When lethal and dangerous things happen because of religious people - suicide bombings, wars, book burnings, hate marches - there is always a group of people, or many groups of people, who call for religions to be banned.
As if that would solve all the major problems of the human race.
In the first place, not all wars and hate marches and other serious issues are caused by religious people. Atheists are pretty good at instigating wars in promoting their own doctrines and agendas, for instance, and so are agnostics. Consider Communist and atheist North Korea. Banning religion might please them. But it would not stop their lethal and aggressive inclinations.
In the second place, suppose you could ban all religions? People would remain with their hunger to know and understand the mystery of human life and the creation of our planet and the universe. Who would satisfy that craving? Well, others would with their own ideas and philosophical systems. They might claim to be atheists. But they would still be taking on the role of priests. It would be religion all over again just in different robes. In their own way they would be seeking to help people find the meaning of life and the universe and their purpose. Some of these new priests might even become god-like in their inclinations and authority.
But in the third place, you can no more ban religion than ban the inhalation of oxygen. Or ban sex. Or ban alcohol. People will find a way. Ask those who lived through the 70 years of the USSR whether Moscow was successful in banning religion. Ask them if the Kremlin succeeded in eliminating the need for faith and the spiritual quest. Ask them if Christianity ceased to exist.
Ask China.
Ask North Korea, come to think of it. Not that we'll get the truth on the matter out of Pyongyang. But I guarantee you they have not eliminated all religious faith though I'm sure they have tried hard.
People have sought religious and spiritual explanations from the beginning of the human race's ability to wonder and imagine. Archaeologists tell us they have found evidence of the quest. So do anthropologists. Religion and the spiritual cannot be banned because hearts and minds and thought cannot be banned. Soul and spirit cannot be banned. The quest to know cannot be banned. It does not matter what you believe or refuse to believe. It does not matter if you do not care about religion. There are many others who believe differently than you, people who are religious, and they cannot all be silenced or eliminated.
Those who cry for the banning of religion because of the damage they see religion can do conveniently forget about the good religion can do. They forget about the Martin Luther Kings, the Mother Teresas, the Francis of Assisis.
Yet most importantly they forget it appears to be endemic to the human race.
It will not go away. There will always be bad religion and good religion just as there will always be bad atheists and good atheists. Atheism is part of the religious equation too.
It is not a world, despite the crime and immorality and intolerance, that is less spiritual that we see in the 21st century.
People are still looking for God.
They look for a Messiah.
They look for a special Word, a Logos.
They are on a quest. Many of them. All of them, really, all of us. Some of us do not call it a quest and some of us do not call it religious.
But we are looking for the meaning of life and life after death and the meaning of creation.
And by whatever name we call it, it is still spiritual.
The world is as spiritual a place as it has ever been. And the people who live here are just as desperate for answers, for hope, for purpose, for light.
Nothing has changed in that regard for thousands of years.
It will never change.
How can it, if it really becomes clear to all one day that spirituality, from beginning to end, is the essence of our existence as human beings?
Monday, May 31, 2010
late night music with felix mendelssohn
One of the great things about growing up in Winnipeg is the arts.
I well remember the first time I went to the symphony. The gleam of the brass section, the rich wood of the stringed instruments, the black dress of the musicians, this and all the other instruments such as drums, a harp, oboes and a piano, it all combined to give me an overwhelming sense of beauty and anticipation.
The first album my brother gave me as a gift (he is an artist and teaches at the University of Manitoba) was not The Rolling Stones, though we both liked the band, but Bella Bartok. It was an LP. On the flip side was Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. Though I knew the regular tunes we're all supposed to know when it comes to classical music (The Moonlight Sonata, Fur Elise, The Beautiful Blue Danube, The Nutcracker, The 1812 Overture, etc.) I did not know Bartok or Stravinsky. The album opened up new worlds of the senses and the imagination.
I have hundreds of classical CDs now. I was just listening, for instance, to Rachmaninov's Vespers, a piece I have used to help get me in the mood for writing a novel set in mid-20th century Russia and Ukraine. If I walk over to one of my stashes of classical CDs, which is arranged in alphabetical order in a tower, I come pretty quickly to Bach, one of my favourite composers (someone many of us might never have known but for Felix Mendelssohn introducing his works to the world).
I used to think, well, one rendering of a piece is sufficient. If I haul out my CDs of Bach's unaccompanied cello suites you see an interpretation by Janos Starker done in his golden years, magnificent, my current favourite. But I liked Yo Yo's early interpretation too (I gave the double set to a friend who could not afford a copy but not before I downloaded it into my iTunes). I have Peter Wispelwey's take on it. Also Haimovitz with his three disc set (because he plays at a slower tempo). I want to get Gastinel and Queyras (his treatment of Britten's unaccompanied is marvelous). So you see? This makes me, I fear, something of an audiophile.
Pianists? The list would be too long. But in Bach you see Angela Hewitt and Glenn Gould whose version of The Goldberg Variations (the slow one made just before his death) is still the one I prefer. If we glance over all of the CDs we see Lang Lang and Argerich and Aimard and Volodos. And violinists. And trumpet players. And different conductors doing different interpretations of Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, Sibelius and Shostakovich.
Okay, enough already. My point? People have different takes on the Bible and we need to listen to them before we agree or disagree. People prefer different translations of the Bible - I enjoy The Message but I have a friend in BC who teaches English Lit who detests it. So? Make room for Gould and Hewitt and Aimard. On my shelf I also have JB Phillip's translation of the New Testament, made for his young people while London was being blown to bits in World war Two, still a fine rendering in my opinion. There is the NEB and the REB and the ESV and NRSV and the NIV and . . . yes, some in Greek and Hebrew as well. They all have their place but I prefer some over others just as I do in my classical music.
But I'm not blogging this just as an appeal to variety in Biblical translations or to ask others to respect a friend's opinions or a stranger's views when it comes to Biblical interpretation or the arts.
I'm saying YES to classical music. It's deep, complex, melodic, all-enveloping, overwhelming and extremely satisfying. I've already blogged about how I enjoy other forms of music, such as the blues. If I can be caught up in jazz or the blues and then come along and get caught up in Prokofiev's wonderfully intense piano pieces, why can't a few more of us? Hey, I open a drawer at my computer desk here, right now (events occur in real time, Kiefer) and there is Ryan Bingham nestled up to Steve Earle who is cozy with GKB (Glenn Kaiser Band) and shoulder to shoulder with them all is Rachmaninov and Shostakovich and Stravinsky. Why not? It's all good.
But classical takes you to some incredible places and I fear, in this day and age, a lot of it is being lost and forgotten just as Bach was for 150 years until Mendelssohn brought the stuff out of hiding and touched a million souls.
Classical remains soul music today. Try some at your local Soft Classic Cafe and see how it goes down. Want something with even more fire and darkness and breaking light? The Hard Classic Cafe is just down the street.
It can take you to another galaxy and back. But not back as the same listener.
I well remember the first time I went to the symphony. The gleam of the brass section, the rich wood of the stringed instruments, the black dress of the musicians, this and all the other instruments such as drums, a harp, oboes and a piano, it all combined to give me an overwhelming sense of beauty and anticipation.
The first album my brother gave me as a gift (he is an artist and teaches at the University of Manitoba) was not The Rolling Stones, though we both liked the band, but Bella Bartok. It was an LP. On the flip side was Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. Though I knew the regular tunes we're all supposed to know when it comes to classical music (The Moonlight Sonata, Fur Elise, The Beautiful Blue Danube, The Nutcracker, The 1812 Overture, etc.) I did not know Bartok or Stravinsky. The album opened up new worlds of the senses and the imagination.
I have hundreds of classical CDs now. I was just listening, for instance, to Rachmaninov's Vespers, a piece I have used to help get me in the mood for writing a novel set in mid-20th century Russia and Ukraine. If I walk over to one of my stashes of classical CDs, which is arranged in alphabetical order in a tower, I come pretty quickly to Bach, one of my favourite composers (someone many of us might never have known but for Felix Mendelssohn introducing his works to the world).
I used to think, well, one rendering of a piece is sufficient. If I haul out my CDs of Bach's unaccompanied cello suites you see an interpretation by Janos Starker done in his golden years, magnificent, my current favourite. But I liked Yo Yo's early interpretation too (I gave the double set to a friend who could not afford a copy but not before I downloaded it into my iTunes). I have Peter Wispelwey's take on it. Also Haimovitz with his three disc set (because he plays at a slower tempo). I want to get Gastinel and Queyras (his treatment of Britten's unaccompanied is marvelous). So you see? This makes me, I fear, something of an audiophile.
Pianists? The list would be too long. But in Bach you see Angela Hewitt and Glenn Gould whose version of The Goldberg Variations (the slow one made just before his death) is still the one I prefer. If we glance over all of the CDs we see Lang Lang and Argerich and Aimard and Volodos. And violinists. And trumpet players. And different conductors doing different interpretations of Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, Sibelius and Shostakovich.
Okay, enough already. My point? People have different takes on the Bible and we need to listen to them before we agree or disagree. People prefer different translations of the Bible - I enjoy The Message but I have a friend in BC who teaches English Lit who detests it. So? Make room for Gould and Hewitt and Aimard. On my shelf I also have JB Phillip's translation of the New Testament, made for his young people while London was being blown to bits in World war Two, still a fine rendering in my opinion. There is the NEB and the REB and the ESV and NRSV and the NIV and . . . yes, some in Greek and Hebrew as well. They all have their place but I prefer some over others just as I do in my classical music.
But I'm not blogging this just as an appeal to variety in Biblical translations or to ask others to respect a friend's opinions or a stranger's views when it comes to Biblical interpretation or the arts.
I'm saying YES to classical music. It's deep, complex, melodic, all-enveloping, overwhelming and extremely satisfying. I've already blogged about how I enjoy other forms of music, such as the blues. If I can be caught up in jazz or the blues and then come along and get caught up in Prokofiev's wonderfully intense piano pieces, why can't a few more of us? Hey, I open a drawer at my computer desk here, right now (events occur in real time, Kiefer) and there is Ryan Bingham nestled up to Steve Earle who is cozy with GKB (Glenn Kaiser Band) and shoulder to shoulder with them all is Rachmaninov and Shostakovich and Stravinsky. Why not? It's all good.
But classical takes you to some incredible places and I fear, in this day and age, a lot of it is being lost and forgotten just as Bach was for 150 years until Mendelssohn brought the stuff out of hiding and touched a million souls.
Classical remains soul music today. Try some at your local Soft Classic Cafe and see how it goes down. Want something with even more fire and darkness and breaking light? The Hard Classic Cafe is just down the street.
It can take you to another galaxy and back. But not back as the same listener.
highway 61 south
In a few weeks I'll be flying into Jackson, Mississippi. Once there I'll be whisked off further south to places like Laurel and Soso and Hattiesburg. A friend is being ordained as a minister down there and he's asked me to do the ordination message. After that, I'm doing a series of evening messages based on chapters from my book STREAMS - this is kind of like a "deeper life" series of gatherings. And yes, I have thought about what I'm going to say, especially on the first evening which is the ordination: Jesus as healer, lover, warrior, God. Something like that.
I am a student of history so I'm not ignorant of Mississippi or the South's history. I know about the slavery, the Civil War, Jim Crow and segregation, I know that Medgar Evers was killed in Jackson, I know about the murder of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County in 1964.
I also know that the pain of Jim Crow and sharecropping and emancipation delayed brought the world the musical form known as the blues just as slavery brought the world black spirituals. I know that rock and pop music and probably a lot more came out of the blues. I know that Elvis was born in Tupelo, Mississippi and that he was heavily influenced by gospel music and the blues.
The Mississippi Delta, that is, the culture and reality and blues music that is the Mississippi Delta, begins on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee and ends on Catfish Row in Vicksburg, Mississippi. I may not get to Memphis on this trip but I will get to Vicksburg. And I will not only be looking at the Civil War battlefield but hunting out whatever's left, if anything, of Catfish Row.
I know that Highway 61 South will take me through the heart of the Delta and I intend to drive on that road, suh.
But the biggest thing, really, is the friends I've made in Mississippi and Louisiana over the past five years. Church groups have come up three times to help us with youth work at our church of Heartland in Alberta (someone else got a hold of the name Graceland first). The cool thing is, all three times it was my pleasure to work with Bucky, the genial and energetic young man whose ordination I am going to preach in a few weeks.
First time he was newly married and they were living and serving people and God in Franklin, Louisiana. Second time too. Third time he was coming up from Britney Spear's hometown of Kentwood, Louisiana where he served in a church. He's in Mississippi now but on the way to the Delta he helped us make a lot of great friends with Southern accents. So yes, blues and Mississippi's dramatic history aside, I am a fortunate man because I am not taking Highway 61 South as a tourist but as someone who is visiting with friends. And not only visiting, but getting to do God and soul stuff with those friends as well.
I don't know if anyone from Mississippi reads my blogs, but if you do, hey, maybe we'll get a chance to meet. Drop me a line.
I'm looking forward to this. A lot. I remain grateful, oh yes, grateful is the word.
I am a student of history so I'm not ignorant of Mississippi or the South's history. I know about the slavery, the Civil War, Jim Crow and segregation, I know that Medgar Evers was killed in Jackson, I know about the murder of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County in 1964.
I also know that the pain of Jim Crow and sharecropping and emancipation delayed brought the world the musical form known as the blues just as slavery brought the world black spirituals. I know that rock and pop music and probably a lot more came out of the blues. I know that Elvis was born in Tupelo, Mississippi and that he was heavily influenced by gospel music and the blues.
The Mississippi Delta, that is, the culture and reality and blues music that is the Mississippi Delta, begins on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee and ends on Catfish Row in Vicksburg, Mississippi. I may not get to Memphis on this trip but I will get to Vicksburg. And I will not only be looking at the Civil War battlefield but hunting out whatever's left, if anything, of Catfish Row.
I know that Highway 61 South will take me through the heart of the Delta and I intend to drive on that road, suh.
But the biggest thing, really, is the friends I've made in Mississippi and Louisiana over the past five years. Church groups have come up three times to help us with youth work at our church of Heartland in Alberta (someone else got a hold of the name Graceland first). The cool thing is, all three times it was my pleasure to work with Bucky, the genial and energetic young man whose ordination I am going to preach in a few weeks.
First time he was newly married and they were living and serving people and God in Franklin, Louisiana. Second time too. Third time he was coming up from Britney Spear's hometown of Kentwood, Louisiana where he served in a church. He's in Mississippi now but on the way to the Delta he helped us make a lot of great friends with Southern accents. So yes, blues and Mississippi's dramatic history aside, I am a fortunate man because I am not taking Highway 61 South as a tourist but as someone who is visiting with friends. And not only visiting, but getting to do God and soul stuff with those friends as well.
I don't know if anyone from Mississippi reads my blogs, but if you do, hey, maybe we'll get a chance to meet. Drop me a line.
I'm looking forward to this. A lot. I remain grateful, oh yes, grateful is the word.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
the lady and the writer
With the publication of my novel ZO in December of 2008 and its inclusion as a finalist for the Kobzar Literary Award in Toronto last March, many people became interested in what this work of fiction was about. To many readers' surprise, it was the first in a trilogy, and they found this out when they were left hanging - somewhat - at the conclusion of ZO.
Since I currently live in a small town it was easy enough for a number of readers to track me down and ask questions about the story and, most importantly for many of them, ask when the second novel in the trilogy was coming out. When I told them, casually, "Oh, about two years," some of them flew into a passion: "Two years! How can you expect people to wait two years after an ending like that?"
Well, it takes time to write and then revise and then edit. Then it takes time to choose a cover and a blurb for the back cover, to get it printed and bound, get the ISBN stuff squared away, etc., etc. But even at that, with a number of other writing opportunities suddenly falling into my lap, I had to wonder when I would get around to writing the sequel to ZO. Would it actually be two years - would it be that fast? Or might it be three or four? At the back of my mind, I sometimes thought: So much is going on. Maybe it won't happen.
Then one day my wife, who is an RN, came home with her own tale to tell. One of her patients, an elderly lady, after making make sure that her nurse was also my wife, said to her: "Well, I want to read the next book. You tell that man of yours that I'm in my 90s and I don't have as long as he has to get around to it. He needs to get it done and get it published."
Humorous as the story is I can't imagine any writer not being affected by her roundabout plea that the story continue and, eventually, be properly completed. So now the sequel to ZO is well underway. At certain stages I have been at it 8-12 hours a day or more. At first I scarcely knew how to start the sequel. Now I can't get all the characters to stop talking at the kitchen table in my head. Idea after idea is gushing forth. It's what Frederick Buechner called an artesian well effect. At one point two weeks ago I was so tired from unending days of writing and word processing I thought I couldn't go any further - I was only human, not a machine. But a few days writing more slowly out of doors rejuvenated me. Now I'm back to running to keep up with my characters and their story. I even tried to stop at the beginning of April, right after Easter, with an "All right, that's enough for a bit, I need to look into some other writing projects." Immediately a new character was in my head, talking, right at me, and I agreed to put his words down for the beginning of the second part of the book, but no more than that.
Fat chance. That was 35,000 words ago.
He's not the only odd incident. I brought a woman military driver into the story just to have a woman military driver. Talk about trying to leash a panther. She's such an important part of the novel now I don't think I'll ever be able to let her go. This happened with another person I brought in with the idea they would need to be "killed off" a few thousand words later. Yeah, right. There is too much to them. They are obviously not going to be killed off a few thousand words down the line. Who knows if they will ever be?
This story has too much energy for me - almost. I've never quite run into this sort of extended depth and complexity and intensity with my fiction writing before. Oh, sure, there's been moments and seasons, but this has no let up. If I could go at it 24/7 without ever eating or sleeping and never losing my edge I might just be able to hold my own with this crew. As it is, I'm hanging on for the ride and my hair is streaming out behind me.
