Loving people is hard.

Art: A Big Fat Lie

2011-06-30T04:49:00.014+08:00

"Art is not truth; art is a lie that enables us to recognize the truth." -David Shields, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto

Manipulation. Calculation. Scrutiny. Precision. Editing. Revising. Reworking. Re-imagining. Removing. And taking away, and away, and away.

The art of making art--no matter the medium--is more scientific than many artists would care to admit. It's about a vision (i.e., a hypothesis), and the working out, playing with, and truth-testing of that vision (i.e., lab work). Even if that vision is nothing in particular, or concrete, or even known to the artist him/herself, it's still there. It's a still a vision; a vision blind to the work that invisibly lays before it.

Like science leads us to facts through evidence, and hints at truth through its exhaustive testing (and re-testing) of its hypothesis, art's process is somewhat similar. It creates (sometimes from nothing and sometimes from too much of nothing) a reflection, a window, a portal, a tiny shaving of sight for the viewer to see. To hear. To touch. To smell. To taste. To ponder. To wonder. This is art's incredible potential. Yet, art's end result subtly (and not so subtly) hides its complicated and calculated and consuming labor. This is one way art lies so well (and why it's necessary for it to do so). For example...

When you're sitting in a darkened theater watching images unfold before you as if they were seamlessly one collective story, one effortless film, you're not thinking about the 7,459 people it took to make it. You're not imagining the 10 different takes an actor had to make before he got the line right, nor the make-up artist who stood just off to the right of the camera to make sure the blood would stay in the right place on the protagonist's forehead. In a way, your eyes are covered--blinded, even--to the glorious masquerade that is, in truth (and mostly lies), the nature of art...which is the editing of all things (tangible and intangible) to make a lie appear true. Gut-level true. Like, you-see-it-and-you're-heart-is-shocked-and-surprised-at-the-revelation-you're-seeing-for-what-seems-like-the-very-first-time-kind-of-true. It's about the emotional, the visceral, about touching (for better or for worse) fragments of the physical, emotional, and spiritual self. Basically, art is so non-holistic in its process (so detached and dislocated and dislodged), it transforms (or appears to transform) into something holistic (and holy) in the eyes of the viewer once it's finished.

At the end of the day, all the lies appear true. And the most provocative thing about this revelation is that you can't reach this truth without understanding the necessity for lies in art, without failure to put on the make-up right or screw up miserably those first 9 takes of a scene. If art really set out to be true (and truthful) we'd be forced to digest the whole artistic process--all 750 hours or more--and it would be excruciatingly dull, painfully monotonous. I'm not saying this wouldn't be a good thing to experience on occasion but I am saying that if this was art's norm, art's primary method, primary praxis, few would have the patience, the cognitive stamina to reach any mini-truth-epiphanies after watching the film Avatar, if what preceded it was 7,983 hours of interviews, and documentation on just how it was all done. This would be the 'truth' (or rather, the facts) but it wouldn't be art, nor would it enable us to recognize the truth any better I think.

This is why the statement, 'art is the lie that tells the truth' is so powerful (and so true). David Shields and Richard Walter and Madeleine L'Engle and Picasso and many others artists over time have said the very same thing (in their own way, from their own artistic medium perspective). The necessity of lies (not just in art, but in life) is what makes art possible. Without lies, art would cease to exist. For how can we see truth if we can't see the importance and value and beauty of lies?

The Bible: It's Not About How It All Ends

2011-06-23T14:29:00.028+08:00

"Some people think that the Bible has to do with the terrors of the apocalypse, and that the apocalypse is 'the end of the world'. The end, they believe, will see the divine 'final solution' of all the unsolved problems in personal life, in world history, and in the cosmos. Apocalyptic fantasy has always painted God's great final Judgment on the Last Day with flaming passion: the good people will go to heaven, the wicked will go to hell, and the world will be annihilated in a storm of fire. We are all familiar, too, with images of the final struggle between God and Satan, Christ and the Antichrist, Good and Evil in the valley of Armageddon--images which can be employed so usefully in political friend-enemy thinking. These images are apocalyptic, but are they also Christian? No, they are not; for Christian expectation of the future has nothing whatsoever to do with the end, whether it be the end of this life, the end of history, or the end of the world. Christian expectation is about the beginning: the beginning of true life, the beginning of God's kingdom, and the beginning of the new creation of all things into their enduring form. The ancient wisdom of hope says: 'The last things are as the first.' So God's great promise in the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, is: 'Behold, I make all things new' (Rev. 21:5). In the light of this ultimate horizon we read the Bible as the book of God's promises and the hopes of men and women--indeed the hopes of everything created; from the remembrances of their futures we find energies for the new beginning." -Jürgen Moltmann, from the forward of his book, In The End The Beginning.

'Christian expectation is about the beginning.' I'm not sure about you but that wasn't my experience in the Baptist church I grew up in near Bob Jones University in Simpsonville, South Carolina. From the age of 5, I remember hearing stories about heaven. No more tears. No more pain. No more stealing pencils from Jennifer's utensil box. It would all be over. Done. Finished.

The ending would be the happiest place on earth (if it were on earth, which it isn't--Mrs. Hyde had apparently been there).

I know that the main purpose in telling us kindergartners this was to share the gospel, and inform us of the fact that our souls would go to heaven in the end when we died if we believed in Jesus but, but, but...there could've been a better way of going about this. They could've also told us how every day (from sleeping hours to waking mornings) is a reflection of this reality. And it's not all bad. Endings aren't to be feared, agonized over, casting teams over who's in and who's out. Endings, as in stories, are about people becoming better, people learning something new, something fresh, something to help carry them from this ending to their next beginning.

This is one of my criticisms with mainline (evangelical Protestant) Christianity, today. I don't think we're doing a good job of educating and empowering people to live as 'Christian beginners' (the hopeful perspective); all too often, there's just a whole-heck-of-a-lot-of 'Christan enders' (the fearful perspective). And that's not a good end to be on, if you catch my drift. That's the end of the playing field where people (sometimes) are bullied, harassed, and slaughtered because of difference. Because they're an 'other.' Not just an 'other' in dress or lifestyle, but in belief, in their view on how life's going to end (if they believe there's an ending at all).

It's a travesty so many people boast and bicker over how it's all going to end. I wonder what would happen if instead, these 'Christian enders' lived life, humbly, as 'Christian beginners'. Beginners, like most children, are open to life, open to change, open to new experiences. Their mind is a race, running after knowledge and pleasures and excitement. Each day is a wonder. The future is full, wide, open (similar to how heaven is described as--which is upsetting because we're told we won't get there or experience anything like this until we're dead). Beginners are rarely proud because they don't know enough of something to be so prideful. They're in a perpetual state of learning, forming, growing. Wouldn't it be nice to be known (as Christians) for this? To be seen as someone who lives each day fully, each day faithfully, each day truthfully? To be someone who doesn't waste any new beginning with talk and talk and talk over (how they think) it's all going to end?

I wonder how much better it would have been for my K-5 Sunday School teachers--instead of sharing with us all about 'the end'-- to have shared with us on how to live life (in all its preciousness), beginning with today. To have shared how to get along with those who believe differently from us (and not be told they're going to hell or that we should tell them they're going to hell). I wonder what America--and the world would look like now--if we were taught (from the impressionable age of 5) to love the 'others' we come across each and every day, and to pray for others' happiness and well-being more than we pray for our own.

To put it plainly, what would've happened if we children were raised as 'hopeful beginners' rather than 'fearful enders'? How much different would we be today? Or more important, how much better?

'The Tree of Life' as a Psalm of Lament

2011-06-05T14:27:00.025+08:00

Terrence Malick's new film, The Tree of Life, is a strange thing of beauty. Nothing can really prepare you for what you see. In it, life is in the details. It's about nothing, yet everything (as well as nothingness and everythingness). It's not a story, but contains within it a million tiny stories. Like the picture/poster to the left illustrates, it's a film about new life, new creation, beginnings, taking steps, growing up. Walking through the chaos in the cosmos, so to speak. Yet, it's also about the lines and creases on the bottom of our feet. They get dirty, messy. They age. We age. From the groaning of creation (via God, evolution and nature) Malick whisks us away into a dark (but beautifully lit) world. Generational sin is there. Goodness is there. Grace is there.

The Tree of Life is like the perfect/ultimate 'Psalm of Lament' film. It captures, in so many ways, the pain, the screams, the disappointments in life (to the good and bad of us--which is all of us, at some point). No one is exempt. Everyone suffers. Some of us, suffer a hell of a lot more. Yet, like the Jewish and Egyptian Wisdom Literature traditions teach us (e.g., the Old Testament Writings), after the storm comes the sun. And Malick captures this beautiful sun(set) and sun(rise) over and over, again and again. Could Malick be suggesting something here? Something about this glowing sun over a suffering setting? Simply put, it seems to be a daily reminder to him (and to all of us) that pain is not eternal. Like the Psalms of Lament express, 'joy comes in the morning.' Heartache will not win out. Suffering will, eventually, end.

Yet, some endings (as the film's beginning reveals) are the hardest on those left behind. So how to cope? How to go on? How to survive? How to grow up with a conscience full of sorrow, regret, deep loss? And how, if ever, can you let it all go? Should you let it all go? Can you forget the painful past, even when riding the elevator up a glass-highrise tower at the age of 50?

In Buddhism, the writings talk about 'the way to the end of suffering.' In a strange, mystical sense, The Tree of Life tries to explore this way, this path, this journey through time--from birth to death. By the film's end, you'll feel as though you've re-lived your own life, too. And even if you don't feel so much for the characters, you see (by the film's end) that the characters you're watching are really fragments of yourself. Fragments of your past lives. Past selves. The ones you've been and lost through the sands of time. Those selves that can be found walking around in the desert searching for a place to call home.

The metaphor of the 'home' is a powerful one in The Tree of Life. It's where life is conceived, where joy swings, and where cruelty lurks. It's also one that (in the end) is lost. Abandoned. Gone. Never to return to again (at least, not in this life, not in this world). Why is that? Garden State talked about home being an 'imaginary place'. This is, according to that film, what defines a family: "a group of people that miss the same imaginary place." There are echoes of this understanding of home all throughout The Tree of Life. It's like a childhood portal where everything looks beautiful but feels tragic. The kind of tragic look that comes when you visit a place that no longer exists.

But that's not all this film is about. I think one of its biggest themes is wonder (a word that's even uttered a few times by its characters). Its the film's own understanding of awe. The way the film's wonder perceives nature and the evolution of humanity that surrounds it. This wonder feels alive, and new. It's like the film is seeing these images for the very first time. That freshness, that child-like-life angle of perception, is captivating. You start to imagine what a baby must be thinking when he/she enters the world (if he/she could cognitively describe what a messy array of images they're encountering, daily). Thus, being fascinated with images (arresting images) is also one of the film's many wonders. A wonder it's asking its viewers to take seriously. To think. To feel. And most important of all, to see. But not just 'to see', but to see, anew.

For how many times have we looked at a tree and seen only a tree? Just a tree? Sitting there on top of a stump spitting out leaves for us to rake up, pick up, clean up?

And how many times, conversely, have we looked at a tree and seen (and thought, and breathed in) the word, the image, the object that is, life? The tree as life-giving? As nature's expression of grace? As the tree of life?

Not often enough.

Love Is Strange: More thoughts on 'Blue Valentine'

2011-03-28T13:37:00.011+08:00

After watching Blue Valentine for the third time tonight, something hit me: love is strange. Complicated. Messy. And probably more than anything, disappointing. Similar to what every Yasujirō Ozu film would tell us about life.

Each time I've watched Blue Valentine, I've seen it differently. The first time, it was all about the highs and the lows. Smiling from grin to grin, heartbreaks going up and down. Left to right. Fits of rage, sexual passion, dancing to a song titled, 'You & Me.' It was all there. And I felt it. Everyone did.

The second time, I noticed it was a story about dealing with (and accepting) relational brokenness. Like the doomed fate of a child who still believes in Santa Claus (e.g., one day, that belief will be dropped), love is (sometimes) all about disappointment. Going from the honeymoon of dating to the throws of a difficult relationship, there are more than just a few bumps along the way. People tell me, 'it's not all bad. It's really worth it.' So why are there so many movies like this out there telling us how sticky, tricky, and just-plain-horrendous marriages can be? Isn't it because it's but a reflection of what see? Or is it just what we choose to see? Or is it just our selfish desires getting in the way of making the other happy? Is it happiness for us, first, that gets in the way? Or do we all just want to feel special and that's when things start to go south?

The third time seeing Blue Valentine, I kept noticing how in the first act both characters talks about 'feelings.' This was the feeling they had, and so, they went with it and 'poof!' what happened? Their risk failed. Their love failed. Their feelings, failed. Like a Greek tragedy, like Romeo + Juliet, it was all lost. And the two people standing face-to-face by the film's end looked more like strangers than former lovers. What happened? Don't they remember? The beginning? The past? The journey along the way? In their attempt to take the risk of love, they end up seeing just how unfortunate (and painful) love can be. They see how loves sometimes turns us into strangers. Strangers to the people we once were, to the people we once loved. But is it really all lost?

As the song by Mickey & Sylvia goes: "Love. Love is strange. A lot of people take it for a game. Once you get it you never want to quit. After you've had it, you're in an awful fix."

In Blue Valentine, both characters were in more than just an 'awful fix.' For them, the stars failed to align. Instead, clouds came, fireworks blasted off, and the burning blues of their future (room) was the only thing made clear. This was their clarity. And not surprisingly, they both couldn't face it.

Sitting in the audience, we want to believe that hearts would soften, minds would be cleared, and their lives would change. Some way. We plead, silently, from the inside-out and hope. A hug. A kiss. A touch. A glance. Something. Something to (maybe) make the other person--and maybe even the person, themselves--change. Do we believe that love changes? Or is it merely that the feelings do? Can we find our way back into love? Or is it like trying to find your way back into being a kid again? Achievable on days when you're at Disneyland or on the playground or coloring with crayons but seemingly impossible anywhere else.

Perhaps this is why Blue Valentine is so rare, so pure, so good. For it presents us with two people, two dreamers, two kids, essentially. Kids trying to grow up in a very broken, very difficult world. Are they ready for love? Maybe that isn't so much the question as is this: are they ready to receive love and not only give it? This is, perhaps, the biggest thing no one tells you about getting into a relationship. It's not just about what you give, what you take, what you're willing to sacrifice. It's also about what the other person is willing to receive. And, also, what they're not willing to receive. Are the two souls in Blue Valentine willing to let themselves be loved? It's hard to say for certain, but I'm doubtful (that's why they seem so insecure, so self-protective, so distant in times of pain, confusion, and loss).

A song can bring them together but it can't keep them from falling apart.

Maybe this is part of the film's power, its mystery, its wonder, and tragedy. For two hours, we get to see the evolution (and destruction) of a relationship, played out as if time ran parallel--the bad running alongside the good. The only problem is, the music has stopped and the couple (may be) beyond repair. Are they?

I guess that depends on who you are and how you see it.

Atheism for Lent: Ash Wednesday (Day 1)

2011-03-10T15:03:00.008+08:00

Why atheism for lent?

Karl Barth once wrote that it was the Church and not the world (or the Jews or Romans) who crucified Christ. Such a statement is a powerful philosophical and doctrinal assertion. Since the Church was wrong about Christ, can the Church be trusted? Should we ever allow the Church to dictate what a community must follow or must believe? Ask an everyday Christian this and I'd be curious to hear their answer.

"But God loves the Church! Christ loves the Church."

Really? Then why the hell did the Church turn on Christ? I mean, really. Why would people do such a thing way-back-then? How could they do something to their so-called Creator, or even, to a Rabbi who brought about good news and great joy to those who had ears to hear? What kind of Church is this?

Many fundamentalists would defend the Church saying, "they were deceived" or "they knew not what they were doing". Well if that's true, who's to say the Church knows what it's doing now? Who's to say people won't be defending the bigotry that passes for right doctrine and right belief today in many churches, 100 years from now? Can we trust the Church, today? When pastors tell us that gay marriage is wrong, today, is that unlike the rabbis and priests and religious leaders and temple players of Jesus' day telling us that Jesus was wrong? Jesus, a heretic? Jesus, a blasphemer? With the Church's track record, shouldn't we have (more than enough) reason to be a little suspect? A little uncertain? A little doubtful?

The story of Zacchaeus always fascinated me as a little child. To me, it was told (and taught) as a story about a small man, a seemingly insignificant man, being heard and noticed and acknowledged by Christ, when no one else would acknowledge him. Now, I understand why people of that time wouldn't acknowledge a man like Zacchaeus. For he was a modern day homosexual. A flaming gay Christian, so to speak. His evil tax collecting ways were shunned by the most religious of society. So when Jesus said, "Zacchaeus, I'm going to your house today," (that time, the equivalent to standing alongside gay advocacy groups or clubbing at the Abbey in West Hollywood), the crowds (full of religiosity) cringed.

When you examine this story closely, it's peculiar (and fascinating) to note the language used in the Scriptures. Particularly in verse 7 of Luke 19, where it reads (following Jesus' insistence on staying over at the chief tax collector's house): 'All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”' To break it down pretty simply, Jesus basically went against everyone. 'All the people' were wrong. And remember, all these people were church-goers (or at least, the majority of them were). If they weren't, why else would they comment on Jesus going to 'be the guest of a sinner?'

Therefore, on this Ash Wednesday--where we're reminded that we are dust and to dust we shall return--perhaps atheism becomes the only lens by which we can see Christ--the Christ crucified by the Church--clearly. This is why, I think, atheism is so important, so helpful. And this is why I'm so excited to be starting this journey. A trip into the dark where the Church is wrong and the excluded, outsider, "lost ones" are finally seen as right.

Atheism for Lent: The Day Before the First Day

2011-03-08T17:55:00.001+08:00

In the preface to his book, Suspicion and Faith: The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism, Merold Westphal writes that he's writing to the church. To the pastors. To the laity. To all Christians who've grown complacent, swirling and circling in a faith that serves the self more than it serves others. Wesphal ends with a hope that his book will prove to be "edifyingly disturbing" to its readers.

I like that concept: to edify by/through disturbing. In light of this, a small group of Fuller friends and I are embarking on what many people our age are thinking about, thanks to a gentle prodding from Peter Rollins, and that is "Atheism for Lent."

Now, some of you may be wondering: 'I thought Lent was about giving something up? About sacrifice?' And you'd be write. But here, Rollins explains how atheism for Lent is an act of giving something up that in turn, can deepen and mature one all the more. He also suggests 'atheism' is part of Christian belief, Christian faith, and in fact, lies at the very heart of Christianity.

Rollins claims, "Every concrete theism creates its negative, its atheism. There are as many atheisms as there are theisms. All affirmations create their negations. Whenever a concrete religion is faced with its own negation, one of two things generally happens: either the church rejects those who reject it, pushes those who question it and who deny it outside the fold, pushing them away; or they listen to those who question, they listen to what they have to say, they consider it and they attempt to use it in a way to deepen their faith. However, there's a third position and it's where one attempts to integrate the negation into the very affirmation, itself. In other words, one takes the critique and sees it as an integrate part of faith. This is something we bear witness to at the very heart of Christianity itself. For in the cross, when Christ cries out, 'my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?', we see that the absence of God, the felt absence of the Divine, is brought into the very heart of the faith. Instead of seeing it as some kind of test that we have to endure, or the result of our sin and our finitude, what we see is God experiencing the absence of God. Therefore the absence of God is seen to be apart of the life of faith. If a Christian is to participate in the crucifixion, to stand with Christ, then part of the Christian experience is that absence, itself. In a similar way, when we are confronted by the atheism that is generated by Christianity, perhaps we should not see it as an enemy that we need to fight, or as a stranger that we need to listen to, but rather we should view it as a friend and a comrade, that we must embrace and welcome as our own."

So with the help of Merold Westphal, myself and four other friends will be embarking on a friendly existential journey into the minds of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud, daily, for the next 46 days. Hopefully, we'll come to a place close to where Kelly James Clark came to, after reading through Westphal's book. In the forward she writes:

"Their [Marx, Nietzsche, Freud] deep insights startle us, find us out, shame us, catch us up short, claim our assent, and damn our pretension. We realize, to our benefit, that we are not as good, faithful, just, and humble as we thought before we started this book."

Here's to 'damning our pretensions' and letting the absence of God make room for the possibility of God, and the gift of suspicion and faith.

Neville's Oscar Picks-Pricks-and-Predicts: 2011

2011-02-24T14:35:00.010+08:00

Best Picture
What will win: The King's Speech
What should win: Toy Story 3
What can't win because it wasn't nominated ('those pricks!'): Blue Valentine

The King's Speech and The Social Network are said to be neck-and-neck, but consider this: all too often, the picture with the most noms goes home with the B.P. gold (Shakespeare in Love won over Saving Private Ryan, Titanic over L.A. Confidential, etc.). Even though I wouldn't be surprised if there was an upset here, I do think that The King's Speech is the better film and so, deserves the prize. However, I'd love--love--to see an upset and have another film (not one of these two) win. Consider Toy Story 3, and let's do a 2003 repeat by awarding Best Picture to the third film in a film/story franchise (e.g. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King).

Best Actress
Who will win: Natalie Portman for Black Swan
Who should win: Michelle Williams for Blue Valentine
Who can't win because they weren't nominated ('those pricks!'): Kim Hye-ja for Mother

I feel an upset in this category is in order. Maybe it's the post-prop-8-of-2008 political California air--and the fact that it's a multiple-nominated, no-win Annette Bening up against the young, she-has-plenty-of-chances-to-win-again-in-the-future-favorite Natalie Portman. Whatever the case may be, Natalie Portman's frantic, frenzied performance is why awards shows exist. But don't rule out Bening. She could steal the prize so don't bet too much on this category. And of course, I'd love a repeat of 2002 Oscars and have someone like Adrian Brody win (the equivalent in this category being, Michelle Williams, who seems to be favored 4th to win). That would make my heart skip a beat. As far as Nicole Kidman (Rabbit Hole was a strong film but her performance seemed a tad uneven, and over-the-top), and Jennifer Lawrence (the best thing about Winter's Bone), this year will not be their year.

Best Actor
Who will win: Colin Firth for The King's Speech
Who should win: Colin Firth for The King's Speech
Who can't win because they weren't nominated ('those pricks!'): Ryan Gosling for Blue Valentine

He didn't win last year for A Single Man, which he deserved to win for over Jeff Bridges (sorry, but it's true--Jeff Bridges should've won a long time ago, not for Crazy Heart). But alas, that's not how Oscars seem to play out these days. Therefore, Colin Firth is a shoe-in. Jesse Eisenberg is great, but he'll win an Oscar before he's 40, so the Academy won't give him one just yet. At least, I don't think they will. Same goes for James Franco (who really held and sold 127 Hours).

Best Supporting Actress
Who will win: Melissa Leo for The Fighter
Who should win: Jacki Weaver for Animal Kingdom
Who can't win because they weren't nominated ('those pricks!')(tie): Leslie Manville for Another Year and Dianne Wiest for Rabbit Hole

Leslie Manville's performance in Another Year was a revelation. It is a shock she wasn't nominated. See the film and tell me that isn't the strongest supporting actress performance of 2010. But I digress. I know people are talking about how Melissa Leo may lose this award because of her controversial, self-publicized "for your consideration" ads, but I'm not buying it. I think with the film's momentum, and the fact that it's more of a showcase for actors (not really an original story/film), Leo's got it according to me. However, this is the category that tends to go crazy. In the past, the shoe-ins have lost to nominees no one thought could've garnered it. So don't rule out Helena Bonham-Carter who, while the performance was just average, has made a career out of playing wonderful women and not being awarded for it. Plus, she was the best thing about Alice In Wonderland last year, so an award for her here is an award for her career. The young star of True Grit could also upset (given the film's surprising recognition in nominations, alone) but I still think that's not where voters are going to go. However, if I could make one wish, if I could hope for one award to go a different way, it would be for Jacki Weaver to win for Animal Kingdom. In it, she plays a truly original, truly terrifying woman (the matriarch of an Aussie crime-family). With every kiss, with every speech, with every embrace, you can feel the duplicity of Weaver's character. Out of these five nominees, she clearly is the strongest. And the year's 2nd best supporting actress performance has (like Manville) also been grossly overlooked. Two-time Academy Award winner Dianne Wiest (Rabbit Hole) was the best thing about that film, and stole every scene she was in. If I could write in a name to vote for, Wiest would be my pick.

Best Supporting Actor
Who will win: Christian Bale for The Fighter
Who should win: Geoffrey Rush for The King's Speech
Who can't win because they weren't nominated ('those pricks!'): Andrew Garfield for The Social Network

I have a theory: if the real man Christian Bale portrayed wasn't featured in b-roll footage at the end of The Fighter, he wouldn't be winning this statue. However, since it was, we're shown what an amazing impersonation he did, how he really did embody that character of a drugged out, washed-up boxer, self-destructed and all. My opinion? Too much, too much. That kind of acting is for the stage and to be honest, I never felt that Bale wasn't giving a 'performance.' It was never more than this. Geoffrey Rush, however, did the opposite. He embodied the spirit, feeling and truth of Lionel in The King's Speech and in some scenes, stole them away from Firth. He's that good and he deserves the win here, hands down. As much as I love Mark Ruffalo, this isn't the film he should win for (The Kids Are Alright). He'll win one before 2020, though. Guaranteed.

---

Agree? Disagree? Let me know.

