You might know I enjoy watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I've mentioned before, perhaps here, that I think John Stewart operates out of the best of the prophetic tradition; funny, clever, disruptive.
You might also know, if we've enjoyed a beverage together, that because I like to watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report I like to pretend I'm informed, particularly about political goings on in the U.S.A. Further, that I like to prattle and opine about the world in which we find ourselves, and that the opining often gets around to head shaking befuddlement at the current state of affairs south of the boarder. All these things you may know.
Likewise, you may know that In the heat of discussion, I sometimes (often? most of the time?) can't coherently nor articulately talk about the current state of affairs, I just list random facts which add up to an amorphous feeling of dread.
Today I came across an article that is both coherent and articulate, penned by a former Republican staffer Mike Lofgren entitled "Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult." It isn't anything really new, if you've been even half paying attention, but it pulls everything together in a way that is, well, alarming.
If you have a slightly shorter attention span, the article came to my attention by way of the not at all provocatively titled piece "How the Apocolyptic GOP is Dragging Us Into A Civil War." written by Matt Taibbi for Rolling Stone magazine. (Apparently the ability to create punchy titles is why Rolling Stone is the larger of the two publications.)
I'd recommend a quick glance at the shorter Rolling Stone piece, and if you have time Lofgren's longer piece as well.
As an extra bonus, I'm going to include a link to an article referrenced by Lofgren. It's written by Rev. Jerry Falwell and is entitled, I'm not making this up, "God is pro-war." The denouement of Falwell's crushing logic comes with an observation regarding the sixth commandment, which doesn't say thou shalt not kill. "Actually, no; it says: 'Thou shalt not commit murder.'" And there you have it folks, that amorphous feeling of dread.
At The Work Of The People we've taken to describing ourselves as desert dwellers who provide food for desert dwellers. I sometimes wish I had a more settled life serving the establishment in established ways for established compensation. But just sometimes.
Thoughts of a warm and fuzzy status quo dissolve away when I sit down to a rich desert feast, the kind of feast you can only get in the desert, the kind of feast only desert dwellers can create. I remember why I'm here, I remember who I'm serving, I remember how blessedly good desert food, like the little film above, is.
If you've got 5 minutes, take a break and pop into the tent, Jean Vanier has a desert feast waiting. Sit still with his words for a time and front will be back, back will be front. Up will be down and down will be up. Suddenly the desert will make sense again.
Compressed 02 // A short film made by Kim Pimmel using "exotic ferrofluid liquid" and ordinary soap bubbles. It's all analog, macro lenses and stop motion. Surely part of the mesmerizing effect is the editing and the score, but what else is going on here? Is it capillaries= life blood, therefore we read it as organic and alive? Is it the know presence of ferro fluids? The eerie tension of man and machine—it looks alive but it's metal. Or does it somehow capture elemental forms and flows that resonate down to our fleshy and embodied DNA that binds us to the wonder of creation?
There was a whole lotta eatin' in Paris. But it's okay, because everyone walks everywhere.
PIC 1: The best Steak & Frites ever. Period. PIC 2: The largest steak I have ever eaten in my life. I thought this was Europe!? Portion control people. PIC 3&4: Did I mention Julie gave us breakfasts to die for. The strawberries are as good as they look, pain au chocolat, fresh coffee...mmmmm. The French have got the breakfast thing going on. Well, they have all the various and sundry eating opportunities of the day going on, but the croissant has to be the crowning glory of French culinary invention. Aghast Foreigner: "Seriously, you're going to eat a pound of butter and some chocolate... for breakfast?" The French: "Oui."
La Ferme, which means "The Farm." A collection of old farm buildings converted onto office space, a library, meeting rooms, accomodations for visitors, and the chapel.
The origianl house where Jean Vanier started L'Arche. A recent photo of mine and a close up of a very old photo on the wall inside the house. Can you find the site of the old photo in the new photo?