I'll get there. And every indication of re-reading is that it appears to be worth the trip.
I hope the lady thinks so too.
I'm shooting for a late fall or early 2011 publication date.
cheers
Since I currently live in a small town it was easy enough for a number of readers to track me down and ask questions about the story and, most importantly for many of them, ask when the second novel in the trilogy was coming out. When I told them, casually, "Oh, about two years," some of them flew into a passion: "Two years! How can you expect people to wait two years after an ending like that?"
Well, it takes time to write and then revise and then edit. Then it takes time to choose a cover and a blurb for the back cover, to get it printed and bound, get the ISBN stuff squared away, etc., etc. But even at that, with a number of other writing opportunities suddenly falling into my lap, I had to wonder when I would get around to writing the sequel to ZO. Would it actually be two years - would it be that fast? Or might it be three or four? At the back of my mind, I sometimes thought: So much is going on. Maybe it won't happen.
Then one day my wife, who is an RN, came home with her own tale to tell. One of her patients, an elderly lady, after making make sure that her nurse was also my wife, said to her: "Well, I want to read the next book. You tell that man of yours that I'm in my 90s and I don't have as long as he has to get around to it. He needs to get it done and get it published."
Humorous as the story is I can't imagine any writer not being affected by her roundabout plea that the story continue and, eventually, be properly completed. So now the sequel to ZO is well underway. At certain stages I have been at it 8-12 hours a day or more. At first I scarcely knew how to start the sequel. Now I can't get all the characters to stop talking at the kitchen table in my head. Idea after idea is gushing forth. It's what Frederick Buechner called an artesian well effect. At one point two weeks ago I was so tired from unending days of writing and word processing I thought I couldn't go any further - I was only human, not a machine. But a few days writing more slowly out of doors rejuvenated me. Now I'm back to running to keep up with my characters and their story. I even tried to stop at the beginning of April, right after Easter, with an "All right, that's enough for a bit, I need to look into some other writing projects." Immediately a new character was in my head, talking, right at me, and I agreed to put his words down for the beginning of the second part of the book, but no more than that.
Fat chance. That was 35,000 words ago.
He's not the only odd incident. I brought a woman military driver into the story just to have a woman military driver. Talk about trying to leash a panther. She's such an important part of the novel now I don't think I'll ever be able to let her go. This happened with another person I brought in with the idea they would need to be "killed off" a few thousand words later. Yeah, right. There is too much to them. They are obviously not going to be killed off a few thousand words down the line. Who knows if they will ever be?
This story has too much energy for me - almost. I've never quite run into this sort of extended depth and complexity and intensity with my fiction writing before. Oh, sure, there's been moments and seasons, but this has no let up. If I could go at it 24/7 without ever eating or sleeping and never losing my edge I might just be able to hold my own with this crew. As it is, I'm hanging on for the ride and my hair is streaming out behind me.
I'll get there. And every indication of re-reading is that it appears to be worth the trip.
I hope the lady thinks so too.
I'm shooting for a late fall or early 2011 publication date.
cheers
ROOTED & STREAMS
Two books of mine have been released from Zondervan over the past month.
One is entitled ROOTED, the other STREAMS.
ROOTED has a longer history. When I lived near Banff, Alberta, a famous tourist resort, I first realized that we had a number of major gardens in the Bible that had strong spiritual connections to one another. Eden, of course, was first and obvious, and it had a direct link to Gethsemane, another garden, where Jesus made up his mind to go forward and undo the curse of humanity's sin in Eden. Then I looked and no sooner is Jesus taken down dead from the Cross then his body is placed in a tomb in another garden. And in that garden where he has been laid out dead he will rise from the dead on a spring Passover morning.
These three gardens were enough to give me a sermon series which I preached at the church I pastored near Banff in the town of Canmore. I used Eden, Gethsemane and the Garden Tomb. I spoke this message in various other locations as well, including the next church I pastored which is located only a few hours south of Banff. As time went on, I found En Gedi, another garden, and also felt that many portions of Revelation present the Kingdom of Heaven in a garden-like state, so I included those and wound up with five gardens in all.
The first time I put this idea in book form was a work entitled The Five Gardens of God. A couple of years later Zondervan asked me to re-work the book, make it more appealing to the mainstream without sacrificing its strengths, add more story, and ROOTED was born.
STREAMS came to be because they wanted a companion volume to go out with ROOTED and they indicated an interest in the water theme (I had suggested deserts or wilderness or high places and mountains). I spent several months working with water in the Bible, especially rivers and lakes and seas, in the same way I had worked with gardens. This time I included a lot of personal story from the start.
So far the feedback from both books has been positive and there has certainly been a lot of interest in the "new kid" of the two, STREAMS. Both are being distributed in Canada, the USA and Britain. Recently, the rights for a Deutsche ROOTED was sold to a publisher in Germany.
I'm grateful to God for the opportunity to tell stories and Biblical truths in such a way they might help others to see Christ and see the sometimes smooth and sometimes rugged road of believing that lies ahead of them. I hope I will get the chance to try out another couple of themes in two different books.
cheers
One is entitled ROOTED, the other STREAMS.
ROOTED has a longer history. When I lived near Banff, Alberta, a famous tourist resort, I first realized that we had a number of major gardens in the Bible that had strong spiritual connections to one another. Eden, of course, was first and obvious, and it had a direct link to Gethsemane, another garden, where Jesus made up his mind to go forward and undo the curse of humanity's sin in Eden. Then I looked and no sooner is Jesus taken down dead from the Cross then his body is placed in a tomb in another garden. And in that garden where he has been laid out dead he will rise from the dead on a spring Passover morning.
These three gardens were enough to give me a sermon series which I preached at the church I pastored near Banff in the town of Canmore. I used Eden, Gethsemane and the Garden Tomb. I spoke this message in various other locations as well, including the next church I pastored which is located only a few hours south of Banff. As time went on, I found En Gedi, another garden, and also felt that many portions of Revelation present the Kingdom of Heaven in a garden-like state, so I included those and wound up with five gardens in all.
The first time I put this idea in book form was a work entitled The Five Gardens of God. A couple of years later Zondervan asked me to re-work the book, make it more appealing to the mainstream without sacrificing its strengths, add more story, and ROOTED was born.
STREAMS came to be because they wanted a companion volume to go out with ROOTED and they indicated an interest in the water theme (I had suggested deserts or wilderness or high places and mountains). I spent several months working with water in the Bible, especially rivers and lakes and seas, in the same way I had worked with gardens. This time I included a lot of personal story from the start.
So far the feedback from both books has been positive and there has certainly been a lot of interest in the "new kid" of the two, STREAMS. Both are being distributed in Canada, the USA and Britain. Recently, the rights for a Deutsche ROOTED was sold to a publisher in Germany.
I'm grateful to God for the opportunity to tell stories and Biblical truths in such a way they might help others to see Christ and see the sometimes smooth and sometimes rugged road of believing that lies ahead of them. I hope I will get the chance to try out another couple of themes in two different books.
cheers
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
the holodomor
Holodomor is a Ukrainian word. It means "murder by starvation."
After the recent Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, I read some blogs where people expressed a longing for a return of the old Soviet Union, the nation that produced powerhouse athletes that truly challenged those from the USA and Canada and Germany, especially during the Winter Games.
I've even seen a song on TV where some American country-folk-roots singer is also pining away for the old Soviet Union. "Mister Gorbachev," he croons, "please put back that wall," meaning the Berlin Wall. Give us back the good old USSR, he goes on.
People that blog like that or write songs like that obviously never had family in Latvia or Lithuania or the Czech Republic or Slovakia or Georgia or Estonia. Or, like myself, the former East Germany and Ukraine.
It was the "good old USSR," under the leadership of a person considered a hero now in the new Russia - Joseph Stalin - that murdered millions of my people on my father's side in the early 1930s. The Communist government in Moscow wiped out whole villages and towns and left the bodies to rot in the streets and fields. A New York Times reporter saw the slaughter and yet wrote back glowing reports of life in the Stalinist Soviet Union in direct contradiction to what he was experiencing first-hand. He even won a Pulitzer Prize for the Times with his dispatches. Bizarrely enough, the paper still touts this Pulitzer as one of their prizes, when the reporter long ago admitted his reports were a lie. The Times owners, management and staff should be in sackcloth and ashes and hanging their collective heads in shame.
The Times wasn't the only paper to sing the praises of the USSR, nor was their reporter the only one to say it was heaven on earth. George Bernard Shaw did a tour of the Soviet Union and proclaimed it was something of a paradise and any rumours to the contrary were false. (It was a rigidly controlled tour that you'd think a smart man like he was would have seen through, even with his rose-coloured Socialist glasses on. Obviously he saw what he wanted to see.)
One of the few papers that told the truth was The Manchester Guardian and one of the few journalists who tried to get the world to cry out in anger was Malcolm Muggeridge. He was ridiculed and ignored. Oh, that love for the good old murderous USSR, it clings to so many from generation to generation.
Stalin took all the crops and he took all the seed to plant new crops. He terrorized farms and towns to get both the harvest and the seed that would guarantee another harvest the coming year. He starved six to ten million to death. But then, he hated the Ukrainians anyway, and their pride and independence and unwillingness to bow the knee to the new czars of Soviet dictatorship, so this was a convenience to his Soviet-winter-cold-heart. He killed more people in two years, just by taking away their food, than Hitler did in ten with his gas chambers and ovens and SS. Nor did Stalin mind murdering millions of Russian farmers using the same methods that worked so well in Ukraine.
Ah, but for Shaw and The New York Times of the 1930s and 40s, and that American singer, the Soviet Union is something wonderful to behold.
The cover-up has been so long-lasting that when a woman I knew sat down and read my novel ZO, she came away saying it was a good story but that the part about the mass starvation in Ukraine was over the top and hard to believe. Once I explained to her that I had not thought it up, that it was true, she demanded to know why she hadn't heard of it (whereas everyone knows about the Jews and The Holocaust).
Why? It's that old twisted romanticism for the USSR that many on the left, and some on the right, cling to like a sweet dream that, in actuality, is no more than the result of an opiate, a drug-induced hallucination, a stupor that blinds the eyes to the human hell the Soviet Union produced from 1917 to 1989. There are some who still want the USSR to look like utopia, who believe it was utopia, and who deny The Holodomor ever took place, just as there are still those, from generation to generation, who deny the Jewish Holocaust ever occurred.
On Thursday night, March 4th, at the Palais Royale in Toronto, I'm privileged to be one of several finalists for The Kobzar Literary Award, an award that celebrates the people of Ukraine and the people blessed with Ukrainian ancestry who write and are written about in Canadian literature.
I stand there with the others to say thank you to the people of Ukraine who immigrated to this country and put their blood in me.
I stand there to celebrate their strength, their love for freedom, their passion for the land on both sides of the Atlantic.
I stand to say The Holodomor did happen, thank God Ukraine is free from the grip of the old USSR, and may the Soviet Union never return and the ghost of Stalin never haunt the fields and hearts of Ukrainians in any place, especially the homeland, ever again.
After the recent Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, I read some blogs where people expressed a longing for a return of the old Soviet Union, the nation that produced powerhouse athletes that truly challenged those from the USA and Canada and Germany, especially during the Winter Games.
I've even seen a song on TV where some American country-folk-roots singer is also pining away for the old Soviet Union. "Mister Gorbachev," he croons, "please put back that wall," meaning the Berlin Wall. Give us back the good old USSR, he goes on.
People that blog like that or write songs like that obviously never had family in Latvia or Lithuania or the Czech Republic or Slovakia or Georgia or Estonia. Or, like myself, the former East Germany and Ukraine.
It was the "good old USSR," under the leadership of a person considered a hero now in the new Russia - Joseph Stalin - that murdered millions of my people on my father's side in the early 1930s. The Communist government in Moscow wiped out whole villages and towns and left the bodies to rot in the streets and fields. A New York Times reporter saw the slaughter and yet wrote back glowing reports of life in the Stalinist Soviet Union in direct contradiction to what he was experiencing first-hand. He even won a Pulitzer Prize for the Times with his dispatches. Bizarrely enough, the paper still touts this Pulitzer as one of their prizes, when the reporter long ago admitted his reports were a lie. The Times owners, management and staff should be in sackcloth and ashes and hanging their collective heads in shame.
The Times wasn't the only paper to sing the praises of the USSR, nor was their reporter the only one to say it was heaven on earth. George Bernard Shaw did a tour of the Soviet Union and proclaimed it was something of a paradise and any rumours to the contrary were false. (It was a rigidly controlled tour that you'd think a smart man like he was would have seen through, even with his rose-coloured Socialist glasses on. Obviously he saw what he wanted to see.)
One of the few papers that told the truth was The Manchester Guardian and one of the few journalists who tried to get the world to cry out in anger was Malcolm Muggeridge. He was ridiculed and ignored. Oh, that love for the good old murderous USSR, it clings to so many from generation to generation.
Stalin took all the crops and he took all the seed to plant new crops. He terrorized farms and towns to get both the harvest and the seed that would guarantee another harvest the coming year. He starved six to ten million to death. But then, he hated the Ukrainians anyway, and their pride and independence and unwillingness to bow the knee to the new czars of Soviet dictatorship, so this was a convenience to his Soviet-winter-cold-heart. He killed more people in two years, just by taking away their food, than Hitler did in ten with his gas chambers and ovens and SS. Nor did Stalin mind murdering millions of Russian farmers using the same methods that worked so well in Ukraine.
Ah, but for Shaw and The New York Times of the 1930s and 40s, and that American singer, the Soviet Union is something wonderful to behold.
The cover-up has been so long-lasting that when a woman I knew sat down and read my novel ZO, she came away saying it was a good story but that the part about the mass starvation in Ukraine was over the top and hard to believe. Once I explained to her that I had not thought it up, that it was true, she demanded to know why she hadn't heard of it (whereas everyone knows about the Jews and The Holocaust).
Why? It's that old twisted romanticism for the USSR that many on the left, and some on the right, cling to like a sweet dream that, in actuality, is no more than the result of an opiate, a drug-induced hallucination, a stupor that blinds the eyes to the human hell the Soviet Union produced from 1917 to 1989. There are some who still want the USSR to look like utopia, who believe it was utopia, and who deny The Holodomor ever took place, just as there are still those, from generation to generation, who deny the Jewish Holocaust ever occurred.
On Thursday night, March 4th, at the Palais Royale in Toronto, I'm privileged to be one of several finalists for The Kobzar Literary Award, an award that celebrates the people of Ukraine and the people blessed with Ukrainian ancestry who write and are written about in Canadian literature.
I stand there with the others to say thank you to the people of Ukraine who immigrated to this country and put their blood in me.
I stand there to celebrate their strength, their love for freedom, their passion for the land on both sides of the Atlantic.
I stand to say The Holodomor did happen, thank God Ukraine is free from the grip of the old USSR, and may the Soviet Union never return and the ghost of Stalin never haunt the fields and hearts of Ukrainians in any place, especially the homeland, ever again.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
loving enemies
Most people are aware of how both Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. were heavily influenced by Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount.
This led to both of them acting as catalysts for independence movements that were characterized by their dynamic non-violent approach. In Gandhi's case it brought about India's liberation from Great Britain. In King's case, it brought about the liberation of America's African-American population.
For many, the idea of loving one's enemies and interacting with them in a non-violent manner is all right for mass movements like King's and Gandhi's, but it is impossible to make work on a day-by-day, person-to-person basis. How do you love, let alone like, someone who hurts your children, back stabs you at work or trashes your family to others whenever they get the chance?
I believe the best way to love your enemies is to do exactly what you do when you love your friends.
If a good friend embarks on actions I think are not only unwise, but dangerous, I sit down with them, have a coffee, and express my concerns. Out of love. They may or may not listen, but it is what good friends do.
If a good friend is out of line with me, I tell them. If they do things that will hurt not only themselves, but my wife and children and other friends, I do what I can to make them stop. If they are engaging in actions that will hurt strangers, I challenge them on that too. Outside of self-defense, or their involvement in law enforcement or necessary military operations, if they are doing things that harm others - psychologically, physically, emotionally, spiritually - I make it a point to challenge them to cease and choose another manner in which to resolve their issues. And I do it out of love for them as well as love for those they intend to harm.
There is no difference with my approach to my enemies.
Loving your enemies does not mean letting them run rampant - destroying your reputation, indulging in harmful gossip towards you with others, hurting or killing your wife or husband or children or friends. Love does not permit that because loving your enemies means not only keeping them from harming themselves, but harming others, because harming others is a blow against their own lives and souls. And loving your enemies certainly does not mean you stop loving others and allow enemies to destroy them.
Loving your enemies means challenging their harmful behavious towards yourself and others. It means taking action to stop them from doing what is wrong. It means defending yourself and others not only for their victims' sakes but their own sakes as well.
Since when did love mean being a spectator when people hurt people? Since when did love mean doing nothing when you could do something to stop people from harming people? Since when did loving your friends meaning letting them self-destruct? Since when did it mean letting them indulge in whatever vicious behaviour they desire without you, their friend, saying or doing anything to attempt to change their minds and behaviour?
Since when did loving your enemies mean never challenging their destructive behaviour towards yourself and others? Since when did it mean letting them do whatever terrible things they wish? Since when did it mean never resisting their efforts to do yourself and others harm? You don't permit the friends you love to engage in that sort of viciousness towards yourself and those you care about and even those who are strangers. Why would you act any differently towards the enemies Jesus has commanded you to love?
Love your friend. Love your enemy. Act in the same manner towards each when they take a path of darkness and destruction. Loving them means helping them not to do the things that harm others and, by so doing, also harm themselves.
