rivanna

When I read these words about the atrocity in Colorado last week - “we do what we always do after yet another horrific massacre – shed a few tears, say a few prayers, and then quickly go on to do what the NRA wants us to do -- change the subject” --I thought, how terribly true. As many have said - it’s not only the gun lobby who is accountable, it’s our elected representatives from both sides, who lack the courage and plain common sense to renew the federal assault weapons ban. We have neighbors, delightful people, who own guns-- to shoot snakes or other pests. We know some wonderful men who enjoy hunting. This isn’t about people like them. A recent blog by Jon Meacham seemed like a possible ray of hope - if more gun owners spoke out against assault weapons, there might be chance to get something done. http://ideas.time.co...ssault-weapons/

Matt Harding has been backpacking around the globe for years, making videos of himself dancing with the natives of other countries – this one has a nice soundtrack he co-wrote the lyrics for, “Trip the Light” by Garry Schyman. An inspired labor of love, it seems to me.

Hi Bill, Nice to hear from you. Challenging question --but I doubt the story line will be all that topical...more likely an opponent with special powers (Garth of Izar? Squire of Gothos?). Apparently they're having a hard time coming up with a title for this film! Another wild guess...Alice Eve as Janice Rand. It's true that Star Trek has appealed to both sides politically, probably one of the reasons for its enduring so long.

More speculation about the next film…according to Trekmovie.com, the co-writer/ producer Robert Orci says the villain is not Gary Mitchell. And definitely not Khan. I’ve been wondering if Gary Seven is a possibility, especially since Orci affirms that Alice Eve is also playing a role from TOS – Roberta Lincoln, the secretary? or Isis, his partner? And Cumberbatch looks more like Robert Lansing than any other Trek villain --or obstacle rather- he was more a mysterious time-police kind of guy, also known as Supervisor 194 in “Assignment Earth”.

The new poet laureate in the US is Natasha Trethewey, the daughter of a black mother and a white father who grew up in the deep South. Here is a poem of hers, with the Renaissance painting it’s based on, below. Kitchen Maid with Supper at Emmaus, or The Mulata —after the painting by Diego Velàzquez, ca. 1619 She is the vessels on the table before her: the copper pot tipped toward us, the white pitcher clutched in her hand, the black one edged in red and upside down. Bent over, she is the mortar and the pestle at rest in the mortar—still angled in its posture of use. She is the stack of bowls and the bulb of garlic beside it, the basket hung by a nail on the wall and the white cloth bundled in it, the rag in the foreground recalling her hand. She's the stain on the wall the size of her shadow— the color of blood, the shape of a thumb. She is echo of Jesus at table, framed in the scene behind her: his white corona, her white cap. Listening, she leans into what she knows. Light falls on half her face.

Thanks for letting us know about this - read one review, sounds thought-provoking. Guess it will be out on Netflix before long.

I was touched by an article in a current magazine, on Obama’s student days at Columbia, living a very ascetic existence….reflecting on that period of his life, he said-- “The only way I could have a sturdy sense of identity of who I was depended on digging beneath the surface differences of people. The only way my life makes sense is if, regardless of culture, race, religion, tribe, there is this commonality, these essential human truths and passions and hopes and moral precepts that are universal. And that we can reach out beyond our differences. If that is not the case, then it is pretty hard for me to make sense of my life…that is at the core of who I am.”

Last week I saw an amazing Israeli film called “Footnote,” in Hebrew with subtitles, which has been highly acclaimed. The story revolves around a scholarly father and son, Eliezer and Uriel, both at the same university in Jerusalem, specializing in research on the Talmud. While there is a huge generation gap between the two men, they both share a passion for truth, their religion, and their families. It’s partly a satire on the stress of academic life, but more deeply, explores father / son tensions and rivalries-- echoing some ancient biblical characters. It made me curious about the Talmud. An extraordinary movie.