It's difficult to put the time spent at L'Arche into words, so I'll half try. The other half of my attempt will be pictures. Here is a couple of pictures of the town to Trosly-Breuil and one of the chapel at La Ferme. The L'Arche community is scattered through out the town in a number of houses. La Ferme is a collection of old farm buildings now used by L'Arche as a retreat centre, an office, accomodations and a chapel. There is another "compound" called The Fountain that is another collection of multipurpose buildings. Apart from La Ferme and The Fountain, L'Arche is simply homes in the town in which disabled people and the assistants who care for them live.
This is the baguette that brought me to tears. It was one of those "life is good" moments. We had strolled around the town the evening before, it's so quiet, peaceful and calming as well as rustic and beautiful. The French country side is anything but hicksville, it is soothing oil poured over any troubled heart. The next morning we went into one of La Ferme's ivy clad stone buildings to partake of breakfast. The building looks like the kind of thing a North American building would try to imitate for effect, except this one just "is." Not only that, it effortlessly just "is." Upon entering, in the corner of the foyer was a large brown paper bag with about 20 baguettes. Even the bread delivery is a thing of beauty. Breakfast was fresh brewed coffee and milk in a bowl and a baguette with jam, which you see pictured above. The sun was shining, birds were singing, we were in France, we were at L'Arche, we were calmed and soothed, we were enfolded in hospitality and here was this simple perfect bread that was good beyond words. It was a tip of the tounge taste of just how good a restored world will be, and so breakfast was accompanied by a tear.
Lastly, here's a few pictures of Jean Vanier. While walking about Trosly-Breuil on that first evening we chanced upon Jean Vanier out for a walk. It was… mystical? There's one of him in his study where he writes and works, that's where we interviewed him. I can't wait to see the footage to watch it over and over again. It's always speacial talking to people who've had an impact on our lives, but this different somehow. As Travis said, "I think I'm going to be a better human being for being here." And it wasn't an exaggeration, it felt that way for all of us. Afterwards Jean graciously let us take some pictures and then bid each of us goodbye with a customary kiss on each cheek.
More to come as I go through more pictures. *BTW, I couldn't take pictures with Hipstamatic so these are all hand photoshopped hipstamaticatized.
...which we use to shield ourselves, avoid pain and miss actually encountering Jesus. Sounds like dangerous words, and I guess they are, but hearing them come from Jean Vanier while sitting in his study gives them compelling credibility. Of course I haven't done his words justice, so look for the videos on The Work Of The People coming soon. We've been watching a few clips and they're all amazing words from an amazing man. I was there and I already want re watch it all and drink it all in again. Not idol worshiping here, it's just that the warm embrace of L'Arche, which we had been bathing for the last few days, gives him an awful lot of credibility. The "proof" of what he says is still warm on our skin. There's so much more to tell. But we're into the wee hours here. Long day. I'm sending this out from Julie Edgely's tres chic apartment where Travis and I are crashing for the next couple of days. Finished filming in Trosly-Breuil this afternoon, hopped on a train, arrived in Paris, grabbed the best steak & frites I've ever had and now my body is ceasing to function.
Getting ready for the trip to Trosly-Breuil and the L'Arche community to spend some time with Jean Vanier. One of the emails contained with sentence: "You have to come at 23 rue d'Orléans Trosly-Breuil. You will find there your room and a dinner." I don't know why, but I suddenly felt like a hobbit on an adventure. " Your room and a dinner" evoked orange-y warm images of lights in cottage windows, of rudimentary and hearty comforts after a days travel. I'm thinking I may have some naive sentimentalities to shed, on the other hand, wouldn't it be great if the place was as welcoming and transforming as my imagination is making it?
The picture above is of Pierrefonds lake, not far from Trosly-Breuil. So far so good.
I'll be in Trosly-Breuil, France next week with Travis hanging out and filming at the L'Arche community. Sort of giddy about meeting Jean Vanier. Any burning questions to throw his way?
My friend Ryan Schroeder dared me to blog about this, from whence the above picture was obtained. My first thought was, well that's kind of like shooting fish in a barrel isn't it?