Love does not mean letting others do the things that make the world most ugly and wicked and which also make themselves most ugly and wicked.
Love does not only mean saying yes at the right times. It also involves saying no.
This is how friends are loved. This is how enemies are loved.
This is how our worlds and the one greater world is changed.
Jesus said, Love one another as I have loved you.
He also said, Love your enemies. Do good to those who hurt you. Pray for those who try to treat you in dark and destructive ways.
Talk. Pray. Challenge. Resist. Embrace. Forgive.
Love your enemies as you love your friends.
It's not just rhetoric. Not just wishful thinking.
It works.
This led to both of them acting as catalysts for independence movements that were characterized by their dynamic non-violent approach. In Gandhi's case it brought about India's liberation from Great Britain. In King's case, it brought about the liberation of America's African-American population.
For many, the idea of loving one's enemies and interacting with them in a non-violent manner is all right for mass movements like King's and Gandhi's, but it is impossible to make work on a day-by-day, person-to-person basis. How do you love, let alone like, someone who hurts your children, back stabs you at work or trashes your family to others whenever they get the chance?
I believe the best way to love your enemies is to do exactly what you do when you love your friends.
If a good friend embarks on actions I think are not only unwise, but dangerous, I sit down with them, have a coffee, and express my concerns. Out of love. They may or may not listen, but it is what good friends do.
If a good friend is out of line with me, I tell them. If they do things that will hurt not only themselves, but my wife and children and other friends, I do what I can to make them stop. If they are engaging in actions that will hurt strangers, I challenge them on that too. Outside of self-defense, or their involvement in law enforcement or necessary military operations, if they are doing things that harm others - psychologically, physically, emotionally, spiritually - I make it a point to challenge them to cease and choose another manner in which to resolve their issues. And I do it out of love for them as well as love for those they intend to harm.
There is no difference with my approach to my enemies.
Loving your enemies does not mean letting them run rampant - destroying your reputation, indulging in harmful gossip towards you with others, hurting or killing your wife or husband or children or friends. Love does not permit that because loving your enemies means not only keeping them from harming themselves, but harming others, because harming others is a blow against their own lives and souls. And loving your enemies certainly does not mean you stop loving others and allow enemies to destroy them.
Loving your enemies means challenging their harmful behavious towards yourself and others. It means taking action to stop them from doing what is wrong. It means defending yourself and others not only for their victims' sakes but their own sakes as well.
Since when did love mean being a spectator when people hurt people? Since when did love mean doing nothing when you could do something to stop people from harming people? Since when did loving your friends meaning letting them self-destruct? Since when did it mean letting them indulge in whatever vicious behaviour they desire without you, their friend, saying or doing anything to attempt to change their minds and behaviour?
Since when did loving your enemies mean never challenging their destructive behaviour towards yourself and others? Since when did it mean letting them do whatever terrible things they wish? Since when did it mean never resisting their efforts to do yourself and others harm? You don't permit the friends you love to engage in that sort of viciousness towards yourself and those you care about and even those who are strangers. Why would you act any differently towards the enemies Jesus has commanded you to love?
Love your friend. Love your enemy. Act in the same manner towards each when they take a path of darkness and destruction. Loving them means helping them not to do the things that harm others and, by so doing, also harm themselves.
Love does not mean letting others do the things that make the world most ugly and wicked and which also make themselves most ugly and wicked.
Love does not only mean saying yes at the right times. It also involves saying no.
This is how friends are loved. This is how enemies are loved.
This is how our worlds and the one greater world is changed.
Jesus said, Love one another as I have loved you.
He also said, Love your enemies. Do good to those who hurt you. Pray for those who try to treat you in dark and destructive ways.
Talk. Pray. Challenge. Resist. Embrace. Forgive.
Love your enemies as you love your friends.
It's not just rhetoric. Not just wishful thinking.
It works.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
what does it mean to be human? (part 1)
Let us begin like this:
A researcher in what we call Strong AI (AI for Artificial Intelligence) tells you his goal is to produce non-biological human life, that is, a human being that has no biological components. He advises you that biology does not a human being make and that by the dawn of the 21st century, it will be a post-biological world, at least as far as human beings are concerned.
Startled, you protest, "I can't conceive of humanity as being anything other than biological! A machine is a machine and a human is a human and they are built of different substances and they are not the same thing."
So he smiles (condescendingly perhaps, since he is well used to this sort of reaction to his life's work and knows exactly how to counter it) and says he would like to present a scenario to you.
Suppose, he says, your son, whom you love, is in a terrible car accident and badly burned and mangled, yet still manages to survive. The year is 2032 and the technology is available to rebuild his body inside and out. Instead of spending the rest of his life deformed, in pain and paralyzed from the neck down, he can have his life back again in full health.
So using silicon, fluids, microchips, computer components and all sorts of synthetic material your son is rebuilt or re-created or - the researcher's favorite word - refreshed. Not only that, although you are aware your son has been restored using non-biological material, when you finally see him after weeks of "restorative surgery" he looks just like he has always looked - same face, same smile, same hug, same laugh. The doctor tells you he is 75% non-biological and 25% biological, but you can't tell the difference. They even put components in his brain to replace damaged tissue and he acts just like your son - he is your son! Even though he is more synthetic than biological.
Now, asks the researcher, is your son still human?
Well, you respond, if you put it that way - that it's him, his mind and personality are intact, even his endearing and irritating quirks are there - yes, of course he's still human. Just like the person with a metal plate in his head or leg is still human. Just like the person with an artificial heart or kidney or eye is still human. Restoring his body using non-biological materials doesn't change the fact this is the same son I held in my arms at birth and taught to ride a bicycle at seven.
So, says the researcher, if he's still human at only 25% biological, why wouldn't he still be human at 15% biological, or 10%, or 5% or 0% biological?
Wouldn't he still be your son? Still a human being?
Even if his body no longer consisted of blood and bone and skin and his brain no longer consisted of grey tissue and grey matter?
? ? ? ?
A researcher in what we call Strong AI (AI for Artificial Intelligence) tells you his goal is to produce non-biological human life, that is, a human being that has no biological components. He advises you that biology does not a human being make and that by the dawn of the 21st century, it will be a post-biological world, at least as far as human beings are concerned.
Startled, you protest, "I can't conceive of humanity as being anything other than biological! A machine is a machine and a human is a human and they are built of different substances and they are not the same thing."
So he smiles (condescendingly perhaps, since he is well used to this sort of reaction to his life's work and knows exactly how to counter it) and says he would like to present a scenario to you.
Suppose, he says, your son, whom you love, is in a terrible car accident and badly burned and mangled, yet still manages to survive. The year is 2032 and the technology is available to rebuild his body inside and out. Instead of spending the rest of his life deformed, in pain and paralyzed from the neck down, he can have his life back again in full health.
So using silicon, fluids, microchips, computer components and all sorts of synthetic material your son is rebuilt or re-created or - the researcher's favorite word - refreshed. Not only that, although you are aware your son has been restored using non-biological material, when you finally see him after weeks of "restorative surgery" he looks just like he has always looked - same face, same smile, same hug, same laugh. The doctor tells you he is 75% non-biological and 25% biological, but you can't tell the difference. They even put components in his brain to replace damaged tissue and he acts just like your son - he is your son! Even though he is more synthetic than biological.
Now, asks the researcher, is your son still human?
Well, you respond, if you put it that way - that it's him, his mind and personality are intact, even his endearing and irritating quirks are there - yes, of course he's still human. Just like the person with a metal plate in his head or leg is still human. Just like the person with an artificial heart or kidney or eye is still human. Restoring his body using non-biological materials doesn't change the fact this is the same son I held in my arms at birth and taught to ride a bicycle at seven.
So, says the researcher, if he's still human at only 25% biological, why wouldn't he still be human at 15% biological, or 10%, or 5% or 0% biological?
Wouldn't he still be your son? Still a human being?
Even if his body no longer consisted of blood and bone and skin and his brain no longer consisted of grey tissue and grey matter?
? ? ? ?
Thursday, January 07, 2010
terror
A few miles south of where I live by the Rocky Mountains a number of paramilitary groups have their home. If you look up their websites, they always seem to be led by a Reverend somebody who has a high definition portrait taken in suit and tie (not camo) and they invariably have some sort of quasi-Christian creed they subscribe to. They want nothing to do with African-Americans, Hispanics, immigrants of any visible minority, and they don't like Jews. Armed to the teeth, they promote a holy white supremacy in the name of Jesus Christ (who, apparently, was not a Jew).
About a thousand miles east of me there is talk of sharia law. One imam on a television documentary states that Allah recognizes no such country as Canada. The only nation Allah recognizes is Islam. Another imam declares it is the "will of Allah" that sharia law come to Canada and that Canadian law is not valid for the Muslim, only sharia. Muslims should do whatever they can to make sharia law part of the Canadian fabric.
Terror has existed on our planet for a long time - terror, that is, which is politically motivated. The terror of the czars of Russia was politically motivated and so was the terror that Lenin and Stalin brought in after the czars. Terror existed under the kings of France but the Revolution that overthrew them had not been around long before it succumbed to its own Reign of Terror. When the American South lost the war in 1865 the region spawned a movement that subjugated African-Americans for a century and effectively produced an American Apartheid that was nothing less than terrorism. Terror came to Germany as government under the Nazi regime.
It is true that poverty can be a breeding ground for movements of terror. The French Revolution and the subsequent Reign of Terror rose out of poverty and misery. The Russian Revolution and its subsequent purges erupted from the grinding poverty of the peasants. The American South was dirt poor after the War Between the States. Nazism came to power out of a Germany impoverished from its defeat in the First World War and humiliated by the penalties its conquerors inflicted upon it. People point to poverty in Yemen and Afghanistan to explain the proliferation of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, both radical Islamist groups that use terror to promote their agendas.
Poverty explains why such movements can gain a large following for they provide people with meaning, purpose, identity, hope. It helps explain why terrorist movements gain ground in the first place because the movements tap into a frustration and an anger.
Yet I feel this only partly explains why the leadership of such movements come into being.
The leaders of terrorist cells may or may not come out of poverty and humiliation. But they know how to harness that poverty, humiliation and alienation to a cause, a greater cause that they believe in.
For many of the paramilitary groups south of me in states like Idaho and Montana (and north of me in regions of central Alberta and British Columbia), the cause is the supremacy of the white race. The groups tap into poverty, job loss, the need to belong and a twisted version of the teachings of Jesus Christ.
For the Islamist radicals, nothing less than the annihilation of Western culture and the domination of Islam will satisfy. They also tap into poverty, unemployment, the need to belong and a twisted version, Muslim moderates say, of the teachings of the Quran and Muhammed.
That white supremacist groups and Islamist supremacist groups will come to blows in the near future in Europe, the UK, Canada and the US is inevitable. That they will strike out at civilians and civilian targets, as well as military ones, is also inevitable. What is not inevitable is that any of these terrorist groups should prevail.
First, our law should be as fair and inclusive as possible and it should be the one law for all people groups. It should not be a religious law, not a law for Jews or Christians or Muslims or whites or blacks or Native Americans. It should not be a law that ties a nation to a creed that denies freedom of speech, religion, press or beliefs.
Second, it is imperative that a nation's sovereignty not only be respected but safeguarded. A nation cannot be subjugated to the totalitarianism of any belief that denies the nation's freedom, legitimacy or authority.
Third, the rights of all people groups within the nation must be respected and upheld and any movement that seeks to destroy the rights and freedoms and lives of these people groups must be resisted legally and effectively.
Fourth, it is incumbent upon the moderates who exist outside or on the fringes of supremacist movements to speak up. Christians should be pointing out the differences between the legitimate teachings of Christ and those of the movements that twist his words to racist ends. Similarly, Muslims should be pointing out the differences between the legitimate teachings of the Quran and Muhammed and those of the movements that twist the words of the Quran and Muhammed to racist and life-destroying ends.
As a Christian, I have a responsibility to challenge those who shoot abortion doctors and then say they are pro-life and have upheld a higher law. I have a responsibility to challenge paramilitary groups who say they follow Jesus but hate Jews and Muslims and African-Americans. I have a responsibility to challenge those who in the name of Christianity destroy life far beyond the mandate of any legitimate law enforcement group or military group to maintain order and resist lawlessness.
I expect the same from Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Taoists, Buddhists and other religious followers. They should not let their faith communities become wombs for hatred and bloodshed and intolerance. But I also expect the same from atheists and agnostics - their organizations should not become think tanks of exclusivity and racism and intolerance either. Neither should the ranks of political parties or NGOs or human rights groups. Human nature is easily capable of subverting the most idealistic agendas and turning those agendas into licenses to kill.
Terror will always be with us. But so must the will to resist its intolerance and totalitarianism and viciousness. It is not simply the job of a few enlightened human rights leaders or politicians. The better angels of our human nature must gain the ascendancy. All of us who oppose the tactics and agendas of supremacist groups must find our voice. Or, in these days and times, risk losing it forever.
About a thousand miles east of me there is talk of sharia law. One imam on a television documentary states that Allah recognizes no such country as Canada. The only nation Allah recognizes is Islam. Another imam declares it is the "will of Allah" that sharia law come to Canada and that Canadian law is not valid for the Muslim, only sharia. Muslims should do whatever they can to make sharia law part of the Canadian fabric.
Terror has existed on our planet for a long time - terror, that is, which is politically motivated. The terror of the czars of Russia was politically motivated and so was the terror that Lenin and Stalin brought in after the czars. Terror existed under the kings of France but the Revolution that overthrew them had not been around long before it succumbed to its own Reign of Terror. When the American South lost the war in 1865 the region spawned a movement that subjugated African-Americans for a century and effectively produced an American Apartheid that was nothing less than terrorism. Terror came to Germany as government under the Nazi regime.
It is true that poverty can be a breeding ground for movements of terror. The French Revolution and the subsequent Reign of Terror rose out of poverty and misery. The Russian Revolution and its subsequent purges erupted from the grinding poverty of the peasants. The American South was dirt poor after the War Between the States. Nazism came to power out of a Germany impoverished from its defeat in the First World War and humiliated by the penalties its conquerors inflicted upon it. People point to poverty in Yemen and Afghanistan to explain the proliferation of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, both radical Islamist groups that use terror to promote their agendas.
Poverty explains why such movements can gain a large following for they provide people with meaning, purpose, identity, hope. It helps explain why terrorist movements gain ground in the first place because the movements tap into a frustration and an anger.
Yet I feel this only partly explains why the leadership of such movements come into being.
The leaders of terrorist cells may or may not come out of poverty and humiliation. But they know how to harness that poverty, humiliation and alienation to a cause, a greater cause that they believe in.
For many of the paramilitary groups south of me in states like Idaho and Montana (and north of me in regions of central Alberta and British Columbia), the cause is the supremacy of the white race. The groups tap into poverty, job loss, the need to belong and a twisted version of the teachings of Jesus Christ.
For the Islamist radicals, nothing less than the annihilation of Western culture and the domination of Islam will satisfy. They also tap into poverty, unemployment, the need to belong and a twisted version, Muslim moderates say, of the teachings of the Quran and Muhammed.
That white supremacist groups and Islamist supremacist groups will come to blows in the near future in Europe, the UK, Canada and the US is inevitable. That they will strike out at civilians and civilian targets, as well as military ones, is also inevitable. What is not inevitable is that any of these terrorist groups should prevail.
First, our law should be as fair and inclusive as possible and it should be the one law for all people groups. It should not be a religious law, not a law for Jews or Christians or Muslims or whites or blacks or Native Americans. It should not be a law that ties a nation to a creed that denies freedom of speech, religion, press or beliefs.
Second, it is imperative that a nation's sovereignty not only be respected but safeguarded. A nation cannot be subjugated to the totalitarianism of any belief that denies the nation's freedom, legitimacy or authority.
Third, the rights of all people groups within the nation must be respected and upheld and any movement that seeks to destroy the rights and freedoms and lives of these people groups must be resisted legally and effectively.
Fourth, it is incumbent upon the moderates who exist outside or on the fringes of supremacist movements to speak up. Christians should be pointing out the differences between the legitimate teachings of Christ and those of the movements that twist his words to racist ends. Similarly, Muslims should be pointing out the differences between the legitimate teachings of the Quran and Muhammed and those of the movements that twist the words of the Quran and Muhammed to racist and life-destroying ends.
As a Christian, I have a responsibility to challenge those who shoot abortion doctors and then say they are pro-life and have upheld a higher law. I have a responsibility to challenge paramilitary groups who say they follow Jesus but hate Jews and Muslims and African-Americans. I have a responsibility to challenge those who in the name of Christianity destroy life far beyond the mandate of any legitimate law enforcement group or military group to maintain order and resist lawlessness.
I expect the same from Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Taoists, Buddhists and other religious followers. They should not let their faith communities become wombs for hatred and bloodshed and intolerance. But I also expect the same from atheists and agnostics - their organizations should not become think tanks of exclusivity and racism and intolerance either. Neither should the ranks of political parties or NGOs or human rights groups. Human nature is easily capable of subverting the most idealistic agendas and turning those agendas into licenses to kill.
Terror will always be with us. But so must the will to resist its intolerance and totalitarianism and viciousness. It is not simply the job of a few enlightened human rights leaders or politicians. The better angels of our human nature must gain the ascendancy. All of us who oppose the tactics and agendas of supremacist groups must find our voice. Or, in these days and times, risk losing it forever.
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
monsignor quixote
Recently my son did a school project on Graham Greene's Monsignor Quixote. So, to keep in step with what he was up to, I read Greene's novel for the first time.
Greene has an ability few people of faith, any faith, have - and that is the ability to see the weak spots in one's faith as clearly as the strong points. He also has the ability to see the weak spots and strong points of faiths, religious or otherwise, that stand in opposition to his personal beliefs.
