivia response.. But I know from talking to Arabs and Frenchmen that those monks definitely had St. Augustine very much in the forefront of their minds while living in Algeria, believe me.
Such details never seem to occur to Americans - not even our politicians - as being relevant. I mean, the likes of Huckabee and maybe even Romney probably can talk good game about Joshua, the Canaanites, and the Book of Daniel's supposed lurid relevance to Israel and Iraq and crap like that, but the intervening 2600 years is lost on them.
And I hate them for it. This is one of the main sins I am struggling with. My fury over their pusillanimous warmongering bigoted stupidity burns and distorts me, even now.
I seriously need to get away from it all somehow. Maybe I should go to Algeria, too.
I'll close by noting that the Wikipedia article I link to above states that the final tragedy in the film, though it was claimed to have been committed by Islamic rebels, may in fact been actually committed by Algerian intelligence and military forces..
There's no hint of that in the film, but the story is so full of normal, sane and humane Muslims that it is still very clear that this film is not making any propaganda points about Islam.
Which is to me - someone who has lived a few years among the Believers in Turkey and Egypt, and traveled throughout the Middle East, was very comforting. I'm sick of propaganda by fools who know nothing about Islam or Muslims splashing their lurid fantastical fears in the media.
This film, on the contrary, ends with a beautiful voice over meditation that is apparently from the abbot's actual letters or journal, about how whatever happens no one is to blame Islam or Muslims for their fate. That they had come in peace to live there, and had been welcomed by the people with love.
And that is about all there is to say. Pray for us, Father.
---
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
One Last Observational Post This Afternoon..
With no further comment, apart from I was just thinking how both Ellen and Great Big Sea are from the Atlantic Provinces, just like me (or I so wish, I'm starting a movement for Maine and Vermont to secede and join Canada today.. ) and that Didier (my pipe smoking buddy in this here video) is from Belgium, just like Magritte.
See how patterns persist on the mind's eye. There is meaning inherent in things. I mean it.
---
See how patterns persist on the mind's eye. There is meaning inherent in things. I mean it.
---
Fish: Not Just for Fridays, Anymore..
I was going to post Donkey Riding on Palm Sunday, but erred on the side of not scandalizing anyone..
But this, I can't resist..
Magritte (ceci n'est pas une pipe) did another classic, by the way, I just remembered it:
(This merely being in keeping with the greater mythical imperative & thematic of this here blog.. leviathan must be parodied after all..)
The Lyrics:
When I was a lad in a fishin' town
My old man said to me:
"You can spend your life, your jolly life,
Just sailin' on the sea.
You can search the world for pretty girls
Til your eyes grow weak and dim,
But don't go searchin' for a mermaid, son
If you don't know how to swim."
Chorus:
'Cause her hair was green as seaweed,
Her skin was blue and pale,
Her face, it was a work of art, I loved that girl with all my heart,
I only liked the upper part:
I did not like the tail.
I signed onto a sailing ship,
My first very day at sea
I seen the mermaid in the waves,
Reaching out to me.
"Come live with me in the sea said she,
Down on the ocean floor,
And I'll show you a million wonderous things,
you've never seen before.
So over I jumped and she pulled me down,
Down to her seaweed bed.
And a pillow made of tortoise-shell,
She placed beneath my head.
She fed me shrimp and caviar
Upon a silver dish.
From her head to her waist it was just my taste,
But the rest of her was a fish.
(Chorus)
Then one day, she swam away.
So I sang to the clams and the whales:
"Oh, how I miss her seaweed hair,
And the silver shine of her scales.
But then her sister, she swam by,
Set my heart awhirl!
'Cause her upper part was an ugly fish,
An' her bottom part was a girl!
Yes, her hair was green as seaweed.
Her skin was blue and pale, her legs they are a work of art.
I love that girl with all my heart,
And I don't give a damn bout the upper part,
'Cause that's how I get my tail!
FINIS
(and that in more ways than one..)
---
But this, I can't resist..
Magritte (ceci n'est pas une pipe) did another classic, by the way, I just remembered it:
(This merely being in keeping with the greater mythical imperative & thematic of this here blog.. leviathan must be parodied after all..)
The Lyrics:
When I was a lad in a fishin' town
My old man said to me:
"You can spend your life, your jolly life,
Just sailin' on the sea.
You can search the world for pretty girls
Til your eyes grow weak and dim,
But don't go searchin' for a mermaid, son
If you don't know how to swim."
Chorus:
'Cause her hair was green as seaweed,
Her skin was blue and pale,
Her face, it was a work of art, I loved that girl with all my heart,
I only liked the upper part:
I did not like the tail.
I signed onto a sailing ship,
My first very day at sea
I seen the mermaid in the waves,
Reaching out to me.
"Come live with me in the sea said she,
Down on the ocean floor,
And I'll show you a million wonderous things,
you've never seen before.
So over I jumped and she pulled me down,
Down to her seaweed bed.
And a pillow made of tortoise-shell,
She placed beneath my head.
She fed me shrimp and caviar
Upon a silver dish.
From her head to her waist it was just my taste,
But the rest of her was a fish.
(Chorus)
Then one day, she swam away.
So I sang to the clams and the whales:
"Oh, how I miss her seaweed hair,
And the silver shine of her scales.
But then her sister, she swam by,
Set my heart awhirl!
'Cause her upper part was an ugly fish,
An' her bottom part was a girl!
Yes, her hair was green as seaweed.
Her skin was blue and pale, her legs they are a work of art.
I love that girl with all my heart,
And I don't give a damn bout the upper part,
'Cause that's how I get my tail!
FINIS
(and that in more ways than one..)
---
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