It did get me thinking about artificial bubbles of reality (which gives you some idea what I think of the above picutre). So I'm going to cop out and not touch the above picutre with a ten foot pole. Instead I'm going to talk about a documentary and let you make the connections between the documentary and the picture above.
The documentary is about North Korea.
YouTube links:
Hopefully the links don't break, just in case, original source is on vbs.tv
[WARNING: MOM. BEFORE YOU CLICK THAT LINK. vbs.tv is NOT Vacation Bible School TV. The Vice Guide to Travel isn't a site you'll want to visit. I intentionally provided aseptic Youtube links. Also, the documentary contains swearsies. That is all.]
So, for a year and a half these guys try to get into North Korea (DPRK) to film. They can't. They end up going to China, handing over the appropriate bribes, heading to the DPRK as tourists and filming on the sly. Smart? Probably not. But what an amazing glimpse into this strange strange place. The short version is the DPRK is like cold war Russia in the 50's, it's the land that time forgot in a really scary and bizzare way.
You'll have to watch the documentary to get the full jist, but afterward I thought, man a whole bunch of Korean people are going to be pissed off when they find out about the outside world. I'm pretty sure the cognitive dissonance between party speech making and their actual lives is fairly evident to them. But, being cut off from the outside world, the cognitive dissonance has no matrix by which it might resolve. They have nothing to compare their lives to, so the cognitive dissonace waves just bounce off the inside of the cultural bubble. It must make them nauseous at times, but they wouldn't be sure why.
Then I realized this all felt oddly familiar. I recognized that land-that-time-forgot feel, the disconnect between the words spoken and action on the ground. The rabid fear of anything "outside." The drive to control how things worked inside the bubble, the drive to control what of the outside got in. The control was maybe originally out of a desire for the better good of those under one's care, but, seemingly more and more, the control was ostensibly for the better good of those in one's care and had just become comfortable for those in charge. In short, it was a lot like the way I experienced evangelicalism in the 70's and 80's.
I've come a long way in sifting out what is my own broken anger and what is to be legitimately left as part of a prophetic calling speaking back into the church for the sake of the church. I take to heart Jeremiah's charge to "take apart and demolish and then start over, building and planting." (Jeremiah 1:10 MSG) In my anger I found that "taking apart and demolishing" came pretty easily. I'm slowly maturing into the much more demanding "building and planting" part.
Here's the thing though, the taking apart and demolishing part comes from hope. It has to, otherwise it isn't worth it. Jeremiah always lived in hope. Most of the people I know who are accused of being nothing but taking-apart-demolishing party poopers are actually people of hope. I live in hope. I constantly live in hope, for the the church, for my neighbourhood, for my city, for the world. It's a fools errand most of the time, but I can't help it. I naturally look to the future and I can't help but hope for a better one. No matter how much I get the stuffing kicked out of me I end up, sometimes to my own consternation, coming back to hope.
Okay, I've picked up the ten foot pole, let me make some connections. Recently I've fallen in love with the word "generative." I'm on a building and planting kick. I'm around generative, hopeful, building and planting people. I've gotten very used to looking ahead. So, when I see an image like the one at the top of this post I get a bit of whiplash. Wow. I get that post-North-Korean-citizen-whose-seen-the-world feeling. I get that thing I used to get so often back when I was in the bubble, a little taste of bile in the back of my throat from sitting there so assured of everything being as it should be, but deep down feeling slightly nauseous from vertigo because something is askew, something is off, something is not right. It pains me to think people are, and there's no way to say this without sounding like a arrogant git, but it pains me to think people are still in a place I have come to consider "back there." I imagine the pain and sadness is similar to what one would feel looking at North Korea from the outside.
When I look at the top picture, whether taken literally or as a metaphorical view of the inside of a religious subcultural bubble gone awry, I feel most for the prophetic voices with that exact view from that exact perspective. I see the artists, the poets, the prophetic voices sitting right there seeing that very scene. They are the voice that reorients God's people and they have been bullied into silence. How else is that picture even possible?