In Monsignor Quixote, two friends, one a Communist ex-mayor, the other a Catholic priest who has been promoted out of his parish, take to the roads of Spain to tilt at various windmills that are all around them.
Greene is equally at home pointing out issues with Communism as he is taking issue with Catholic Christianity. So the conversation from both main characters rings true as they rattle along in the small car. Though we know Greene is seen as something of a Catholic writer, and we may sense a slight tilt - often very slight - in that direction, he allows the Communist to score telling points against inconsistencies and hypocrisies in Christianity. He also takes the trouble to show some of the strengths of the Communist "faith." There is an even-handed approach here we are not used to seeing from writers of any stripe - someone usually has a one-sided axe to grind about something.
The only way Greene can do this sort of thing effectively, I maintain, is because he is able to slip into the skin of the Communist or the Catholic in his story, without pretense or guile, and be sympathetic to their point of view. In this back and forth fashion he creates his own contemporary catechism that permits himself, and his readers, to arrive at a better and deeper truth than if he had simply mounted his horse and charged single-mindedly at one opposing target. Unquestionably, he is interested in taking us closer to God and the spiritual, the denouement of the novel shows that, but he is interested in doing it in a more roundabout "give and take" sort of way that shows truth exists in more places than just the few where one might expect to find it, depending on who you are (such as during Mass or in a church setting or at a Communist Party meeting). Truth is in all sorts of places, Greene tells us in Monsignor Quixote, including some very odd locations, and God things happen in those odd places as much, or more, as they do in the expected places.
This makes the novel an excellent read for just about anybody: those asking questions, those who think they have no more questions to ask, those with doubts and struggles, those who feel complacent, those who seek and those who are sure they have stopped seeking. Greene does not write unkindly, and he certainly does not write polemically - with the exception of a kind of Christlike cleansing-the-temple polemic on occasion - so readers can feel safe in the sense they have placed themselves in the hands and imagination of someone who cares.
The novel is quickly read, and there is a movie as well, but it is the sort of novel you read and then think about. A good book for this week of Orthodox Christmas or, as we call it here in my home, Ukrainian Christmas. Or, as Greene would undoubtedly like, a good book for any time of year, not only a standard set of days delineated as godly and holy ones. For the godly and the holy, he would maintain, are to be found everywhere.
If we look and listen, Christ is obvious in what is not obvious.
Greene has an ability few people of faith, any faith, have - and that is the ability to see the weak spots in one's faith as clearly as the strong points. He also has the ability to see the weak spots and strong points of faiths, religious or otherwise, that stand in opposition to his personal beliefs.
In Monsignor Quixote, two friends, one a Communist ex-mayor, the other a Catholic priest who has been promoted out of his parish, take to the roads of Spain to tilt at various windmills that are all around them.
Greene is equally at home pointing out issues with Communism as he is taking issue with Catholic Christianity. So the conversation from both main characters rings true as they rattle along in the small car. Though we know Greene is seen as something of a Catholic writer, and we may sense a slight tilt - often very slight - in that direction, he allows the Communist to score telling points against inconsistencies and hypocrisies in Christianity. He also takes the trouble to show some of the strengths of the Communist "faith." There is an even-handed approach here we are not used to seeing from writers of any stripe - someone usually has a one-sided axe to grind about something.
The only way Greene can do this sort of thing effectively, I maintain, is because he is able to slip into the skin of the Communist or the Catholic in his story, without pretense or guile, and be sympathetic to their point of view. In this back and forth fashion he creates his own contemporary catechism that permits himself, and his readers, to arrive at a better and deeper truth than if he had simply mounted his horse and charged single-mindedly at one opposing target. Unquestionably, he is interested in taking us closer to God and the spiritual, the denouement of the novel shows that, but he is interested in doing it in a more roundabout "give and take" sort of way that shows truth exists in more places than just the few where one might expect to find it, depending on who you are (such as during Mass or in a church setting or at a Communist Party meeting). Truth is in all sorts of places, Greene tells us in Monsignor Quixote, including some very odd locations, and God things happen in those odd places as much, or more, as they do in the expected places.
This makes the novel an excellent read for just about anybody: those asking questions, those who think they have no more questions to ask, those with doubts and struggles, those who feel complacent, those who seek and those who are sure they have stopped seeking. Greene does not write unkindly, and he certainly does not write polemically - with the exception of a kind of Christlike cleansing-the-temple polemic on occasion - so readers can feel safe in the sense they have placed themselves in the hands and imagination of someone who cares.
The novel is quickly read, and there is a movie as well, but it is the sort of novel you read and then think about. A good book for this week of Orthodox Christmas or, as we call it here in my home, Ukrainian Christmas. Or, as Greene would undoubtedly like, a good book for any time of year, not only a standard set of days delineated as godly and holy ones. For the godly and the holy, he would maintain, are to be found everywhere.
If we look and listen, Christ is obvious in what is not obvious.
Friday, November 27, 2009
why I write
My thanks to a good friend, Len Hjalmarson, for the cri d'coeur he forwarded to me and which I include below. It is by the American Terry Tempest Williams, a woman who is a writer and a naturalist:
why I write
I write to make peace with the things I cannot control.
I write to create fabric in a world that often appears black and white.
I write to discover. I write to uncover. I write to meet my ghosts. I write to begin a dialogue.
I write to imagine things differently and in imagining things
differently perhaps the world will change.
I write to honor beauty. I write to correspond with my friends.
I write as a daily act of improvisation. I write because it creates my composure.
I write against power and for democracy.
I write myself out of my nightmares and into my dreams.
I write in a solitude born out of community.
I write to the questions that shatter my sleep. I write to the answers that make me complacent.
I write to remember. I write to forget. I write to the music that opens my heart. I write to quell the pain.
I write with the patience of melancholy in winter. I write because it allows me to confront that which I do not know.
I write as an act of faith. I write as an act of slowness.
I write to record what I love in the face of loss. I write because it makes me less fearful of death. I write as an exercise in pure joy.
I write as one who walks on the surface of a frozen river beginning to melt.
I write out of my anger and into my passion.
I write from the stillness of night anticipating — always anticipating.
I write to listen. I write out of silence. I write to soothe the voices shouting inside me, outside me, all around me.
I write because I believe in words.
I write because it is a dance with paradox.
I write because you can play on the page like a child left alone in sand.
I write because it is the way I take long walks.
I write because I believe it can create a path in darkness.
I write with a knife, carving each word from the generosity of trees.
I write as ritual.
I write out of my inconsistencies. I write with the colors of memory.
I write as a witness to what I have seen. I write as witness to what I imagine.
I write by grace and grit.
I write for the love of ideas.
I write for the surprise of a sentence.
I write with the belief of alchemists.
I write knowing I will always fail. I write knowing words always fall short.
I write knowing I can be killed by my own words, stabbed by syntax, crucified by understanding and misunderstanding.
I write past the embarrassment of exposure.
I trust nothing especially myself and slide head first into the familiar abyss of doubt and humiliation and threaten to push the delete button on my way down, or madly erase each line, pick up the paper and rip it into shreds — and then I realize it doesn’t matter, words are always a gamble, words are splinters from cut glass.
I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words, to say the words, to touch the source, to be touched, to reveal how vulnerable we are, how transient.
I write as though I am whispering in the ear of the one I love.
- Terry Tempest Williams
why I write
I write to make peace with the things I cannot control.
I write to create fabric in a world that often appears black and white.
I write to discover. I write to uncover. I write to meet my ghosts. I write to begin a dialogue.
I write to imagine things differently and in imagining things
differently perhaps the world will change.
I write to honor beauty. I write to correspond with my friends.
I write as a daily act of improvisation. I write because it creates my composure.
I write against power and for democracy.
I write myself out of my nightmares and into my dreams.
I write in a solitude born out of community.
I write to the questions that shatter my sleep. I write to the answers that make me complacent.
I write to remember. I write to forget. I write to the music that opens my heart. I write to quell the pain.
I write with the patience of melancholy in winter. I write because it allows me to confront that which I do not know.
I write as an act of faith. I write as an act of slowness.
I write to record what I love in the face of loss. I write because it makes me less fearful of death. I write as an exercise in pure joy.
I write as one who walks on the surface of a frozen river beginning to melt.
I write out of my anger and into my passion.
I write from the stillness of night anticipating — always anticipating.
I write to listen. I write out of silence. I write to soothe the voices shouting inside me, outside me, all around me.
I write because I believe in words.
I write because it is a dance with paradox.
I write because you can play on the page like a child left alone in sand.
I write because it is the way I take long walks.
I write because I believe it can create a path in darkness.
I write with a knife, carving each word from the generosity of trees.
I write as ritual.
I write out of my inconsistencies. I write with the colors of memory.
I write as a witness to what I have seen. I write as witness to what I imagine.
I write by grace and grit.
I write for the love of ideas.
I write for the surprise of a sentence.
I write with the belief of alchemists.
I write knowing I will always fail. I write knowing words always fall short.
I write knowing I can be killed by my own words, stabbed by syntax, crucified by understanding and misunderstanding.
I write past the embarrassment of exposure.
I trust nothing especially myself and slide head first into the familiar abyss of doubt and humiliation and threaten to push the delete button on my way down, or madly erase each line, pick up the paper and rip it into shreds — and then I realize it doesn’t matter, words are always a gamble, words are splinters from cut glass.
I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words, to say the words, to touch the source, to be touched, to reveal how vulnerable we are, how transient.
I write as though I am whispering in the ear of the one I love.
- Terry Tempest Williams
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
some words from jack kerouac
I read On The Road when I was a teen. I read it very quickly, at least as quickly as Jack wrote it (three days). What I remember is the energy and how life came across as intriguing even without the need to resort to big literary moments or plot twists. Even as a 15 or 16 year old, I savoured it page by page.
I offer you today a quote from Jack passed on to me by a friend. It's one of those quotes that you have to share with those you think it might matter to - the ones who have a lust for life, a longing to do far more than survive or exist, the ones who crackle with intensity.
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"
Jack Kerouac
I offer you today a quote from Jack passed on to me by a friend. It's one of those quotes that you have to share with those you think it might matter to - the ones who have a lust for life, a longing to do far more than survive or exist, the ones who crackle with intensity.
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"
Jack Kerouac
Thursday, October 29, 2009
shakespeare alive
Some of us live in places where we can see Shakespeare performed live on stage, others of us don't. Even if we do live in areas where we can see Shakespeare live it still usually means we won't see him more than once or twice a year - unless there's a Shakespearean summer festival going on or we live in Stratford-on-Avon, England (where the Royal Shakespeare Company performs). So what to do if we want to see Shakespeare acted out, the way it was meant to be seen and the way it should be seen - as opposed to simply seeing it printed on the page of a book?
The world of the dvd, fortunately, gives us many options, and if readers want to send in their favourite choices, I'll be happy to post them. In the meantime, I'm going to make a list - and check it twice - of the dvds I've seen and which I think bring Shakespeare alive. My main goal in doing this is to get persons who have been slain by Shakespeare in school to come back from the dead, like Juliet, and enjoy a world in which Shakespeare's plays add a certain depth and lustre to their lives.
I should say that some of the Shakespeare productions on dvd are done like movies - without a stage - and others are films of a stage presentation. In most cases, all of the dialogue is subtitled, enormously helpful if you are trying to get the hang of Elizabethan English. But there's nothing like the thrill of realizing you understand what's going on without using close captioning. The great benefit is you can concentrate on the faces and the acting and not the printed word. This can happen more quickly than you think for I have seen it happen with both my children, while watching a Shakespeare dvd, in no very great amount of time.
MY FIRST LIST (SECOND LIST TO FOLLOW IN ANOTHER BLOG ON ANOTHER DAY)
MY SHAKESPEARE
This is kind of a warm up piece that showcases the enduring power of Shakespeare when it's done right. It's something of a reality TV piece. A young actor returns to a poor district of London and literally plucks people off the street, including a lot of youth, holds auditions and forms a cast of non-actors and non-English majors in order to perform a modern dress version of Romeo and Juliet at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA). How they get there - learning to act for the first time in their lives and memorizing Shakespeare for the first time in their lives - is simply an incredible story to watch unfold. It transforms the lives of the young men and women involved in the production quite literally.
THE REDUCED SHAKESPEARE COMPANY
You gotta love this. A three man team does all of Shakespeare's plays in 90 minutes and they do it with a huge dose of humour. Every play gets mentioned or touched on. Some get more air time than others, but it's a great introduction to The World of William especially for those who have never been interested in anything to do with Shakespeare before. Hilarious.
HAMLET
*Hamlet with Mel Gibson and Glenn Close - gorgeous sets and excellent acting, a crisp pace that never allows the great play to flag - directed by Franco Zeffirelli
*Hamlet with Kenneth Branagh as actor and director - a longer version but utterly superb - perhaps start with Zeffirelli's take and return later to Branagh's
ROMEO & JULIET
*Romeo and Juliet directed by Franco Zeffirelli - beautiful sets and cinematography, as per usual with Zeffirelli - the best historical version of the play
*Romeo and Juliet directed by Baz Luhrmann - a superb modern dress gangsta version of the play - all the Elizabethan script is there but the setting is urban 21st century and the colours are uber vivid
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
*Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare's comedy about how friends conspire to make two enemies, a man and a woman, fall in love - Kenneth Branagh acts and directs - Denzel Washington is in on this one and so is Keanu Reeves - excellent
HENRY V
*Henry V, the Battle of Agincourt, Kenneth Branagh once more doing a magnificent job acting and directing - simply one of the greatest performances of ANYTHING - how's this for a cast? Paul Scofield, Derek Jacobi, Judi Dench, Ian Holm, Christian Bale - unbelievable
MACBETH
*Macbeth, the dark and powerful tragedy - the only dvd worth getting is done in a Braveheart and Rob Roy style, where the Scots actually look like medieval Scots - the version you want has Sean Connery's son Jason in the lead role doing an excellent job - it was the winner of the Silver Screen Award at the 30th US International Film Festival (1997) - forget Polanski's blood bath - this is the one to watch until Kenneth Branagh gives us a version - or Sir Ian McKellen
KING LEAR
*King Lear set in medieval Japan and directed by Akira Kurosawa - entitled RAN - totally absorbing
This is enough to start with, especially if you're trying to seriously cuddle up with William for the first time. Best of luck and I hope you find some joy and entertainment - and truth.
The world of the dvd, fortunately, gives us many options, and if readers want to send in their favourite choices, I'll be happy to post them. In the meantime, I'm going to make a list - and check it twice - of the dvds I've seen and which I think bring Shakespeare alive. My main goal in doing this is to get persons who have been slain by Shakespeare in school to come back from the dead, like Juliet, and enjoy a world in which Shakespeare's plays add a certain depth and lustre to their lives.
I should say that some of the Shakespeare productions on dvd are done like movies - without a stage - and others are films of a stage presentation. In most cases, all of the dialogue is subtitled, enormously helpful if you are trying to get the hang of Elizabethan English. But there's nothing like the thrill of realizing you understand what's going on without using close captioning. The great benefit is you can concentrate on the faces and the acting and not the printed word. This can happen more quickly than you think for I have seen it happen with both my children, while watching a Shakespeare dvd, in no very great amount of time.
MY FIRST LIST (SECOND LIST TO FOLLOW IN ANOTHER BLOG ON ANOTHER DAY)
MY SHAKESPEARE
This is kind of a warm up piece that showcases the enduring power of Shakespeare when it's done right. It's something of a reality TV piece. A young actor returns to a poor district of London and literally plucks people off the street, including a lot of youth, holds auditions and forms a cast of non-actors and non-English majors in order to perform a modern dress version of Romeo and Juliet at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA). How they get there - learning to act for the first time in their lives and memorizing Shakespeare for the first time in their lives - is simply an incredible story to watch unfold. It transforms the lives of the young men and women involved in the production quite literally.
THE REDUCED SHAKESPEARE COMPANY
You gotta love this. A three man team does all of Shakespeare's plays in 90 minutes and they do it with a huge dose of humour. Every play gets mentioned or touched on. Some get more air time than others, but it's a great introduction to The World of William especially for those who have never been interested in anything to do with Shakespeare before. Hilarious.
HAMLET
*Hamlet with Mel Gibson and Glenn Close - gorgeous sets and excellent acting, a crisp pace that never allows the great play to flag - directed by Franco Zeffirelli
*Hamlet with Kenneth Branagh as actor and director - a longer version but utterly superb - perhaps start with Zeffirelli's take and return later to Branagh's
ROMEO & JULIET
*Romeo and Juliet directed by Franco Zeffirelli - beautiful sets and cinematography, as per usual with Zeffirelli - the best historical version of the play
*Romeo and Juliet directed by Baz Luhrmann - a superb modern dress gangsta version of the play - all the Elizabethan script is there but the setting is urban 21st century and the colours are uber vivid
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
*Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare's comedy about how friends conspire to make two enemies, a man and a woman, fall in love - Kenneth Branagh acts and directs - Denzel Washington is in on this one and so is Keanu Reeves - excellent
HENRY V
*Henry V, the Battle of Agincourt, Kenneth Branagh once more doing a magnificent job acting and directing - simply one of the greatest performances of ANYTHING - how's this for a cast? Paul Scofield, Derek Jacobi, Judi Dench, Ian Holm, Christian Bale - unbelievable
MACBETH
*Macbeth, the dark and powerful tragedy - the only dvd worth getting is done in a Braveheart and Rob Roy style, where the Scots actually look like medieval Scots - the version you want has Sean Connery's son Jason in the lead role doing an excellent job - it was the winner of the Silver Screen Award at the 30th US International Film Festival (1997) - forget Polanski's blood bath - this is the one to watch until Kenneth Branagh gives us a version - or Sir Ian McKellen
KING LEAR
*King Lear set in medieval Japan and directed by Akira Kurosawa - entitled RAN - totally absorbing
This is enough to start with, especially if you're trying to seriously cuddle up with William for the first time. Best of luck and I hope you find some joy and entertainment - and truth.
killing shakespeare
Imagine going to the cinema, getting your ticket, buying some popcorn and a Coke, then being given a big thick spiral-bound notebook as you go to take your seat. All around you people are munching and guzzling and reading from the notebook. There's some music being filtered into the theatre that's supposed to go along with what you're reading and there you sit, reading voraciously like everyone else. And what are you reading? Why, the movie script, of course. Why else would you go to the movies?