Bruce Sanguin's blog this week is on popular music - and his own guitar playing. http://ifdarwinpraye...e-food-of-love/

For those who like Robin Meyers – I see he has a new book out, The Underground Church: reclaiming the subversive way of Jesus. One that I keep learning from, is Richard Rohr’s Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality. Marcus Borg’s interpretations of the bible have been so helpful to me, and Rohr’s Catholic / Franciscan perspective (also Evolutionary Christianity) makes a nice complement to Borg’s Protestant approach. They arrive at the same place (as I see it) from different paths. A few samples from this book – We have made the bible into a bunch of ideas about which we can be right or wrong, rather than an invitation to a new set of eyes. The bible’s primary concern is mystical, not moral. The I-Thou language is a way of speaking quite different from the I-It relationship, where everything is functional, impersonal, earned. When God divided light from darkness, he did not call it “good” …The work of the bible will be about putting those seeming opposites of darkness and light, heaven and earth, flesh and spirit, back together in one place. They have never really been separate. In the beginning was the relationship…I consciously take this pattern of God as a dynamic communion of persons as the central template and pattern of all reality. It is interesting that physicists, molecular biologists and astronomers are often more attuned to this universal pattern than many Christian believers. We start with tribal thinking; we gradually move toward individuation through chosenness, failure and grace; then for those who walk fully through the first two stages, there is a breakthrough to non-dual consciousness or the unitive way. Universalism (non- groupthink) is the point of the whole book of Jonah. On the cross of life we accept our own complicity and cooperation with evil, instead of imagining that we are standing on some pedestal of moral superiority….We live in the in-between, holding the tensions, discovering the paradoxes, we are the contradictions visualized by the geometric image of the cross. We bear the ambiguity, the inconsistency and brokenness of all things, instead of insisting on dividing reality into good guys and bad guys. We cannot ever get worthy, but we can get reconnected to our Source.

The news has been back and forth, whether Cumberbatch will be playing Khan… I’m still hoping it's a different villain! Does anyone have a favorite Trek movie, show, character? The past few months I’ve enjoyed some “Enterprise” episodes streaming on Netflix. One of my favorites is from season 2, “Carbon Creek.” At dinner, Archer and Trip ask T’Pol why she paid a visit to this tiny mining town in Pennsylvania, and she tells them an amazing story about the real First Contact -- not in Montana 2063, but in 1957 when a Vulcan survey ship crash-lands near Carbon Creek (they’d come to earth to check out Sputnik). The three survivors are T’Mir--T’Pol’s second foremother—and two male crewmates, Stron and Mestral. They hide out for weeks until they’re near starvation, then find jobs, passing for human, slowly getting involved with the community. T’mir works as a waitress, Stron a handyman, and Mestral a coalminer. After several months, Mestral becomes so fond of his new life and friends that he stays behind when a Vulcan ship arrives to rescue them. At the end, Archer and Trip look doubtful these things actually happened, but T’Pol, back in her quarters, reveals a ‘souvenir’ handed down from her ancestor. It’s an intriguing mystery, with plenty of warmth, humor and nods to past Trek events….one of those episodes that gives you hope for radically different cultures getting along, helping each other. Trip: Do you realize you've just rewritten our history books? T’Pol: A footnote at best. Trip: : Footnote? This is like finding out Neil Armstrong wasn't the first man to walk on the moon! T’Pol: Perhaps he wasn't.

Well said. I so admire him for doing this.

This chapter was difficult for me, thought Joseph’s concluding line was helpful – being aware of our limited human perception, is the beginning of wisdom. When Tillich says “we unite with what we see, seeing is a kind of union” it suggests we become what we focus on. I like the ending, let us close our eyes, to feel the divine gaze that “looks at us with eyes of infinite human depth and power and love.” Imagining ourselves fully accepted by God returns us to wholeness. The meaning of this chapter is still unclear to me, but it reminds me of Jesus’ saying, Remove the plank from your own eye so you can see clearly to remove the splinter from someone else’s. It reminds me of the end of the book of Job -- I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. And also of another Tillich passage from chapter 13 in The Shaking of the Foundations, based on For now we see through a glass darkly [i Cor. 13] -- “Paul says that all our present knowledge is like the perception of things in a mirror, we do not grasp it directly face to face. A little light and much darkness; a few fragments and never the whole; perfect knowledge is denied us. For everyone is an elusive fragment to himself, and the inner life of everyone else is an enigma. The misery of man lies in the fragmentary character of his life and knowledge; the greatness of man lies in his ability to know that his being is fragmentary and enigmatic….. Paul experienced the breakdown of a system of life and thought which he believed to be perfect truth. He then found himself buried under the pieces of his knowledge. But Paul never tried again to build up a new, comfortable house out of the pieces. He dwelt with the pieces. He realized that the unity to which they belong is grasped through hope, but not face to face. The fragmented mirror pointed to something new for him: the reality of perfect love. Not blind love- a seeing love, a knowing love that looks into the depth of our hearts.”