It pains me to think of the artists, the poets, the prophetic voices sitting right there in that exact spot and thinking something is wrong with the way they see the world, something is wrong with them because of the way they see the world. They don't even know they're prophets. They don't even know we need them. They don't even know God made them the way they are and that he did it on purpose. How can the church hear the prophets when the prophets don't even know they're prophets? Crazy fantasy words and fear bully people into silence, or happy shiny words and fear bully people into silence, in the end is there a difference?
Artists. Poets. Prophets. It's time to think and consider. It's time to taste the bile. It's time to live into the person God made you to be. It's time to take apart and demolish and then, more importantly, it's time to build and plant.
Looting is a manifestation of scarcity and fear. Why would looting manifest itself in a city that has never known scarcity? Why would looting manifest itself in one of the safest places on earth during one of the safest periods in human history?
From our comfortable armchairs in Canada we've witnessed a collaborative anarchy that stands up to oppression in places like Egypt, Tunisia and Syria. From the same distanced perch we've also witnessed the worst of predatory anarchy in places like Rwanda and Somalia. So what are we to make of the mutant deformation that reared it's head in downtown Vancouver last night? What are we to make of the petty anarchy we witnessed?GRASSROOTS? First of all, yesterday's grotesquery seemed to imagine itself as some kind of grassroots anarchistic uprising. Hardly. Yes, the smell of tear gas triggers powerful human urges. The urge to move toward justice, to fight against oppression, to tear down principalities and powers and strongholds that keep us from our true humanity.If such urges were activated yesterday, they were activated in vain. No injustice occurred. Therefore justice could not be moved toward. Incredibly naive persons in an embarrassingly inappropriate context moved toward some wildly imagined justice and spent themselves in an orgy of cultural onanism. These faux libertarians know nothing of the realities of Egypt, Tunisia or Syria. They will most certainly never know the realities of Rwanda or Somalia. They are petulant and bored and their imagined seeds of imagined justice are wasted. They are a parade of masturbating dandies. The very possibility of such misguided earnestness speaks to a deep deep spiritual ennui, a profound collective boredom of the soul. Without real scarcity, without justifiable outrage, without any tangible or logical opponent, the impetus to fight oppression becomes a ridiculous and sad parody. It becomes a protest against one's own good fortune. LOOTING? Second, how can looting be anything but yet another masturbatory exercise when you've never gone hungry and you lack for nothing? These people are masters of futility. Sated dullards engaging in looting as some triumphal act of resistance is worthy of pity and loathing. Their self-loving self-hatred compels them to the lazy petulance of lashing out at nothing in order to feel something and this response is so sadly predictable so as to be mundane.THUGS? Lastly, does snapping facebook pics in front of a fire really make someone a badass? Honestly. True predatory anarchy is a world in which the strong maim and kill and take from the weak. Look at the downtown dandies strut and posture, they imagine themselves thugs, they imagine themselves strong, they think anarchy is their métier. Consider the human condition from a global perspective. In a world of true predatory anarchy, these prancing peacocks would be among the first of the weak to be maimed and killed. They are tourists visiting a game farm they take to be the jungle. They act from secure comfort knowing they will awake tomorrow and life will continue as usual. How brave.FALL OUT So what kind of damage did the peacocks do? What have we lost? A couple of cop cars and some consumer goods? If that is your delusion, you are dangerously mistaken. The losses are profound and deep. Our city is more than buildings, pavement, trees, cars and collections of consumer goods. Our city is knit out of the threads of human interaction. Those threads coalesce to form a spirit, something that is separate from us, but emanates from us. The spirit of our city isn't borne out of our collective intentions, it's borne out of how we actually behave toward one another. If, while walking in my neighbourhood, I throw a rock through a window, the next day I will find my neighbourhood a slightly more anxious, fearful and mean place. If, while walking in my neighbourhood, I stop to wash a window, the next day I will find my neighbourhood a slightly less anxious, slightly more trusting and slightly more friendly place. If the above illustration is true of the physical stuff of our city, it is also true of the threads of human connection that constitute the spirit of our city. I can cut threads or I can create threads and both will impact the city I live in. If I create threads of human connection I make the spirit of our city an ever so slightly more livable one. If I go on a self indulgent riotous rampage that infects all kinds of human connections with anxiety, fear and meanness, I have just made the spirit of our city a drastically less livable one. So that's the deep and profound loss here. Not glass and plants and stuff, but the subtlety of millions of threads of human connection, the spirit of our city. What happened yesterday left a large and cankerous wound on our collective spirit. A lot of threads got cut, or damaged, or pissed on. Our city is potentially a much more anxious, fearful and mean place. But we don't have to let it be. We all have the capacity to create threads of human connection. If we all start doing little things that make our city slightly less anxious, slightly more trusting and slightly more friendly, it'll soon add up to a riot's worth of good, and then we'll have our city back.