Katie: Did you know her? I mean, was she a friend or what?
Bob: I don't know how to answer that.
[music thread begins]
[cut to memory shot - Bob with Alice in Warsaw just after the Second World War]
Alice: So now that the war is over, what are we to each other? Who are you to me?
[close-up of Bob's younger but war-torn face]
Bob: I don't know how to answer that.
[cut to plane droning overhead]
[cut to Alice staring at Bob]
[cut to Katie staring at Bob]
[cut to Bob staring at a boy on a tricycle in Warsaw]
After reading the movie you take the script home with you and add it to your collection of movie scripts. Then you turn on the TV to watch CSI:Miami. It consists of a script being scrolled up from the bottom of the screen (in colour).
Suspect: I didn't do it, I wasn't there.
Horatio: Are you sure about that?
Suspect: Of course, I'm sure. I know where I was the night Johnson got his head caved in by a Mercury speedboat motor.
[cut to close-up of Horatio Gates tilting his upper body and head and almost hissing at the suspect]
Horatio: Who told you it was a Mercury? That information hasn't been made public.
Suspect: [shrugging and stuttering] Just guessing . . . I guess . . .
[cut to Horatio pulling off his sunglasses]
Horatio: Well, Mr. Hendricks, we'll see how your DNA matches up with the saliva we pulled off the motorboat's propeller . . .
Suspect: Ok, Ok, yeah, I was there, but only for a minute . . .
[cut to screeching tires, a gunshot, and a woman screaming]
And so it goes till you've watched another great episode of CSI. What could be more fun than exercising your imagination in this way?
If we did movies and TV like this, just reading the scripts, no actors, no FX, no sets, no action, no nothing . . . well, you can guess how unpopular TV and movies would suddenly become. We watch movies and TV dramas because we want to see a show, a performance, we want to be entertained and even enlightened, we want some excellence, some great shots, some great acting.
So why do we kill Shakespeare for people by doing it the wrong way?
Why do we give them movie scripts to read and wonder why they don't get excited?
The scripts are for the actors and the sound crews and the lighting and the stunt team so that they can put on a show that we sit back and watch. The scripts are not for us. We want the finished product, we want the performance, we want the whole gleaming structure - not the scaffolding and the cranes and the blueprints.
Shakespeare's plays are the movies of Elizabethan England. You enjoy them by watching them. Not reading them.
That's where English Lit courses have always gotten it wrong. For centuries. And that's why too many people hate Shakespeare. Go read a movie script sometime and see if it holds your attention, especially if you don't have a part in the film. BORRRRRRING!
The only reason I can see for reading Shakespeare is in preparation for watching a performance of Shakespeare. That's it. As prep for a show so that you can understand the language and the plot better (after all, it is Elizabethan English, and that was 400 years ago). Otherwise, unless you're an actor or director or you're reading the sonnets, leave the scripts alone.
Can you imagine taking a course on film in high school or university and never watching a film, just reading the scripts? Absurd. So why do we approach Shakespeare as if we're reading a novel or a short story or a poem? We're not reading novels or short fiction or poetry - we've come to watch a play being performed. Studying Shakespeare - or any playwright and their plays for that matter - should be about watching the plays being staged.
In case you think it won't work, my son watched a series of Shakespeare dvds when he was 15. He did not sit and read the scripts, he watched the plays being performed on film, ones like Hamlet and King Lear and As You Like It. Sometimes we used subtitles and sometimes we didn't. To my surprise, in no time at all, he developed an ear for the language, understood what was going on, laughed at the jokes without prompting, and got into both traditional and modern dress Shakespeare. He got into Shakespeare in the same way we get into Clint Eastwood or Francis Ford Coppola - by watching it. Which, incidentally, was the same way the men and women and children of England got into it way back when. It's still the best way and beats reading movie scripts by a hundred to one.
If you were turned off of Shakespeare in school, try the performance approach. Trust me, the difference between printed page and powerful performance will astonish you.
[Thanks to Ron Reed, founding Artistic Director of Pacific Theatre in Vancouver, BC, Canada, for the germ of the idea for this blog.]
Katie: Did you know her? I mean, was she a friend or what?
Bob: I don't know how to answer that.
[music thread begins]
[cut to memory shot - Bob with Alice in Warsaw just after the Second World War]
Alice: So now that the war is over, what are we to each other? Who are you to me?
[close-up of Bob's younger but war-torn face]
Bob: I don't know how to answer that.
[cut to plane droning overhead]
[cut to Alice staring at Bob]
[cut to Katie staring at Bob]
[cut to Bob staring at a boy on a tricycle in Warsaw]
After reading the movie you take the script home with you and add it to your collection of movie scripts. Then you turn on the TV to watch CSI:Miami. It consists of a script being scrolled up from the bottom of the screen (in colour).
Suspect: I didn't do it, I wasn't there.
Horatio: Are you sure about that?
Suspect: Of course, I'm sure. I know where I was the night Johnson got his head caved in by a Mercury speedboat motor.
[cut to close-up of Horatio Gates tilting his upper body and head and almost hissing at the suspect]
Horatio: Who told you it was a Mercury? That information hasn't been made public.
Suspect: [shrugging and stuttering] Just guessing . . . I guess . . .
[cut to Horatio pulling off his sunglasses]
Horatio: Well, Mr. Hendricks, we'll see how your DNA matches up with the saliva we pulled off the motorboat's propeller . . .
Suspect: Ok, Ok, yeah, I was there, but only for a minute . . .
[cut to screeching tires, a gunshot, and a woman screaming]
And so it goes till you've watched another great episode of CSI. What could be more fun than exercising your imagination in this way?
If we did movies and TV like this, just reading the scripts, no actors, no FX, no sets, no action, no nothing . . . well, you can guess how unpopular TV and movies would suddenly become. We watch movies and TV dramas because we want to see a show, a performance, we want to be entertained and even enlightened, we want some excellence, some great shots, some great acting.
So why do we kill Shakespeare for people by doing it the wrong way?
Why do we give them movie scripts to read and wonder why they don't get excited?
The scripts are for the actors and the sound crews and the lighting and the stunt team so that they can put on a show that we sit back and watch. The scripts are not for us. We want the finished product, we want the performance, we want the whole gleaming structure - not the scaffolding and the cranes and the blueprints.
Shakespeare's plays are the movies of Elizabethan England. You enjoy them by watching them. Not reading them.
That's where English Lit courses have always gotten it wrong. For centuries. And that's why too many people hate Shakespeare. Go read a movie script sometime and see if it holds your attention, especially if you don't have a part in the film. BORRRRRRING!
The only reason I can see for reading Shakespeare is in preparation for watching a performance of Shakespeare. That's it. As prep for a show so that you can understand the language and the plot better (after all, it is Elizabethan English, and that was 400 years ago). Otherwise, unless you're an actor or director or you're reading the sonnets, leave the scripts alone.
Can you imagine taking a course on film in high school or university and never watching a film, just reading the scripts? Absurd. So why do we approach Shakespeare as if we're reading a novel or a short story or a poem? We're not reading novels or short fiction or poetry - we've come to watch a play being performed. Studying Shakespeare - or any playwright and their plays for that matter - should be about watching the plays being staged.
In case you think it won't work, my son watched a series of Shakespeare dvds when he was 15. He did not sit and read the scripts, he watched the plays being performed on film, ones like Hamlet and King Lear and As You Like It. Sometimes we used subtitles and sometimes we didn't. To my surprise, in no time at all, he developed an ear for the language, understood what was going on, laughed at the jokes without prompting, and got into both traditional and modern dress Shakespeare. He got into Shakespeare in the same way we get into Clint Eastwood or Francis Ford Coppola - by watching it. Which, incidentally, was the same way the men and women and children of England got into it way back when. It's still the best way and beats reading movie scripts by a hundred to one.
If you were turned off of Shakespeare in school, try the performance approach. Trust me, the difference between printed page and powerful performance will astonish you.
[Thanks to Ron Reed, founding Artistic Director of Pacific Theatre in Vancouver, BC, Canada, for the germ of the idea for this blog.]
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
far from the madding crowd
Hardy finally gave up, you know. His novels were so heavily criticized, so many different groups and individuals weighing in for one reason or another, that he threw in the towel and retreated into his poetry. And he wrote some good poems. One of my favourites is about the legend of the animals in the barns and stables going to their knees at the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve. It is written in a wistful, plaintive tone, the poetry of a man who lost his faith along the way but who never really wanted to lose it and never found anything better to replace it.
But to return to the novels. The works of Thomas Hardy used to be a staple of high school English literature courses. Why they are not anymore is an issue for another blog: they are readable, highly dramatic and often keep the interest of a good number of teenage readers. If people have read anything by Hardy it will probably be Tess of the D'Urbervilles, commonly referred to as Tess. Or maybe they haven't read it, but recall the title because they saw a film version of it (the ill-starred Roman Polanski's being the best).
Hardy's novels can be grim fare. No one is spared the jarring, jagged blows of life. The novels are Shakespearean tragedies. The stage is littered with dead bodies or dead souls at the denouement. Yet this is too easy to say, true as it is. There are glimmers of redemption in many of his novels' final pages, far more glints of hope than William affords us at endings of Othello, King Lear or Hamlet. Without spoiling you with spoilers I shall mention a few (for I have no idea who has been reading Hardy these days of the Yorkshire moors when even the people who gave us Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Hopkins and Eliot and Tolkien have lost their literature and lost their fiction and so lost their way).
I might as well start with Tess. A tale that still haunts and hurts when I re-read it and re-live it. What horrific loss in the book, loss of all kinds, and the loss is relentless right up to the final paragraphs. Yet, there, just there, a shaft of light, a bright promise of new life, surprising, but there it is. (Read it for yourself - but please start at the beginning of the novel, not at the end, so that the proper impact may be most properly felt.)
Then there's The Return of the Native - I remember my older brother reading this in high school in the 1960s and all the mysterious books of those long lost days - including Pride and Prejudice and The Sun Also Rises - stirred a hope that I would one day get to open these intriguing volumes. (Alas, I was not to open them in high school literature courses, for by the 1970s they had vanished from the curriculum.)
Native has its share of tragedies and loss, just like Tess, and just like Tess the curtain closes not simply on bodies and broken lives but great promise and great hope, even a fledgling faith in a better world and a better God. The difference with the feel-good endings of the formula fiction of today is that the characters of Hardy's novels and the readers of those characters' pen and paper lives pay a price to get to the crack of sunlight and it's never a given. Tess and Native have those crinkles of the luminous, however brief, but Hardy's novel of Oxford the Cruel, Jude the Obscure, has none of it. Jude is, like all Hardy's novels and poems, beautifully written, but painful, oh so painful in its beauty. No dreaming spires here except ones that impale you.
But when Hardy does bring you into the light of a decent day, blinking furiously to take in the colours and sudden blessings, you know very well there has been no formula or fluff, you have lived and suffered real life just like your own real life and others' real lives. You have been somewhere in your imagination that matters and that can change your soul. I have yet to read a Hardy novel that does not turn me inside out and offer a form of catharsis or transformation, and that for the better, even though the pain may be razor sharp - not unlike the way in which the grace of God comes to us in the stone cold dark and cuts both dead and living flesh and dead and living spirit.
Yet, I confess here and now - for all blogging seems to me to be something of a confessional for all who strike the keys - that I have not read all Hardy's novels. But soft, before you howl foul, I am pretty sure my reading of the ones I've missed along the cobblestone years will bear me out, for Hardy is Hardy, yet I will submit to this - after I've read my missing links, I will return to blog about any theory of his art I must alter or any fresh insight I have threshed from the fields of Wessex (or that have threshed me). Surely that's fair.
And I will begin with Far From the Madding Crowd, a title that has always intrigued me. Following that I will delve into The Mayor of Casterbridge. Then I'll work my way through the others: Desperate Remedies, A Pair of Blue Eyes, The Woodlanders, Under the Greenwood Tree . . . and on and on until I find myself at his own end with his wonderful poems. Let us see if what I have written here holds up - a great adventure it will be to find out.
And if you haven't read any or much of Hardy, why not join me this autumn and see what you come across in his dark and leafy wood, infrequently ignited by vertical light so pure you can only shut your eyes and wish its illumination may be so, may truly be so.
But to return to the novels. The works of Thomas Hardy used to be a staple of high school English literature courses. Why they are not anymore is an issue for another blog: they are readable, highly dramatic and often keep the interest of a good number of teenage readers. If people have read anything by Hardy it will probably be Tess of the D'Urbervilles, commonly referred to as Tess. Or maybe they haven't read it, but recall the title because they saw a film version of it (the ill-starred Roman Polanski's being the best).
Hardy's novels can be grim fare. No one is spared the jarring, jagged blows of life. The novels are Shakespearean tragedies. The stage is littered with dead bodies or dead souls at the denouement. Yet this is too easy to say, true as it is. There are glimmers of redemption in many of his novels' final pages, far more glints of hope than William affords us at endings of Othello, King Lear or Hamlet. Without spoiling you with spoilers I shall mention a few (for I have no idea who has been reading Hardy these days of the Yorkshire moors when even the people who gave us Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Hopkins and Eliot and Tolkien have lost their literature and lost their fiction and so lost their way).
I might as well start with Tess. A tale that still haunts and hurts when I re-read it and re-live it. What horrific loss in the book, loss of all kinds, and the loss is relentless right up to the final paragraphs. Yet, there, just there, a shaft of light, a bright promise of new life, surprising, but there it is. (Read it for yourself - but please start at the beginning of the novel, not at the end, so that the proper impact may be most properly felt.)
Then there's The Return of the Native - I remember my older brother reading this in high school in the 1960s and all the mysterious books of those long lost days - including Pride and Prejudice and The Sun Also Rises - stirred a hope that I would one day get to open these intriguing volumes. (Alas, I was not to open them in high school literature courses, for by the 1970s they had vanished from the curriculum.)
Native has its share of tragedies and loss, just like Tess, and just like Tess the curtain closes not simply on bodies and broken lives but great promise and great hope, even a fledgling faith in a better world and a better God. The difference with the feel-good endings of the formula fiction of today is that the characters of Hardy's novels and the readers of those characters' pen and paper lives pay a price to get to the crack of sunlight and it's never a given. Tess and Native have those crinkles of the luminous, however brief, but Hardy's novel of Oxford the Cruel, Jude the Obscure, has none of it. Jude is, like all Hardy's novels and poems, beautifully written, but painful, oh so painful in its beauty. No dreaming spires here except ones that impale you.
But when Hardy does bring you into the light of a decent day, blinking furiously to take in the colours and sudden blessings, you know very well there has been no formula or fluff, you have lived and suffered real life just like your own real life and others' real lives. You have been somewhere in your imagination that matters and that can change your soul. I have yet to read a Hardy novel that does not turn me inside out and offer a form of catharsis or transformation, and that for the better, even though the pain may be razor sharp - not unlike the way in which the grace of God comes to us in the stone cold dark and cuts both dead and living flesh and dead and living spirit.
Yet, I confess here and now - for all blogging seems to me to be something of a confessional for all who strike the keys - that I have not read all Hardy's novels. But soft, before you howl foul, I am pretty sure my reading of the ones I've missed along the cobblestone years will bear me out, for Hardy is Hardy, yet I will submit to this - after I've read my missing links, I will return to blog about any theory of his art I must alter or any fresh insight I have threshed from the fields of Wessex (or that have threshed me). Surely that's fair.
And I will begin with Far From the Madding Crowd, a title that has always intrigued me. Following that I will delve into The Mayor of Casterbridge. Then I'll work my way through the others: Desperate Remedies, A Pair of Blue Eyes, The Woodlanders, Under the Greenwood Tree . . . and on and on until I find myself at his own end with his wonderful poems. Let us see if what I have written here holds up - a great adventure it will be to find out.
And if you haven't read any or much of Hardy, why not join me this autumn and see what you come across in his dark and leafy wood, infrequently ignited by vertical light so pure you can only shut your eyes and wish its illumination may be so, may truly be so.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
special poets: jane kenyon
Ms. Kenyon is a poet I discovered only recently, perhaps two weeks ago. One of her poems was included in a book comprised of readings for Lent and Easter. I am now tracking down her books of poetry. There is a collection of all her poems but the cover is awful, a still life that looks like an artificial dead life, and her books have a Frostean feel and a Wyethean feel (whose art should have graced the cover) and I simply won't have that book cover covering her poems in my house. (So there.) The covers I've seen on the separate editions have a much better feel about them: houses and trees and windows and beached boats.
But of course, I'm judging the cover and not the book of poems. I have just begun my sojourn with Kenyon's writing but the poems I have read tend to shortness, much said in little, ordinary things lifting us into the extraordinary - they have the kind of punch and precise beauty that keep a reader turning pages in the hunt for yet another brief cluster of letters and syllables that crack open the profound like a man cracks open an egg to mix in a drink or cook for a meal.