To me, it’s understood that most if not all PC’s think of God as both male and female, so I don’t talk about it much, but it’s helpful when people say She and Her for God every once in a while. I haven’t read the book Yvonne referred to by Elizabeth Fiorenza, but have read similar ones that focus on Wisdom as female co-creator in the later and apocryphal books of the OT. Also as Marcus Borg points out, Jesus can be seen as the embodiment of Sophia – womblike compassion and inclusiveness. God’s feminine side is there in the very beginning, saying We will make human beings in our image. God's tender, motherly side is shown when Adam and Eve eat of the tree of knowing good and evil and become aware of their nakedness. “God sewed together clothes for them out of the skins of animals and they put them on.” As Richard Rohr says, “Surely this is a promise from a protective and nurturing God. This will become the momentum-building story of the whole Bible which gradually undoes the history of a fearsome and threatening deity.” Ilia Delio says “before encounter, God is perceived as omnipotent power; after encounter, God is perceived as humble love. God, against all expectation, is humble.” I once took a seminar on Mary Magdalene. Without her, Christianity would probably never have been founded, yet she’s only mentioned 13 times in the gospels and not at all in the rest of the NT.

This seems like a helpful distinction – I think we sometimes misuse the word religion to mean faith; and I’ve often seen the word faith used to mean orthodoxy, rather than praxis. The difference is between internal reality, and external form. To me, religion is an institution, which can be an object of analysis and historical study; faith is subjective experience, devotion, transcendence. I’ve known so many people who exemplify Jesus' humility, understanding and generosity in their lives, yet have nothing to do with religion as such. I've also known people like that who regularly attend a church, sing in choirs, serve on committees, etc. What was the fifth category you added – activism?

Recently I’ve discovered a British website on poems, wonderful resource-- www.poetryarchive.org Here is a poem by Jacob Sam LaRose-- “Faith” A girl in class opts out of speech. A teacher mouths problems at home and who knows what too-large or brutal vision stalled the engine of her voice. In a photograph I pass round, a man reels from a baton to the head and cameras bloom in every hand to catch his perfect grimace. The challenge is to write about the things that we believe in. The class comes up with God, by all the usual names, and faith in numbers, that the News at Ten’s more often bad than good, that some things never change, no matter what you say, although there’s so much to be said. A girl carves out a space for her voice to return to. Praise her fierce and stubborn silence. Somewhere, rain will fall on dry land for the first time in months. I want to know what her first words will be. ------------------------------------ and one by Philip Larkin- “The Trees” The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again And we grow old? No, they die too, Their yearly trick of looking new Is written down in rings of grain. Yet still the unresting castles thresh In fullgrown thickness every May. Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Jonny, I like your idea...there are many bible verses I keep coming back to, a list I've compiled. Here's one that seems to resonate with the two that you quoted. "Let all things be done for building up." --I Cor. 14:26

Yes, that's what I meant, should have been clearer...I edited the post, adding "attributed to Paul". It's important to realize how Paul's position was 'revised' from radical to conservative to reactionary, as Borg & Crossan point out in the book discussed a couple years ago, The First Paul.