Actually, it's been here for a while, but I kept forgetting to post something about it. The book is called "Psalmist's Cry: Scripts for Embracing Lament." We (The Work Of The People) pitched a wacky project to The House Studio, and this is the result. A DVD with 5 interviews with Walter Brueggemann produced by TWOTP and a companion resource in the form of a book (written by yours truly) published by The House Studio.
Someone asked me "What was it like to work with a publisher?" In a word, wonderful. I'm keenly aware that all writers need an editor. Never more so than when I'm scribbling these babbling blog musinging all by my lonesome. That last sentence, unecessary. The self reflection in the last sentence reagarding the second to last sentence, even more unecessary. See, I told you.
It was wonderful working with Kristen Allen, editor at The House Studio. Apart from being a kind and gracious person, at the core she provided a different perspective that was outside of myself. Sounds kind self evident. Well, okay, it is self evident. But I think it's one of those "so simply true it's profound" things. I think we as humans need input in our lives that is both different from our perspective and outside of our perspective. We can imagine a different perspective (which is empathy, which is the gensis of compassion) but it's imagined from within our own perspective. Nothing is a substitute for the unassailable truth of the perspective of another human. As a writer, it's invaluable. The editor/writer metaphor is quite handy and extends to many aspects of life in general. Every writer needs an editor, every editor needs a writer.
I've told my friends Don, Stephen and Travis, that they're on every page of this book. Not just indirectly in that their friendship shapes me and shapes how I see the world, but in direct ways too. Their ideas, experiences, strenghts and foibles get cooked together with my ideas, experineces, strenghts and foibles in jambalaya brain stew. Our conversations (my words and their words) bring language to otherwise ethereal thoughts. That's a pretty important part of writing. Again, writers never write alone. Writing is a much more collaborative process than we hero worshipping Westerners might like to think it is. Yes, someone has to sit down and do the work of getting ideas into language. I'm not denying a writer has the critical role to play in brain mist becoming "a book." But the criticality of one role doesn't have to conflict with the intrinsically collaborative nature of the process.
It isn't like the writer is the only one with the thoughts captured in a book. Lots of people have similar thoughts, or related thoughts, or tangental thoughts. The writer just pulls them all together in way that's accesible and rememberable. [rememberable? editor!] No one reads a book they completely disagree with, or in no way understand. When you read a book you get confirmation on some of your thoughts, you stretch them, flesh them out, add to them, and then you discover a few completely new thoughts along the way. When you read a book, parts of the book are alreay in your head, a good book helps you get a hold of the bits and pieces already floating around in there, and, as an added bonus, gives you a few new bits and pieces.
So a writer isn't like this lone hero toiling away in the sequesterd bowels of creative frenzy in order to bestow upon the world his or her unique and startling perspective on things. Writing is like collaborating with the people around you, near and far, to make a book you'd all like to read.
With that in mind, I think I'm going to start using this blog, at least in part, as a collaborative platform for the manuscript I'm working on. Maybe it'll become "a book" that we'd all like to read. Yay books.
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