Yes, I've just begun so I don't know what I'll find. Just as no one told me about the Jesus Poems that Dylan Thomas wrote, which showed me that while he may have struggled with churchianity he had a deep love for Jesus, I don't know what I may find in her writings that deals with the metaphysical and angels and God and life and death. She doesn't have to write about those things in order for me to enjoy her poetry. But since that first poem of hers I read did talk about those things in a few dozen words, well, I expect I will find more thoughts on these matters as I delve into her volumes of paper and ink and soul.
I liked that first poem so much I included it in a final revision of a book for Harper Collins/Zondervan I was working on during Easter. I leave you with it and hope you will explore her poetry along with me. The poet laureate of New Hampshire, her physical presence left us in 1995.
Looking at Stars
The God of curved space, the dry
God, is not going to help us, but the son
whose blood spattered
the hem of his mother's robe.
But of course, I'm judging the cover and not the book of poems. I have just begun my sojourn with Kenyon's writing but the poems I have read tend to shortness, much said in little, ordinary things lifting us into the extraordinary - they have the kind of punch and precise beauty that keep a reader turning pages in the hunt for yet another brief cluster of letters and syllables that crack open the profound like a man cracks open an egg to mix in a drink or cook for a meal.
Yes, I've just begun so I don't know what I'll find. Just as no one told me about the Jesus Poems that Dylan Thomas wrote, which showed me that while he may have struggled with churchianity he had a deep love for Jesus, I don't know what I may find in her writings that deals with the metaphysical and angels and God and life and death. She doesn't have to write about those things in order for me to enjoy her poetry. But since that first poem of hers I read did talk about those things in a few dozen words, well, I expect I will find more thoughts on these matters as I delve into her volumes of paper and ink and soul.
I liked that first poem so much I included it in a final revision of a book for Harper Collins/Zondervan I was working on during Easter. I leave you with it and hope you will explore her poetry along with me. The poet laureate of New Hampshire, her physical presence left us in 1995.
Looking at Stars
The God of curved space, the dry
God, is not going to help us, but the son
whose blood spattered
the hem of his mother's robe.
significant writers: richard llewellyn
The Welsh have given us many wonderful things: the Welsh revivals (there have been several), hymns before football matches (soccer in Canada & the US), coal miners that sing well, Richard Burton, Dylan Thomas . . . and the novel How Green Was My Valley ought to be added to my truncated and certainly non-exhaustive list.
The book is so lyrical it's almost a poem from beginning to end. Wonderful metaphors and similes pull the reader's imagination in. It is the colour of the fiery green Welsh grass, the deep black Welsh coal, the pigeon grey Welsh winter sky. It is the colour of people and of language and of family happiness and family anguish.
At one time I believe the book was better known. Now, unless it pops up on a course in UK lit, I believe it's largely forgotten. But if Dylan Thomas had written a novel, it might have had this book's fluidity and imagery and phrasing if not exactly the same themes or immediate clarity.
Yes, I mentioned that family was in it – so is growing up, so is love and school and first kisses, so are hatreds and strikes and violence. And God. God has to be around somewhere if we're talking about the Welsh and God's there all right, often treated with worship and reverence, but often as not challenged in anger.
I like book covers and I like good ones enough not to purchase certain editions if I think the publisher's front cover people had a very bad day. Penguin usually does well at this sort of thing and they have a nice paperback of Llewellyn's novel with a green, hilly, meadowy Welsh scene on the front - at least, it looks like the Wales I've enjoyed on two separate trips. (And I've yet to see it rain in Wales though the flaming green tells me it does.) If you haven't got a copy of the book and want one you might try looking that edition up on Amazon or in a brick and mortar store. It's a very nice copy to read and have hanging around your house on tables and couches and kitchen counters or by the bed.
Richard has written other books you might want to look into. He wrote a sequel to this called Green, Green My Valley Now. And his second book (How Green being his first) may be the one you've heard mentioned in certain company – None But the Lonely Heart.
He passed beyond us in 1983.
The book is so lyrical it's almost a poem from beginning to end. Wonderful metaphors and similes pull the reader's imagination in. It is the colour of the fiery green Welsh grass, the deep black Welsh coal, the pigeon grey Welsh winter sky. It is the colour of people and of language and of family happiness and family anguish.
At one time I believe the book was better known. Now, unless it pops up on a course in UK lit, I believe it's largely forgotten. But if Dylan Thomas had written a novel, it might have had this book's fluidity and imagery and phrasing if not exactly the same themes or immediate clarity.
Yes, I mentioned that family was in it – so is growing up, so is love and school and first kisses, so are hatreds and strikes and violence. And God. God has to be around somewhere if we're talking about the Welsh and God's there all right, often treated with worship and reverence, but often as not challenged in anger.
I like book covers and I like good ones enough not to purchase certain editions if I think the publisher's front cover people had a very bad day. Penguin usually does well at this sort of thing and they have a nice paperback of Llewellyn's novel with a green, hilly, meadowy Welsh scene on the front - at least, it looks like the Wales I've enjoyed on two separate trips. (And I've yet to see it rain in Wales though the flaming green tells me it does.) If you haven't got a copy of the book and want one you might try looking that edition up on Amazon or in a brick and mortar store. It's a very nice copy to read and have hanging around your house on tables and couches and kitchen counters or by the bed.
Richard has written other books you might want to look into. He wrote a sequel to this called Green, Green My Valley Now. And his second book (How Green being his first) may be the one you've heard mentioned in certain company – None But the Lonely Heart.
He passed beyond us in 1983.
Thursday, November 06, 2008
significant writers: gail tsukiyama
Those who've read something by Gail Tsukiyama will likely have read Women of the Silk or its sequel. I've read those too and, at this point, I've not picked up any of her latest works, but I still have to say she will be hard put to beat the excellence of The Samurai's Garden.
I've made it clear in my previous "significant writers" blogs that I like fine simile and metaphor in my writing. Tsukiyama has all of that, painting pictures like Joyce in Portrait of the Artist, memorable images that even now, not having read The Samurai's Garden for several years, I open my mind eyes and see: sunlight on the Japanese homes, the beach, the sea, the two doomed lovers embracing in a cascade of colour and scent.
Doomed - I had to drop that cliche like a stone into the midst of my praise, didn't I? And why doomed? Because Tsukiyama has a Chinese mother and a Japanese father and, if you follow international events at all, you will know there is a long-standing tension that simmers between China and Japan. If you have never given pause to how that affects love between a man and a woman, The Samurai's Garden will show you in a story wonderfully put together, yes, and painfully put together.
Even though I knew of the atrocities perpetrated on China by Japan in the 1930s - while the world stood by and watched - I honestly had not thought about how the conflict must have tainted personal relationships between the Chinese and Japanese prior to reading the novel. Tsukiyama is well aware. The tale though tragic, is perfect, an incredible glimpse into a cultural agony few of us have pondered or read much about. But as in all good literature, the strength of Tsukiyama's writing is not in the fact she has chosen a neglected and controversial theme. The strength of her writing is her writing.
Born in San Francisco, Tsukiyama is an American jewel, a scintillating artistic light in a nation of many bright literary lights. Having talked briefly about The Samurai's Garden here, it awakens in me a desire to look into what she has penned since, an awakening I hope and believe will afford me many pleasant and intense hours this fall in the chill weeks before the Christmas season.
I've made it clear in my previous "significant writers" blogs that I like fine simile and metaphor in my writing. Tsukiyama has all of that, painting pictures like Joyce in Portrait of the Artist, memorable images that even now, not having read The Samurai's Garden for several years, I open my mind eyes and see: sunlight on the Japanese homes, the beach, the sea, the two doomed lovers embracing in a cascade of colour and scent.
Doomed - I had to drop that cliche like a stone into the midst of my praise, didn't I? And why doomed? Because Tsukiyama has a Chinese mother and a Japanese father and, if you follow international events at all, you will know there is a long-standing tension that simmers between China and Japan. If you have never given pause to how that affects love between a man and a woman, The Samurai's Garden will show you in a story wonderfully put together, yes, and painfully put together.
Even though I knew of the atrocities perpetrated on China by Japan in the 1930s - while the world stood by and watched - I honestly had not thought about how the conflict must have tainted personal relationships between the Chinese and Japanese prior to reading the novel. Tsukiyama is well aware. The tale though tragic, is perfect, an incredible glimpse into a cultural agony few of us have pondered or read much about. But as in all good literature, the strength of Tsukiyama's writing is not in the fact she has chosen a neglected and controversial theme. The strength of her writing is her writing.
Born in San Francisco, Tsukiyama is an American jewel, a scintillating artistic light in a nation of many bright literary lights. Having talked briefly about The Samurai's Garden here, it awakens in me a desire to look into what she has penned since, an awakening I hope and believe will afford me many pleasant and intense hours this fall in the chill weeks before the Christmas season.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
significant writers: rudy wiebe
Most readers familiar with Canadian literature will be aware of Rudy Wiebe. To readers outside of Canada, he is not as well known as Margaret Atwood or Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient). He does not live the life of the author-celebrity so even Canadians are not often aware of what he's writing or what he's up to.
There is a bit of experimental writing in Wiebe's most ambitious novels and some unique uses of stream of consciousness (sometimes like Faulkner's writing in The Sound and The Fury though Wiebe doesn't quite push the envelope so much). I can only describe the rhythms of his prose as jagged. I don't say these things to put you off. Wiebe's writing is extremely rewarding and satisfying for those willing to turn on their minds. Any of his books are a meal. But his novels are not dumbed down read-while-you-wait-for-the-plane thrillers.
I first read The Blue Mountains of China. I think what struck me the most was Wiebe's wonderful use of simile and metaphor. As brilliant as those of Nikos Kazantzakis. Highly original and full of colour and life. They make his books poetry in motion. This characteristic of his writing I found held true when I read The Temptations of Big Bear and The Scorched-Wood People.
Wiebe's asymmetrical rhythms and his rugged surge of words and seizure of your imagination and intellect make him unique, in my opinion, among world writers. Impressions left are indelible. I am not affected much by writers who have no metaphor or simile to speak of, and there are more of those around than I'm comfortable with. In my lifetime, and from very early on, poetry has easily affected me as much as story, so for someone to write a piece, however well put together, and not work at the lyric of their art - I can only say it leaves me stone cold dead.
A few people make a great deal of Wiebe's Mennonite background. It comes up in Peace Shall Destroy Many and in The Blue Mountains of China as part of their storylines but Wiebe does not proselytize, in fact that appears to be the farthest thing from his mind. What he is is a good writer who leans towards historical fiction and who can make his stories crackle with intellectual and emotional force. It is, I think, impressionistic writing, making you feel intensely because of the way he paints his sentences and paragraphs. He pulls you into not only the characters and the plot but into the sunlight and the shape of the leaves and the shape of the wind and the long arching contour of the land.
There is a bit of experimental writing in Wiebe's most ambitious novels and some unique uses of stream of consciousness (sometimes like Faulkner's writing in The Sound and The Fury though Wiebe doesn't quite push the envelope so much). I can only describe the rhythms of his prose as jagged. I don't say these things to put you off. Wiebe's writing is extremely rewarding and satisfying for those willing to turn on their minds. Any of his books are a meal. But his novels are not dumbed down read-while-you-wait-for-the-plane thrillers.
I first read The Blue Mountains of China. I think what struck me the most was Wiebe's wonderful use of simile and metaphor. As brilliant as those of Nikos Kazantzakis. Highly original and full of colour and life. They make his books poetry in motion. This characteristic of his writing I found held true when I read The Temptations of Big Bear and The Scorched-Wood People.
Wiebe's asymmetrical rhythms and his rugged surge of words and seizure of your imagination and intellect make him unique, in my opinion, among world writers. Impressions left are indelible. I am not affected much by writers who have no metaphor or simile to speak of, and there are more of those around than I'm comfortable with. In my lifetime, and from very early on, poetry has easily affected me as much as story, so for someone to write a piece, however well put together, and not work at the lyric of their art - I can only say it leaves me stone cold dead.
A few people make a great deal of Wiebe's Mennonite background. It comes up in Peace Shall Destroy Many and in The Blue Mountains of China as part of their storylines but Wiebe does not proselytize, in fact that appears to be the farthest thing from his mind. What he is is a good writer who leans towards historical fiction and who can make his stories crackle with intellectual and emotional force. It is, I think, impressionistic writing, making you feel intensely because of the way he paints his sentences and paragraphs. He pulls you into not only the characters and the plot but into the sunlight and the shape of the leaves and the shape of the wind and the long arching contour of the land.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
significant writers: jennifer johnston
I thought I'd do a series of blogs on writers from around the world whose works have particularly impressed me. Most will not be that well known, I think (though you can always write in and surprise me and tell me you've known about them for decades), while others, like Alan Paton of South Africa, will certainly be familiar to many.
I have liked Jennifer's work for years. It began with the short novel Shadows on our Skin, a troubled tale set in Northern Ireland that is swiftly and brilliantly told, impossible to forget. I think I read The Railway Station Man after that, again about The Troubles, though this time set in the South, again hurtling into the mind with a high velocity impact. The third novel was Fool's Sanctuary, easily one of her best, set in Ireland during the South's war and break with England, yet, despite this background for the novel, surprisingly delicate and peaceful, idyllic, until the sort of denouement that always leaves you pondering the cliffs and crags and crevasses of the human condition.
Her writing is crisp and clipped and tight, not like Joyce at all, if you'd like to compare her to another Irish writer. She is not obscure or dense, like a fog over Dublin's busy harbour, but more like clear light striking the Kerry coast. Blades of grass and waterdrops on the blades are obvious and each grain of sand on the beach, each water-rounded stone, each gull feather in the surf, each whitecap racing to the land, all are finely engraved in the words with which she chooses to strike the imagination.
I remember a time in Carlow - I have visited Ireland at length on several occasions, once for an entire summer - when evening clouds pulled away and gold light lit up the countryside. How emerald the grass was, how precise the cottages and full-leaved trees, how black a stallion that ran over his pasture. That is the clarity of her writing.
It is very moral writing, yes, I'll say that, she cares about rights and wrongs, not so much in the political sense (as in siding with Republicans or Unionists), but in terms of how people treat one another, love or betray one another. She is not a cynic about human nature but she does not pull any punches either. Her writing wounds you but it blesses as well and any tears are well spent and any hurts well felt. You turn away grieving a bit, wary of those around you in this brittle world, yet with a sense that tragedies can be other than they are and we can choose different fates and often do choose different fates. Sometimes, of course, no matter how well we lay our plans, fate or life or God chooses something much different than we'd hoped, and the clean white porcelain walls come crashing down anyway. But even then, in her writing, we still get a feeling that there is another day and there can be light and space and other choices on that day as well, regardless of yesterday. Yesterday is not trivial or easily forgotten. But it is not a mill-stone about the neck either.
I have liked Jennifer's work for years. It began with the short novel Shadows on our Skin, a troubled tale set in Northern Ireland that is swiftly and brilliantly told, impossible to forget. I think I read The Railway Station Man after that, again about The Troubles, though this time set in the South, again hurtling into the mind with a high velocity impact. The third novel was Fool's Sanctuary, easily one of her best, set in Ireland during the South's war and break with England, yet, despite this background for the novel, surprisingly delicate and peaceful, idyllic, until the sort of denouement that always leaves you pondering the cliffs and crags and crevasses of the human condition.
Her writing is crisp and clipped and tight, not like Joyce at all, if you'd like to compare her to another Irish writer. She is not obscure or dense, like a fog over Dublin's busy harbour, but more like clear light striking the Kerry coast. Blades of grass and waterdrops on the blades are obvious and each grain of sand on the beach, each water-rounded stone, each gull feather in the surf, each whitecap racing to the land, all are finely engraved in the words with which she chooses to strike the imagination.
I remember a time in Carlow - I have visited Ireland at length on several occasions, once for an entire summer - when evening clouds pulled away and gold light lit up the countryside. How emerald the grass was, how precise the cottages and full-leaved trees, how black a stallion that ran over his pasture. That is the clarity of her writing.
It is very moral writing, yes, I'll say that, she cares about rights and wrongs, not so much in the political sense (as in siding with Republicans or Unionists), but in terms of how people treat one another, love or betray one another. She is not a cynic about human nature but she does not pull any punches either. Her writing wounds you but it blesses as well and any tears are well spent and any hurts well felt. You turn away grieving a bit, wary of those around you in this brittle world, yet with a sense that tragedies can be other than they are and we can choose different fates and often do choose different fates. Sometimes, of course, no matter how well we lay our plans, fate or life or God chooses something much different than we'd hoped, and the clean white porcelain walls come crashing down anyway. But even then, in her writing, we still get a feeling that there is another day and there can be light and space and other choices on that day as well, regardless of yesterday. Yesterday is not trivial or easily forgotten. But it is not a mill-stone about the neck either.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
the Jesus fictions
Every author has certain pet stories, some of which are recognized by the reading public and some of which aren't.
For instance, I am so used to people reading The Divine Game Of Pinzatski that I am delighted when someone contacts me because they liked a different story, the more obscure the better. An author likes all his children, not just the more well-known ones.
So here is something. If I was asked to relate which story most hit the nail on the head in terms of an accurate description of an actual experience, maybe in a sentence, maybe in a paragraph, which story would I point to? Pinzatski? Boj? Mister Good Morning? The Emperor of Ice Cream?
Good Night, John King is a fictitious retelling of a boy's experiences in America in the spring of 1968. His parents are heavily involved in the social justice activities of Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) and Robert Kennedy (RFK). Some people have been comparing the summer of 2008 in America with the summer of 1968 and maybe that is something to talk about in another blog. For now, this story is the context for a paragraph which perfectly describes one moment in one morning in my life.