Stones

2011-02-23T14:52:00.004+08:00

If we could all
just stop throwing stones,
and stoop, knees bent
and write in the dust,

we'd see that the dust
was once stone--
grand, and hard, and proud, and tough--
now ground and dissolved
in grace and tears.

So...how much better
to be a grain of dirt
on that kind prophet's hands
than a stone
in the cold, accusing Temple
of the pure.

-Kester Brewin, from this book,
Other: Loving Self, God, and Neighbour in a World of Fractures

Top Ten Films of 2010

2011-02-15T01:11:00.018+08:00

The financial crisis of 2008 is partly to blame for the mediocre year that was, 2010. From The Fighter to True Grit to Winter's Bone, 2010 was definitely a year filled with films that we, the audience, were "supposed to like" more than we actually did. Apart from documentaries (and there were many great ones this year--see a few lines below), the story-department seemed to run a bit dry. Nevertheless, I've narrowed it down to the best-and-my-favorite films of 2010. Although my number 10 spot could've gone to many (Catfish, She's Out Of My League, Inside Job, Exit Through The Gift Shop, or Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work), I decided to go with the one (I think) will be looked back on and regarded as a very special cultural text---a film about humans and where we now live. So here we go. Number 10.

10. The Social Network: "We lived in farms, then we lived in cities and now we're gonna live on the internet." This line uttered in the final minutes of David Fincher's The Social Network sums up why, in a sentence, critics are praising this 'film-for-our-times.' It couldn't have been made 10 years ago, and it couldn't be made (like this) 10 years from now. It's our generation's Network. It's entirely and utterly a-movie-of-and-for-the-moment. With a zippy, razor-sharp, feels-like-fists-are-swinging screenplay by Aaron Sorkin (the Oscar is his to lose), an ominous, chilling score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and a talented cast led by the always wonderful Jesse Eisenberg (Zombieland, Adventureland and his best film, The Squid & The W hale), The Social Network isn't the best film from a (pretty) weak film year, but it is one that will go down in history, studied and remembered for being a film that sums up a generation. My generation. For this is where (and how) we now live. Friending. Tagging. Facebooking our way into life, as we now know it.

9. How To Train Your Dragon: The sleeper hit from early 2010 ('thank you' audience word-of-mouth buzz, which put the film at the number one box office spot weeks after its initial release--an unheard of feat) turns out to be one of the dreamiest, most giddily entertaining films of the year. What stood out to me most, while watching the film was its mature, sage perspective on 'what and who is evil' in this world. There's a fantastic theological conversation going on in How To Train Your Dragon, and one question that keeps haunting our protagonist Hiccup's mind: mainly, 'why is the dragon the enemy'? From the Vikings' perspective, it has to do with fire, death and destruction. But once Hiccup seeks to reach across the island waters and understand the dragons (and where they came from), something cinematically (and narratively) enlightening emerges. As a metaphor for our globalized, pluralistic and increasingly big/small complex world, How To Train Your Dragon reveals what it will take to understand one another today, tomorrow and in the future to come. Of course, as Madeleine L'Engle once wrote, this sort of message and movie can only come at us in the realm of fiction, and fantasy. And what a grand, provocative fantasy this is.

8. The King's Speech: The year's biggest surprise, The King's Speech sounds like typical made-for-TV-movie melodrama but it's not. It's a throwback to the golden age of cinema. It's as conventional as the very best mainstream movie can be yet, its heart (and script) are in a very good, very true place. The theme of finding one's voice is not new to contemporary cinema but here, it gets a colorful (literal) makeover thanks to solid performances from Colin Firth (his second knockout performance in two years, following last year's tragic A Single Man) and Geoffrey Rush (his best work since Quills). While watching the film, I couldn't help but think "How was this not made into a movie sooner?" For it feels--almost effortlessly--like the perfect piece of cinema: entertaining, enlightening and (in its own soft-spoken way) enthralling. Kudos to the perseverance of screenwriter David Seidler for a script that honors the incredible spirit (and providential humanity) of history. For a story he's been wanting to write since 1980, and someone who dealt with a stammer himself, it's not hard to see why The King's Speech leads in Oscar nominations this year.

7. Inception: Christopher Nolan's dream-within-a-dream film has been criticized on many levels. My wise film friend Eugene Suen said this to me after seeing Inception (we argued for over two hours about the film until 3:30 AM on a Friday night, after I saw it a second time): "There is so much damn exposition about the logics of its own universe." I agree. But I defended the film, saying, "The particular dream world that was constructed needed this type of exposition. It needed a setup that explained the inner working-world of Cobb's (Leonardo DiCaprio) dreams." Call it cheating. Call it bad screenwriting. Call it whatever. But for me (and millions of other people), it worked. It engaged me. I was entertained. It made me think and reflect on dreams I've longed to get stuck in (and forget about) since childhood. And I liked the un-reality of Inception. For dreams aren't supposed to be about reality, but they're about what reality can't reveal to us. In Inception we see a man so troubled and traumatized and tricked by his own love for dreams, his life (literally) disappears before our eyes.

6. Last Train Home (归途列车): Lixin Fan’s laborious documentary about a migrant workers’ family journey home once a year for the Chinese New Year festival celebration is not just an exploitation of China’s economic boom (and its back-breaking, painful side effects on the family at hand) but it’s a global snapshot of a world (and a people) just trying to keep up. The last half of the film is so emotionally taxing, you begin to sense what it must feel like to be one of the 130 million migrant workers (who make your jeans, your t-shirts, your shoes, your pretty-much-everything—e.g., “Made In China”), living in a world that’s forgotten them. Fan—who also served as cinematographer here—pays visual homage to Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence and Edward Burtynsky’s photography in the way he captures a people literally held captive by the world’s economic demands. Uncomfortable, disturbing yet wholly cinematic, Last Train Home is a portrait of a family being severed, slowly. In a year filled with wonderful documentaries--from Inside Job to Exit Through The Gift Shop to Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work--Last Train Home is, I think, the best of the best.

5. Another Year: On paper, Another Year looks like an impossibility; a film that just 'couldn't work.' Its central characters--a rock-of-calmness-and-goodness couple played by Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen--are flawed, but there's little gloating over their flaws, just gloating over their hospitable gentleness. They're that rare cinematic couple that seem to have learned (in their old age) how to love, accept and live in and with each others' brokenness, while never seeming to be fixated on them. A cinematic (and real life) rarity, indeed. Additionally, I think they're the kind of elderly couple so many of us aspire to be--youthful, playful, and in love with life, with this earth and with each other. So it's a surprise to see that the conflict arises not so much from within them but within the lonely people woven into the vocational and familial relationships they have. Director Mike Leigh (Secrets & Lies, Vera Drake, Happy-Go-Lucky) showcases an exactitude for the mundane and transforms it into the remarkable. By creating a cast of normal people who feel so real, their very idiosyncrasies reveal the inner world as physical world, Leigh's created his smallest and quietest great film in years. It's better and stronger than Happy-Go-Lucky, and stays with you longer than Vera Drake did (as it's not merely about an issue or social problem but a universally felt, common human experience). This is at the heart of Another Year's wisdom and drama. I loved eavesdropping in on this world. Perhaps because, minus the aged wisdom, it resembles my own.

4. Undertow (Contracorriente): The 2010 Sundance Film Festival (World Cinema Audience Award) winner deserves all the praise it's been getting. Peru's Undertow (Contracorriente) is a ghost story like no other. It's about cultural and religious traditions, gender roles, masculinity, family, God, and being gay, yes, but it's much more than this. At its heart, it questions the very things in life that weigh us down and literally, drown us--day by day, night by night, tear by tear--til' the day we return to the ground from which we came. Writer/director Javier Fuentes-Leon's brilliant (yet small and quiet) first feature film is that rare piece of cinema that knows what it wants and goes for it. A parable like no other--and far better than Brokeback Mountain, a film it's often compared to--Undertow is one of the most moving films of the year, and one of my favorites. For a glimpse into a world many people rarely visit or experience, see the achingly beautiful Undertow.

3. Mother (마더): Mother is a movie that's brimming with cultural satire, family melodrama and swift suspense. There's not a wasted scene and the payoff at the end, is nothing short of (visual) brilliance. From the opening scene to the haunting final shot, we know what this film is about and yet, we're also completely lost with nearly every scene unfolding more unpredictably than the one before it. It makes sense but it doesn't, it's heartbreaking but maddening, melodramatic but mesmerizing. Mother is the year's best, genre-bending, cinema-as-paradox film. South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho (Memories of Murder, The Host) proves he's one of today's great directors as Mother is his grandest and greatest achievement to date. It's like his earlier nuanced, Seven-meets-Zodiac, Memories of Murder remade, 10 years later. Only better. In some sense, it's a film that gives us a glimpse of the future possibilities of cinema and narrative storytelling in a digital age. By tapping into themes of savvy adolescent techno-literacy, poverty, and a Korean mother's (a dazzling performance by Kim Hye-ja that makes Natalie Portman in Black Swan look like amateur acting, a shame she was snubbed in the Best Actress Oscar race) relationship to her one-and-only son, Bong Joon-ho has made a thriller like no other. If Alfred Hitchcock directed Memento, Mother would be its movie-child.

2. Toy Story 3: Jürgen Moltmann would be proud. This is, basically, his theological treatise book, "Theology of Play," translated onto the 21st century big screen. If that means nothing to you, then let me just say this: this movie is loads of fun, entertaining and giddily funny, and in the end, reminds us all never to lose that child-like sense of wonder and, well, play. Academy Award-winning screenwriter Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine) has crafted another comic masterpiece, combining the light and dark sides of humanity into one, seemingly effortless cinematic story. It's the most surprising (and the most touching) of all the Toy Story films, as it comments not just about the loss of childhood, but the loss of play (and imagination) in today's society. For the most beautiful story-metaphors, look no further than to Pixar's Toy Story 3. To quote one of my favorite critics from Entertainment Weekly, the film is a "salute to the magic of making believe." By the film's end, we all do.

1. Blue Valentine: When I walked out of Blue Valentine, I didn't see it as the year's best film. It has its flaws, its story structure issues, its emotional holes here and there. But it's a film that lingers and stays with you, in the most uncomfortable (and surprising) way. Drawing slightly (stylistically/in editing) from Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless and in mood/story from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Blue Valentine is the kind of experimental, art-house film that breaks your heart, the way a Tom Waits song does. Yet, through its relentless, raw flashback-flashpresent narrative, there's a kind of romance presence here that is bursting with chemistry and full of life. There are moments--several scenes, in fact--that made me smile like I was watching the most romantic moment from my life played out right in front of me, courtesy of two of the year's most underrated performances (Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams). This is what movies are supposed to do, and Blue Valentine does it well. At the same time, there are other moments that make you cringe, the inner felt aftershock of a blow to the stomach. Blue Valentine isn't so much a story as it is an experience. An experience into the past of a relationship (and every past/present-romantic relationship of its audience) juxtaposed against the future all tied together with a song that (although it is 'their song') quickly becomes our song, too. It's like a symbol standing for the hope that exists between any couple who are too battered and beat up and tired to find hope within their love again. Or perhaps, for the first time. Although it's an extremely difficult film to watch (and is for adults only, to be sure), it captures the spot as the best and my favorite film of the year because it's so paradoxically human. A film that will haunt me and stay with me, forever.

It's All The Love I've Got

2011-02-14T23:11:00.000+08:00

"When I die, when I die, I'll rot. But when I live, when I live, I'll give it all I've got. Well I have known you for just a little while. I feel I must be, wearing my welcome, I must be moving on. For my intentions, were good intentions, I could've loved you, I could've changed you. I wouldn't be so, I wouldn't feel so, consumed by selfish thoughts. I'm sorry if I seem self-effacing, consumed by selfish thoughts. It's only that, I love you deeply, it's all the love I've got." -Sufjan Stevens, from the song "Age of Adz"

I've heard this song for months. It's eclectic. It's beautiful. It's grungy-meets-ballad. And apocalyptic. Sort of post-love, post-human, post-break-up-esque. Post-so-many-things, really. Like the album of the same name, it's all over the place. A lovely noisy mess.

But I've never heard it like I did tonight. Every line hit me. It knocked me out-of-balance and I had to shake my head to make sure I was hearing the lyrics correctly. I now know exactly what the end of this song, "Age of Adz" is saying. I understand this place. I get it. I hear who Sufjan was crying out for (himself, perhaps, or maybe everyone who's had their heart broken so swiftly, so quickly).

"Well I have known you for just a little while," starts it all for me. It's the beginning of the impending end, it seems. A haunting little hint-of-a-sentence. It makes me cringe every time I hear Sufjan sing it. The opening line to the song. The way he feels like he knows the person. Before. "Before the earth was split in five." And yet, he knows it's ending. It's not going to last. It's almost over. And he feels it.

I think I feel it, too.

the Maybe World

2011-02-05T16:55:00.002+08:00

"Listen to the exhortation of the dawn. Look to this day, for it is life, the very life of life. In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence, the glory of action--the bliss of growth the splendor of beauty. For yesterday is but a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision, but today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well therefore to this day. Such is the salutation of the dawn."-Excerpt from The Holy Quran

After the storm, comes the sun.
After the fire, rain.
After the hurt, joy.
After the past, future.
And then, there's the present.

What does it mean to welcome, to salute, to dance into the dawn of today? So much of living in the present moment usually depends on us choosing the past, focusing on it, and living from within it. It's not about moving on, letting go. It's about being held. Captive, almost. Like you're stuck inside two worlds and you can't escape to the one called 'life' and 'living.' Sort of, 'stuck in a moment' you can't get out of, as U2's song recalled. It's that place between a "Beautiful Day" and one's "Elevation" (yes, this is where Track 2: "Stuck In A Moment (You Can't Get Out Of)" falls on their CD--after the day, before the elevation).

Living in the present is so hard, at times. I think it's because we only see it as a place where we're somehow, in some way, stuck, and a not a place we see as being open to the possibility of joy, bliss, and love.

Ironically, though, this is where these things exist. Not in the past or in some distant future, but right here, right now. This is what the wise old Rabbi teaches his disciples. If you can't touch, feel, or love what's right in front of you, how can you learn to love yourself, others, and God? Much more, life? This is what Lisa Germano is referring to (I think) in her lovely song (from the album of the same name) "In The Maybe World."

We all seem to want to live 'in the maybe world'. It's safer there. In this world, we don't have to leave our pasts, our fears, or worries behind. In this world, we choose safety over risk, past over present, control over love. We don't want to take, what (my favorite author) Madeleine L'Engle calls "the fearful gamble" of actually living a life of love, in love, for Love.

Here's to moving beyond the 'maybe world.' As hard as that may be.

Joy

2010-12-13T15:26:00.012+08:00

"Alone, even with all the wisdom in the world, we are powerless: castaways adrift in an impersonal ocean. You can't love a computer or a software program or even a book as you can love another person. Sometimes you just need a human." -Tim Sanders, Love Is The Killer App

My last post just after Thanksgiving focused in on 'hurt'. In it, I was approaching the subject from a variety of perspectives, from a sea of ambiguous faces all trying not to say what I really wanted to say. It was a bit maddening. I wanted to write within my current state of disappointment, darkness, and distressed anxiety, but it was difficult. After all, how do you articulate the hurt that so (unassumingly) creeps up on you? How do you put into workable words ideas so steeped in emotion, pain, suffering?

Sometimes, writing feels like a bi-polar, inner-self dance. A dance between the writer's insecurity and their own (failed) attempts to get out the right words, to speak the appropriate truth. The truth, that exists, just in that moment.

Since that day after Thanksgiving, when I wrote about the subject of 'hurt,' I've experienced--particularly in the past week--a grandiose amount of joy. From so many angles, it keeps piercing me, like an unexpected rush of good fortune, good cheer, goodness. Like the word 'Radiant' webbed by Charlotte to save her dear (pig) friend Wilbur, I feel--in some weird way--like the last 5 days have been a gift. A gift so undeserved, blessed, and profoundly overwhelming, I feel as though I can't take it. I'm speechless. In awe. So struck by the beauty and gift of the moment I have to scatter around on the floor in my head to catch my breath.

Blindsided by joy, if you will.

In the Psalms, the writer writes, "My heart leaps for joy, and I will give thanks to him in song." I like this image. Joy leaping up at us via song. One of the first songs that comes to mind after reading this line is the lovely Mac Davis tune, "I Believe In Music." The chorus to the song, says it all: I believe in music, I believe in love, I believe in music, I believe in love.

I think this is partly what I was getting at a few weeks ago when I wrote. My hurt was a loss of faith. A loss of love, in a way. Love for myself, love for my voice as a writer, for my humanness. We all have such a hard time loving ourselves, I think. We don't think we deserve it. We often choose people to love who don't love us well because we don't think we deserve a love worthy of who we really (truly) are. So we settle. Settle for lies over truths, productiveness over playfulness, criticism over kindness. But it's never too late to see it a different way.

Catholic priest Brennan Manning calls the lack of love for self, 'self-hatred'. He believes it is the antithesis of God. The ultimate slap-in-the-face to creation, humanity, and love. Author Donald Miller believes it's one of the most difficult concepts to grasp in life. The still-small-sinking-sick voice telling us we're not worthy, we're not good enough, we're not lovable, often drowns out the simple love-of-self voice within us.

Thankfully, people come into our lives sometimes who help us see the love we're too stingy to give ourselves. For me, this came in three forms (and then some) this past week: 1) a screenwriting professor, 2) a kindred spirit sharing a wonderful art piece with me courtesy of U.P.S., and 3) a new, breath-of-kind-and-fresh-air, friend, who loved on me in a way only a person who doesn't know you can. All seemed to come out of nowhere, yet, all (also) seemed to connect with me at just the right time, just the right moment. It's baffling to me now, even still. I feel joyful, but writing that seems so silly. So insignificant in capturing the rapturous feeling of ecstasy it has brought me.

I've come to realize (this feeling) is more than joy, really. Much more. It's a joy, transformed; transformed into utter gratitude. A gratitude that thanks God, karma, and all the other broken-people-humans out there who've been so gracious, so wise enough to love on me when I can't seem to love myself.

This is when one of Anne Lamott's two prayers is all that can be expressed, at the end of a week like I've had. I must simply close my eyes, sit and silence, and utter: "Thank you, thank you, thank you." That's all I feel now, too. My heart feels full, drunk on gratitude, spinning over too much love, too much grace, too much goodness, kindness, gentleness, happiness.

This is pure joy. What often comes after the hurt.

Hurt

2010-11-26T08:47:00.016+08:00

It's hard to feel thankful when you're hurting. When you're grieving, it's even more difficult. Growing up in the church, I often heard people talk about 'giving thanks in all circumstances.' It's in the Bible, yes, it's the way many Christians say we're supposed to feel, supposed to act, supposed to supposed to supposed to.

Do you ever feel tired of living in the 'supposed to' world?

In screenwriting, everything moves because of conflict. Without it, no one would go to the movies. Yet, so many of us avoid conflict, dodge it, suppress it (within others, within ourselves) because we think it will make our life better. But what if the opposite was true? Not 'what if we just made people's lives hell'. Certainly not. But what if we didn't avoid conflict. What if we faced it. They say in movies, audiences are attracted to characters who do the things they only think of doing. For example, if someone cuts you off, gives you the finger in traffic, your inner self may scream out loud and imagine following this person to the nearest Whole Foods to confront them and tell them how 'unacceptable that was.' But who does this? Really? Who has the guts to put into action the thoughts of millions of scared little broken people?

People in the movies.

This is (partly) why we care so much about cinema, about story, about characters. This is why conflict isn't so bad after all.

In Nine Inch Nails' brutal, cut-to-the-core-of-humanity song, "Hurt", Trent Reznor sings: "I hurt myself today / To see if I still feel / I focus on the pain / The only thing that's real." Conversely, there's a line pictured at the end of the film Into The Wild wonderfully summarizing Christopher McCandles' self-realization at his journey's end: "Happiness only real when shared." This was McCandles final entry into his diary before he died.

Two things are posited here as being real: pain and happiness. Like life, both cannot happen alone, in a vacuum. Pain often happens because of others, because of conflict, because of interactions and confrontations with the world. Happiness, according to McCandles, happens only with others. It means nothing to be happy if you're all alone. So why do so many of us avoid pain and believe happiness can happen when we do what we want to do, on our own terms, for the good of ourselves, for the good of what society, parents, friends say we're 'supposed to' do? So many people live lives married to the hope of pleasing others, of not letting our parents down, of being (in a deeply inner sense) found out. We don't want others to know how hurt we are or how much we need them. Of course, there's some good to this. I'm not expecting people walk around all day expressing their deepest hearts' desires to people with whom they don't have a relationship with. Yet, at the same time, it'd be nice to encounter a few more risk takers out there (myself, included). It'd be nice, just once in a very long while, to talk to a person who doesn't let what they're 'supposed to do' dictate what they really should be doing.

I think this is what the writer of that famous (overused) New Testament phrase 'give thanks in all circumstances' was getting at. Giving thanks the for hurt. Why? Because it's real. And because, happiness cannot be felt without it. Friedrich Nietszhe' words first pointed me to this truth, but I don't think I was ready to receive it then. No, I think before you can receive something like this (and when I say receive, I don't mean possess for I'll probably forget this truth in a few years and have to rediscover it in some other place, in some other person and learn it all, over and over again) you have to surrender to the hurt, to the pain, to the suffering inside your own head. It's similar to what John Carroll argued in The Existential Jesus. Like Christ, we all must face the pain of our own mortality, or own deserted, desperate (and painfully lonely) isolation, at times. If we don't, we will break.

Someday.

We will lose it. We can't fight it. We must surrender and accept, not run away and hide. For we won't be able to live with the power of denial and the refusal to see pain and suffering for what it is: real.

This is the water I'm treading in right now (and I have been for the past several months, I think). At times, it's exhausting. At night in bed, it can turn into a kind of all-consuming fear, a morbid sense of detached lifelessness. And then, there are moments (brief glimmers, really) where Joshua Radin's song lyrics struggle to the surface. Where I trust and hope and believe that one day (even though it's not today nor anytime in the foreseeable distance) "everything'll be alright." Where hurt morphs--in a surprise spark of illumination and transcendence--into happiness.

This is 'giving thanks in all circumstances'. When hurt is not marginalized and happiness is not exalted, but both--in all their mystery--are held together, closely. A kind of glorious song and dance of emotional conflict.

Some call this being crazy. I think it's just being.

A (Christian) Reality Check

2010-07-22T01:01:00.000+08:00

"It is far easier to ask forgiveness of a god we can't see than from a person we can see." -Philip Gulley, If The Church Were Christian: Rediscovering the Values of Jesus

I'm just finishing up Philip Gulley's new book, If The Church Were Christian, and it's been a breath (blast, at times) of fresh air. Sure, I disagree with some of what Gulley puts forth as 'the values of Jesus,' but for the most part, he's dead on. His latest book might make Matthew and Luke raise their eyebrows (I imagine Mark and John would be smiling all the way through, though). Why? Because this book has a Rabbinic flare to it, in that, it addresses what the Church has too often neglected: today's world, today's people, today's hurting souls. All too often, Christian orthodoxy focuses on future eschatology while leaving John's understanding of realized eschatology far, far behind. It's almost ironic the Left Behind series are called that; for that is exactly what they have done to millions of people. They've left behind an understanding of Jesus, an understanding of living life today, now, here, present in hopes of gaining some personal (eternal) security.

Years ago, I had a thought: "Doesn't heaven sound like the most selfish thing a Christian could ask for? Wouldn't the most sacrificial, love-act be (if love really is laying down one's life for a friend) to lay down one's afterlife, then, as well?" It seems counter-Christian to be so consumed with eternity, yet, this is the way of most church folk.

But that's getting me off track (this is the last chapter of the book, so perhaps that's why I jumped to talking about it because I just finished reading it). In essence, this book is a wake-up call for Christians who want to be real, who want to do good, who want to take life seriously, who want to not check their brain at the door in order to follow Jesus. Some people will tremble and go a little mad after reading some of what Gulley is questioning but this is to be expected. Throughout history, any re-imagining of what Christian Orthodoxy entails has always been met with a firm fist (and sometimes a sword). But Christians need to let go and let loose a bit, and stop thinking that the world rests on their mind's doctrinal stances.

One thing I really loved about the book? It reiterated (within me), why the topic of 'women in ministry' is so important (and still, so behind-the-Jesus-times in so many growing churches). Are we really still telling people that women can't lead--in those most high places--of churches? Are we really still saying their gender has to take a back seat as far as leadership ability goes when it comes to churches? If we are, shame on us. For if we can be so selective of what we will modify (and not modify) within scripture, God help us for what else we are capable of reading (or not reading) into. This book reminded me of the amazing nuances of scripture and how easily we brush over them in hopes of constructing a manageable, livable faith life. How sad it is when people say they're 'living by the good book,' while making slight changes and modifications to their interpretations along the way (and yet, still thinking in their mind what they've done is "absolutely scriptural").

Newsflash: it isn't. So please, don't kid yourself by telling yourself 'this is living like Jesus.' We could all use a lot more humanity, a lot more humility when following Christ. This is the way of Jesus. Additionally, as the book so refreshingly suggests, we need more people willing to follow Jesus and less people who simply want to 'worship him on a Sunday morning.' True discipleship is worship. Maybe that's what the Church has been lacking for so long.