The video is disturbing...makes me sad. One of my kids is gay. It’s terrible when people see the bible as a moral recipe book --“how it’s supposed to be for all times” --instead of spiritual history…“here’s how Judeo-Christian civilization started out as a tribe, a record of what’s good AND bad about humanity.” The bible does not provide a basis for condemning healthy, monogamous relationships between same sex partners. There are relatively very few references to homosexuality in scripture. It’s not in the Ten Commandments. The Sodom & Gomorrhah story is about homosexual rape, not consensual sex between adults. The Leviticus “purity codes” are in the context of setting Jews apart from Gentiles. All the Old Testament prophets are silent on same-sex behavior. It’s likely that David and Jonathan, Daniel and Ashpenaz, and Ruth and Naomi were intimate couples. Jesus doesn’t refer to homosexuality, and many scholars think at least one of his disciples may have been gay. He constantly went out of his way to include those who were marginalized, and taught us not to be judgmental. When homosexuality is mentioned in letters attributed to Paul, it refers to Graeco-Roman pederasty and male prostitution. Paul himself may well have been gay or bisexual. John, hope you don't mind my asking about your avatar / signature-- how does “Jennifer’s Body” as a porno/ horror film affirm homosexuality? wouldn’t a non-violent choice be better, one that treats the subject with respect and tenderness?

Thanks, all interesting choices...hadn't heard of Anthony Caro before, like his work. Mary Southard was on the Evolutionary Christianity panel last year - she also does spiritual paintings and sculptures, you can see them here http://www.marysouthardart.org/ Below, "Divine Dynamic"

Are there works of art that speak to you spiritually or are personally meaningful —a painting, sculpture, nature photo? These images I saved from a couple months ago when a cathedral in Ghent, Belgium, was created for the Festival of Lights… it’s 91 feet tall and made of 55,000 LED lights (yet consumes only 20Kwatt per hour of electricity). This is one church I'd like to go to.

I’ve never seen "Phantom" on stage, but did see one show in Las Vegas, “Mamma Mia” which was delightful. “South Pacific” seems like one of the most inspired musicals ever—the intertwining of very different cultures, and such memorable songs.

Has anyone seen a play or musical that inspired you? My husband and I only get to live shows maybe once a year, but recently we saw “Memphis” in New York and were blown away. It’s about a white disk jockey, Huey Calhoun, who plays black rock n roll songs on the radio in the 1950’s south when that was taboo—the story is loosely based on a real DJ, Dewey Phillips. The curtain opens on Memphis’ Beale Street nightclubs, and the singing and dancing from beginning to end are incredible-- exuberant, non-stop high energy. But besides the entertainment, there is a marked improvement in race relations by the end of the story – real progress, not enough in terms of social justice but reason to hope-- more trust and openness communicated through music. It became clearer to me that rock n roll really was started by black rhythm and blues, and how large a part church gospel music played in its development. I was particularly impressed with Montego Glover- a gorgeous petite woman with an amazing range of vocal styles. There is a serious romance between her and Huey, which they were forced to keep hidden. As one reviewer said, “you rejoice & cry with them. The end was bittersweet and you just want to step in & rescue Huey but the curtains closed. So you are left to finish it in your mind with a happy ending….” “American Bandstand” was featured in the show--which we saw days before Dick Clark’s passing. The story reminded me of “Dreamgirls”- also the movie “Cadillac records.” (And -- couldn’t help thinking about Trayvon Martin, and Bill Cosby’s comment that his death was more about guns than race-which I tend to agree with, but that’s another story.)

This month, Thomas Nelson publishers are releasing The Voice, a new translation of the bible that focuses more on dialogue, formatted like a screenplay or novel. The phrase Jesus Christ does not appear in it—instead, "Jesus the Anointed One" or the "liberating king." Angel is rendered as "messenger" and apostle as "emissary." David Capes, lead scholar for The Voice, says "I hope we get people to see the Bible not as an ancient text that's worn out, but as a story that they participate in and find their lives in." The new edition omits the "he said" and "they said" --for instance, in the scene where Jesus walks on the water: Disciple: "It's a ghost!" Another Disciple: "A ghost? What will we do?" Jesus: "Be still. It is I; you have nothing to fear." The title comes from the Greek word logos, usually translated as "word"-- "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God," In The Voice, that passage reads: "Before time itself was measured, the Voice was speaking. The Voice was and is God." An interesting shift of emphasis there.

Speaking of films that deliver light-hearted romantic comedy with an inspiring, almost visionary theme-- my husband and I both thoroughly enjoyed “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.” Surprisingly good.