In the story it takes place in a motel room. In real life it took place in my bedroom. Dad usually called up the stairs to make sure I was awake for school. This time he came upstairs, asked me very gently if I was awake, then began wandering aimlessly about the room. I watched, surprised, from my bed, because he had never done anything like this before.
I can't tell you how long it took me to write the paragraph that describes this moment. If I had my original draft, which was in longhand in ballpoint pen, I would be able to see immediately what had been scratched out, what retained, what added. I can almost see that page in my mind's eye right now and I'm pretty sure it wasn't one of your got-it-right-first-time pieces of prose. But I do remember that when all was said and done and I re-read that paragraph, I knew that was it, those words described the moment and the feeling perfectly, nothing could or should ever be altered. I still feel that way. I like other things I have written, of course, but nothing, I believe, has come so close to accurately describing a critical moment in my human experience as that paragraph. That's how I felt, that's exactly how it was that early morning in June.
And what could my Dad not tell me that he finally did tell me? That Robert Kennedy had been shot. And because he felt it, he needed to talk to someone. He risked that I would feel it too, so he told me, and then we were both alone with the awfulness of what we knew . . .
You see, a work of non-fiction might have been able to describe to a certain degree the impact of Robert Kennedy's assassination on my father and I. Only fiction has the freedom and power to re-create the moment - sounds, smells, light, shadows, personal sensations - and even put it in a different place to suit the story, and yet more accurately describe the emotional impact of the moment than any fact-finding essay could do.
It is time Christians, in particular, start waking up to the fact that fiction is the great purveyor of truth. It is not simply a vehicle for end time thrillers or murder mysteries or western romances. It can carry very well indeed the weight of truth that even non-fiction cannot, to the extent of placing the reader right in the middle of the truth both emotionally and spiritually.
Jesus knew this all along. That's why he had stories, fictions, suitable for every occasion. "Without a fiction, he did not speak to them." And his fictions, along with the truths they convey, have remained with us for over 2000 years. Where books of fact and history lose stature over time, and are often declared obsolete and set aside as museum pieces and curiosities, his stories never fail to strike deep into the human heart and imagination.
It is time Christians increasingly wrote and spoke fictions of simplicity and complexity just like Jesus did. A world turns precisely on such profound tales of morality and mortality.
For instance, I am so used to people reading The Divine Game Of Pinzatski that I am delighted when someone contacts me because they liked a different story, the more obscure the better. An author likes all his children, not just the more well-known ones.
So here is something. If I was asked to relate which story most hit the nail on the head in terms of an accurate description of an actual experience, maybe in a sentence, maybe in a paragraph, which story would I point to? Pinzatski? Boj? Mister Good Morning? The Emperor of Ice Cream?
Good Night, John King is a fictitious retelling of a boy's experiences in America in the spring of 1968. His parents are heavily involved in the social justice activities of Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) and Robert Kennedy (RFK). Some people have been comparing the summer of 2008 in America with the summer of 1968 and maybe that is something to talk about in another blog. For now, this story is the context for a paragraph which perfectly describes one moment in one morning in my life.
In the story it takes place in a motel room. In real life it took place in my bedroom. Dad usually called up the stairs to make sure I was awake for school. This time he came upstairs, asked me very gently if I was awake, then began wandering aimlessly about the room. I watched, surprised, from my bed, because he had never done anything like this before.
I can't tell you how long it took me to write the paragraph that describes this moment. If I had my original draft, which was in longhand in ballpoint pen, I would be able to see immediately what had been scratched out, what retained, what added. I can almost see that page in my mind's eye right now and I'm pretty sure it wasn't one of your got-it-right-first-time pieces of prose. But I do remember that when all was said and done and I re-read that paragraph, I knew that was it, those words described the moment and the feeling perfectly, nothing could or should ever be altered. I still feel that way. I like other things I have written, of course, but nothing, I believe, has come so close to accurately describing a critical moment in my human experience as that paragraph. That's how I felt, that's exactly how it was that early morning in June.
And what could my Dad not tell me that he finally did tell me? That Robert Kennedy had been shot. And because he felt it, he needed to talk to someone. He risked that I would feel it too, so he told me, and then we were both alone with the awfulness of what we knew . . .
You see, a work of non-fiction might have been able to describe to a certain degree the impact of Robert Kennedy's assassination on my father and I. Only fiction has the freedom and power to re-create the moment - sounds, smells, light, shadows, personal sensations - and even put it in a different place to suit the story, and yet more accurately describe the emotional impact of the moment than any fact-finding essay could do.
It is time Christians, in particular, start waking up to the fact that fiction is the great purveyor of truth. It is not simply a vehicle for end time thrillers or murder mysteries or western romances. It can carry very well indeed the weight of truth that even non-fiction cannot, to the extent of placing the reader right in the middle of the truth both emotionally and spiritually.
Jesus knew this all along. That's why he had stories, fictions, suitable for every occasion. "Without a fiction, he did not speak to them." And his fictions, along with the truths they convey, have remained with us for over 2000 years. Where books of fact and history lose stature over time, and are often declared obsolete and set aside as museum pieces and curiosities, his stories never fail to strike deep into the human heart and imagination.
It is time Christians increasingly wrote and spoke fictions of simplicity and complexity just like Jesus did. A world turns precisely on such profound tales of morality and mortality.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Jesus the Includer
With all the sharp divisions these days between Christians and so many other groups and individuals - gays, pro-choice advocates, proponents of stem cell research, evolutionists with an atheistical slant - it's hard to imagine Christ as an includer, not an excluder. To many people it must seem like Christianity is about confrontation, polarization, isolation and exclusion. It's important this Holy Week to remember that Jesus brought people close and then transformed them, not the other way around. In fact, it was his bringing them close that often began the transformation.
Consider Zaccheus. Did Jesus begin the relationship by condemning him and mounting a protest march? No, he invited himself over for lunch and there was not even the whiff of a sermon in the air. That very act broke Zaccheus's heart just enough for God to rush in. It was the inclusion that Jesus offered that saved him.
Or consider the woman at the well. Another one of the excluded that Jesus included. He broke all sorts of taboos, a Jewish man sitting with a Samaritan woman who was living with a man she was not married to. He came close, joked with her, brought her back to life, saved her soul, without argument, without anger, without condemnation.
The same is true of the woman caught in adultery. Where was the condemnation? Where was the exclusion? Where was the sermon? The ones who got the sermon were the ones who hated her and wanted to kill her. Jesus would not condemn her, not hate her, certainly not kill her, but defend her and include her in his love.
It never stopped. Men and women with leprosy were touched. Romans were not marginalized. Nor the Jews who wanted to kill the Romans. Nor, despite his clashes with them, did Jesus exclude the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin who condemned him. He made room for Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea and other religious leaders. There was room in his band not only for the tax collector Matthew, but Simon the Zealot, the activist who would have loved to kill Matthew for collaborating with the Roman occupiers, but who instead wound up loving to love Matthew because of the love Jesus gave to Simon himself.
Were children excluded because they were children? Women because they were women? Soldiers because they were soldiers? Murderers? Thieves? Prostitutes or sex trade workers?
Jesus was the great includer. The very act of inclusion changed people from the inside out. Today, many Christians act as if the world around them and all its people must change first and then they will love them. Jesus loved the world and the people first and then both world and people changed for the better.
Consider Zaccheus. Did Jesus begin the relationship by condemning him and mounting a protest march? No, he invited himself over for lunch and there was not even the whiff of a sermon in the air. That very act broke Zaccheus's heart just enough for God to rush in. It was the inclusion that Jesus offered that saved him.
Or consider the woman at the well. Another one of the excluded that Jesus included. He broke all sorts of taboos, a Jewish man sitting with a Samaritan woman who was living with a man she was not married to. He came close, joked with her, brought her back to life, saved her soul, without argument, without anger, without condemnation.
The same is true of the woman caught in adultery. Where was the condemnation? Where was the exclusion? Where was the sermon? The ones who got the sermon were the ones who hated her and wanted to kill her. Jesus would not condemn her, not hate her, certainly not kill her, but defend her and include her in his love.
It never stopped. Men and women with leprosy were touched. Romans were not marginalized. Nor the Jews who wanted to kill the Romans. Nor, despite his clashes with them, did Jesus exclude the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin who condemned him. He made room for Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea and other religious leaders. There was room in his band not only for the tax collector Matthew, but Simon the Zealot, the activist who would have loved to kill Matthew for collaborating with the Roman occupiers, but who instead wound up loving to love Matthew because of the love Jesus gave to Simon himself.
Were children excluded because they were children? Women because they were women? Soldiers because they were soldiers? Murderers? Thieves? Prostitutes or sex trade workers?
Jesus was the great includer. The very act of inclusion changed people from the inside out. Today, many Christians act as if the world around them and all its people must change first and then they will love them. Jesus loved the world and the people first and then both world and people changed for the better.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
the road to easter and the fairy tale of the rose
My last blog was about Advent - I've been MIA for about two months - and now I'm writing my first blog of 2008 and already it's Easter. How come I'm into Easter so soon?
Well, it's not really that soon. Easter is very early this year. Palm Sunday comes before St. Patrick's Day (March 16th) and I can't remember the last time that happened. One of our community's study groups has already started examining the Easter Story in depth because if we don't start now we'll never get it done by Easter Sunday. It's only about six weeks away.
I think it's kind of cool that we're just done celebrating the Incarnation and here we are talking about Redemption. For obviously these are the critical moments of Christ's life on earth. We don't need to have months and months between them. A few weeks is sufficient.
If this were a fairy tale we would talk about the search for a magic blood that would save the Kingdom. And how the King had put up a reward of 10,000 gold pieces for whoever offered up that blood. And how people journeyed for months to come to the castle to let three drops of their blood fall upon a shriveled rose - if the blood was magic the rose would burst into life and dispel the cold and darkness and death overwhelming the Kingdom.
And, as fairy tales go, many would come, few would be chosen. In fact, none would be chosen. And the Kingdom would be at death's door. Until, by chance - or some heavenly design - a milkmaid's son, hauling some wood for the fire in the great hall, stopped to look at the shrunken rose, touched it, and pricked his finger on a thorn. Then became frightened as the rose swelled and grew and flashed red fire and began to burn away the cold and darkness. Perhaps he would stand rooted to the spot until the King came running and found him. Or perhaps the boy would flee and they would not find out whose blood had saved the Kingdom for days or weeks or months. Who knows?
The important thing is, a simple story like that can help us look at the familiar Easter Story with new eyes. We have heard the tale of the Cross so many times. And some don't want to hear it at all if they can help it, they want to skip right past the Cross with the dead body on it, the Cross of Good Friday, to the empty grave with no body in it, the Resurrection of Easter Sunday morning. But it's a funny thing - Jesus didn't tell us to remember his resurrection until he came again, he told us to remember his death.
He shed blood. Magic blood. Holy blood. Blood that could do things no other blood could do. Just as the Christmas baby was born to do things no other baby could do, and be someone no other baby could be - God.
So let Christmas and Easter be woven closely together this time around. Let the stories be told right on top of one another. Let stars and crosses and angels and stables and graveyards be intertwined. For really the story is one story, is it not? The greatest story ever told. Even if sometimes we have to tell it slant, as Emily Dickinson suggested, "tell the truth but tell it slant", so that maybe by doing so Easter won't be a ritual or a ceremony or just another holiday or a great chance to kick back. Maybe it will be an encounter with the supernatural. Maybe it will be one of the great God moments of my year and yours.
Because the God did die. And the blood did do what no other blood could do. And the baby was what no one else could be.
Well, it's not really that soon. Easter is very early this year. Palm Sunday comes before St. Patrick's Day (March 16th) and I can't remember the last time that happened. One of our community's study groups has already started examining the Easter Story in depth because if we don't start now we'll never get it done by Easter Sunday. It's only about six weeks away.
I think it's kind of cool that we're just done celebrating the Incarnation and here we are talking about Redemption. For obviously these are the critical moments of Christ's life on earth. We don't need to have months and months between them. A few weeks is sufficient.
If this were a fairy tale we would talk about the search for a magic blood that would save the Kingdom. And how the King had put up a reward of 10,000 gold pieces for whoever offered up that blood. And how people journeyed for months to come to the castle to let three drops of their blood fall upon a shriveled rose - if the blood was magic the rose would burst into life and dispel the cold and darkness and death overwhelming the Kingdom.
And, as fairy tales go, many would come, few would be chosen. In fact, none would be chosen. And the Kingdom would be at death's door. Until, by chance - or some heavenly design - a milkmaid's son, hauling some wood for the fire in the great hall, stopped to look at the shrunken rose, touched it, and pricked his finger on a thorn. Then became frightened as the rose swelled and grew and flashed red fire and began to burn away the cold and darkness. Perhaps he would stand rooted to the spot until the King came running and found him. Or perhaps the boy would flee and they would not find out whose blood had saved the Kingdom for days or weeks or months. Who knows?
The important thing is, a simple story like that can help us look at the familiar Easter Story with new eyes. We have heard the tale of the Cross so many times. And some don't want to hear it at all if they can help it, they want to skip right past the Cross with the dead body on it, the Cross of Good Friday, to the empty grave with no body in it, the Resurrection of Easter Sunday morning. But it's a funny thing - Jesus didn't tell us to remember his resurrection until he came again, he told us to remember his death.
He shed blood. Magic blood. Holy blood. Blood that could do things no other blood could do. Just as the Christmas baby was born to do things no other baby could do, and be someone no other baby could be - God.
So let Christmas and Easter be woven closely together this time around. Let the stories be told right on top of one another. Let stars and crosses and angels and stables and graveyards be intertwined. For really the story is one story, is it not? The greatest story ever told. Even if sometimes we have to tell it slant, as Emily Dickinson suggested, "tell the truth but tell it slant", so that maybe by doing so Easter won't be a ritual or a ceremony or just another holiday or a great chance to kick back. Maybe it will be an encounter with the supernatural. Maybe it will be one of the great God moments of my year and yours.
Because the God did die. And the blood did do what no other blood could do. And the baby was what no one else could be.
Monday, December 03, 2007
one for the road
This first week of Advent I offer a prayer from the pen and heart of Thomas Merton.
Merton was a Catholic Christian and also a monastic. A very thoughtful and
down-to-earth believer. Perhaps his words may speak to some of you. Personally,
I can pray this one from the heart, no problem. Maybe you can too. Here it is.
Christ be with you in all your ups and downs and level spaces this week.
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road
ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I
really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your
will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the
desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that
desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything
apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me
by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I
trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of
death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never
leave me to face my perils alone.
Amen.
Merton was a Catholic Christian and also a monastic. A very thoughtful and
down-to-earth believer. Perhaps his words may speak to some of you. Personally,
I can pray this one from the heart, no problem. Maybe you can too. Here it is.
Christ be with you in all your ups and downs and level spaces this week.
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road
ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I
really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your
will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the
desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that
desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything
apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me
by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I
trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of
death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never
leave me to face my perils alone.
Amen.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
a state of wonder
Canadian pianist and musician Glenn Gould has this marvelous quote: "The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity."
I have taken this quote and altered it slightly to read like this: "The purpose of the Christian faith is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity."
I think Glenn will not have a hard time forgiving me for tinkering with his words. His Christian background will amply prepare him for such an alteration and, in my humble opinion, the two terms - "art" and "the Christian faith" - ought to be interchangeable. The Christian life ought to be considered a work of art in progress, in the deft hands of a loving God who has an eye for beauty and originality.
I have taken this quote and altered it slightly to read like this: "The purpose of the Christian faith is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity."
I think Glenn will not have a hard time forgiving me for tinkering with his words. His Christian background will amply prepare him for such an alteration and, in my humble opinion, the two terms - "art" and "the Christian faith" - ought to be interchangeable. The Christian life ought to be considered a work of art in progress, in the deft hands of a loving God who has an eye for beauty and originality.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
paint
The whole idea of it is old, at least for me.
I grew up with a brother who wanted to be an artist. An enduring memory is a Christmas Day when he was 15 or 16 and he spent the entire day on his bed in the room we shared reading The Agony and the Ecstasy. He was older than me by five years. Soon he was off to university for his Bachelor's in Fine Arts and south to the States for his Master's. Caught up in his world I brought it with me when Christ became the revelation that revolutionized my life. It did not take long for me to realize I was trying to mix oil and water. The first story I sold at 14 or 15 was published by an evangelical firm that gutted my fiction before printing it, something I did not know until I received a copy of what they were going to release. All the depth and complexity I had worked so hard to include in a story of a boy coming to faith in God was gone, vaporized. The firm didn't want art. They wanted a tract. Or to put it bluntly, propaganda.
Forty years later nothing has changed. It's actually probably worse. The evangelical publishing houses still want tracts, formulas, genre fiction that never slips out from under the locked doors of its predictability. They don't want art. Art is certainly not formula, certainly not predictable. It is messy and you never know where it is going to take you, simply because an ending has not been preordained in order to serve a particular genre. It's God and mud and blood and ink and cyberchips and the volcanic, unlimited human imagination.
Where the story gets really old is in the paint. Remember that oil and water don't mix? So oil paint and the waters of Christian baptism don't work well together. Or so somebody decided in the 19th and 20th centuries. Which my brother points out to me. (He who has read Rookmaker's Modern Art and the Death of a Culture with approval, arguing only that you can't go back to the Christian era, if Christians want to paint they have to do it in the now, the modern or postmodern era.) Which brings up his persistent point. Why did Christians stop painting works of art?
Trying to deny profound Christian influence in the arts of Western civilization is like trying to deny Everest is a tall mountain. The Christian influence is all too obvious and its impact is just as obviously far reaching. Bach and Handel and Hadyn. Milton and Herbert and Donne. Rembrandt and Da Vinci and Michelangelo. Tolkien and Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. But unquestionably the painting and sculpting stopped. At least it stopped making a difference.