The Beauty of Being Indirect

2010-05-22T09:33:00.005+08:00

"He did not hate the Winter now, for he knew that it was merely the Spring asleep, and that the flowers were resting." -from Oscar Wilde's short story, The Selfish Giant

There are a handful of people from history I would love to share a meal with; Oscar Wilde is one of them. When I first came across his short story The Selfish Giant, I did so because I heard he often read it to his children before bedtime. According to one of his sons, Oscar would always start to cry come the story's end. Once upon a night, his son Cyril asked his father why he always cried at the end of The Selfish Giant. Oscar replied, "Because really beautiful things often makes me cry."

Sometimes, these 'beautiful things' can only be approached through story, through metaphor, through a roundabout way. Maybe that's why a movie like The Passion of the Christ didn't affect me personally as much as the movie The Wrestler did. The first is a straight story of the cross. It's about what happened, it's about going through the 'facts' (or, at least, the facts we have come to know), and the lives of Jesus, Mary, and the disciples. The second, however, is a metaphorical story of the cross. It's about the emotional, spiritual undertones. Pain. Suffering. Exclusion. Isolation. All these play into the scenes of the ripped, torn (human) flesh. All of them are as much about the physical as they are about the emotional, the spiritual. Many would argue that The Passion of the Christ succeeded in being about this, too, but I would heartily disagree. The Passion of the Christ gave us torture, gave us violence, gave us torn flesh, but the context was so stooped in religious controversy (and in religious historical debate), the story failed to connect with many people. And why? Because it was too focused on the facts, rather than the spirit and the truth of Christ's lived experience.

In The Wrestler, we see how scared, how confused, how alone Christ must have felt. It's similar, in a cinematic sense, to what Nikos Kazantzakis did in his fantastic novel, The Last Temptation of Christ. In it, Kazantzakis understood what human beings were missing when they were reading the Gospels. They constantly sought out Christ's divinity without every giving much thought to his humanity, his finite nature. That's not wrong or anything, but I don't think it's much help to us in terms of how we live, how we feel, how we love, or how we forgive. Furthermore, there's a distance that's created from the former approach compared to the latter. When you watch The Passion of the Christ you rarely think, "I am like Jesus. He understands my pain." No. All you (can't help but) think is, "I'm sinful. I would have killed Jesus, too. I could never do what he did for me." But when you watch The Wrestler, one is eerily empathetic to "The Ram's" plight because, well, we've all felt like he's felt before. We've failed in relationships, we've let our family down, we've abused our bodies for the sake and pleasure of others and ourselves. The loneliness, the drugs, the wrinkles in our faces. They all reveal time's toll on us. They all reveal the fact that we will one day die.

To take the analogy one step further, it's as if The Passion of the Christ was all about overcoming death and looking towards eternity, and The Wrestler was mostly about facing death and accepting one's own fate, one's own path into eternity. And what does this have to do with Oscar Wilde and The Selfish Giant? Because in it's final sentences, I was reminded of this narrative, literary, metaphorical power. The way you can hear the same story a thousand times and then, hear it told indirectly and finally 'get it.'

I still don't think I've 'gotten it,' but I do think Wilde has helped me see the Passion story in a new light. In the spirit of hospitality, charity, and comforting the week, the lonely, the down-and-out, Wilde has crafted a simple, short, beautiful story that reminds us (through a different type of garden encounter), of how to be human.

And this, Wilde believes, is what makes us divine.

Harvard

2010-05-12T07:11:00.002+08:00

"I spent my high-school years staring at the pine trees outside my classroom window and picturing myself on the campus of an Ivy League university, where my wealthy roommate Colgate would leave me notes reading, 'Meet me on the quad at five.' I wasn't sure what a quad was, but I knew that I wanted one desperately. My college friends would own horses and monogrammed shoehorns. I'd spend weekends at my roommate's estate, where his mother would say things like, 'I've instructed Helvetica to prepare those little pancakes you're so fond of, but she's had a devil of a time locating fresh cape gooseberries." This woman would have really big teeth that she'd reveal every time she threw back her head to laugh at one of my many witticisms. 'You're an absolute caution,' she'd bray. 'Tell me you'll at least consider joining us this Christmas at Bridle Haven; it just wouldn't be the same without you.' I fantasized with the nagging suspicion there was something missing, something I was forgetting. This something turned out to be grades. It was with profound disappointment I discovered it took more than a C average to attend Harvard. Average, that was the word that got to me. C and average, the two went hand in hand. I was sent instead to a state college in western North Carolina where the low brick buildings were marked with plaques reading ERECTED 1974, and my roommate left notes accusing me of stealing his puka shell necklace or remedial English book." -David Sedaris, from the chapter "The Incomplete Quad" from his book, Naked

If you haven't read this book, you should. Everyone needs to laugh a little more in life than they currently do. Including me. Including you.

Angels

2010-05-10T23:11:00.000+08:00

"Through the open door I could see a sliver of carolers, some faces peering inside at the scattered tatters of money, some faces turned to the sky and the snow, now beginning to fall. And there, in front of them, in the room with us, stood the family, their outlines barely visible within the weight of the room's light. It was a light so brilliant and white it could have been beamed from heaven, and Brian and I could have been angels, basking in it. But it wasn't, and we weren't." -Neil McCormick in Mysterious Skin by Scott Heim

I know this quote probably means nothing to people who haven't read this book (or seen the film adaptation), but it's amazing to me how sometimes, a film can capture the very essence of the written word. It can enhance, enlighten and illuminate the words so brightly, so pitch-perfectly, you feel as though what you're seeing is exactly as you imagined it would be. The tragedy of this scene--in film and written form--is so overwhelming it (almost always) takes my breath away. Brian and Neil, two of the literary world's deeply wounded characters, emerge like angels from heaven, clinging to one another as if their life depended on it.

Something tells me it does. Maybe that's why this scene is so powerful to me. It's where I want to live. Where I want to be. Where I feel safe, inside my own (and some other wounded soul's) mysterious skin.

Existentialism

2010-05-09T15:33:00.000+08:00

"Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could've been yesterday." -Albert Camus, The Stranger

Albert Camus' existential literary masterpiece begins with these (haunting) words. On today, Mother's Day, this quote came to mind. I thought, 'how could someone be so detached from life, from family, from reality to be so nonchalant about his or her mother's death? To not remember the day, the hour, the moment? Obviously, this is a bit of a stretch in the writer's world of this novel as it serves to engage with the reader's thinking, questions, ideas about reality and humanity and life. I know this. But I still find it interesting (and haunting).

It's not just an existential question or problem. It's a human one. And we really should be asking more questions like this, about ourselves (if we want to be really honest) more often.

Dying

2010-05-08T22:10:00.001+08:00

"The first step to eternal life is you have to die." -Tyler Durden in Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk

I like the idea of death being linked to eternity. I especially like the idea of this as it relates to reality and our present-day-existence (and living fully in that brief present-day-existence).

I was talking to a friend last night about death as it relates to churches and how funny it is that so many churches (and Christians) fear death as a sort of closing chapter or finality to a life and world in which they have little control over. We talked about how things--and people, and institutions, and ideas--need to die, how it's part of the natural process and a natural (evolving) world. It must happen before anything new can sprout up in its place. Sometimes, before anything good can grow, too.

But for some reason, many of us are surprised, aghast, and even offended when death comes in various forms to ourselves and our ideas and old ways of living our lives (as if we didn't think it was possible to ever end). My friend was telling me how he would go to Catholic church with his parents and how so much of it was just rigid, unchanging, elderly people--a sea of white heads clenching tight to the old ways of living (which are not to be confused with the ways of Scripture, for they are completely different than this). "They mean well," he said. "I know they do...but..." It's not going to last forever. Sooner or later, that physical building, that physical space, that relentless refusal to adapt and learn from life's new lessons (and God's new and ever-changing world) finally caves in and collapses. No more structures. No more budgets. No more people. At least, not in this particular place anymore.

Many Christians are afraid of these days (and claim it's a sign of the apocalypse). Me? I think it's just a sign that we've been doing church wrong for way too long and that our forms of spirituality are not connecting (at all) with the creative surge of life and humanity. And I think it's a good thing, I think it's what needs to happen before this world will be made anew. Before the so-called New Jerusalem will be a place right here, right now, on Earth. Theologians call this a realized eschatology; I call it living life, eternally. Dead, but really, alive.

Gilliam

2010-05-07T11:29:00.001+08:00

"The first movie that really got me was Paths of Glory, which I saw when I was sixteen at a Saturday matinee in Panorama City, with kids running up and down the aisle. Suddenly, with Paths of Glory, there was a movie that was about something--about injustice--with themes and ideas, and the good guys didn't win in the end. That film completely changed me and I went around trying to get everybody I knew to see it." -Terry Gilliam (director of Brazil, 12 Monkeys, Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas, and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus) in Gilliam on Gilliam, edited by Ian Christie

I just recently saw Paths of Glory, and still, there are scenes I can't shake away. Like most of Stanely Kubrick's films, the last act just blows you away. Everything comes together. Everything starts to set in, sink in, and simmer from within. From the story's inside-out perspective, Kubrick's direction allows the words (from soldiers who are sentenced to be killed for not following orders, for not respecting authority, by their own generals) and the actions of his characters to bleed a kind of naked vulnerability. I think this may be what Gilliam is talking about. And I think, this is partly why, I enjoy his films (and Kubrick's films) so much. There's an electricity to the dialogue. It feels real, yet it doesn't, all at once. Like a Wong Kar-Wai film, it transcends the space inside the cinematic frame and moves beyond it. Into the audience. Into the living room. Wherever you may be viewing it. And then, out of nowhere, it hits you. And you know you're watching something important and not just another Saturday matinee special.

Silence

2010-05-06T07:20:00.000+08:00

"Time is life's fundamental necessity but has become the ultimate luxury--the most expensive and extravagant thing we have. We're in a time famine; we don't need more free time as much as we need more time that is free from desires and demands. No matter what we may think, technology doesn't so much give us more time as enable us to do many more things in the time that we have. In addition, technology makes us more enslaved to work, not less. You don't have to walk far on a crowded beach to find somebody busy at a laptop. What we need is more sabbaticals--time to learn and explore the secrets of the soul. I am not talking about the 'year-off-for-research-and-study' type of sabbatical. I am talking about mini-sabbaticals that are skinny-dips in the fountain of youth. There are three important s's for sabbaticals: stillness, silence, and saying no. Music encompasses and embraces silence though it is made of sound. The rests are what make notes possible. It's the same with life. We need lots of time with nothing to do. Souls are drawn to stillness the way objects are drawn to the ground, the way sounds are drawn to silence." -Leonard Sweet, Summoned To Lead

I've struggled for years with saying, 'no.' At first, it was difficult and then gradually--when my self began reaping the benefits of what saying 'no' meant for it--it got much easier. I think people, in general, are on a continuum when it comes to saying 'no' to others with respect to their own time for silence and solitude: there are those who risk being overly isolated and those who fear isolation at any cost. I think years ago, I was in the latter category. I didn't know how to appreciate alone time, silence, even. As Madeleine L'Engle would say, 'I knew how to be a human doing, but not a human being.'

In today's technological boom-of-an-age, I can't help but think how more interaction through technology and social networking sites doesn't give us more time to be with people, or relate socially, but less. This is not a slam at today's world, only a minor critique of it (and of myself). In a way, we're so connected (and are determined to stay so connected) to our phones, our emails, our computers, we forget what to do (or rather, how to be and live life, in silence, in conversation, in the company of others), when we're away from these devices.

How many times have you been sitting on your couch and for no apparent (pressing) reason, you've thought, "I should check my email." Even though you've been checking it all day long, there still is that need, that urgency, to stay connected, to stay in touch. Ironically, I wonder how out-of-touch this is making us. Not just as people but as societies.

Maybe that's why I like the line in Sweet's book, "We need lots of time with nothing to do" so much. It speaks to everyone of us and is something to remember the next time we're sitting in front of a TV not knowing what we're watching or we're reading Wikipedia on our iPhone trying to find out what "pumice" is, or we're simply scanning through emails and spamming the ones we don't want to read. All of these acts maybe something but they turn to nothing at the end of the day. Whereas, Sweet argues, nothing (or stillness and silence), is something that wouldn't turn to nothing by the day's end.

Branded

2010-05-05T06:56:00.001+08:00

"Marketers have convinced these kids that they need a specific set of physical attributes, and that their own qualities must be obviated. For the large subcultures of teens who self-brand into look-alikes with tiny waistlines, bulging biceps, deracinated noses, and copious breasts, the supposed freedom of self-creation is not a freedom at all. What they have is consumer choice, no substitute for free will. Imagine the dark day for marketers when kids look for things that are neither bought nor sold." -Alissa Quart, Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers

Some may read this quote and lament: "Oh, isn't it horrible how hard teens have it these days?" or "Life was much simpler way back when I was young...," and so on. But in reality, this isn't productive thinking or helpful, in my opinion. Perhaps Alissa Quart oversimplifies (and over-blames) marketers' control over teen's free will, but I think the general observation is accurate. Teens aren't left with the freedom to self-create who they desire to be, but rather, they're left with consumer-controlled choices that are carefully constructed to encourage a greater appetite for consumer culture bent self-creation. But what if teens longed for things neither 'bought nor sold?' What if a world such as this, was possible? Will we reach this world in 20 years time, 50 years, 100?

The experiential, the spiritual, the ecstasy of emotions, are all attributes/descriptions that, in and of themselves, are 'not for sale' things in our world. The only problem is they're almost always tied to contexts (and services) that cost something (e.g., concerts, gaming, and plastic surgery, to name just three). But what, in today's branded society, isn't up for sale? I would challenge Alissa Quart's thesis and say that once teens go that route, marketers (and many others) will find away to charge what cannot be 'bought or sold.' This is the underlying problem. French philosopher Jacques Derrida once wrote, "I think, therefore I am." In today's cultural marketplace, it's shifted to "I shop, therefore I am," where are actual identity is so intertwined with an identity of consumption, it's nearly impossible to separate/sever one from the other. Until we recognize the power of living within a culture of consumption (and its affect on our shaped/evolving identities), we'll never move beyond the branded and buying and selling of teenagers (and ourselves).

Unity

2010-05-04T08:16:00.002+08:00

"I doubt whether justice, which is a forerunner of peace, will ever be pulled out of a hat, as some suppose. Justice will find a home where there is a synthesis of liberty and unity in a framework of government. And when justice appears on any scene, on any level of society, man's problems enjoy a sort of automatic solution, because they enjoy the means of solution. Unity is no mirage. It is the distant shore. I believe we should at least head for that good shore, though most of us will not reach it in this life." -E.B. White, from the essay, "Unity," in Essays of E.B. White

Jesus' words, 'A kingdom divided against itself will surely fall,' is probably the one sentence that gets me through debates and divisions within the church. Sometimes I feel like we're all getting pushed out towards the fringes, to disagree for Disagreement's sake. Other times it seems there's nothing more we want than to not get along.

In Sara Miles recently published book, Jesus Freak and her earlier memoir, Take This Bread, she talked about how all are welcome at the table. A similar analogy was used by author Bruce Bawer some years ago, as it pertains to gay individuals in modern society. In his book, A Place At The Table: The Gay Individual in American Society, he asks the heterosexual readers if they've ever wondered how it feels to be gay when it comes to showing affection in public. From showcasing photos in office cubicles to going for a walk hand-in-hand with your loved one some cool, summer evening, Bawer argued that it was out of fear of exclusion from society that gay individuals couldn't express love to one another (at least, not in public).

Maybe things are a bit different now, but the principle still remains the same. But I think Jesus and E.B. White's quote is talking about something beyond simply protecting people from exclusion; he's writing about bringing peace through reconciliation and inclusiveness. We can't merely think that the solution--in any social context--is for our position to win out or the majority (or minority) we belong to, to triumph. This is not on the road to that 'good shore.' The way to reach that shore, I think, is by telling ourselves, 'it's not about finding one solution, but about liberty and unity,' and, like the Pledge of Allegiance ends, 'justice for all.'

Penguins

2010-05-03T07:33:00.001+08:00

"'I want you to know how much I appreciate your offer of putting my birds in the movies. But I am afraid I have to refuse. I do not believe the life in Hollywood would be good for penguins.' Then Mr. Popper turned to Admiral Drake. 'Admiral Drake, I am going to give you the birds. In doing this, I am considering the birds first of all. I know that they have been comfortable and happy with me. Lately, though, with the excitement and the warm weather, I've been worried about them. The birds have done so much for me that I have to do what is best for them. After all, they belong in a cold climate. And then I can't help being sorry for those men up at the North Pole, without any penguins to help them pass the time.'" -Mr. Popper from Mr Popper's Penguins, by Richard & Florence Atwater

I first heard this story read aloud to me in 2nd grade by Mrs. Rexford. Then, it was a tale of loss with the an undercurrent of love streaming all the way through it. In a sense, I think I loved (but just didn't know it yet) this story because it so resembles the story of King Kong, as well. Despite a different ending, the film is ultimately about society trying to turn a profit on nature, on beauty. In Mr. Popper's Penguin's, it is similar. But the difference is, the penguins are let free and Kong is held captive and dies. Thus, the story becomes a charming, graceful, and lovely little picture of how true beauty needs to stay true to its source, its inherent, creative life. When humans abuse beauty in such a way that it disrupts or degrades its source, humans lose out while the object of affection loses the greatest. Even death, at times.

But not so in Mr. Popper's Penguins. No, in this story, we're given hope that one's admiration for something (in this case, some talented little penguins) doesn't have to turn into mere profit, mere exploitation, mere entertainment. It can--and should--be a catalyst for love. Maybe I wasn't getting all this at the age of 7--when Mrs. Rexford flipped through the pages, her face animated and joyful, her expressions real and empowering--but I'm starting to get it more now. I'm constantly in awe of how beauty (and the subject of beauty) is so instrumental in our daily life. So instrumental in pushing us forward to do good, to give love. It just all depends on what we do with the beauty we're given.

The great Russian writer and essayist Fyodor Dostoevsky once uttered, "Beauty will save the world." I think Mr. Popper, and Mrs. Rexford, might just agree.

Work/Art

2010-05-02T10:29:00.000+08:00

"The aim of 'work' in modernity was to produce materials necessary for modern life: food, clothes, homes, cars. In modernity, there was a sharp dichotomy between the puritan work ethic and the hedonistic 'leisure ethic' of self-expression and self-improvement which only a very few could afford to pursue. Society reaches a postmodern condition when 'work' turns into art, that is, when more and more areas of life are assimilated into the logic of the marketplace, when the economy is increasingly geared to providing entertainment, and when the business of America is leisure. In a post-industrialist postmodern economy, goods are produced not to supply pre-existent needs, but to supply needs that are themselves created by advertising and marketing strategies. What gets marketed is not an object so much as an image or lifestyle." Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology

This makes me excited to be alive today.

Nature

2010-05-01T22:52:00.008+08:00

"Nature is never constrained to change, and that which is once formed cannot simply will to reverse itself wrongly, since desire is not nature. Desire can alter the character of something already formed, but it cannot remake its nature." -John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century

One of the most fascinating things about people is their capacity for adaptability. In the film Boogie Nights, director P.T. Anderson explored this and the extent to which one would alter and adapt him/herself to fleshy abuse in order to gain a sense of belonging, a sense of being accepted. I wonder how much this is true for the history of homosexuality and the Church (or rather, churches). How often have we marginalized, compromised, or idolized the very nature of the self the Church declares is imago dei? In what areas (besides homosexuality) can we see people mistakenly seeing nature as being synonymous with desire? All too often, it seems the discussion of nature--as it relates to our violent propensities--quickly moves into carnal desire-talk territory because of how we assume that it's in our nature. But what if it wasn't in our true nature? What if that was only mere desire?

As the Church continues to dialogue, debate and argue over the issues of nature with respect to homosexuality, I wish we'd also spend similar energy toward healthy conversation over our views of war and violence, and how this relates to our true nature. It seems, to use Boswell's analogy, we've spent far too many centuries trying to remake nature through our desires (and presupposed ideas of who a person is and what is their purpose) rather than critically looking at the varied nature (and natures) of the human species, and separating what is mere desire (what can be slightly altered) and what is fixed (what cannot be altered). The latter, I think, is the most difficult to articulate and accept because behind our desire (in this) is a growing need to be autonomous and self-sustaining rather than limited and interdependent. The former is our desire, the latter is our nature. Or at least, that's the way I see it.

The Top Ten Films of 2008

2009-04-13T12:43:00.014+08:00

Since this is the year of me graduating from Fuller Seminary---where I'm continually thinking and writing in theological language about films and music, art and culture---I decided to write this list in the spirit of a true seminary spirit suggesting that each film on my top ten list carries with it a true (serious and thought-provoking) kind of theology. So here we go. Here's the list, take it or leave it. (Thanks Nate for pushing me to finally publish this stupid thing---it feels good to have it done).

-----

10. MARLEY & ME: [THEOLOGY OF LIFE: AS SEEN THROUGH THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES, AND ONE SMALL NAUGHTY PUPPY]
The number 10 spot is always hard to pin down. I could’ve put a number of films here: the darkly subversive and sexy Woody Allen comedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Wong Kar Wai’s lush (but uneven) ode to America My Blueberry Nights, or Oscar’s pick and American audiences surprise sensation favorite Slumdog Millionaire, that reminded me again just how pure and wonderful an audience is to the total experience of cinema watching. But I went with my gut and heart on the number 10 spot. I went for the Frank Capra lover in me (director of classics It’s A Wonderful Life, You Can’t Take It With You, Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and It Happened One Night). Frank Capra is one of my favorite “Golden Age of Cinema” directors. I know, I know, some people may call me a sentimentalist, a Carpri-corny film geek, but I don’t care. I love when films feel like an ode to life wrapped up in 2 hours of screen time and this is what Marley & Me is. At first glance, it looks like another Beethoven movie but it’s so far from this I feel like I’m insulting the filmmakers for even suggesting such a thought. Marley & Me is a pitch-perfect movie about life and its many messy details. It’s a cinematic ode to nostalgia, sure, but it’s a throwback convention film that’s worth going back for. There are good people in this very imperfect world and Marley & Me reminds us of this. Also, it’s Owen Wilson’s best film since The Royal Tenenbaums and Jennifer Aniston’s best work since The Good Girl. Both actors lend credibility to a story that feels so close to home, you’ll be in a bittersweet state of bliss after watching it. I was and in a strange way, still am.

9. UP THE YANGTZE: [THEOLOGY OF FINITUDE]
If anyone wants to know what I learned after living 2 years in China, see Up The Yangtze. This is one of those stories you wouldn’t believe if it were fiction. Its drama is that penetrating, its human subjects that real, its scope—epic, larger than Earth—is that wide. Through masterful direction, editing, and cinematography—where the seemingly insignificant and commonness captured in one single, sweeping shot takes your breath away—Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang has created the documentary of the year, and one of the best films of 2007 and 2008 (it was released in some countries in 2007, but screened first in the U.S. at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, the year I attended). Up The Yangtze is a visual cross between Hiorkazu Koreeda’s beautiful Nobody Knows and Edward Burtynsky’s stunning photography in Jennifer Baichwal’s exceptional documentary, Manufactured Landscapes. But Up The Yangtze is better than both (or maybe that’s the China bias in me talking), for its story isn’t just about being displaced or living in manufactured factories and socialist-capitalist landscapes created for the good of the country rather than the good of the people. More than this, it addresses poverty, grief, home, faith and greed with gripping clarity and an ultimate sensitivity. This is the real China. Take it or leave it.

8. SILENT LIGHT: [THEOLOGY OF RESURRECTION]
It’s so appropriate to be posting this list on Easter Sunday when it comes to this unseen gem of a small film that is Silent Light. This slow, gorgeous, moving, and unbelievably unforgettable work of cinema does what few great movies do: it makes believers out of skeptics and (simply) surprises. Believers in what you may ask? I’m not going to ruin the surprise (and there are many) that this film has to offer. I’ll only say this: I really hope we haven’t heard the last of director Carlos Reygadas, a man who embarked into a Mennonite community in Mexico, filming non-actors, and non-manufactured landscapes, and came away with something of a miracle: a post-Easter film merging sound (silent) and sight (light) in an act of creative and narrative genius.

7. THE VISITOR: [THEOLOGY OF CLASS]
There were two great films in 2008 highlighting the subject of class in our world today. One was the Cannes recipient of the coveted Palme d’Or award and Oscar nominated Best Foreign Language Feature aptly titled, The Class; the other (and better film in my opinion) was Thomas McCarthy’s small wonder The Visitor. The movie is just about perfect. Hilarious. Touching. Tragic. It's about finding the beat and rhythm inside yourself and syncing that beat with the friends you grow to love, yes, but it’s also about answering that age old Genesis question, “Where is your brother?” God asked this of Cain and The Visitor asks this question of all of us. Where is our brother? Who is our brother? What are we willing to sacrifice for the sake of another human, in another class, from another country? The Visitor asks similar questions that McCarthy’s first feature, The Station Agent asked in 2003, but this is a much better film than that. It’s more complete, more universal, more personal, in every way. When I saw it at Sundance Film Festival 2008, it received an overwhelmingly unanimous standing ovation. With over 1200 people cheering and applauding after that haunting final shot, I knew right then that The Visitor would find its way onto my top ten list of 2008. So here, at number 7, it is.

6. DOUBT: [THEOLOGY OF DOUBT]
Doubt is practically flawless. The cast is dynamite, the cinematography fantastic, the direction strong, and the story is timely and yet, timeless. It's a fantastic meditation on the Church, as a whole—hierarchy, holiness, and the hell we often experience between them—that will surely spark discussion as to what this story (and the church) is all about. But one of the things I loved most about it (after seeing it three times in theaters with different people each time) was how varied the interpretation on the film was. Kudos to stage writer/director John Patrick Shanley for his acute attention to detail in every scene; he shows us (in nearly every frame) the two sides to the power/importance of doubt in faith. It can enhance and mature us while serving as the catalyst to divide a community, and tear down unity in the body of Christ. Perhaps this is what a double-edged sword looks like. For this really is a total theology of doubt—from the beginning sermon to the final closing one.

5. MILK: [THEOLOGY OF HOPE]
Milk came at the perfect time (especially when it comes to California, and its heated October/November 2008 post-election protests over Proposition 8—doubly titled, Prop. H8TE, by many of its opposers). In a way, it’s a reminder of how a film is as much about the now as it is about the story it’s telling (or in this case, re-telling). For me, it took two viewings of Milk before I was able to see it for what it really was: a pivotal, turning point movie for America, highlighting not only the new Obama administration, but a new depression era, a new era for the Church to redefine itself from the inside out. Harvey Milk as seen through Gus Van Sant’s lens, is in-your-face and humble, in one unrelentlesss breath. It will undoubtedly be remembered as a turning point; a time when people really re-think what it means to be human and to be homosexual in this world. As Milk (the movie and the man) reminds us, hope is a movement. And as the late Harvey Milk would say, he’s here to recruit us to join in that movement. So will we join? Will we step up and enter into the real discussion? It matters little what side you come into the discussion/movement on; what matters is that you simply join the movement.

4. IN BRUGES: [THEOLOGY OF HELL]
As my professor Barry Taylor posited, In Bruges is a meditation on hell. Bruges is a place, and as the title suggests, both two main characters (who are hit men) are stuck in it. Stuck in hell, so to speak, and can’t seem to find there way out. But as one character indirectly asks, how do you find your way out of hell? What can possibly resurrect you out of this dark dream, this unending nightmare? How do you, simply, get out? Atonement is one of In Bruges answers, and its fascinating to see where this conversation goes in a film that (on the surface) looks like just another revenge thriller, just another buddy-bad-guy-shoot-em-kill-em-caper flick. But writer/director Martin McDonagh isn’t interested in staying within the traditional film genre. In his Oscar nominated screenplay, he entertains a world where most stereotypes are true, where most people are more evil than good, and where life (really and truly) can only be redeemed in and through death.

3. WALL-E: [THEOLOGY OF ESCHATOLOGY VIA ECOLOGY]
Andrew Stanton’s dark and somber feature (his best since Finding Nemo) plays off like added pages to the book of Revelation. The strangest feeling one gets while watching WALL-E is a sense of possibility. Seeing a future not too removed from our present age is unsettling, to say the least. Graciously, though, Stanton uses Earth’s inevitable apocalypse premise to recall a sense of wonder, beauty and messiness in life. Rather than simply attacking sterility, security, and shopping (which WALL-E does do), it moves into a homage to cinema, an ode to the great comic geniuses (Charlie Chaplin) and visionary filmmakers (Stanley Kubrick). It’s a movie about the love of movies, a movie about the love of earth, and a movie about the special (wonder) of chemistry and connection. Is it ironic that the new Earth is ushered into existence through two characters who aren’t even human?

2. THE DARK KNIGHT: [THEOLOGY OF EVIL]
Not much more needs to be said about Christopher Nolan’s disturbing, motorcycle ride into-the-abyss-of-what-it-means-to-be-human film that is The Dark Knight. Like every masterful work of cinema, it’s best just to experience it for yourself. Evil has rarely been this clever, this well thought out, this insightful into our own psyche, our own minds and hearts as human beings.

1.THE WRESTLER: [BODY THEOLOGY]
“It’s all about the sacrifice of the body. Everything in life is about the sacrificial lamb.” These two sentences haunt Randy “The Ram” Robinson’s character in Darren Aronofsky’s deeply moving and poignant The Wrestler. From the first time I saw this film, something about it haunted me. It stayed with me. Something about it would not escape my mind. This is what movies you love do, isn’t it? Refuse to leave your mind no matter how hard you try to force them out of it. In this case, part of this is because of its two characters, Robin and Pam, struggling to find their name, their place, their title in life. Stripper? Mother? Butcher? Father? Failure? Lover? Hater? Wrestler? Notice “The Ram” has many names he’s called in this film (Robin Radnzinski, Randy, “The Ram,”), none of which he’s comfortable with. But this is exactly the point. Labels aren’t too helpful, but this beautiful film helps us see something special beyond this: that behind every label, every name, every act of marginalization, is one very lonely person. Not since 2002’s Talk To Her have I felt such a powerful take on the subject of loneliness. This is my favorite (and the best, I think) film from 2008. It’s the perfect reflection of the state of our country, here and now; a country filled with lonely people filling up lonely bodies, looking for their name, their place, their calling.

-----

P.S.THE 2008 ODE-TO-CINEMA AWARD:
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
It's an import from Sweden and it's a damn good one. A vampire story like no other, Let The Right One In explores love and sacrifice in a way that my favorite film of the year also did. And I'm sorry to disappoint all you Twilight fans out there, but this movie is the real deal--a serious and thought-provoking (and beautiful) expose on vampires, first loves, and the dangers of letting too much light into hospital rooms. And why is this film worthy of this yearly award (one I started years back with Three Times)? Because it reimagines a film genre, it reinspires the traditional horror movie with wit, class and a scary sophistication. Maybe that's why Newsweek magazine named it "The best film of 2008." It isn't just another vampire movie; this movie has bite and you don't need fangs to see that.

Imagination (Part 1)

2008-10-30T16:11:00.006+08:00

Thank you, God, for giving us minds.
Thank you, God, for giving us ears.
Thank you, God, for giving us love.
Thank you, God, for giving us tears.

Jesus is the Incarnate One. The one who we turn to when we're depressed, lonely, down and out. Sometimes all we feel we must do is get out. Get out of all our boxes, as Lauryn Hill would say. Jesus, like 2Pac, was a rebel from the underground, a Savior so completely different than what the majority of Christians accepted, he was hung for upsetting people's perception of his reputation. When people, particularly in the majority, are convinced something is 'wrong,' it takes a pretty huge leap to overturn that line of logic/thinking. It takes generations really. It took over a hundred years for people to even consider the idea that slavery (as America practiced it) was wrong. Inhumane. Disrespectful. Wrong. And we're still reaping what we sowed. We still are in the process of unlearning.

Sometimes I wonder how much imagination it will take for us to unlearn all the misinterpretations we've been fed from Scripture. From the practical to the academic level, there are lies floating around everywhere (sure) but there are also lies being masked as lies, yet, they are really true. Can we spot these? Can we see the Bible as Whole enough to see these sections of Scripture illuminated only by the Holy Spirit?

I think I'm more in agreement with the Gospel of Mark and Nick Cave on Jesus' redemption for our lives, really. I think he did come to save us, yes, but he also came to give us back our imagination. He came to ignite in his a passion to look out for the poor, the needy, the broken, the tired, the weary. I don't know about you but I haven't been doing too much of that lately. I've been saying I should, but I haven't.

I talk, yet don't walk.
Speak, yet don't listen.
Law, yet don't love.

How do I begin to unlearn this? With the help of Christ, yes...but what does that look like? How does God see me? How do I think God sees me? These are some of the most telling questions we can answer if we want to truly know who we are (and if we want to catch a glimpse, of who God is).

The Lonely, Isolated, Creatively Imaginative Christ

2008-06-05T03:28:00.001+08:00

Here's a selection from Nick Cave's introduction to the Book of Mark. Our professor read it today and it gave me chills. This is the last part of it. For the full quote, search online on google and you'll find it.

"...The rite of baptism - the dying of one's old self to be born anew - like so many of the events in Christ's life is already flavoured metaphorically by Christ's death and it is His death on the cross that is such a powerful and haunting force, especially in Mark. His preoccupation with it is all the more obvious, if only because of the brevity with which Mark deals with the events of His life. It seems that virtually everything that Christ does in Mark's narrative is in some way a preparation for His death - His frustration with His disciples and His fear that they have not comprehended the full significance of His actions; the constant taunting of the church officials; the stirring up of the crowds; His miracle-making so that witnesses will remember the extent of His divine power. Clearly, Mark is concerned primarily with the death of Christ to such an extent that Christ appears consumed by His imminent demise, thoroughly shaped by His death.

The Christ that emerges from Mark, tramping through the haphazard events of His life, had a ringing intensity about him that I could not resist. Christ spoke to me through His isolation, through the burden of His death, through His rage at the mundane, through His sorrow. Christ, it seemed to me was the victim of humanity's lack of imagination, was hammered to the cross with the nails of creative vapidity.

The Gospel According to Mark has continued to inform my life as the root source of my spirituality, my religiousness. The Christ that the Church offers us, the bloodless, placid 'Saviour' - the man smiling benignly at a group of children or serenely hanging from the cross - denies Christ His potent, creative sorrow or His boiling anger that confronts us so forcibly in Mark. Thus the Church denies Christ His humanity, offering up a figure that we can perhaps 'praise' but never relate to. The essential humanness of Mark's Christ provides us with a blueprint for our own lives so that we have something we can aspire to rather than revere, that can lift us free of the mundanity of our existences rather than affirming the notion that we are lowly and unworthy.

Merely to praise Christ in His Perfectness keeps us on our knees, with our heads pitifully bent. Clearly, this is not what Christ had in mind. Christ came as a liberator. Christ understood that we as humans were for ever held to the ground by the pull of gravity - our ordinariness, our mediocrity - and it was through His example that He gave our imaginations the freedom to fly. In short, to be Christ-like.” -NICK CAVE

My Musical Autobiography

2008-05-20T12:03:00.004+08:00

My final project for my THEOLOGY & POP MUSIC class is exciting: "write out (in some way, shape or form) your musical biography and hand in a life mix tape/CD to go with it." I found a used record at a store the other day that I cut up because its cover had bands and singers from the 20th century (mostly from the 60s and 70s) typed in tiny font all over the front in pink and blue and yellow and red and purple writing. In big, bold, funky white letters on the front the name of the record was aptly titled I BELIEVE IN MUSIC.

This is where I'm beginning. Let the process begin.

I called my childhood best friend Emiline and asked her to the lyrics of a song our 2nd grade teacher Mrs. Rexford taught us and she remembered. She began to sing it as if no time had passed, rhyming lyrics and all. I couldn't believe it. Music, I'm constantly reminded, is the substance running underneath my love and near obsession with cinema. If it weren't for music, I wonder if I would've ever even been attracted to writing stories or watching movies or making them or anything. Music is the reason I want to dance. It's the reason I exercise. I know I know I should do it because I want to be healthy and live healthily and sure, that's part of it, but I doubt my running would be consistent if I wasn't able to listen to "That's Just What You Are" by Aimee Mann, "All Mine" by Portishead, "Unison" by Bjork, or "All The Trees Of The Field Will Clap Their Hands" by Sufjan Stevens. If these artists didn't share their talent, their gift to the world, think of how different people would be. Think of how boring our world would be.

I was reminded of this yesterday when my iPod went dead just before I began a nice bike ride around Pasadena. I stopped, looked down at the display screen and felt disgruntled and upset and threw my hands up asking, "what's the point of riding a bike now!?" Maybe that was more internally, but whatever it was, I walked my bike back to my apartment complex, parked it, locked it up and went to go charge my iPod.

I'll ride tomorrow maybe, I thought.

This is what music does to me.

And then there's the end of 1998, when my first car (I bought) Nissan's radio deck, cassette tape deck, whatever you wanna call it, was dead. I thought it wouldn't be so bad. I thought, "now I can drive peacefully and enjoy nature and meditate on being still and knowing God is God and become a more serene, responsible teenage driver."

That thought didn't last long.

I think it took 2 days for me to bring my yellow Sony half-sports boom box (battery operated) into my Nissan, wedging it between the driver and passenger seat with the speakers pointing up toward heaven. Every classmate or youth group friend or sibling that would drive with me was now blasted with music from the bottom of my car up, the sound waves bouncing up against their left ear lobe and quickly rushing up into their eardrum. And the sound, in all honesty, wasn't so bad. It was music and music makes driving worth it too. Even while driving across the country, the scenery may get old but the car's soundtrack (as long as it's playing) will make the ride worth it. It will make 32 hours driving from Michigan to California feel like a few seconds from a dream. This is another reason why music is so important. This is another area of our lives it pervades, most of the time, without us even recognizing it.

In 2004, this realization really took form inside me and it came in the form of a Leonard Sweet book on leadership called, "Summoned To Lead." In this book, Sweet writes of leaders being called, hearing the sound so intently so persuasively that they envision a future (first through sound, through hearing and then through seeing and looking) they can lead people into. This kind of blew my mind.

I always answered the childhood question, "would you rather be blind or deaf" with a resounding, "DEAF!!" But now, I'm amazed. As sure as I was when I was 7 years old, who would believe I could change my mind and change it so certainly. Now, the same question gets answered with a resounding, "BLIND! Of course! That's easy. No question." Some people still disagree with this, but that's because they've never thought about how much they depend on sound, on noise, on music to color the days of their lives. They don't see the dozens of way music faces them daily and they also don't see how much they enjoy it. They take music for granted and I am included in this group.

So this project is helping me not take music for granted. It's helping me realize that my life biography, really could also be synonymous with my musical autobiography. Music is there greeting me in every area, every (st)age of my life. At age 2, it's old records playing "Santa Lucia" and "My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean" as I dance in a euphoric, chubby state. At age 6, it morphs into VBS spelling songs such as "I Am A C...I Am A CH...I Am A C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N" or "O-B-E-D-IENCE." At age 8, my dad lets me listen to music from his days and "What The World Needs Now Is Love" and "Alley Oop" spring into my mind. At age 9, Paul Overstreet's "Pick Up The Shovel" and "All The Fun" blast through my dad's maroon 2-Door Buick Somerset on the 7 minute trip to school every morning. How I got to one day listening to Regina Spektor and Sigur Ros and The Roots and Eels is beyond me, but that story is now being told--in my head and onto the written page.

This is another picture of Grace, I think. That despite my upbringing, despite my conservative Christian school, despite some legalism in the church here and there, my ears would one day still come to hear beauty in music that went beyond a Disney theme song key change. Not by my own accord but by people around me, (and God, too I think) constantly showing me the way.

And this is one reason why I love, why I Believe In Music.

If I Am Alive This Time Next Year

2008-04-29T12:05:00.002+08:00

My life is all about movie moments. I am defined not by the years I’ve been alive but by the movies that defined me while the years passed quickly by. For example...

1999 is not 1999 but the year that Magnolia and Fight Club were both seriously overlooked in the Oscar ceremony.

1997 is Titanic, period.

1994 was when I became incredibly sick of the phrase, “Life is like a box of chocolates-you never know what you’re gonna get,” thanks to Forrest Gump.

1993 is not 1993 but the year that Philadelphiabrought the issue of AIDS and homosexuality, and more importantly acceptance of homosexuality (too bad they had to use a dying gay man as the catalyst for acceptance but at the time, that was culturally where we were at I guess).

1992 is not 1992 but the year I first wept while actually in a movie theater. That movie was of course, My Girl.

And 1991 isn’t just 1991 but the year, for me especially, where I experienced celluloid salvation, thanks to a dollar theater viewing of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.

Ever since 1991, movies have defined me and this presents a theological problem for many people in my life, I think.

I was talking to one of my best friends tonight on the phone and was reminded of how much I ache for movies that depress me, I thrive on exploring the madness, the sadness, and the helplessness so many (usually independent) movies offer nowadays. I only need a shred of hope; please save the happy-happy sports/hero/man-triumphs-over-adversity-yet-again for someone else. This is not to say I'm above this story structure or even that I'm tired of watching movies that follow such a story structure, I'm simply saying I like movies like About Schmidt, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and 4 Months, 3 Weeks, & 2 Days. Why does that make me such an "other." A "them," even, in so many "Christian" circles? I'm not sure. I guess I'm beginning to care less and less how I'm seen in those circles anyway so maybe asking such a question is futile (even to begin with).

Perhaps I'm viewed weird because Christians follow a person who's own life ended so happily. Perhaps the way Jesus triumphed over torture on the cross is how people justify their strange glances toward me. Because when his mother Mary was beside him on that hill, I'm sure she was just waiting for the applause to happen and for God to wink and say, "Just kidding! Everything's gonna be alright!" That's probably why people look at me funny sometimes. Because "their" Savior was just so damn happy all the time. Wasn't he?

Was he?

I don't think I want a Savior who puts Gladiator as his favorite film, or who sees his own life timeline of movie moments being captured in scenes from Radio or The Game Plan or Big Mamma's House.

I want a Savior who's comfortable with poop. Not just poop in the toilet but poop in people's lives. In our tragedies, depression and tears.

I thought that's who Jesus (the Savior of the Church) really is. But looking around in today's churches, and looking around at how they treat the gospel, how they see movies, how they look for the happiness around every corner, I wonder. I doubt. Over and over again.

I doubt.

Free Tibet? Free China!

2008-04-24T08:29:00.003+08:00

The Western politics and media have once again persuaded American nationalism and patriotism into swallowing "freedom" rhetoric yet again. Now, I'm not trying to undermine the people who are actually being discriminated against in China or Tibet, but I am getting a little tired of violent protests going on (in Tibet by Tibetans, mostly Tibetan Buddhists) and our media calling them "peaceful protests" (see Los Angeles Times for repeated skewed-to-the-West articles on the matter).

In the past two months, Chinese embassies have been attacked in Austria, Germany, France, Hungary...and many more. Yes, these so-called "peaceful protests" fueled by "Free Tibet" thinking Tibetans and Westerners, resulted in beatings, rocks thrown, and burning and desecration of the Chinese flag, just outside the embassies. Imagine if this had happened to U.S. embassies worldwide. Imagine the outcry on Fox News by Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. Imagine how many times George W. Bush would've named this as "terrorists at work." Yet, this happens to China and we in America don't try and speak against these acts...no...instead, we encourage them. We encourage Tibet to be free from China. We encourage Tibetans to protest (violently) and call it peace and justice and liberation.

Ironic that it was the Chinese government that actually saved/freed Tibet (socially and economically) in 1951 from the agonizing effects of Feudalism, Imperialism and corrupt religious officials who were more concerned with hording riches, keeping poor people enslaved and widening the gap between the rich and poor. Is history repeating itself or what? Is the West really being fooled into thinking that Tibet was really so wonderful and peaceful and serene before 1951?

It's always easier to blame the government. For Westerners, when the government is Communist, this is even more reason to blame the government. As we all know, the U.S. (well, George W. Bush as representing the U.S.) is much more concerned with every country converting to a democracy instead of actually understanding a country's history. We think democracy will work everywhere because it works (well, for the most part it does) in the West. This is proving to be fatal for American political foreign policy leaders and heads of state.

So of course, it's easy to reduce the history of Tibet, fueled by slavery, wars, and disgusting displays of torture for anyone who challenged religious authorities...or basically anyone who wanted religious freedom, to a political statement by Mr. W himself. In the Los Angeles Times, George W. Bush is quoted as saying, "If they [China] ever were to reach out to the Dalai Lama, they'd find him to be a really fine man, a peaceful man, a man who is anti-violence."

Wake up Mr. American President! This "really fine" and "peaceful man" is part of a history of Dalai Lamas that oppressed its people. But I guess as long as its done in the name of religion, it's okay.

The reality is this: China is becoming more powerful and let's face it, 1.5 billion people is threatening to other world leaders. It's much easier to attack, to point out the plank in another country's eye, rather than attempting to address our own problems. So please America, stop jumping on the FREE TIBET bandwagon unless you've actually studied the history of Tibet, the history of Tibet and China before and after 1951 and consider what exactly the U.S. would do if "peaceful protesters" in Los Angeles set innocent civilians on fire (what some Tibetans did recently to Han/Chinese civilians) and claimed to be doing so in search for freedom and independence? How would the U.S. government respond? Would we allow these people of Los Angeles to secede from the U.S.? Would we honestly grant them independence from our country since they're so, supposedly, "peaceful?"

What's going on in Tibet is not peaceful and what's going on in other countries against Chinese embassies is not peaceful either. It is a push towards anarchy. Yet, the Western media doesn't report those incidences. We don't seem to believe much of what's done against China and its nation (and people) is worth reporting.

My question is: why? Or I guess my real question should be: why not?

The Top Ten Films of 2007

2008-02-20T14:41:00.010+08:00

It's that time of year again. Just before Oscar Sunday and I've been putting it off long enough. So many films this year deserve to be in a top ten list--someone's list anyways--but I had to decide a few weeks ago that making a list should be about movies I loved, not necessarily about those that critics loved. It should be filled with ones that shocked or surprised me or made me fall in love with cinema all over again. It shouldn't just be filled with a list of the truly "great films" of the year. As I look at the list I made for this year, one thing is common to them all: the music (or deliberate lack thereof) colors the emotional core of the movie. From number 10 to number 1, the music plays a significant role in the story, the mood, and the character's struggle. So even though I'm leaving off a few films I thought for sure would make it on my top ten list and some also ruled by great music ("The Savages," "Juno," "The Namesake," "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," "American Gangster," "Knocked Up," "The Orphanage," "The Devil Came On Horseback," "Waitress," "Dan In Real Life," "3:10 To Yuma," "No Country For Old Men" and one of my favorite summer flicks "Hairspray") the list must only be ten, that's the beauty of it. So here we go, like it or not:

10. Eternal Summer: What does it look like in a country where same-sex friendship, for centuries, has been more valuable, more precious, and more lifelong-lasting than opposite sex romances? More importantly, what does it look like when the Western world of romantic ideals clashes with the Eastern world of honor and friendship? Eternal Summer is that dilemma. Far from perfect, but consistently engaging in its simplicity, there’s a visual wonder present here that once again reinforces how and why Asian cinema simply is, the master of mood and atmosphere. With the three characters in the film all symbolizing particular objects in space—Jonathan (the sun), Shane (the earth), and Carrie (the comet)—the film uses this “space” to explore sexuality and the friendship that often muddles up, down and in between. It also uses this as a metaphor for the transition from childhood to adulthood. In a sense, Eternal Summer is as reserved as Chinese culture itself, evoking in its simplicity a raw brand of melodrama unparalleled in big-budget American films. In the end, Director Leste Chan suggests a final scene far more ambiguous, complex and ironically dreamlike (despite its element of tragedy) than a handful of American independent films. We the audience are cast out into the cosmos, and asked to wonder where the fate of these three friends—and people in the world like them—will be at life’s end. Haunting, heartbreaking and a much needed love letter to the people of Asia who live lives with similar complexities.

9. The Host:Welcome to my new obsession with Asian cinema. Some movies on a film lover’s list simply have to be on there for a sarcastic slap in the face of our world today. For me, South Korea’s mega blockbuster The Host is that film. Blending the dysfunctional family comedy of Little Miss Sunshine, the thrills of Jaws, the human nature values of King Kong and the contemporary circus politics of the Fox News Channel, director Joon-Ho Bong has crafted a relevant, scary, and funny cultural indictment on the political superpower known as America. Based on the real life events of an American scientist who ordered toxic chemical waste to be emptied into Seoul’s vast Han River, causing an outbreak of South Korean riots and protests, The Host begins with a simulated scene displaying this very act (set in the year it actually happened). After that, something freaky has morphed underneath the waters of the Han River and as expected, it’s attacking people, hopping along beaches and underneath bridges slurping and snapping up its prey as fast as it can. Essentially, The Host is a film showcasing an excellence in editing. It juxtaposes mass hysteria against our “everyday fear-driven evening news” in a way that asks, “Are we mere consumers, being controlled by the democracies we elect?” What’s fascinating about The Host is how it manages to be completely cultural—showing how ancient old society values of its senior citizens starkly contrast the bachelor’s-degree-holding mass of educated, yet dissatisfied youth—and yet, completely, universally now. When a monster movie can be this smart, this exciting, this culturally critiquing, how can it not be one of the year’s best?

8. Superbad: “Tell your story, no matter how bad it is.” This mantra could be the vision for the evangelical world, couldn’t it? I recall once in youth group in high school a sponsor commented that when people come to give a testimony, they spend entirely too much time focusing on the “sin part” of the story. That is, it all seems to be about how horrible this person was before they found Jesus. Their story was about their dirty deeds (had sex a lot before marriage, did every drug imaginable, cursed profusely). To myself, a kid born and raised in the church, this part always intrigued me. I looked forward to this part of the story. It fascinated me. In all honesty, this is why I loved to listen to these stories: to hear all the bad that I was told I could never do. This is the difference between the evangelical world and the rest of the world: the latter embraces the “badness” of every story; the former usually doesn’t. The evangelical world tries to theologically tell us it’s not apart of the whole person who we really are. But they can’t seem to come to grips with the reality that this is and was part of a person’s past. They are only one person and you can’t split a person into halves (as much as we’d like to think we can). This is why I loved Superbad so much. It effortlessly merges today’s raunchy youth with Ecclesiastes 4:9, figuratively and literally. In an age where most people suspect intimacy between two people of the same sex on film as almost always “homo-erotic” it’s refreshing to watch Superbad and see it’s not about the sex, but about the friendship. Masked as another raunchy high school comedy, it’s actually an elitist comedy really, with most of the jokes hitting high above the heads of everyday adolescents. And I know I’ll get a lot of crap for putting it there on my top ten list, but I’m sorry. Here’s a film that got me. It shocked me by how much I loved its irreverence and appreciated its blend of high/low cinematic art. Farting is still funny but it’s never been this well-written, I swear.