Even though the first person mentioned in the Scriptures that is filled with the spirit of God is an artist, certain elements of Christianity have always been ill at ease with the arts. Somehow this attitude got the upper hand as the 19th century progressed. Did the Age of Enlightenment, pouring into the modern era, stop Christian artists from searching out Christ in paint and stone? Why didn't it stop other artists? Was it a Christian over-reaction to biblical higher criticism which challenged the veracity of the Bible? Did Christianity feel all resources had to be spent proving the Bible was literally true and there was no longer any effort made to support the arts? Did Western culture become less and less Christian and so less and less interested in Christian themes? Or did a certain spirit get into the Church that declared the arts not only frivolous to real faith but dangerous and in saying this gain the ear of an inordinate number of Christian believers and pastors?
I suppose if I was going to do Phd research on this topic I might find a number of reasons for the loss of Da Vincis and Rembrandts in the Christian faith. Personally, I think a whole wave of thought within Christianity turned its back on art as something that serious spiritual Christians might do. In particular, this affected the Protestant movement and the evangelical movement. In the same way Protestantism and evangelicalism should have kept monasticism but didn't, Protestantism and evangelicalism should have kept art but didn't. And the prints sold in evangelical bookstores prove it. As well as the absence of faith on the walls of downtown art galleries.
For a couple of decades there has been a growing resurgence of artistic activity within not only Christianity but, specifically, evangelical Christianity. It has not impacted Western culture yet in a way the Christian faith once did and there is still plenty of opposition with the evangelical Church to keep the flow of works small. But persistence of a few may mean the breaching of the dike that keeps Christ from talking to his world through literary fiction, poetry, theatre, ballet, popular and neo-classical music . . . and paint.
Then I will no longer have to admit to my brother that Christians, whose works of art have challenged and inspired the world, do not make paintings or sculptures anymore because they think art doesn't matter to God or humanity as much as a sermon or a tract or a book about the Anti-Christ and the end of the world. And he'll be able to look at a canvas and see not a formula in color but a living, breathing exploration of the spiritual dimension, no holds barred, no perspective barred, no Christ barred.
I grew up with a brother who wanted to be an artist. An enduring memory is a Christmas Day when he was 15 or 16 and he spent the entire day on his bed in the room we shared reading The Agony and the Ecstasy. He was older than me by five years. Soon he was off to university for his Bachelor's in Fine Arts and south to the States for his Master's. Caught up in his world I brought it with me when Christ became the revelation that revolutionized my life. It did not take long for me to realize I was trying to mix oil and water. The first story I sold at 14 or 15 was published by an evangelical firm that gutted my fiction before printing it, something I did not know until I received a copy of what they were going to release. All the depth and complexity I had worked so hard to include in a story of a boy coming to faith in God was gone, vaporized. The firm didn't want art. They wanted a tract. Or to put it bluntly, propaganda.
Forty years later nothing has changed. It's actually probably worse. The evangelical publishing houses still want tracts, formulas, genre fiction that never slips out from under the locked doors of its predictability. They don't want art. Art is certainly not formula, certainly not predictable. It is messy and you never know where it is going to take you, simply because an ending has not been preordained in order to serve a particular genre. It's God and mud and blood and ink and cyberchips and the volcanic, unlimited human imagination.
Where the story gets really old is in the paint. Remember that oil and water don't mix? So oil paint and the waters of Christian baptism don't work well together. Or so somebody decided in the 19th and 20th centuries. Which my brother points out to me. (He who has read Rookmaker's Modern Art and the Death of a Culture with approval, arguing only that you can't go back to the Christian era, if Christians want to paint they have to do it in the now, the modern or postmodern era.) Which brings up his persistent point. Why did Christians stop painting works of art?
Trying to deny profound Christian influence in the arts of Western civilization is like trying to deny Everest is a tall mountain. The Christian influence is all too obvious and its impact is just as obviously far reaching. Bach and Handel and Hadyn. Milton and Herbert and Donne. Rembrandt and Da Vinci and Michelangelo. Tolkien and Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. But unquestionably the painting and sculpting stopped. At least it stopped making a difference.
Even though the first person mentioned in the Scriptures that is filled with the spirit of God is an artist, certain elements of Christianity have always been ill at ease with the arts. Somehow this attitude got the upper hand as the 19th century progressed. Did the Age of Enlightenment, pouring into the modern era, stop Christian artists from searching out Christ in paint and stone? Why didn't it stop other artists? Was it a Christian over-reaction to biblical higher criticism which challenged the veracity of the Bible? Did Christianity feel all resources had to be spent proving the Bible was literally true and there was no longer any effort made to support the arts? Did Western culture become less and less Christian and so less and less interested in Christian themes? Or did a certain spirit get into the Church that declared the arts not only frivolous to real faith but dangerous and in saying this gain the ear of an inordinate number of Christian believers and pastors?
I suppose if I was going to do Phd research on this topic I might find a number of reasons for the loss of Da Vincis and Rembrandts in the Christian faith. Personally, I think a whole wave of thought within Christianity turned its back on art as something that serious spiritual Christians might do. In particular, this affected the Protestant movement and the evangelical movement. In the same way Protestantism and evangelicalism should have kept monasticism but didn't, Protestantism and evangelicalism should have kept art but didn't. And the prints sold in evangelical bookstores prove it. As well as the absence of faith on the walls of downtown art galleries.
For a couple of decades there has been a growing resurgence of artistic activity within not only Christianity but, specifically, evangelical Christianity. It has not impacted Western culture yet in a way the Christian faith once did and there is still plenty of opposition with the evangelical Church to keep the flow of works small. But persistence of a few may mean the breaching of the dike that keeps Christ from talking to his world through literary fiction, poetry, theatre, ballet, popular and neo-classical music . . . and paint.
Then I will no longer have to admit to my brother that Christians, whose works of art have challenged and inspired the world, do not make paintings or sculptures anymore because they think art doesn't matter to God or humanity as much as a sermon or a tract or a book about the Anti-Christ and the end of the world. And he'll be able to look at a canvas and see not a formula in color but a living, breathing exploration of the spiritual dimension, no holds barred, no perspective barred, no Christ barred.
Monday, September 17, 2007
is God love or hate?
I recall a preacher juxtaposing God's holiness with God's love in a sermon one Sunday morning many years ago. Which was a better description of the true essence of deity? He mentioned another person had once told him divinity was summed up in the Johannine phrase, "God is love." The preacher scoffed: "No! God is holy!" I wasn't much satisfied that Sunday morning, being around 16 or 17, and I remain less convinced today.
Perhaps he felt to reduce God essentially to love would render God too anemic or mushy or touchy-feely or . . . weak? I wonder if since then he's ever had the opportunity to listen to Rich Mullins' song where Rich calls it "the reckless raging fury that they call the love of God"? A United Church minister in my town astonished me by praying about God's "savage love" and it made me think of other metaphors and similes, "a love like thunder", "a storm of love", "a grim, unbending, unyielding love". I often think about the Song of Songs and how it describes love - a fire that cannot be put out, a fire more fierce than hellfire, a burning. A love that takes on the sword cut of human sin and the nail cut of the Cross is not a weakness in man or God, but a greatness.
So suppose you had God's holiness without love, what kind of darkness would that be? Even Paul knew love had to be the human bedrock or any action at all, even done in the name of God (or especially done in the name of God), would be a din like the din of the human hells of genocide, rape or war. And if true for us to hold to, true for God to hold to as well. For he who is human in Christ defines humanity for us all and it is from this essence of humanness that the milk of human kindness must flow or we are all doomed. Better a kind God than a merciless one, aloof in his flawless purity. Better a kind Christian than a perfect one who cannot stoop and risk being stained. Better a faith defined by kindness than one defined by power and might. Better the holy God totally caught up in forgiveness and pity than the holy God caught up completely in himself. Better the Christian caught up in the Cross and the bleeding than the Christian caught up in being a Christian.
Perhaps he felt to reduce God essentially to love would render God too anemic or mushy or touchy-feely or . . . weak? I wonder if since then he's ever had the opportunity to listen to Rich Mullins' song where Rich calls it "the reckless raging fury that they call the love of God"? A United Church minister in my town astonished me by praying about God's "savage love" and it made me think of other metaphors and similes, "a love like thunder", "a storm of love", "a grim, unbending, unyielding love". I often think about the Song of Songs and how it describes love - a fire that cannot be put out, a fire more fierce than hellfire, a burning. A love that takes on the sword cut of human sin and the nail cut of the Cross is not a weakness in man or God, but a greatness.
So suppose you had God's holiness without love, what kind of darkness would that be? Even Paul knew love had to be the human bedrock or any action at all, even done in the name of God (or especially done in the name of God), would be a din like the din of the human hells of genocide, rape or war. And if true for us to hold to, true for God to hold to as well. For he who is human in Christ defines humanity for us all and it is from this essence of humanness that the milk of human kindness must flow or we are all doomed. Better a kind God than a merciless one, aloof in his flawless purity. Better a kind Christian than a perfect one who cannot stoop and risk being stained. Better a faith defined by kindness than one defined by power and might. Better the holy God totally caught up in forgiveness and pity than the holy God caught up completely in himself. Better the Christian caught up in the Cross and the bleeding than the Christian caught up in being a Christian.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
infidel
One of the books I read this summer was Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel. It is basically her autobiography about growing up Muslim and then growing up beyond Muslim. You may remember the brutal murder of her artist friend, Theodore Van Gogh, at the hands of a Muslim extremist in Holland a few years ago. There was a good deal of approval for this killing in the Dutch Muslim community. Van Gogh's crime? He made a movie, a very short movie, about the abuse of Muslim women. He and Ali dared to challenge Islam. For that he died and for that, and Ayaan's continued outspoken criticism against the abuses of Islam, she must have constant protection. She has now left Holland and lives in the US where she works with the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC.
The book is a page turner. It stuns. But it is not only the issues that flame between her and Islam that ignite the pages. It is the parallels with evangelical Christianity. She, I must quickly point out, does not draw these parallels. But for myself the connections between major aspects of evangelicalism and rank and file fundamentalist Islam are too obvious to ignore. It almost made me break into a cold sweat as I read the book.
What parallels? For starters, intolerance. Evangelicals are very good at not giving any space to people who think and act differently than they do. Though there is supposed to be a separation of church and state in the west, there are many who would, like Islam, love to erase that distinction, make both one, and rule nations with their brand of evangelical Christianity - and a very ruthless brand it can be.
The subjection of women. Because subjection it is. Women can't teach men - women can't preach - women can't be pastors - women can't lead. We find a few verses in the New Testament, ignore a multitude of others, and condemn women to a second tier existence in the Body of Christ. And call it God.
Homosexuality. An Islamic Republic would execute them. When you listen to some of the rhetoric coming out of the evangelical camp, you wonder if they wouldn't do the same in a Christian Republic.
Not allowing people to choose. Evangelicals may not like abortion - I don't - but you cannot force a woman to bear a child. You cannot put a gun to her head, say she cannot have an abortion, and call it God. You cannot put the same gun to the gay man's head, to the gay woman's head, and say you cannot be homosexual, or have a gay marriage, and call it God. Christians have as ugly a history as Islam in this regard - the butchery of Jews and Muslims in Christ's name, forced conversions, forced mass baptisms, the slaughter of Christians by Christians - all because some people wanted to believe differently, be baptized differently, read a different translation of the Bible, take a different stance on the nature of God. I'm afraid that spirit of intolerance still broods in the evangelical breast. In fact, many would call it a mark of true spirituality - such people are celebrated as being closer to God.
Anti-intellectualism. Anti-imagination. Anti-literature. Anti-arts. I know as well as anyone the new flowering of the arts and intellect, yes, and even of tolerance, among evangelical Christians. I also know it is in relatively short supply and that mediocrity and ignorance still reign supreme. Evangelicals acclaim the depth and value of shallow and tepid books, they thump their chests and point to sales of the Left Behind series and say, "Look, we've made it, this is our literature, and it's making a lot of money." Crass, cruel, craven and commercial. Exalting materialism and ignorance and intolerance. Worshipping the shallow, affixing God to a bumper sticker or T shirt, hating gays, screaming at women who have abortions, calling themselves pro-life but supporting war and the death penalty, making abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research the most important issues, but saying little enough about Darfur and human rights issues and the environment, turning their back on centuries of sculpture and painting and writing by Christians (and everybody else). And calling it God.
Sweeping generalizations? No, not really. I grow tired of people always saying, "Oh, but not all evangelicals are like that." The truth is, quite a few are. And a smattering of Christian liberal arts colleges and a new generation of Phds doesn't change that. The rareified air of an academic institution may lull some into thinking rank and file evangelicalism is just like what happens in those classrooms, but that's just not the case. The same thinking and exploring and listening is not out there in the mosque and the chapel. A few interesting writers who have Christian beliefs - Walker Percy, Wendell Berry, Frederick Buechner to mention three - doesn't change what fills the fiction shelves of most Christian bookstores (and trinket emporiums) and it has no bearing whatsoever on the formula fiction evangelical publishers churn out by the bushel - it's all about $$$$ and maintaining an insipid evangelical status quo. Painting? Painting is what evangelicals do to their kitchen walls when they want to change the colour scheme of their homes. It's what they sell in the bookstores - shepherds and sheep and fat cutesy angels and chrome crosses. A few good paintings hung in a few evangelical colleges and institutions does not change what the majority are buying and hanging and calling sublime.
No wonder I felt panic when I read Ayaan's book. Islam and evangelicalism have so much in common it's scary. And this sort of religious, political and cultural fascism is not diminishing among Christian evangelicals. Despite well-wishers to the contrary, it's on the increase, and a handful of thinkers and writers and sculptors have not changed the face of evangelical Christianity from cruel to kind. Not yet.
The book is a page turner. It stuns. But it is not only the issues that flame between her and Islam that ignite the pages. It is the parallels with evangelical Christianity. She, I must quickly point out, does not draw these parallels. But for myself the connections between major aspects of evangelicalism and rank and file fundamentalist Islam are too obvious to ignore. It almost made me break into a cold sweat as I read the book.
What parallels? For starters, intolerance. Evangelicals are very good at not giving any space to people who think and act differently than they do. Though there is supposed to be a separation of church and state in the west, there are many who would, like Islam, love to erase that distinction, make both one, and rule nations with their brand of evangelical Christianity - and a very ruthless brand it can be.
The subjection of women. Because subjection it is. Women can't teach men - women can't preach - women can't be pastors - women can't lead. We find a few verses in the New Testament, ignore a multitude of others, and condemn women to a second tier existence in the Body of Christ. And call it God.
Homosexuality. An Islamic Republic would execute them. When you listen to some of the rhetoric coming out of the evangelical camp, you wonder if they wouldn't do the same in a Christian Republic.
Not allowing people to choose. Evangelicals may not like abortion - I don't - but you cannot force a woman to bear a child. You cannot put a gun to her head, say she cannot have an abortion, and call it God. You cannot put the same gun to the gay man's head, to the gay woman's head, and say you cannot be homosexual, or have a gay marriage, and call it God. Christians have as ugly a history as Islam in this regard - the butchery of Jews and Muslims in Christ's name, forced conversions, forced mass baptisms, the slaughter of Christians by Christians - all because some people wanted to believe differently, be baptized differently, read a different translation of the Bible, take a different stance on the nature of God. I'm afraid that spirit of intolerance still broods in the evangelical breast. In fact, many would call it a mark of true spirituality - such people are celebrated as being closer to God.
Anti-intellectualism. Anti-imagination. Anti-literature. Anti-arts. I know as well as anyone the new flowering of the arts and intellect, yes, and even of tolerance, among evangelical Christians. I also know it is in relatively short supply and that mediocrity and ignorance still reign supreme. Evangelicals acclaim the depth and value of shallow and tepid books, they thump their chests and point to sales of the Left Behind series and say, "Look, we've made it, this is our literature, and it's making a lot of money." Crass, cruel, craven and commercial. Exalting materialism and ignorance and intolerance. Worshipping the shallow, affixing God to a bumper sticker or T shirt, hating gays, screaming at women who have abortions, calling themselves pro-life but supporting war and the death penalty, making abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research the most important issues, but saying little enough about Darfur and human rights issues and the environment, turning their back on centuries of sculpture and painting and writing by Christians (and everybody else). And calling it God.
Sweeping generalizations? No, not really. I grow tired of people always saying, "Oh, but not all evangelicals are like that." The truth is, quite a few are. And a smattering of Christian liberal arts colleges and a new generation of Phds doesn't change that. The rareified air of an academic institution may lull some into thinking rank and file evangelicalism is just like what happens in those classrooms, but that's just not the case. The same thinking and exploring and listening is not out there in the mosque and the chapel. A few interesting writers who have Christian beliefs - Walker Percy, Wendell Berry, Frederick Buechner to mention three - doesn't change what fills the fiction shelves of most Christian bookstores (and trinket emporiums) and it has no bearing whatsoever on the formula fiction evangelical publishers churn out by the bushel - it's all about $$$$ and maintaining an insipid evangelical status quo. Painting? Painting is what evangelicals do to their kitchen walls when they want to change the colour scheme of their homes. It's what they sell in the bookstores - shepherds and sheep and fat cutesy angels and chrome crosses. A few good paintings hung in a few evangelical colleges and institutions does not change what the majority are buying and hanging and calling sublime.
No wonder I felt panic when I read Ayaan's book. Islam and evangelicalism have so much in common it's scary. And this sort of religious, political and cultural fascism is not diminishing among Christian evangelicals. Despite well-wishers to the contrary, it's on the increase, and a handful of thinkers and writers and sculptors have not changed the face of evangelical Christianity from cruel to kind. Not yet.
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