7. There Will Be Blood:There’s always one film on my top ten list that deserves to be there and I can’t even explain why. But when you’ve been wrong about a certain director for so long (with Boogie Nights and Magnolia I missed the point when I first watched them—probably due to my age—and only later realized they were both top ten material, for sure) you begin to change from your old ways. Initially, after I saw There Will Be Blood I saw no hope. There only was a very desperate man who was very, in a sense, soulless. But after some good conversations I’m already learning how wrong that assumption of the film was: this isn’t just a film about how bad one man is, but about a complex figure in American history: the oilman. Once chipping away lonely in a dark hole, alone, and covered in dirt is now a man speaking to crowds, making more money than he knows what to do with. How does the former become the latter and still keep his soul when his world is but an open road? More importantly, what happens when you’re surrounded by the very worst in “Christian” religion, where it becomes the next thing in line behind oil that people are ready to sell (and ready to “buy” so to speak)? This is why There Will Be Blood works on so many levels. It is a historical sum up of America in the 1920s California, revealing how greed works its way into every aspect of life, no matter what a person’s faith may be. And once again, as he did in Boogie Nights and Magnolia writer/director P.T. Anderson crafts a story that’s a warning sign to future generations, overtly moral and striking in visuals and substance. What is it about? It’s about people. It should always be about people. Every time it loses focus, things go awry. There Will Be Blood shows us how bad it did get and how bad it will get if we don’t start taking Jesus’ words seriously: “money is a bitchy barrier to God—you can’t serve them both; when you try, be prepared to die twice.” That’s a paraphrase but it works, doesn’t it?

6. The King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters: Every once in awhile, a documentary breaks through the barriers of capturing “life on film” and captures the competitive history of humanity in one 100 minute sweep. In 2003, a little documentary called Spellbound did just that. Not until now has a documentary repeated that feat. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters could very well be “Spellbound-as-adults.” Essentially, it narrows in on a group of 80s gamer geeks (a few of them geniuses) with one particular story in focus: who is the best Donkey Kong player on the planet? This question starts a film loaded with laughs, giggles (they are not the same) and so many smirk-cracking-to-laugh-out-loud moments you’ll swear you’re a character inside of the game. On top of this, the footage these guys capture is nothing short of a miracle. It’s a movie where more is at stake than the title of being Donkey Kong champion. It’s a movie about competition, competitiveness and ego, and it’s the best, most exhilarating, most entertaining documentary of its kind.

5. The Diving Bell And The Butterfly: So many critics are talking about this film and so many of them have named it the best film of 2007. That’s not a surprise. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is visually intoxicating and explosively emotional, and may very well be the most unique, haunting and creative "true story" vision to appear on film in years. Imagination hasn't looked this good since In America or Amelie. Many films try to get inside the heads of their characters visually, but The Diving Bell and the Butterfly achieves such a feat with an emblematic visual rhythm. There are a few moments in the film that feel like home video footage from one’s childhood, slowly etching its way into our hearts. When the film gets frustrated, we get frustrated. When the film shows the most vulnerable moments between father and son, we recall our own personal moments. These moments carry the film and bleed into the harsh, seemingly hopeless reality that is the main character’s life (and real life person, Jean-Dominique Bauby). Every act of the film is fleshed out to perfection, thanks to the Cannes award recipient in 2007 for best director, Julian Schnabel. And don’t be surprised if he does an upset at the Oscars in a week.

4. Ratatouille:Disney and Pixar just keep getting better. Not only is this a film that was worthy of a Best Picture nomination (when are Oscar voters going to realize that 5 Academy Award nominations in other categories such as Best Original Screenplay, Best Sound, Best Sound Editing and others warrant a Best Picture nomination, despite it being “animated”). In the tradition of Beauty and the Beast and Finding Nemo, Ratatouille may even be a more fully realized whole film. I can’t remember the last time an animated film honored Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet in story, in drama and in visuals. It also could’ve shared the title of another great film about Paris this year—Paris, Je T’aime (Paris, I love you)—in the way it seems to act as a love recipe to the city of blinding lights. Added to this, the movie really does (as cliché as it sounds) have it all. It blends high culture with low culture, criticism with creativity, and devotion with destiny. For a movie appealing to all ages, that’s pretty much a miracle in 2007.

3. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, And 2 Days:Romanian films are quickly becoming the cinematic cultural touch points of today. Between past and tomorrow, moral choices and immoral social systems, nothing and everything seems to be sacred in the present. Romania showcased this brilliantly with its 2006 masterpiece The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and it’s done it again here in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, where the world of 1987 is seen through a 2007 lens. Watching 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days is an experience that must be absorbed in one sitting. You can’t take a break, you can’t pause for an interrupted cell phone call; you simply must focus on the film’s use of space. With no music in the film, only silence showing the distant space between people, the film works through you gradually and meticulously like a shining razor, cutting through emotionalism in an effort to exploit its audience. You watch and wonder why the camera lingers for so long after a scene—that in most Hollywood films would be cut out in an instant—and marvel how director Cristian Mungiu brilliantly relishes in the mystery of the after space. The after space is that intangible but completely felt mystery weaving through the air after any choice made between two people. It is confused by how love often manifests itself and even more confused at how politics encourage such warped expressions of this love. The space is explored in this film between the heart of the character and the heart of the audience, merging the two in a climax that is eerie and unforgettable. This is breathtaking cinema that will be haunt you for days after you see it.

2. Lars And The Real Girl:Ryan Gosling somehow manages to upstage himself yet again (from last year’s Half Nelson) into this wholly complex character of an ordinary lonely man in Wisconsin who grew up without a mother. Hundreds of actors have played characters like this before but no one has given the depth and emotional intelligence that Gosling gives to Lars here. Having said that, the entire cast fully supports this tricky performance. Patricia Clarkson as the wonderful psychiatrist/MD Dagmar, Emily Mortimer as Lars’ overbearing yet completely loving sister-in-law, and Paul Schneider as Lars’ older, sometimes wiser (sometimes not) brother. In a sense, the movie redeems our perception of what a sex doll could do for people (and in this case, an entire community). There are endless layers to Lars and the Real Girl—with its visual chemistry warmly fused with its lyrical story—but I really saw it as one giant contemporary parable with shades of pink colored in everywhere. Lars is about redemption, yes, but it’s also about how perception and community can make us into truly good people. There are so many wonderful scenes in the film, so many crying out desperately needing to be noticed it seems as though the loneliness Lars feels is actually connecting to us. The movie is mostly somber and quiet but there’s a level of respect, humanity and honor in this quiet. It has its outrageous, hilarious moments (as shown in too great of detail in the movie’s trailer) but these are not where the film’s strengths lie in. Like my last year pick for second best film of the year Stranger Than Fiction, Lars and the Real Girl rests its head in between the tragedy and comedy of everyday life and everyday people. And there, in the transformation of seasons—from winter to spring—is where we see its heart and our own.

1.Into The Wild:There’s a pattern going on here. Roger Ebert, the undisputed greatest film critic of the twentieth century, is freaking me out. Every other year for the past few years, his “number ten spot” on his wrap-up top ten list of films for the year has been my “number one.” In 2003, his number ten was my my number one: In America. In 2005, his number ten was my number one: Millions. And now, two years later, it’s happened again. His number ten is my number one—my favorite and pick for the best film of the year: Into the Wild. The film (even after three viewings) is a deeply moving, completely complete motion picture event. Movies like this rarely get made anymore. It’s got the character driven-ness of great films like Five Easy Pieces and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and the pitch-perfect-poetic flare of a really good nonfiction book. It’s about a selfish kid trying to find his way (with to his credit, a seriously disturbed past) in life, out on the road, and climaxes in a way that movies rarely, if ever, do: a spiritual, emotional, purely human supernatural epiphany. Is it from God? Heaven? Nature? Inside himself? Let the viewer decide.

NEVILLE'S LIST RE-VISITED:
-----------------------------------------
10. Eternal Summer
9. The Host
8. Superbad
7. There Will Be Blood
6. The King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters
5. The Diving Bell And The Butterfly
4. Ratatouille
3. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, And 2 Days
2. Lars And The Real Girl
1. Into The Wild
-----------------------------------------

THE 2007 ODE-TO-CINEMA AWARD: I started a tradition a few years back picking out one film a year which furthers the art of cinema. It honors the past while creatively putting together a fresh, unique vision for the future. Essentially, I like to think of it as part of my 2007 Top Ten list, just in a different way. This year's award goes to, Paris, Je T'aime.Eighteen different directors and dozens of world-famous actors come together for various interpretations--sad, lonely, tragic, scary, happy and wondrous--of what it means to be in love in Paris and in love with Paris. Each vignette takes place in one of Paris' streets and is named after it appropriately. There are of course a few favorites I've watched more than 10 times already (see Alexander Payne's film, Tom Tywver's film, and Gus Van Sant's film for three greats inside of here), but what I love most about this film is the way it captures--sometimes in five minutes or less--moments in life. It moves us, sweeps us up and enchants us. I hope the future of movies come close to resembling something like Paris, Je T'aime.

That's all for now. Be forewarned though...once I see more films from 2007 and once I see movies I loved more than once, sometimes that makes me rethink my list. So as always, this is subject to change. But enough for now. Sorry Nathan for making you wait so long. I hope you're not heavily disappointed.

Sundance (ReDirect)

2008-01-24T23:35:00.000+08:00

Sorry for doing this but I've been having trouble posting pictures on blogger so I'm using xanga for a few days (and all of the Sundance updates).

www.xanga.com/nevillekiser

Sundance Film Festival 2008: DAY ONE

2008-01-22T17:38:00.001+08:00

In Park City, Utah, the infamous Robert Redford darling Sundance Film Festival, has been underway for a few days. The theme this year is: "Film Takes Place." An interesting one packed with films from all over the world, competing and premiering and hopefully, finding an audience. After an almost 20 hour first day, here are the films I got to see today.

9:15 - "The Last Word" (Starring: Winona Ryder, Wes Bentley, & Ray Romano)

A man makes a living writing other people's suicide notes. This is the premise of this dark, but sharply observed comedy that hits as many good notes as it misses. Some scenes in "The Last Word" explode and creatively showcase a kind of energy rarely found in a black comedy. However, for me, there was a lot that just didn't work...mostly...this had to do with the screenplay. Gimmicky is what it ended up being, with little substance really left over in the end. Maybe it was because I felt like I didn't get to know the lead character, that I knew more about the supporting ones and they seemed far more interesting. I'm not sure. Whatever the case, it was a pretty good film that was creative in its subject matter but in the end, not a very memorable last word. Ray Ramona is wonderful though, and his scenes are where all of the film's best laughs are. Neville's Grade: C+

3:15 - "Henry Poole Is Here" (Starring: Luke Wilson)

REVIEW TO COME

11:30 - "Phoebe In Wonderland" (Starring: Elle Fanning, Felicity Huffman, Patricia Clarkson, Bill Pullman, & Campbell Scott)

REVIEW TO COME

25 Movies You Should See Before Making Your Top Ten Film List for 2007!

2008-01-17T16:15:00.000+08:00

In honor of Entertainment Weekly's recent "25 Movies You Should See Before Oscar Night" list, I wanted to highlight (and add) few not found on that list. Not necessarily because they will be showcased or nominated on Oscar night but because before making any top ten list, you probably should check them out. First though, let's look at the list EW gave us:

1. No Country For Old Men
2. Atonement
3. Juno
4. Michael Clayton
5. There Will Be Blood
6. Into The Wild
7. American Gangster
8. The Diving Bell And The Butterfly
9. Sweeney Todd
10. Charlie Wilson's War
11. The Kite Runner
12. Away From Her
13. Eastern Promises
14. La Vie En Rose
15. I'm Not There
16. A Mighty Heart
17. Gone Baby Gone
18. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
19. Lars and the Real Girl
20. Hairspray
21. 3:10 To Yuma
22. The Savages
23. Enchanted
24. Before the Devil Knows Your Dead
25. Ratatouille

----

Ones on the list you really need to see (I've seen them all so that's why I feel like I can tell you this):

1. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford---You probably missed it but don't overlook this beautiful Western that was just as good as 3:10 to Yuma, even if only 1/100th of the number of people saw it.

2. Lars and the Real Girl---It's beautiful, transcendent, and one of the best scripts of the year (and one of the best films of the year in my opinion) and Ryan Gosling will likely get a Best Actor nod so see it if you can.

3. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly---Haunting, visually arresting portrait of one man who blinks his way into eternity.

4. Ratatouille---In case you (or Oscar voters) forgot last summer...let me remind you of one of the highlights: Pixar's exhilerating and funny and perceptive Ratatouille. I really would love to see this one get a Best Picture nod. It would be oh-so-perfect.

5. There Will Be Blood---This movie will mess you up. Pay attention to the beginning and ending. Pay attention to the way Daniel Day-Lewis' soulless oil tycoon character is driven. Pay attention to the creepy and devastating score by Johnny Greenwood. Pay attention to everything. It's one of the most visually stunning landscape motion pictures since, well, the early days of cinema.

Other films to see before making your own list for the year!!!

1. Eternal Summer---Taiwanese tragedy photographed to perfection about two guys and one girl, and one very long summer. Aside from one plot jump this movie is powerful--even if it's all about the culture and the mood and the music--the director has done his homework. It gets inside of a mind and of a world that many of us have never dared to ever enter.

2. The Host---South Korean cinema is quickly giving Hollywod and Bollywood a run for their money. Watch Oldboy and this film and you'll see why. It's like Jaws and King Kong and Jurassic Park as if they were all crammed into one political satire with the family like spirit of Little Miss Sunshine. Wonderful!

3. The Namesake---Mira Nair's best film since Monsoon Wedding is this stunning journey of one family's move to America. I loved it...my only complaint was that the ending felt rushed. I could've lived inside of this world for at least another hour.

4. Waitress---Keri Russell will likely get overlooked in the Best Actress category (it's been a solid year for leading ladies) but still, you owe it to yourself to see this sweetheart of a romantic comedy that's more about finding yourself than it is about finding your man.

5. The King of Kong: A Fistfull of Quarters---Still, from what I've seen, there hasn't been a more enjoyable, surprisingly delightful (and slightly sinister) film than this superb documentary all year long. It's coming out on DVD Jan. 29. See it with a group of friends if you can. It will be much funnier I assure you.

The Drama of Doctrine

2008-01-16T12:19:00.000+08:00

Reading this new book ("The Drama of Doctrine") has definitely been a challenge. However, it's a new kind of systematic theology that our Western World has been dying for I think. Madeleine L'Engle wrote about it. Karl Barth hinted to it. The divinity unfolding within the drama of the greatest story ever told. It seems so funny to be called that, doesn't it? I always used to cringe when I was younger thinking that title was too ambitious, even for the writers of Scripture. To me, it seemed that if it was the 'greatest story ever told,' nobody needed to tell people it was. Greatness is great because of what it is, not because of what someone says it should be. That's the thing about stories, too. They grab you and won't let go. And great fiction--in my opinion--is the greatest venue for truth we humans have around today. Is that because the medieval Christians were so hostile to it? So hostile that they failed to see the affirmation of fiction, of story, of drama unfolding within the Christian doctrine the Church was slowly but surely setting forth?

Who knows.

I'm back on Blogger and hopefully will start writing more than I have been in the past 6 months.

Back to Blogger, Censor-free from China

2007-05-26T22:33:00.000+08:00

Okay maybe not "censor-free" but still, I can access Blogger now and not Xanga. What is up?

The first nightmare of teaching happened 2 days ago. Something I never thought would happen to me, but something that happened quite frequently to every nerdy, foolishly creepy (or just plain strange) teacher I've had over the years. My seventh grade history teacher for example. The one that made us do "clusters." He would have ran into this kind of embarrassment often but I never thought I would.

After 2 hours of group presentations in one of my oral english classes, I came up to the front of the class to talk about the final exam and to simply give the students the exact date and time and so on and so forth. After I dismissed the class, two girls came up to me---almost unable to even look me in the eyes but displaying the biggest grin their pudgy Chinese cheeks could muster---and one of them gestered for me to come closer to her. I leaned forward and put my ear to her mouth as she whispered, "Mr. K...um....your trousers...are uh....(point to my crotch)...yeah."

I looked down and sure enough, my olive-colored Express khakis were open. The most serious case of XYZ I had ever seen and I quickly zipped up and said "Thank you so much, but why didn't you tell me sooner?" The girl shook her head in embarrassment and for the first real time as a teacher here in China, I was blushing with near shame.

"I'm one of those teachers" I thought. "Obvlivous to anything around him, single, talks too much, and forgets to zip up whenever he goes to the bathroom. Sad."

Maybe this comes with approaching one's quarter-century birthday?

The best films of 2006 so far...

2006-08-29T12:02:00.001+08:00

Here are the good ones, worth the trip to the theater or DVD store or Netflix queue should the release date permit:

Little Miss Sunshine: The film to beat in 2006. It's got the greatest opening shot and the best ending scene since 2004's Napoleon Dynamite.

Brick: Rian Johnson's dark and gritty little indie-film-noir-flick starring Joseph-Gordon Levitt (who's on a role with movies and chilling/committed performances) trying to piece a dead-girlfriend-drug puzzle together with the help of his screwed up high school peers.

Bubble: Steven Soderburgh produced this ultra-low budget, reality film (meaning, it's as close to real life as you could get) about a trio of bored factory workers who find themselves mixed up in a murder in a small town and its almost creepy the way it feels like this could happen to anyone. Best scene in the film: the prison conversation. The staging of this scene, the set design, the direction...all of it, pitch-perfect.

World Trade Center: I know this is supposed to be an inspiring film---and it is, don't get me wrong---but I didn't know some things about this story and about the number of survivors who actually survived from after the rubble and it actually depressed me more than it inspired me. But even still, it reminded me of the power of hope---especially when this hope is being liften up with the words of another.

John Tucker Must DieOkay, maybe "best" doesn't apply here at all but nevertheless, this movie is almost exactly what it's trying to be: a teen comedy with a little bite and a little revenge/sassy/sweetness in a summer filled with movies made to blow you up. The first half hour of this film, unlaughable, but as the movie goes along, three characters make this high school romp worth the trip to the end (even though we all know how it's going to end). And although the moral of the story is preachy, it's oddly encouraging to be reminded from a movie as shallow this, the value of telling the truth. Too bad John Tucker never learned this. But then again, something is not exactly right with the screenplay or direction when the character your supposed to hate actually ends up being the most interesting, most engaging, most charming, most endearing and most likeable one of them all. Maybe "WICKED" was right: it's all about pop-u-lar. (Come to think of it, maybe this movie has no plae being on my list at all. But I guess if I had to include a stupid summer movie you thought would be god-awful but wasn't, this would be the one) It's a far far cry from MEAN GIRLS though. Let's be clear on that for sure.

Am I missing some here? Is that all? :/

Chinese Stars

2006-08-16T14:13:00.000+08:00

I love the night skies in America. Or at least, in Richland, Michigan that is.

I love the way the stars drop down to the dark horizons and then explode the more and more you tilt your head up towards the twinling. I love the way the misty clouds sift their way through the blackness that is night, sometimes almost unrecognizable to the unobserving eye. And I admire the stars---just as they are---and nothing more. They don't pretend to be anything else. They simply, shine and shine.

And they embody beauty---pure beauty from a human perspective---even though we learn from science class what these tiny fire nightlights are really made up of. And whenever I find myself running beneath them, whenever I find myself looking up longer than I've been looking straight ahead, I can't help but feel at peace. I can't help but think of peace. Why do stars do this to me? Why do I always remember my Taylor years and the Upland night skies the moment I catch a glimpse of the heavens at night?

One night a few months ago while in a tiny village deep in the farming fields of Shandong, China, I experienced an eyefull one night when the sky was bombarded with stars, nearly bursting at the seams of the heavens. It was a cosmological miracle, and my eye heart could not believe my eyes. And then, my heart gave away one breath. I stumbled to try and take it all in, wanting to not leave anything out of my own mind and memory. I didn't want to forget by morning what a night this had been because I now realize and am learning day-by-day that every morning, every new day is simply another chance to get it right. To---before you lay your head down on the pillow that night---see beauty, and meditate on it and admire it and totally be filled in awe of it. And this type of admiration is connected to love, which is connected to God, which is connected to every one of us whether we believe it or not. And on that night in this tiny, tiny Chinese village, my friend looked over at me and wondered what I was looking at. And for once in my life, I didn't feel the need to answer.

I simply stared up and off into the distance, my eyes glowing reflections of millions of rays of beaming light. And on that night, I felt happy. The kind of happiness that touches on love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, humility and self-control. And this, I've come to realize, is one of the millions of ways we feeble humans worship the Trinity (the Sun, the Moon, the Stars). The three total, perfect, whole lights that run through every fiber humanity comes to experience. The lights that no person, in their entire life, can possibly do (or live) without. They are three, but they are one.

The Spirit Within

2006-08-10T09:25:00.000+08:00

"We all go a little mad sometimes," says Norman Bates in the film PSYCHO. The same could be said for us Christians.

For one, I'll never understand how simply being with other Christians can somehow internally irritate me. I mean, I guess I understand how "theologically" this happens but I still find it hard to swallow practically. It just doesn't make sense.

Why am I irritated by those I love the most so easily? On this note, I can empathetic with Oscar Wilde when he wrote, "I always want to know everything about my new friends and nothing about my old ones." But then, on the other hand, there are those few friends in which I still (day by day) deeply desire to know more. They are the ones (of course) that are far away and so perhaps if they all lived next door to me they would cease to be interesting anymore.

I don't know about that, but maybe.

Anyway you look at it, it's almost impossible to always figure out the spirit within. The one you always seem to question. The spirit that tells you to love yourself and be unhappy with yourself all before you go to bed at night. How can you discern which is right? Of course unhappiness with yourself in a "good guilt" kind of way is essential for the maturing Christian. But then again, I think of Brennan Manning and how he goes around preaching and preaching and preaching about how "self-hatred" is the biggest hurdle for the gospel to overcome. Not wars. Not genocide. Not gay marriage. Not abortion clinics being erected on every corner. No, the scariest moment for him is when he meets a Christian who doesn't really believe God loves him/her. And every day I keep living and living, I am constantly forgetting the idea that "God loves me" or rather, "God likes me." Part of this is because the enemy is trying to tell me I am unloveable and part of the reason is because I really am, in pure human terms, unloveable (by worldly standards at least). I will never measure up, so why do I try?

I try because I believe in love I guess. Because I believe that grace and mercy is better than judgment and criticism. I try because I want to believe that at the end of the day, the person that has loved the most has won rather than believing its the person with the most money in his/her pockets. I try because it hurts more to try to love than it does to not love at all, and in some sick way, I find that to be more fulfilling, more important, more eternal. Loving people is hard. Yes. And most of the time if I have the choice to talk to an old friend of my parents' or try and make new ones in a very short amount of time, I simply want to throw in the towel and say, "the hell with it." But one day out of the month, a light comes on. A click finally clicks. And the spirit within is finally awakened from its dead, cold, unlove-filled sleep.

And then my eyes are open.

The Top Ten of 2005...

2006-02-14T13:31:00.000+08:00

Finally, I can put this out with confidence. I've seen enough (too many) of the movies released in 2005 and through much grueling effort, I can now (with good conscience) publish my own top ten film list.

Although 2005 was a funky year for movies, with the documentaries probably ruling once again, it wasn't the best or the worst. There were good movies (Cinderella Man, A History Of Violence, Red Eye, Capote, Mad Hot Ballroom, Mrs. Henderson Presents, Batman Begins, The Family Stone, Good Night And Good Luck) and really good movies (Heights, 2046, March Of The Penguins, Munich, Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, The Upside Of Anger, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe) and great movies (Me And You And Everyone We Know, 15 and Nobody Knows)...but still...something about this year was funny and a little overrated. Standouts were not common, and excellence in filmmaking was rare.

But here's my list. Most of these I've seen twice (okay, Nate? Happy?!) and have thought enough about them to give them credit where credit is due. And I think, for the most part, that I'll stick with this one until months later when I've reconsidered after the Oscar buzz/hype. Until then....here it is...from number ten to number one.

10. Brokeback Mountain -- There are two ways to watch this movie: (1) watch the movie as a critic of a character’s moral decisions or (2) watch the movie as if you’re living within this character’s 1963 context. The first time I watched Brokeback Mountain, I could only see the former; but on a second viewing the latter view seemed to give me well enough reason to include this on my list. Contrary to what many critics are hailing Ang Lee’s beautiful and haunting western drama as, Brokeback Mountain is not a “tragic” love story, but rather, a love story with extremely sad side effects. Here you have a story about two young cowboys—one from Texas, the other from Wyoming (which ironically is the same birthplace of Matthew Shepherd, the young gay man who was beaten to death and hung up on a barbed wire fence back in 1998 because he was gay)—who wrestle through their sexual identity within the highly prejudice 1960s context. The setup may sound a bit depressing, but thankfully Annie Proulx’ story steers clear of complete bigotry and minimizes the melodramatic clutter possible to one or two, still fairly poignant scenes. Illuminated by Gustavo Santaolalla’s wonderfully simple musical score, the film’s end conjures up an emotional response that is confusing and frustrating and difficult. But this is the true hidden genius behind this story: it could’ve been a one-sided political outcry for homosexual marriage, but instead it leaves you with ambiguous thoughts and real life dilemmas about a very complicated subject. The ones not solved overnight and the ones with few black-or-white answers.

9. Mysterious Skin --There are a lot of independent films out there dealing with child sexual abuse and many of them are powerful. But none of them come close to capturing the disturbing, yet emotional effectiveness that director Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin achieves. Based on the even-better breakthrough first novel by Scott Heim, the movie is about two boys who both experienced something horrible when they were young, but yet can’t fully remember the mentally blurred and distorted details. One boy grows up thinking he was abducted by aliens and obsesses over searching for answers, while the other boy ends up into being a hustler, selling himself (and his very hard heart) again and again to other men looking for sex. Although the movie treads over subject matter tackled by previous films such as My Own Private Idaho, L.I.E., and Twist, it’s stronger than all three of these combined. After all, it’s not just a story of recovering memories, exploring how adults often romanticize their childhoods to almost mythical, mystical and (of course) mysterious levels, but it’s a story of deep-seeded pain, inevitable family failures, the loss of sexual innocence, and most profoundly, it’s a story about discovery. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Angels In The Outfield, and TV’s 3rd Rock From The Sun) and Brady Corbet (Thirteen) give two of the most powerful, most engaging, and most underrated performances of 2005, balancing the wounds of their characters’ childhoods with near-perfect grace. In the end, the result is a harrowing, daring, hopeless yet, quietly hopeful work of art, with the film’s final scene—one that is so emotionally complicated, so cinematically profound, it could very well be the most deservedly moving scene put to a Sigur Ros song ever—lifting Heim’s novel up into the rafters of Christmas carolers singing, old wounds being uncovered, and two human beings sharing that intimate and rare moment of connecting over a very dark past. (WARNING: Mysterious Skin is rated NC-17, so I can’t say I’m recommending this for everyone. Some people do not need to see (and will never need to see) this one. But for those of us who can, I think it’s more important than most people think)

8. Walk The Line --James Mangold’s Walk The Line is this year’s Ray, except with a stronger story and much more endearing true-life love story. And although Academy Award voters snubbed it in the Best Picture category (Capote was clearly not Best Picture material, but oh well), Walk The Line will be the film from 2005 most people won’t soon forget (unlike many of the other Oscar nominees). Here, you have a story of grace—catapulting love and God and drug abuse and music together in one film—which blossoms into a truly moving story that is closer to the real story than to movie fiction (unlike other films released this year such as Cinderella Man). Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon are dead-on, performing all their character’s songs themselves, and matching the kind of cinematic chemistry not found too often these days in American cinema. And while some people may sigh and yawn at the thought of yet another “biopic” being made about a musical legend, let’s give them a break. Just because the formula works, doesn’t mean the movie will! Yet with Walk The Line, it is different. And the difference is in the uniqueness of the story. Family. Intervention. True friendship. Community. Faith. These are the themes and they go a very long way in this touching, ode-to-Johnny-Cash musical film tribute.

7. The Constant Gardener -- I knew back in 2003 when I first saw the visually arresting film City Of God that it wouldn’t be the last of Fernarndo Meurilles. And sure enough, after receiving a Best Director Oscar nod for City Of God, he went on to make this best-selling novel adaptation—part love story, part pharmaceutical drug thriller—with the same directorial genius that so marked his previous film. In The Constant Gardener, the global world’s eyes are on Africa, as an overseas pharmaceutical company attempts to find a cure for local people inflicted with the Tuberculosis disease. What sounds to be a noble attempt in bettering the wellness of these poor African people ends up being something much more complicated, as a British diplomat (Ralph Fiennes) and his wife (Rachel Weisz) come to find out on a trip to the country. What follows is a complicated (yet, in a way, very simple) web of paranoia, corruption, deceit, corporate greed, and a most unsettling ethical way of working the world over in one’s favor. In a sense, the movie tramples on previous territory—it’s sort of a cross between Hotel Rwanda, and Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room—but in my opinion, The Constant Gardener is better than both. Shot with intelligence, vividness, and a kinetic pacing that attempts to lessen the invisible wall setup between the screen and its audience, The Constant Gardener couldn’t be timelier, or more plausible, which is why it’s easily one of the smartest and most unsettling real-life thrillers to come along in years.

6. The Squid And The Whale -- The phrase, “Like father, like son,” couldn’t be more true. In a year filled with movies that fail to surprise, fail to inspire, and are as “okay” as a Sunday evening snack, Noah Baumbauch’s The Squid And The Whale becomes a minor miracle. In 81 razor-sharp melancholy minutes, the story of an intellectual couple (Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney) and their two sons who must accept their recent news to get divorced (but with a sensible, joint-custody agreement) is as heartbreakingly funny as it is uncomfortably moving. The brilliance of the film, however, lies in the very commonness of their divorce experience. In modern day America, a social love affair with broken marriages seems to be the norm and Baumbauch treats this fact with judgment and grace. The father, played with a cunning brilliance by Daniels (his best performance in years) is a “Woe is me,” artsy-fartsy, jerk-of-a-dad, who is always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time even though he lives in a world where he is right and everyone who disagrees with him is always “not very intelligent.” The mother, played with perfect emotional conviction by Linney, is a “My life is me and your life is you,” self-absorbed, yet well-meaning woman, who’s always changing the man she shares the sheets with. Within that context, the film soars bravely and radiantly along in a matter-of-fact fashion, thanks to a solid thematic grounding in J.D. Salinger’s literary masterpiece The Catcher In The Rye, pertaining to the squid and the whale at New York’s Natural History museum. At times, laugh-out-loud funny, at times, bracingly authentic and witty and weird and dysfunctional, The Squid And The Whale is that tiny little treat that 2005 needed oh-so desperately.

5. Grizzly Man -- I’ve never used the word “transcendental” to describe a documentary before, but here it’s the only word to come even semi-close to capturing this film’s spirit. In what is sure to be the most memorable documentary for years to come (and possibly the most hilarious and most tragic), the world of humans is being lived out with one man as the centerpiece. On the breathtaking Alaskan landscape, T.T. and his 13-year-long love-relationship with a bunch of wild (as if this word needs to be placed before the next two words I’m using here) grizzly bears, is the setup. The rest of the story here, as narrated by W.G. points out, is found within those unintentional moments of rare natural wonder, where the eye of the camera lens captures sights beyond explanation. The animal world is chaotic, yet harmonious; and the inner heart of man seems (in comparison) to top even this, as T.T.’s rants and raves and confessions bleed into the light captured by the camera like a subtle, humble prayer. In a year filled with some wonderful documentaries (Murderball, Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room, March Of The Penguins, Mad Hot Ballroom, and Rize) Grizzly Man stands tall above them all as an eerie, bigger-than-life-or-death rarity, that is both maddening and moving, sensitive and daring. Too bad Oscar voters were too lazy to see this for themselves.

4. King Kong-- There’s a much grander and bigger story going on here then what’s on the surface—one that has been going on for centuries really. Which is why I almost immediately fell in love with Peter Jackson’s ode-to-cinema-and-life-itself creature picture King Kong. Say what you will, but this is not just another Jurassic Park nor is it another New-York-City-gets-demolished action pic. It is first and foremost, a beautiful film with a text and subtext so rich and so simple and yet, so philosophically intriguing, it will be a shame if it doesn’t get a best original screenplay Oscar nomination. But King Kong is more than a throwback B-movie monster flick, and it’s more than a love story between a beautiful young actress and big, loud gorilla. The movie explores the endless dilemma of entertainment vs. reality, man vs. nature, love vs. obsession, and obviously, the inevitable undercurrent we know as ‘power’ running through them all. The things we love we often end up destroying, and as the U.S. divorce rate climbs, the race for world power/control continues to linger on every first and second and third world nations’ mind, Kong sits on top of the Empire State Building looking as beautiful and as natural as can be. And finally, like any work of cinematic art, King Kong ends up entertaining just as much (if not more) as it does enlightening.

3. Junebug-- I was born in Greenville, South Carolina and lived there for the first 10 years of my life. Words like “y’all” were apart of my daily vocabulary, and family was pretty much everything down there in the South. Which is maybe why I loved Phil Morrison’s Junebug so much. In this story of a somewhat snooty art dealer from Chicago falling for a North Carolina boy and then traveling down to his homeland to meet his family (but more importantly to her, to check out a local, eccentric, promising folk artist) there is a kind of world explored and visited where few movies dare to go: the world of the normal, Southern American family. Rather than treating their accents as comical crutches and reducing their religious faithfulness to blind-sided bigotry, Morrison pretty much leaves these people as they are. Because of this, Junebug never falls into trap of having the normal, one-dimensional, stereotypical Southern movie characters. For even if this family may seem simple and normal, their lives are complex and ambiguous. Family is treated here as family should be treated: not something to take lightly and not something with problems easily resolved by the end of a weekend visit home. But the two things I loved about Junebug the most were the people these characters reminded me of from when I was young (and no doubt, they will remind you of people you once knew too) and Amy Adams’ winsome, delightful, and heartbreaking best-supporting-actress-performance-of-the-year hands down. If she doesn’t win the Oscar on March 5th, it will be the stupidest mistake of the night!

2. Crash-- Crash, Paul Haggis' directoral debut (he wrote Million Dollar Baby) is as impressive as they come. And I’m willing to bet if it had been released in December instead of last May, it would be this year’s Oscar runaway hit. And even though I’m sure it will have a tough time beating out Brokeback Mountain for best picture, it is the only one of the five that truly deserves such a title. Crash is a melting pot of a movie about the melting pot that is, America. Set in L.A., the movie explores the city people’s lack of human-to-human contact through the lenses of culture, race and class, and does this with surprising clarity and insight. Essentially, the movie sees America as it is today—a world filled with language differences, culture clashes, and good and bad around every small town and big city corner. Like the smart and sassy Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle, Crash thrives on racial stereotypes—which could’ve been a disaster, but in this film it works almost perfectly—and touches on the unsaid and unspoken universal fibers running through just about every American. With some of the most haunting and intensely entertaining moments of 2005 captured on film in this movie, within those high and extremely high-level heart-pounding scenes, it’s no wonder Crash is film critic Roger Ebert and many others’ best film of 2005 pick. And although I can’t agree that it is the best, it’s the best second best movie of the year, ever.

1. Millions-- I’ve waited for a long time to say this: Millions is my favorite and the best film of 2005. Similar to my best of 2001 list, the number one pick (then, Moulin Rouge) was not even in my mind as the year’s best film upon a first viewing. But of course, repeated viewings allowed this overlooked, underrated family film from director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, and 28 Days Later) to be my pick for my favorite (and the best I think) film of 2005. It’s a movie about childhood, about faith, about money, about grief, yes; but more importantly it’s a movie about epistemologies. How people come to see and know the world around them—whether society or family or school or God shapes them—all come together in this appropriate titled film covering so much ground. The story is told through the mind of an 8-year-old, which plays out appropriately with the film’s plot as it hops from new scenes to new topics like the mind of any 8-year-old kid. Like the film’s visually spectacular and exhilarating opening sequence (reminiscent of such great openings as Amelie and Magnolia, although not as grand), the movie is enchanting…a word that describes no other movie I saw this past year. And so for the third year in a row, here’s me choosing another movie about childhood (but wow, it’s so much more than this) as my number one film of 2005. So don’t watch the trailer before you see it; just go rent it now. Watch it two or three times, and tell me there is not more to meets the eye in this wide-eyed meditation on the money, childhood, and the Gospel.

Needing God

2005-12-29T13:20:00.000+08:00

China is on my mind. More specifically, Chinese people who continue to amaze me and encourage me and be there for me, despite the distance. Which brings me to this reoccuring thought: what happens when you meet people who are living out the fruits of the Spirit far better than you (the Christian) ever has, and they don't profess to know Christ? How do you approach the Gospel to these people?

Obviously, the Gospel is about freedom and redemption and more than anything else, love. Love between God and people. Love between man and women. Love between children and parents. But isn't it moreso about making meaning in one's life? After all, if we sell the Gospel as something to simply "make you happier" or "make you more successful" or (God-forbid) "make you feel blessed all the time," then what happens when these things are not so after one trusts in Christ? What happens if these three things feel as if they fly out the window of people's hearts the moment they become disciples?

I don't know how to word this, or how to tell people who don't know God about this yet, but I want to try and play with this idea as my way of talking about the gospel from now on. I want to talk about how it's more about giving meaning to things, and less about feeling safe and happy and quaint. How it's about living in and on a certain kind of paradox. One that understands pain and suffering but does not delight in it; one that embraces mystery without embracing an ignorance on tough questions; and one that realizes life is really about loving people and loving God, no matter how many people choose to do the exact opposite. We live on the opposite ends of a spectrum, when really we should be living in the middle. Not the lukewarm middle, but the middle that teeters on balancing mercy and grace with justice and peace. The middle that does not believe in blind love or blind faith, but rather, faith that doesn't marginalize and love that doesn't compromise. I realize, this is the ideal...and we will never (ever) get there. But as I like to tell my students when a few of them have approached me and told me that hope, in the end, turns into hopelessness I say, "No, I don't think it does."

Maybe it turns into a smaller kind of hope...a shred of hope that seems so thin and fragile it appears to not be hopeful at all. But in truth, it is still called hope. And it is still worth clinging to (I think) no matter how many future wars come or how many Tsunamis hit or how many children in orphanages die believing no one loved them. Just because these things are so, doesn't give us right to live less. But it should give us reason to live more.

At least, I think that's what it's all about.

And The List Goes On...

2005-12-28T23:00:00.000+08:00

Are there any must-see movies from 2005 that you think would make my top ten list?

Right now, I'm doing my pathetic end-of-the-year scurry to try and see all those films I've missed from this past year and it's overwhelming. From "King Kong" to to "Munich" to "North Country" to "The Constant Gardener" to "Brokeback Mountain," there just seems to be an awful lot that came out in the past 2 weeks that are already being talked about as potential Oscar favorites.

But then again, I guess that's how every year goes.

So far, the list of potential ten-best-films is as followed: Crash, Millions, Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room, Me And You And Everyone We Know, Mysterious Skin, Walk The Line, and maybe (just maybe) Cinderella Man.

Oh, and "My Summer of Love" (although it won all sorts of international awards and critics' prizes) will not be on my top ten list. Although it was at times, an interesting look at love---with its disturbing portrayal of an older brother redeemed by Jesus juxtaposed over his younger sister, lost in a sea of girlhood fascination---the movie was at its best, only somewhat interesting. However, I do love how ambiguous the film played out to be. We need more of that in American movies today.

Behind the Times

2005-12-23T23:45:00.000+08:00

Being in China for only 4 months does things to you.

First, for someone like me, it makes you way behind when it comes to movies. My knowledge of what's out there consists of Narnia, King Kong, and Harry Potter. I had no idea their was a sequel to Cheaper By The Dozen, another end of the year movie by director Ang Lee, nor did I ever even hear of Jim Carrey's latest "See Dick and Jane Run" or whatever it's called.

Second, which is related to the first, it makes me feel like I'm behind and there's no use even trying to catch up. It's not everyday that my sister Tiffany is talking on and on about all these indie films she saw in L.A. while I'm sitting there listening to her thinking "I've never even heard of that movie! But it sounds so good!" I can't remember the last time where she---or anyone in my family really---saw an indie, arsty-fartsy movie before me. It's disconcerting for someone who sees the last 6 or 7 years of their life through the lens and grid of what has happened in the world of cinema (i.e., 1999 was the year of "The Matrix," "Magnolia," "American Beauty," and my senior year of high school; and 2002 was the year of "About Schmidt" and "Punch-Drunk Love," and the best Fall semester I ever experienced at Taylor---you get the picture). And so now, it makes me feel like I have little to offer people now when it comes to movies.

Maybe I didn't realize how much my useless movie knowledge was the springboard for half of my conversations but I'm realizing this is true. And so, I've resorted to something else I feel I can talk on for hours---boring people to death---and that is China. So for those of you who haven't been around me in person lately...watch out. Because my "In China..." stories are shooting out of me like slippery watermelons.

What a pretty sight, huh?

Pudding and Alvin and Me

2005-12-08T17:38:00.000+08:00

Today, I ate with the cutest Chinese student couple I've ever seen. They're both non-English majors, but through a series of weird and random encounters, I met up with them finally for lunch after my classes.

Their english names? Pudding and Alvin. And I'd like to add that Pudding is the boy and Alvin is the girl.

All afternoon, the three of us connected in ways and on levels that people who I can speak perfect English with never could. It is odd when you realize although someone does not understand your words exactly, they still understand your meaning. And yet, so many of my English-speaking American friends I have trouble with communicating with? Why? We both speak the language! Maybe we should both start speaking in the simplest of words? Maybe we should always dumb the language down until our friendship is worked up enough to withhold the burden and fickleness of weighty three-syllable+ words?

Whatever the reasons, I had a fun time explaining to Pudding and Alvin why their English names were so funny. Telling them that Alvin was a little boy cartoon chipmunk's name was hard, but eventually, it clicked inside both their heads. And that's when the light flickered on in Pudding's eyes!

"Oh! I know your mean! You think "why are our names a 'food' and an 'animal?'" Pudding said.

"Exactly," I said. "You understand me exactly!"

And in the freezing, brisk Linyi City air, we walked and laughed and talked and mumbled in our broken Chinglish knowing that no matter where the conversation turned, we could always count on bringing it back to smiles with me asking them two simple words: "food" and "animal???"

I've yet to see Chinese people laugh so hard.

Mary

2005-12-04T21:19:00.000+08:00

Recently, I've been taken aback---at times, to almost tears---when thinking about the Christmas story this season. Being in China doesn't help, as the usual Sunday church-going experience is gone and the constant reminders of Joseph and Mary and Jesus are not scattered in manger scenes all over the city. But still, a song will play on random from my iTunes and it will send me swimming in a mixed bag of emotions---all concerning this teenage girl.

Most of the time, we miss the real Mary at Christmas time I think. We see her as this calm, ever-giving, ever-willing woman who's merely the passing point from the heavens to the Earth. But in reality, she wasn't this at all.

She was however, this very young girl who just happened to believe in the impossible. To believe the radical call to obey what some angel named Gabriel told her in a dream to believe in. And it wasn't some fairy tale bit-of-magic-sort-of-dream, but it was the ordinary and extraordinary dreams we humans have all the time. The ones that make us believe in something greater out there.

But lately, I've wondered about what kind of thoughts and emotions must have been running through her head and heart that night and the following morning. Obviously, we've all had times where we feel God has spoken to us---from the tiny moments through our conscience as a 6-year-old to the loud and outragous repeated calls to love He stirs up in us each and every day---but the rational part of us tends to always question this voice. And rightfully so! For how many crazies and loonies have there been out there who thought they heard the voice of God but really only heard themselves talking very quietly? Or more importantly, how often do we write off the crazies and loonies out there (Mary would be one in our day, no doubt, making every CNN and FOX news headline from China to Cairo to Chicago) as merely fools fooled by themselves?

I believe in the mystery of the Gospel, but what does this look like? Is it some ambiguous whirwind of supernatural phenomena, or is it simply the acts of love that often go unseen in the world today, everday?

I don't know, but right now, I'm humbled by the thought of anyone who behaves like Mary today.

Psycho

2005-11-30T20:47:00.000+08:00

You should try listening to some really intense instrumental music whenever you next post to your blog. Right now, I'm listening to the theme song to "Psycho," starring Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins and it is hilarious. I keep bobbing my head from side to side, and picture myself driving alone with some scary police car following me. And my eyes stare into the movie camera---penetrated, focussed, and frightened.

It doesn't do wonders for inspiring good thoughts worth reading on a blog though. Oh well, songs over. Happy hump day.

2005-11-28T00:48:00.000+08:00

There's something to be said for the day or moment or second you finally realize your walk is not matching your talk. The time when everything and everyone gets to look at you---the real you---and see that your shortcomings and mistakes are, in a word, hypocritical. I know we all have many times in our lives where these times come up but how often is the evidence so blatantly contrary to how we say we live? How often does the evidence make our insides turn, our minds cramp up, and our heart sink and sink and sink?

I had one of these surreal moments this past weekend. The ones you tell yourself you will never have, because you are a good Christian. A good, balanced Christian. But I guess even Christians should never say never. Because when you do, you find yourself doing exactly what you told yourself you would never do. After this whole escapade occurred, the smell of justice was in the air and my name was up. And then I finally got what my self-righteous attitude had coming to it: a wake-up-and-smell-the-reality check.

And for the first time in my life, I woke up from a night of drinking---way too much, of course---and realized I had puked somewhere between the time of getting undressed for bed and the time I lay sloshed and sound asleep, on top of my blankets. And then I saw the trash can sitting next to my bed I did not put there, and the towel under my face hiding the puke I evidently spew up hours earlier that I also did not put there. Which was enough evidence to make me think: one of my friends did this for me and so, they know!! They know how pitiful and ridiculous and pathetic I looked at 3 a.m. lying fast asleep, unconsciously munching on bits of vomit spattered all over my pillow. I became the evidence that my words could not hide over anymore, and it felt unnervingly shameful.

But I guess we all need these moments that remind us again of how fallible we are. We need to be told again and again that 'yes, you are imperfect and you still make mistakes and you still are failing to live up to what you speak.' But it sure is difficult facing this fact. Especially when you're the one everyone's looking at. Like a dried up french fry you find under your car seat looking undesirable and cold and just plain pitiful, I felt like I was even smaller than this.

And so, to reach a new level in how-small-can-I-be, I decided to write you all this and confess via the blog world of just how stupid and selfish I really can be.

Even in China.

2005-11-25T22:58:00.000+08:00

Blogger is so much better than Xanga.

It feels good to be back. Even if no one is out there, it's nice to hear and see my voice illuminated by the blogger template rather than the annoying xanga one. Although I will try to keep up with xanga blogs I like to read, I don't know how well I'll do with keeping up at posting there now that I can post here instead.

Happy Weekend. Bye.

2005-09-19T01:04:00.000+08:00

I think I finally realized and put into words what relationship I have with the Bible. I know that sounds weird to just come out and say, but I've been thinking a lot about this lately and it has really been bugging me.

Part of me loves it, part of me hates it. Does this make sense?

Whenever I read something beautiful in it, I underline, I say 'yes,' I am personally reaffirmed of the faith I cling to and claim to be apart of. However there are those moments when I find myself hating it. I hate the way it looks at me sitting on my nightstand. I hate how when sometimes I read it, I want to run away from my conscience after finishing a certain sentence. I hate it for the way it makes me feel sometimes inside, even though most of the time, this is a good way of helping me grow.

But ironically (or paradoxically) I think what I hate the most (and have come to love the most too...if you give me a long enough time) are those times when the words sting so close to home and scrape so sharply at my own life. The moments when I read and can hear the ringing 'this is for you' in my head and heart. I can hear my body ache because of it.

And this may not be pretty and it may make me sound like a looney boy, but I don't mind it really. It's what I've come to accept as me, living the paradox, and its best if I stop pretending it's something that it really is not.

I miss the blogger blogs I used to read.

2005-09-14T11:03:00.000+08:00

So Nate, and Chalupa, and Liz....well....I guess you three were my favorite ones (now that Tara has joined xanga:), I hope you can email me your posts or do something so that I can read what is going on in your life.

It sucks not being able to read them here.

The Xanga alternative

2005-09-08T16:39:00.000+08:00

Because blogger is hard to post to while in China and even harder to read other blogs from here (I haven't been able to access one blogspot blog while over here---ugh!) I've decided to cave in and write on a xanga blog while in China.

Even though I'll try to keep writing on this one whenever I feel like writing to a different audience, I think that one will be easier to post to. So all your blogspot people, please know that I am still one of you...I just must avert to xanga for a few months.

Here is the web site address:
http://www.xanga.com/nevillekiser

My first day of teaching in China

2005-09-06T14:11:00.000+08:00

Last night, I didn't think I was teaching until a week from today. But China had other plans.

At 9:00 a.m. this morning, I awoke to the sound of knocking on wood and soon realized there was someone at my door. It was one of the Chinese teachers and she had my schedule for this week of teaching (not next week). On the contrary, I was teaching this week. In fact, I was starting this afternoon (yes, that means 5 hours from now...I told myself). Did they just forget to tell me this? None of the other American teachers are teaching today or this week!

Oops. Oh well.

Of course I wasn't mad, only a little shocked. But then that wore off and I got excited. Two two-hour classes in the afternoon of sophomore english majors is not a bad thing at all for a Monday, and so, I think---looking back on it---it was a pretty wonderful day.

I learned that in China, students will not leave the classroom---even after the teacher has dismissed them---until the teacher leaves first. So when I dismissed my first class and they all sat staring at me as I put away my things near the front of the room, I felt like I was grabbing one two many cookies out of the hidden cookie jar. Everyone was looking up at me...smiling...and so, I reassured them: "You are free to go! Class is dismissed." One girl picked up her purse and pulled out her cell phone. I think she knew deep down how stupid I was.

And then of course, in the next class I somehow found myself singing the chorus to R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly." Don't ask me how my students got me to do that, but in the first week of classes at any college---with all the lame introductions and 'my name is' ice-breaker games---something like this is inevitable. And then there was the moment when one student asked, "Do you think you are handsome?" and another asked, "Do you like yourself?" Yes, these questions threw me because they tend to only come up between friends (if ever at all). But I just kept wondering why these two kids weren't psychology majors instead. I mean, come on---what kind of personal, prone-to-self-destruct question is that?

When the second class ended, the sore throat from talking slow slow slow english had went from marginal to a scratchy dry high kind of pain. But despite this, I still couldn't help from smiling. Walking out of the class room with Chinese faces gleaming and smiling at you, and giggles and hand-to-mouth laughs constantly overtaking the entire room made me wonder why I didn't come to teach english in China sooner.

China at last!

2005-08-31T07:27:00.000+08:00

I have only 2 minutes to write but I wanted to say that I think I found my new home.

I'm trying to find something I don't like about China and so far, nothing comes to mind. We're off to Beijing in a few minutes---taking the train up there for a few days---but I'll be back soon as I now am connected to the internet from my room.

At last, again...I feel as though I have a pulse. It's almost sick to realize how dependent we Americans are on the internet.

10.5 hours 'till departure

2005-08-25T16:38:00.000+08:00

I love China already and I'm not even on the plane yet.

Can you tell I'm excited? Well, I am. I'm smiling right now actually! Seriously. I am.

2005-08-24T14:12:00.000+08:00

Blake and Annilee's 60th anniversary was a success! A weekend filled with West Virginia oddities, found in the small town between Ripley and Charleston, I was amazed at how much L.A. already has tainted my view of the rest of small-town America. It's getting harder not to see the very scary side of small towns (i.e., the pride in one's own ignorance) and so, I've resorted to not speaking or making any comments whenever such thoughts come to mind.

Among other things, I read the most daring and provocative and depressing book I've read in a long time over this past weekend: "Mysterious Skin" by Scott Heim. I don't recommend it to the masses...only to those of you who saw "Irreversible" and "Requiem for a Dream" and thought it was "nice."

Only a few more hours of packing, and my road to China will begin. First start? Interstate 94 West toward Chicago.

All the way from Harlem

2005-08-17T15:57:00.000+08:00

"I loved my friend
He went away from me
There is nothing more to say
This poem ends as softly as it began
I loved my friend." -Langston Hughes

2005-08-17T11:59:00.000+08:00

I think this is the first time ever I've left on my last day of working at any particular job while almost crying in the middle of the employee parking lot.

Maybe it's due to China. Maybe it's due to the pictures I see with co-workers, wrapped up in giggles and oversized grins, reflecting the inner child inside of us all. Maybe that's why it's so hard not to cry.

Smashed

2005-08-17T07:45:00.000+08:00

Maybe I haven't let the book fully set in yet, but after recently finishing "Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood" by Koren Zailckas, I thought 'people need to read this book.'

Not because it paints a frightening picture by juxtaposing alcohol up against other "more harmful" addictive substances. Not because it will probably fuel the paraonia already in most parents minds when it comes to wonderfing if their teenagers or college-agers still living at home are closet drunks. No, this book should be read for the very reason Zailckas writes in her introduction that she wrote the book: for the utter commonness of her own story. There is nothing terribly extreme or extravagent about Zailckas' experiences, but at the same time, her experiences are as harrowing sometimes as the darkest parts found within and beneath all of us. It's as if she's hitting the world (America in particular) over the head and going, "this happens all the time...why!?" Why is drinking part of what it means to be an American teen? Why is it that at age 21, it's expected that you get smashed and people look at you in almost shock and disgust when they hear you don't? What's wrong when someone is always asked for a reason they're NOT drinking, instead of those who do drink excessively in social situations? I'm all for drinking--believe me. I drink on occassion with friends, but these questions and so many more that Zailckas raised to the surface got me wondering 'what does drinking do to one's identity or more importantly, one's self-concept?' Especially when a kid starts at age 14, like Koren Zailckas did.

Even though the book runs a tad long, it sill reads (most of the time) like a fast-paced fiction novel---building up tension, heightening awareness, and brimming with greater and deeper insights the more pages you jumble through. And to top it all off, Zailckas never falls into the trap of self-deprecating writing. She manages to entertain, inspire, and tickle the annoying hairs on the back of your neck enough to keep you smiling, chuckling and shaking your head in awe throughout the book. So read it...and see for yourself.

14 days

2005-08-12T11:03:00.000+08:00

14 days from today, I'll be on my way to China. I feel like a two-year old whenever I've tried recently to express how happy and excited I am to people about this trip, so we'll just leave it at that.

2005-08-11T08:14:00.000+08:00

In light of my upcoming trip to China, the floor at the hospital where I work at decided to throw another "Neville Day." That is the name that someone came up with months ago and it just so happen to stick. So, for the past week everyone has been asking when "Neville Day" is. It's pretty ridiculous, yes, but it's good to see so many employees get so excited over a potcluck party that makes it okay to eat three kinds of chocolate cake in one setting. Carol, one of those huggable nurses that just can't figure out when to quit beating a dead horse, was frolicking up and down the halls all morning awaiting the noon-time splurge fest of chocolate, chocolate syrup, chip dip, hot dogs, and diet pepsi.

"Are you ready honey?" She asks me whenever she passes me in the hall. Her face can barely bottle up all the joy.

"I'm gettin' there!" I'd say.

Once the "Neville Day" potluck party began, Carol was nearly bouncing of the walls as others decided to throw some hot dogs on the George Foreman grill. At the sight of this, Carol exclaimed "Make sure you brown them really good! I like my weiners brown!" and then laughed uncontrollably, as if she was in third grade and had just told the naughtiest joke to her best girlfriend. And then, she danced the waltz out of the break room to get some more ice for the diet pop. Everyone else just kept asking if she was drunk.

Once the party was well underway, Carol admitted to sucking down three cups of coffee a couple of hours before noon. This, a co-worker named Flo informed me, is "all she needs to get going. Once she's gone there ain't no stopping her no more." And this is part of why I love working at the hospital. People eat a little too much sugar, perform a little too many blood withdrawls, and start one too many IV pumps before going sailing into a mental state of euphoric oblivion. And of course, everyone merely shrugs and accepts this as normal behavior. After all, if there's one thing you learn after working at a hospital it's this: vocational norms and public displays of indecency don't exist.

2005-08-08T08:16:00.000+08:00

For a change, weddings this summer have been my beacons for worship. Normally this isn't the case (at least, not in my experience). All too often, they are cheapened down ceremonies of people's so-called "loves" finding each other with little or no accountability from family, friends, God, or the Church. Obviously, I'm not talking about people's lack of reverence for sacred spaces (because I'm not sure if that should even be a priority) but moreso I'm talking about the attitudes, motives, intentions, and thoughts found inside most of the people gathering around the wedding altar. But this is not the way it was meant to be. This is not what happens when the full spectrums of joy and pain, love and hate, cruelty and forgiveness come together under the recognized and received grace of God. What happens when we enter into this grace (or rather, receive and accept that it is already there and realize how we can do nothing without it) is how every wedding I attended this summer mirrored so beautifully.

Instead of splintered communions between strained faiths or no faiths at all, there was love. Instead of sharing a meal with a total stranger being as agonizing as getting fillings at the dentist, there was peace. And instead of self-centered receipients in attendence, there truly seemed to be the Holy Spirit dancing between the bride and groom.

It's no wonder then that at each one of these joyous occassions, I found myself soaring like a baby bird flying successfully for the first time. I found myself meeting and making new friends---not ones to be easily forgotten but to be quickly cherished. And now, I thank God for it all.

Take heart, and expire.

2005-08-03T12:36:00.000+08:00

Due to confidentiality rights of patients, all people in the medical field are trained to speak in code. There is a symbol for everything, an acronym for every position placed properly within the hospital hierarchy, and every person/patient is reduced to a number (i.e., if you want to talk about Mrs. Roberts, please simply refer to her as "345 Bed 1"....OR if you want to talk about her roommate Miss Smith, simply say "345 Bed 2" seeing how she has a window bed).

And another issue that cannot be talked specifically about in hospitals? Death.

As absurd to me as this seems (after all, we all are going to die) employees are trained not to talk about patients potentially dying. Even though it is a hospital and it seems this would be the safest place (if any) to talk about such a thing (i.e., I realize saying things like "she is dying" or "he only has 2 more hours to live" may seem out of place and a bit creepy for say, a high school locker room discussion or a grocery store checkout lane but at a hospital? Can't this be a safe place, if there ever should be a safe place, to talk about death?

I'm not advocating momentary morbid conversations all day long, plus the weekends. I'm simply wondering 'why' we westerners think we must be so "proper" and "professional" and "reserved" and "calm" and "collected" and "put together" when it comes to the subject of death?

All this to say, today I overheard one nurse tell another nurse "285 Bed 1 has expired." Which in farmer talk means "the milk has gone sour." However, in hostpital talk it means a "this person has died." As soon as I heard this while walking by, I stopped, looked at the nurse and then walked on. I don't think I like the idea of referring to people as if they're all gallons of milk just waiting to be thrown out. I don't necessarily think it's healthy to be reduced to a number and treated as if you're the one product that just didn't make it into the big supermarket aisle display this Easter season.

But alas, I have no alternative language code or system to offer the medical field so maybe I should just shut up. Maybe I should be walking around room-to-room while working at the hospital, labeling patient's foreheads with my human-expiration/death-date stamp. "Oh I'm sorry 265 Bed 1, but you're probably going to expire tomorrow so please---eat your over salted pieces of bacon and try not to think about it."

Karl Barth is sooooo smart.

2005-07-23T13:40:00.000+08:00

How does one reconnect with God? How can we reverse the flow, and go against the way we were born into this world? Were we crying when we came into this world because we knew---ever so clearly and simply---what it feels like to be separated (in some sense) from God's heart?

Conversations lately have been wild, as I feel almost embarassed at how blunt and obvious so many people in my life have been when it comes to approaching me about my own faith. Case in point: today at work, one of the receptionist ladies who answer phones, do patient charting, and a host of other things, asked me "tell me what was the best single thing you learned while at school/seminary last year?" Now, understand this: up until this point, the most contact I've had with this woman is a fair 'hello' exchange from time to time. But here she is, asking me the most radical thing I learned last year at seminary and wouldn't you know I had to think for five minutes before even answering. My response, now looking back, wasn't so great even though she seem to accept it as legitimate and marginally profound. And now that I think back again, I wonder why I didn't steal from the great theologian Karl Barth when giving my response. Because after decades of theological research and intense epistemological debates and creation/evolution talks, and liberal/conservative protestant discussions, he was asked what (out of it all) was the greatest thing he came to know.

"The greatest thing that I've ever learned and known is that Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

Sometimes I need to be just taken back to square one and remember who it is I'm actually living for. Yes, Jesus loves me...and Jesus even likes me (something Brennan Manning taught me to accept) and this I've come to know and love and cherish and cling to when I'm feeling alone and depressed, and depend on when I don't know where to go or who to turn to. It is the "it" in the gospel that blows me to pieces. It is in the form of grace and yet still, it hits me almost every time.

U2

2005-07-20T14:13:00.000+08:00

I have a new favorite U2 song: "So Cruel" from their Achtung Baby album. Oh my! I've heard this song before but this is the first time I heard it and felt like I got it! And ironically, it was playing on the radio last Saturday night after talking to my childhood best friend from third grade for 2 hours.

Thank you again Tara for allowing me to see the light, again and again.

Welcome Home

2005-07-18T07:10:00.000+08:00

South Carolina is just as beautiful as I remember it, and coming back for a wedding of one of my beloved childhood friends has been the thing I needed to do. Running into old faces, and friends I used to ride bikes to swim practice with, and my best friend from 3rd and 4th grade who I haven't seen since my family moved away from South Carolina, almost 13 years ago...has all been nostalgic to say the least. It's been like one of my favorite movies "About Schmidt," as the melancholy feelings and bittersweet recollected memories parade around in front of me in the form of ticking clock. I know I'm getting older, every day, every hour, every time the sun goes down below the trees. I realize this is happening but I don't think I'm comprehending it. I think most of the time, I like to live as if it's not happening. And although I don't think it's possible to live always aware of our finitude and of our own everyday reality, I do think it's possible to at least try.

Whirlwinds

2005-07-15T04:56:00.000+08:00

Tody is one that is flying---by both bad and good winds---and I can't seem to figure out what the heck is even going on! Work was a blur. And I realize when I say that, I sound like Lindsay Lohan from "Mean Girls," but it was. I left it going, "what in the world just happened today?" Everyone's temperature seemed to be boiling at both ends of the spectrum---one minute people were laughing and giggling, the next they were in fits of rage or squabbles of tears. What is going on here!?!

I know people bring their home to work and vice versa. I realize that amongst me at work there are nurses working who have husbands that beat them, and there are those of us who are extremely lonely and confused, and there are others who continually find themselves living in fear, in anger, or in a state of being where nothing makes sense---at all. I realize we all bring our own worlds to the big world of work and we all attempt to continually throw bits and pieces of our worlds into the wide open melting pot. So maybe I shouldn't be surprised at days like today. And maybe you're reading this and wondering what the heck it is I'm really talking about.

It's so hard to explain really, but I"ll try in one sentence. You ever have the kind of day where near strangers began to ask you about the ultimate questions of existence, where persons are opening up to you about serious personal issues they have at home, where another woman seeks out your advice on whether or not it's "okay" for her to be a lesbian, and where in the midst of it all, you're constantly being torn between the thought of doing the work you're at work to do, and doing the kind of human work you know deep down really needs to be done?

Well, if you get that you know what kind of day I had. Not bad, not necessarily good---just befuddling and confusing and fascinating, all at once.

Gay marriage, Abortion, and Enron.

2005-07-13T14:35:00.000+08:00

Maybe I'm so far off it's not even funny or maybe I'm just angry and wanting to think outside the Christan norm...but a discussion with my small group tonight made me think about this central question: is the Church apart of the the main "battle" going on in the world today?

Of course, it's hard to read such a question without hardly any context but immediately I thought 'no...it isn't!' Even though I generally frown upon such language (i.e., "we've got a battle to fight today, and the Church must fight back!") I understood the question and still found myself disagreeing. Consider the past presidential election for instance.

Were the two main issues (gay marriage and abortion) evangelical Christians rallied behind really the ones central to the global Church's concerns at large? Meaning, were these issues the main battle going on in the world today? Were these the biggest hindrances to people coming to Christ? Or coming to God?

Once again---like in the good ole' scary Bible times---people who know very little about God and don't even pretend to call themselves Christians generally seem to be the ones fighting for justice, for peace, for love. So when the Enron scandal came out, how did the Church respond? Did it speak vehemently and passionately against this corporate scandal of injustice, lying, cheating and stealing, like it did when it spoke about abortion and gay marriage? Or was it merely just another story of man wanting too much money and the Church believing that there were other more pressing issues out there? Could it be possible that maybe, the Church missed the boat---again!?

In the New Testament, it's no surprise to the average person that Jesus addressed the problem of greed and the love for money as the single greatest threat to knowing Christ. Yet, when was the last time you heard a sermon on America's equating salvation with earning more money? When did the Church last picket corporate criminals who steal from middle and low income familes just so they can take another week of vacation in a year?

Somehow, most of us Christians (including myself), don't seem to be too concerned with that whole "sell everything you own and follow me," command that Jesus gave. No, we're on America's side for the most part. After all, how dare we question this Christian nation's values? How dare we suspect that the things that America holds to be its dream is not at all what we Christians should be living or dreaming for?!

Elliot Fox Hoeflinger

2005-07-11T14:25:00.000+08:00

I finally got to meet and see my beloved godson Elliot Fox Hoeflinger, and he is just as beautiful and wonderful and near-perfect as I imagined. Seeing Dave and Lindsay (his parents) was a blessing in and of itself, but Elliot added a little extra bit of wonder to the evening. I hope someday I can be like my friend Dave Hoe...not just because he's cooler than I'll ever be but because he really is (and tonight, watching him with Elliot and Lindsay and in just about everything) I saw the selfless, love-filled Dave Hoe I remember from Taylor freshmen year.

In other news (as if some of my friends confirming of this thing wasn't enough) I've finally come to terms with something about myself: I'm not a cynic, despite always saying "maybe I'm a cynic" in every other post. No, I'm an idealist. So whenever something coming from me sounds purely cynical, know it's really just my idealistic mind meeting up with my idealistic heart in order to construct an idealistic world.

Failing the Test: The Story of Abraham and Isaac

2005-07-05T10:04:00.000+08:00

Recently, I've been thinking about something I read in a Madeleine L'Engle book ("The Rock That is Higher") more than a year ago that until now had dismissed as just merely something I didn't believe. The story of Abraham and Isaac is one of the most common ones to the Christian Orthodox and Jewish traditions, and rightfully so. Having to sacrifice your son is never something I'd like to be challenged to do in the future, and so, I used to not feel any connection to Abraham and the entire story surrounding God's request that he should sacrifice his son.

But then, it came up somewhere else---in another book---and I decided to revisit the story again and see if I really agreed with the "new interpretation" that was out there in so many Christian scholar circles today, on this particular story.

Simply put, many Christian and Jewish scholars today are saying (what Madeleine wrote over 10 years ago about) that perhaps Abraham actually failed the test yet God honored and fulfilled his promise to him anyways. Yes that's right...you heard what I said: Abraham failed the test and God intervened just before his son was to be killed.

If you read more closely and you seek out the character of God more thoroughly in the Old and New Testament, it seems very against God's nature to request such a thing. I know, I know...many of you are saying, "But he was only testing Abraham---to see if he really feared God, and loved God more than anything." But I'm thinking more now, "Was he?" It seems this tenth test of Abraham was really a test of whether he would choose law over love. And sadly, instead of choosing love Abraham chose law, and didn't even go as far as to question God's motive on the matter. Was Abraham simply obeying or is there such a thing as discernable obedience? Why didn't he question God who had called him to keep his commandments (which how could he forget, included "Do not murder") when God was asking him to violate one of these commandments? All throughout the Old Testament it seems Abraham and so many others wrestled with God and argued with Him whenever He would ask something shady or unreasonable of someone. I mean come on, God changed his mind a number of times because of people like Abraham who wrestled and duked it out in the relational life pool of ideas with God. Is it ironic or mere coincidence that Jacob, the man who wrestled with God is whom Israel is named after? God's chosen people's very name suggests the fact that they "wrestle," and yet, Abraham (this time around) doesn't do anything of the sort! Something is seriously messed up here, isn't it?

Perhaps I'm merely trying to understand the infinite too hard with my finite brain. Perhaps I really don't understand this kind of God---a God that would ask me to murder someone I loved so dearly. After all, if this happened today would not 99% of Christians be telling the Abrahams out there, "That is not God telling you to kill your son! That's someone else! Don't listen!"

From my perspective so far, it seems that you don't have to change a lick of scripture to come up with this interpretation of the story. It seems that Abraham could've seemingly failed the test, but yet, by God's grace was given what was promised to Him anyways. And if I'm not mistaken, wouldn't that be more in line with the God we Christians proclaim to serve? Wouldn't this interpretation make more sense when it comes to years and years later and Jesus is about to be crucified, and it is uttered (and compared) "Are you sons of Abraham or sons of God?" Or metaphorically speaking, do you live for the law or live for love?

I'm still thinking on this a great deal, but when I read this again recently and did some more research on it, I came to see it as a much more freeing and grace-filled interpretation of a sacred story that's been agonized and studied over year after year for thousands of years. I'm gonna keep searching, but for now this is just another thing in my life in which God's grace grows and my need for mercy extends even greater.

Behind the Times

2005-07-03T11:52:00.000+08:00

I just saw the music video for the song by Beck entitled "Dead Weight," and although it's almost a decade old, am I so lame of a person to want to have it and listen to it now again and again? I know great songs can be enjoyed whenever but it always seems like that when it comes to the music world, I'm years and yeard behind the rest of the world.

But at least I enjoy it still even though most people would simply scoff and say, "Oh my gosh! That song came out like last summer! It's so old!" To which I always smile and say, "I know....but I really love the old songs! What can I say?"

Get to know your co-workers.

2005-07-01T13:59:00.000+08:00

"Sometimes you see things and...well...other people, they can't see them."

One of my many favorite lines from the movie "Millions" seems to appropriate today after I got to know one of my employees at the hospital a little better. She is one of those wonderful older women---vibrant, very alive, and a very hard worker---and she also wears a necklace key change thingy that says "Jesus Loves Me" on it repeatedly (one phrase after the other) and is vehemently not a fan of George W. Bush. She makes me smile whenever I get to talk with her.

So today, she's sharing with me about herself, her past and her life basically and it saddened me to hear her story. Hearing how she struggled with physical and emotional abuse for years and years until finally, after 30 years she left him (she forgave and forgave and forgave and just kept letting him "come back"), I was angry with the world again but yet, too upset and sad to really do anything about it. I stood there listening, and watched as my respect grew even more for this woman---a 52 year old child at heart---and I thanked God again for being able to see someone I thought I knew...in an entirely different light. And this goes on all the time and I seldom choose to notice it. Maybe I don't want to see how I see people because it makes me think about the way people might see me. I wonder how so many people could be wrong about me, and I think about the few who I feel "get me"...like few people in this world do.

And I suppose that is how life is generally supposed to work. We see people the way we want to see them until they give us reason to see otherwise. And when those few people in our lives give us that other reason, they no longer become simply other people---dancing in the sea of the census---but they become our friends, and the ones who will hold our hand when we will leave this world, and be with us as we slip into the next.

This is why today, I'm happy to be alive.

The Giver lives in Our Town

2005-06-28T10:42:00.000+08:00

In Mrs. Vavra's sophomore American Lit. class, we gathered into small groups and read certain plays from the past century during our "20th Century Theater Month." My group read Thornton Wilder's obscure play "The Skin of our Teeth," in which Sabina and a host of other colorful characters crash historical events on the stage. Many people don't know this wonderful play, because many have only heard of Wilder's more widely known play "Our Town," which semi-inspired "Dogville" (the movie by Lars Von Trier, starring Nicole Kidman). Anyways, so right before I left L.A. I found a copy of "Our Town" for a quarter (oh I how I love thrift stores in L.A.---I miss them already) and decided I'd add it to my summer reading list (a list I have laughably yet to really even officially start).

So now I'm reading "Our Town," and it is simple but lovely. It may seem strange that I'm reading a play before I go to bed, as it's not your typical Mary Higgins Clark or Dan Brown summer fiction reading type-of-a-book, but for me---honestly---I love that I'm finally getting to read it and so many other classics like it because I feel like I robbed myself back in high school by sliding through and hardly reading a thing! If it weren't for Miss Smith, my senior year A.P. English teacher, I might have even escaped high school having not read "Hamlet!"

But back to books I'm reading or have been reading: "The Giver" by Lois Lowry...I skipped it in 5th grade but came across it recently and said "I need to read this Newberry medal award winner!" and so I did, and again it made me so happy. I don't know if I would've appreciated this book or many others for that matter, had I read them when I was "supposed to." So perhaps now is my time---as the writer of Ecclesiastes would probably agree---and today is the day when I will see the beauty in so much literature that I blindly and foolishly scoffed at during my early childhood years.

So here's to a summer reading list sprinkled with bits and pieces of the classics! And by the way, don't be surprsied if I start quoting famous dead literary geniuses and turn into a high school english teacher by the end of July. As you all know, I tend to get caught up in whatever it is I'm currently reading and someeeetimmmes take my happiness a little too far.

Hospital hugs

2005-06-24T08:00:00.000+08:00

My first day back working at the hospital yesterday went wonderful minus a few things. I enjoyed seeing many old faces, scrubbed out in their appropriate hospital uniform attire. Since I've been gone, Robin gave birth to her first baby boy and he's almost six months old now! I saw pictures and ooo-ed, and awww-ed respectively. And then there is Pat, who since I last left has chosen to die her hair a very horrible brown color and at first sight, I was tempted to tell her that I much rather preferred her beautiful silver-colored hair, as opposed to her present choice, but instead I say nothing and hug back. Some thoughts need to be spoken; others must be taken through the ringer before coming out of the huge hole in one's face. Otherwise, there probably would be very few people with friends here on planet earth.

Case in point: nurse Jenny saw me and didn't recognize me at first. So when it clicked in her head, "Yes, this is Neville. From last summer. You remember!" she gasped and blurted, "Oh my gosh! I saw you from behind and I thought you were an old man! What with your receding hair and all!"

She said it like it was Kalamazoo Gazette front page news. Like it was the given common sense we all really must recognize, and point out. She hugged me tight, laughing and giggling, and I have to admit, my gut reaction was to give her a noogie while trying to rip chunks of her own hair out of her head---you know, just so she could feel what it's like to have "receding hair." But then I thought, 'she's probably right.' After all, my hair...styled with gel and sticking straight up, and getting longer every new day, probably resembles a 42-year-old doctor's head more than my own 22-year-old one. And so, I keep hugging Jenny back, and I smile, and I think of how fun it is to be 22 years old and already losing your hair.

I guess I should've never made fun of all those Rogaine commercials I saw when I was young. God is surely getting back at me...in a very smart, and clever way. Oh well---that's life: God-1, Neville-0.

And yes, I AM keeping score!

Only seven more to go.

2005-06-21T06:10:00.000+08:00

I already have three movies lined up to go on my top ten list of 2005, and while this may sound dorky and lame, I feel like a big burden has been removed from my life because of this. It's usually so stressful trying to dig through all the cream and the crap when it comes to narrowing down all the movies I've seen in one year, but this year seems to be looking up as it isn't even July yet (e.g., Most of the "good" movies don't come out till' summer or fall or around December 31st)!!

So here we go, if I had to make it up right now:

1. "Millions"
2. "Crash"
3. "Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room"

I'm such a dork. Goodniggggghhhhhhhht.

Power, please.

2005-06-19T13:40:00.000+08:00

I've been thinking about power a lot lately, and how so much of what we do everyday really comes back to our need for it. I don't like to think that I have this problem too, because really, it's much easier to look at the corporate criminals tied up in the Enron scandal and see them as the real power addicts. But essentially, that is to fall into what Madeleine L'Engle dubs judgmentalism and it is too crowded of a road to walk down already. Every time I feel the urge, the need, the must-ness to be right, I'm struggling with power. Every time I look at someone else, and envy and and envy and envy whatever it is they have that I don't, I'm struggling with power. And every time I let control lead, and allow certainty to continually pave my way, I'm giving in and buying into whatever lie power is marketing and advertising.

It is indeed everywhere we turn here in America. You don't have to look too long or too hard before you find it or see it. Power is what so many of our conversations are really about and it's sad to see and understand and comprehend how this very thing can rip the Church apart--and the world too, for that matter.

But still, life seems worth the risk. The risk of living for love is a "fearful gamble," (again, Madeleine L'Engle's phrase---not my own) but it is one I'm ready and willing and wanting to repeatedly make.

Come into my pole barn, please.

2005-06-18T03:39:00.000+08:00

The garage sale / yard sale / pole barn sale signs are all over town today. I guess you know what that means: I'm not in California anymore.

Here's to frenzy Friday garage sales and much fun-in-the-Michigan-sun. And as Kelmo "Moselle" Blomgren would like to say...."Boo-yeah!"

The bread, the wine...the pretzels, and diet coke.

2005-06-13T14:56:00.000+08:00

There's something about the Eucharist that transcends into all meal times I think---as long as people are open enough to sense it.

Tonight, after flying back from David and Kelly's wonderful wedding in Minneapolis, I had a two-hour plus conversation wtih Dot, a sixty-something-year-old Catholic who was exactly who I needed to talk with after these past few crazy weeks. It was the first real, amazing, transparent, affirming, Catholic / Protestant background dialogue I've ever had where it never turned into any sort of debate or argument. As we sat there, me in seat 16D and she in 16E, we said nothing until the breaking of the pretzels and the serving of diet coke. Up until then, we had both been reading or in our own little American Airline world...trying not to make contact with one another I think. But then, the food came and the pretzels were broken and the diet coke was served to both of us, and we couldn't hold back any longer. And God, I think, had something to do with all of this.

She shared with me about the rich tradition and meditative worship of the Catholic faith, and I shared with her my sunday school class Protestant upbringings, and told of how much I valued these memories today. She needed help with her parish in these ways, while I needed guidance in Protestant problems and it went on and on like that until our plane landed in California. We said our goodbyes, blessed one another and gave the kind of hug Jesus would be proud of, no doubt, and when our own little ways.

And after that wonderful moment, I thought again of how wonderful it is to be apart of something as radical and as breathtakingly beautiful as the Church of Christ. And I thought about the bond Dot and I shared---both spiritually and emotionally---and the common ground we walked on and talked on together. And I thought about the way we laughed at ourselves and joked about the silliness God must look down upon at us in---so often and so frequent. It was the perfect ending to two near-perfect weekends of two events where close friends were pulled together as one by God and by the Church.

I usually never say things like this, but I'm so looking forward to meeting Dot again--wherever and whenever that may be. If it won't be till' heaven, I'll be just fine with that.

And so, the breaking of bread and the sharing of wine proves to be more than just an act or sympbol or practice we meditate on when we remember Christ's sacrifice for us---for really, whenever there is a meal being shared by the people belonging to the open-wide-arm hold of God, and there is fellowship and food and laughter exchanged, there Christ is...affirmed and remembered in spirit, in act, and in action. And the world is really, as Bjork would say, "full of Love"---again.

My paper from heaven!

2005-06-09T11:07:00.000+08:00

I don't think I've ever had the freedom to write a paper this random.

I like when the professors are open to ideas and are not as strict as to where you decide to take your paper. For me, I wanted this one to be crazy---something no one had ever written about before---and so, I'm writing a missiological and theological discussion (written both informally and formally) about Lesslie Newbigin (the great India missionary / evanglelical / theologian), the Church and its relationship with the film industry, AND drawing from three films ("Amelie," "Pieces of April," and "Millions") as springboards for theological dialogue and discussions.

It's either going to be really cool or really bomb---I'll let you know how it goes once I'm done with it. Good night.

The Playboy Mansion

2005-06-08T02:38:00.000+08:00

Yesterday for work, I had to run something to and pick something up from the Playboy mansion. Yes, that's right---I was actually there (not inside the mansion itself, but on the premises). I entered the gate, I saw the little white bunnies (yes, actual bunnies---not women) playing in the fenced-in dirt sections near the entrance and I realized that it really does take up half of a mountain off of the infamous Sunset blvd.

My mom and dad will be so proud, for sure.

After 7 years, Nate & Erica are one.

2005-06-06T02:49:00.000+08:00

Nate and Erica Shorb. It's official. And it's done. And it was beautiful. And it was very, very good. And I think I just fell in love with Coopersburg all over again. And yes, I cried when "One April Day" by Stephen Merritt was played as Erica walked gracefully down the aisle. And yes, I suppose that makes me somewhat of a strange groomsmen. But I don't care. There was too much of an affirmation of love in the room to react any differently I think.

Some people make getting married easier. I know that marriage itself is not easy at all, but I do know that some people are blessed to enter into the union of marriage having already practiced quite beautifully what it means to be one. For Nate & Erica and their wedding this past weekend, I kept thinking about how I never thought of them as two and wondered whether or not that was why this wedding seemed so unique and special to me. Perhaps it has more to do with this being the first wedding I've attended where a very close friend was the groom---I don't know. Whatever it was though, somehow I'm not worried at all for Nate and Erica. I'm just anxious to see what God will bring into their lives and to see how much love they can keep giving away.

Some people are just better at being selfless I think.

I hope you know!

2005-06-02T14:48:00.000+08:00

Contrary to what some people may think, the previous post regarding palm trees, too much sun and Tom & Yvonne Shorb was not in any way written with the intent of receiving something in return. I know Yvonne makes the meanest and yummiest cheesecake I've ever had (and believe me, I've had a lot---just look at my gut)...but my love for these two people is not because one of them makes delicious food; it is because they are truly two of those kind of people who you really need to meet and once you do, begin to fall in love with immediately.

So Yvonne especially, take that for what it is: a compliment and nothing more. I'm not expecting a cheesecake out of you this weekend (wow, that sounds a little strange now doesn't it) so if you try and pull a fast one and make one, rest assure you'll be wearing it before I'll be eating it.

Good night all...and good morning to the rest of you.

Burnt by the Sun

2005-06-01T05:20:00.000+08:00

The title of this post is borrowed from a Russian film that won the Academy Award for best foreign language film a few years back, and although I never saw it, I always wanted to and liked the title of the film---despite its implied simplicity.

Yes, I was out in the sun yesterday for Memorial Day. Yes, I was out a little too long. I hate whenever I happen to want to go outside and read under the sun, and then get the suddenly immediate feeling of being really really tired. And then, time gets fuzzy...and I can't seem to remember if it's been two minutes or two hours since I last looked at the clock. Time is very weird sometimes. It must be its own entity or something because I swear sometimes, it's just playing me for the necessary fool that I am.

This weekend is Nate and soon-to-be Erica Shorb's wedding, and as I've told them already, I think I'm getting a little too excited for it. I'm a little worried what I might do at the reception, as it will be the first time in quite a long time that I've been around any Taylor people or my beloved Tom and Yvonne Shorb---two of those wonderful people that everyone in the world should meet at least once. And I think the fact that I'm taking a red eye flight from California to Pennsylvania makes it even more exciting. There's nothing more thrilling than going to sleep in one part of the world and waking up in another. Obviously, I realize this "change-of-worlds" is happening from within the U.S. borders, but still, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't excited about it. I know it may sound like America is the world as I know it, but believe me when I say that's not at all true.

The sun is out today and the palm trees are trying their best to look beautiful. I never knew this until I moved here, but there are many people---especially mid-westers and east-coasters---who find palm trees especially ugly. Why? I haven't the faintest idea. To me, they seem to be pretty cool and beautiful too. I can think of few sights more beautiful than the gazing up at the L.A. night sky, while driving on the 110 freeway...where the palm trees silhouette themselves into the dreamy, starry heavens. After experiencing several of those moments, I think maybe this is why God made palm trees so unusually tall and awkward. Because other than mountains, there's not a whole lot in creation brave enough to face the sun and the clouds and the stars so closely, and so beautifully.

So please, give palm trees a break. They may be no "maple" or "oak," but they're still pretty wonderful even if some people don't particularly care for them at all.

Loving people is hard; but loving Christians is harder.

2005-05-27T16:50:00.000+08:00

It’s scary the way we Christians today view church and pastors similarly to the way we view Hollywood and celebrities. It is no longer God’s church, it’s man’s church. In Orange County, you’ll find Rick Warren’s church; in Minnesota, take your pick: Greg Boyd’s church if you like women in ministry, John Piper’s church if you don’t; in Chicago, there is Bill Hybel’s church—where most mid-west pastors sadly envy to one day be working at; in Virigina, there’s Jerry Falwell’s “homosexuals are taking over the world” church; and in L.A., there’s Erwin McManus’ church vs. John McArthur’s church—with its own big, phat McArthur Bible. And of course there are many, many others. Every book-writing evangelical Protestant pastor of a mainline church seems to be Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts for the shameful subculture of Christianity. But this can’t be right, can it? This can’t be what God had in mind.

I’ve been thinking so much lately about church unity, I feel my frustrations are running out of places to hide. Why do we keep splitting and starting new churches based on denominational differences? Why do we end the argument and discussion and conversation on such controversial matters as if to say, “well, we’re not going to agree so we might as well part, and go our own separate ways.”

No! Why not stay until we agree, or continue the conversation within the fellowship of the Body until we become continually edified through our attempt to be unified? Do we have so little faith in God’s power to seriously work through a church united, as opposed to a church divided?

Jesus said that a kingdom divided against itself will not stand, but fall. My question is simply this: how many churches in America today—separated from one another so much that unity even under the roof of one church is not even possible—are slowly falling? Or more appropriately, how many of them have already fallen? It seems somewhat silly when you think about it to just up and leave whenever disagreements come up in churches. After all, we’re human and fallible and differences come with the territory of being human. Likewise, it seems silly to leave the conversation or debate from within a Church community and say, “let’s just agree to disagree.” Why? Who told us this is a valid response? Who sold us such an easy-way-out? Because it certainly wasn’t Jesus!

Maybe I’m being too much of an idealist, but need I remind you that there are roughly 74,000 different Christian denominations present in the world today? Could this fact signify that maybe be this “let’s just agree to disagree” mentality is flawed? That maybe, to some degree, the really important issues worth arguing for should be wrestled with and through until unity becomes the selfless communal goal all members of the body of Christ are aiming for?

"Take the risk, and just jump!"

2005-05-26T14:35:00.000+08:00

Sometimes this feels how most relationships seem to work.

Either you're keeping something from someone you're trying to get to know, or you're thinking about telling them but fear how they might respond in return. Every time I get in this pickle, I usually go through the same thoughts that inevitably lead me back to square one. And every time I happen to be daring and stick my neck out and just jump into the dangers of a loving relationship---and tell what I know I should tell, and be honest about what's been hiding behind closed doors---I am usually relieved, and the burden leaves my mind like a ship off to sea, far far away from the harbour.

I hope tomorrow I will jump when this time comes around.

Dating 101

2005-05-26T02:01:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, I had a beautiful conversation / discussion with Greg, a friend from Taylor I work with, about L.A. and dating. We were talking about how so far off the "norm" is here when it comes to what's acceptable or expected if you're dating someone, and got kind of depressed about the whole thing. Sure, I love my generation but I wonder how much its hurt us to not have a steady, positive, consistent, dependent and altogether loving model on which to build our own romantic relationships on. I'm talking of course about the rampant divorce rate that's skyrocketed in the past 50 years or so, as one afternoon of listening to Dr. Laura can tell you no doubt. You'll hear kids---of parents who are divorced---calling in to try and make things right...trying to mend the wounds and broken bonds their parents have inadverently created within their own family, and it's just really sad.

I know this sounds like I'm a fundalit (Madeleine L'Engle's word creation of a "fundamentalist" and a "literalist") but it seems that the norm in today's society is not something I'd be too happy to always cling on to. Greg and I talked of how we don't think we'd want to be classified as being on the same lines as most people in L.A. when it comes to dating, partially because relationships are usually seen as "the end all answer to solve all of my problems." But as Greg paraphrased so aptly, from that lost-long-Disney-feel-good-heart-tugger "Cool Runnings," "If you're not good enough without this person, you'll never be good enough with this person." I guess he was basically saying that there are some places where only God to go, and I guess for the most part, I'd agree.

The problem comes when you become a "fundalit"---and you start naming where God should and shouldn't go, or where God should or shouldn't be---and that is a sad day, indeed. We Christians talk too much about what God isn't and project too often what God is only as seen through our own eyes. I realize that this is somewhat inevitable---when talking about the infinite, the finite explanation is as far as you'll get---but it still bothers me (even though I'm guilty of this too). I just wonder if it's even possible today to talk about God purely, without limiting Him or Her to a gender, or angry judge, or timid lover, or passive referee on the sidelines?

Time for Time

2005-05-24T15:07:00.000+08:00

Before the plethora of summer movie crap hits theaters, do yourself a favor and see the movie "Millions" if you can. If that's not possible, it comes out in July on DVD I believe, so you better watch it then or else. It's definitely one of the most beautiful---looking and sounding---movies I've seen in months, and asks the kind of smart questions few movies nowadays do.

In the movie "Dogma," the title character Bethany who works in an abortion clinic is asked to do the unthinkable: be the driving force, and the person to accomplish and carry out God's work on earth. It is not unlike Mary's own calling to be the mother of Jesus, as I'm sure Mary encountered her own fare share of first century equivilents (like in "Dogma" with the scary teenagers skating around viciously with hockey sticks in hand trying to keep Bethany from completing her calling). But if Mary wouldn't have had the courage and bravery and loyalty and patience and ability to say "yes!" then this world may still be waiting for the Messiah to come.

Sometimes I wonder if all of us get a call from God to do something brilliant and great and history-shaping-and-changing, and that the number of people who truly respond is just so small it's hard to see God working in the world because of ourselves. Instead of God being the problem, maybe we are. Maybe we settle for the main road rather than running toward the seemingly inconceivable and ridiculous path because we are too short-sighted to see and know any better? We think of time as being oppressive but I'm not really sure that it is. And maybe that's where a fundamental flaw in our thinking lies: because we age and grow old and change with the seasons, we think we're running out of time but really we're only spreading ourselves out deeper and wider into it. It's hard to not think in terms of life and death, but I think getting this idea down is one way to begin to think right about our world and our path in this crazy thing we call "life."

Congrats to all 2005 Taylor University grads...

2005-05-22T02:16:00.000+08:00

Yes, today is the day you've been waiting for and now it's so gone already. Four years working toward this moment and how does it feel? Anti-climactic, perhaps?

Whatever bittersweet emotions come about, know that this moment only reinforces what so many movies---Kill Bill, Cast Away, A Very Long Engagement, About Schmidt, and many more---have been telling us all along: the gem of it all is found not in the arrival but in the process. It's the pursuit of wholeness, or rather, the wholeness of pursuit that is, perhaps, the bigger, better thing.

Good day, all. Kiss the Taylor grass for me in front of Morris if you can before you head out. You'll be glad you did.

Spontaneous Combustion and the 2005 Taylor grads

2005-05-21T00:31:00.000+08:00

We all need to do something unplanned every once in a while and today, I was feeling I needed to do that very much. Amidst a load of papers due and books for class to read, I felt the urge to do something that would normally take planning and run with it to make it happen. Sadly, I was the only one up for such a thing, and so, my spontaneous thoughts were flushed down the toilet.

In light of the soon-to-be-graduates of Taylor University, I just wanted to congratulate all of you---especially the ones I really like---on accomplishing four years of education in so little time. And I also wanted to remind you that from here on out, it will be an ongoing battle of learning to live strictly by the book and by the planner, OR choosing to live with purpose and meaning and spontaneous fervor and a willingness at any moment to drop every-thing in life you own and possess, and immediatly run, run, run into the horizon of endless dreams and sunsets; into the place of irrational baby giggles; and into a world where you live for love, and people, and not for schedules or money.

I hope none of you choose the latter of those two. Good day and congrats.

Go Bo Go!

2005-05-18T14:59:00.000+08:00

Oh, and I hope the final A.I. round comes down to "The Vonz" and Bo. But after tonight's show, I can't say I'd like to have anyone but Bo win. I'm sorry but he's the only one out of the three that I never felt nervous for while they were singing. That tells me to put my money where Bo goes, and so, I'm pretty much there. Go Bo Go!

Challenging the Fundamental Bunny

2005-05-18T14:50:00.000+08:00

For someone who's as careful about what they say as I am, it's no small feat to come out and question the general political stance of my beloved Christian brothers and sisters. Asking "But Why?" may sound simple, but for me, it's not. It's much easier for me to rage and complain and object and scoff on the inside---because I always win the argument when I do that---than it is for me to tell a person what I'm really thinking or wondering at the moment.

And so, lately, I've tried to do just that, and can't tell you what a thrilling and freeing feeling it is. I hope I can keep this up because I'm really starting to like doing this.

(And sorry for beating around the bush---as this post doesn't really delve into "what" exactly I did do---but I'm taking my cue from "Mean Girls" right now and trying not to talk about people behind their backs. But wow, it's much harder than I thought it would be.)

Come to Me

2005-05-16T13:40:00.000+08:00

Every now and then, I come to the Bible and see it as alive again. I know it always is alive theologically speaking but most of the time, I don't think I really believe that. If I did, I would be reading it much more often than I actually do. That's not to say I should beat myself up for not reading it enough---because that would turn into being legalistic---but it is something when you realize again the very power and love that once drew you to God in the first place, is still well and active and living and moving.

When I read Jesus' words, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest," I can't think of a better way to sum up the entire empty space of ultimate need that all of us feel eventually in life. The kind of need that cries out "I'm tired...I'm fed up....I'm sick of trying to do things my way...I'm sick of trying to always be right...I'm tired of always trying to look presentable...I'm at the end of my rope, and I need help, please!" Everyone has these feelings and although I don't think I was necessarily feeling any of those things last night when I read this verse for the first time in a very long time, it did still give me comfort and hope and was the very words I needed to hear at that moment.

Madeleine L'Engle once wrote, "Our faith is a faith of vulnerability and hope, not a faith of suspicion and hate." I think my big goal in life right now is trying to make that a reality. Choosing the words that will build up, instead of the ones that would tear down. Looking for ways to find joy and peace and ways to bring people together, instead of living and breathing in the self-righteous and self-centered pompous air of judgmentalism. God is God over all creation, and His love stretches from and to "all corners of the cosmos." I just think I tend to forget that every morning I wake up. I keep forgetting and God---don't ask me why---keeps reminding me and loving me, despite this. I wonder if there will ever come a day when I remember all day this simple truth: that God loves me, this I know, for the Bible, tells me so.

How likely? Very likely.

2005-05-14T15:20:00.000+08:00

In response to the comment on my previous post:

"Yes, I would like to think that should such a horrible thing happen, I would move heaven and hell and re-arrange whatever pieces in what I usually call my life to take care of this kid---despite how irrational and illogical it sounds---because I guess in the long run, making sure this kid grows up to know he had two parents that loved him very much is (I think) more important to me than dallying along with my so-called life-plans."

It seems silly to try to speak definitively on the matter (because really, it is in the end one of those decisions that must be made again when and if it comes to your world, face-to-face, in the heat of the moment). I'd like to think that reflects what my friend Dave means to me---doesn't laying down one's whole life for a friend also constitute laying down a very much alive life too?---but maybe I'm just being wishful. Either way you look at it, what I said I meant and so, that's all I really can say at the present moment in time. Sometimes the best decisions in one's life are the ones he never makes because they sound so absurd, so hard, so illogical and so totally selfless. To me, this sounds like one of those decisions; so how could I say "No!"???

All is full of Love

2005-05-09T09:43:00.000+08:00

Bjork was so right, even though so many times love doesn't seem to be anywhere around us.

My freshman year Fall semester roommate Dave Hoe called me up yesterday and as soon as I saw his name light up my cell phone display, I thought I was about to hear the good news: the baby had been born!!!

But the baby had not been born, although the due date is tomorrow. Two previous trips to the hospital were false alarms, and so, little Elliot Fox (yes, they already named him) still sits, hangs, grips, and kicks inside of Lindsay and waits for his time to come. Waiting to enter the world is a pretty big deal; I wonder if he knows what he's getting himself into? Not that he really had a choice I guess.

After talking to Dave about how excited he was to become a father, I got sad and wished (or at least part of me did) that I was becoming a father soon too. And that's when he asked the question that stumped me:

"Neville, Lindsay and I would like you to be the baby's Godfather?"

I was stunned, and couldn't tell if he was joking or not.

"Are you serious or is this a joke?" I asked.

"No, I'm serious."

"Well, what would that entail?" (dumb question, I know---but hey, I'm not Catholic even though I wish I was, and so give me a break)

"Well, should anything happen to Lindsay and me, we'd want you to raise Elliot."

"Oh, absolutely!" I said. And that's how it happened. I became a Godfather for the very first time, and I was thrilled. I didn't think about it; I didn't project and prophesize into the future and think hard on what that would look like for me or what I so-call-my life; I just said 'yes!' It was the first un-selfconscious decision I've made in quite a long time, and it's one that reminded me again of God's love for us all and how he gets us all to love each other and care for each other and help one another, despite ourselves.

And so, I sit here on a Sunday night, quiet for the first time in days, and think of the joy-peace that only Love can bring. It is sobering and depressing and uplifting and more beautiful than the sixteen mountain tops I see driving into work every other day. It confirms the fact, or more importantly...truth, that all is full of Love and there is no ounce or inch of creation that God does not hold to be his own.

Wipe Your Feet At The Door

2005-05-07T02:33:00.000+08:00

It's been an ongoing discussion for centuries: how do you open up the church doors---both literally and figuratively---to the world it so often blasts and condemns?

When a prostitute comes into church, in need of guidance and community and love and friendship, what do we do?

"Oh yes, we can help! God can help!"

And for the next few months, the prostitute obstains from prostitution. But then, she slips back--she goes back to her old ways on Saturday and returns to church on Sunday. Intervention, please!!!

"I'm sorry Mary, but if you're going to prostitute you can't be apart of the church." And so, Mary is shamed and looked down upon and thus, leaves thinking she is an outcast for good.

My question is this: how is Mary's problem different from the entire Church's wrestling with sin? Do I get asked not to come when I've slipped back into habitual sin, or addictive behaviour?

This situation happened recently at a friend of mine's church and I was so distraught over what I heard. "They did what???" Yes, they told her she wasn't able to participate in the "benefits and blessings" of the Church if she kept on sinning. This is not helping people think that our doors are open to everyone. I wonder what would happen if God would've asked this church member who asked the prostitute this, "Have YOU given up your life of sin? Totally, and completely?"

The same thing goes with the whole homosexuality controversy, and the belief that people must change first before they are welcome (or at least, admit they are struggling and detest what it is they seem to be caught in). I'm not really sure what The Church is trying to protect? I understand the importance and value of character, integrity, and reputation, but there's a difference between the Church's reputation and what the Church often projects as its reputation. Quite possibly the biggest reason why people are turned off from Christianity is hypocrisy; yet, haven't we---as the Church---created this problem? Instead of saying we are weak, and poor in spirit, and tired, and confused and in need of redemption, we say to the world: "We have answers! We have THE solution! We can make you into a better person! We can make you acquire blessings! We are almost perfect! We are for what's "right," not what's "wrong!" We are against abortion! We are FOR life! We are FOR war! We are way better than you, but if you come inside you might be able to be as good as us!"

Sure, I'm taking some things to an extreme but this seems to be it. We offer ourselves as models instead of God, and in the process, the world looks at us and laughs.

I know we're in a paradigm shift. I know this is radical and hard to articulate and hard to really work and live out in the way church is done, but we've got to do it: we need to stop asking people to wipe their feet at the doors of our sanctuaries, and start letting the carpet and pews and each other get a little messy.

Back to Life

2005-05-05T00:24:00.000+08:00

It's funny and unsettling the way certain things in life become tainted. For instance, with all the recent L.A. freeway shootings I find myself (especially at night) not driving side-by-side by any car for too long. I'll either slam on the brakes or change lanes immediately just out of fear that I might get shot.

And then there's that little thing where I look at the time--as I did this morning--and see that it's 9:11. In an instant, I remember again and think for a second about it--and then I go back to life. Or at least, the thing that I so-call life. Maybe seeing 9:11 on my cell phone clock and fearing for my life on the L.A. freeways is more Life than I'd like to think.

Whatever it is, it's definitely more than a feeling.

World On Fire

2005-05-01T04:48:00.000+08:00

I know back in high school I never cared for Sarah McLachlan but now, I think I might be having a change of heart.

When I saw her music video this past week in class for her luminous song "World On Fire", I was taken aback: this is not the Sarah McLachlan I remember.

And so, Sarah has been playing a lot in my car lately and that, so far, has been a pretty wonderful thing. But really, you should check out the video and see for yourself. After my professor showed it to our film class, every pastor in the room wanted to know "who is this singer" and "what's the name of this song again" because they wanted to show it in a church service I think. Yes, it really is that good...even though at first, I thought it was going to be "just another world outry for help." It's not. By the end, the music and images from around the world get to you---another reason for it being a pretty wonderful thing.

Bye, Bye Constantine

2005-04-28T15:38:00.000+08:00

I just watched American Idol from tonight and my jaw literally dropped and hung open for a good 15 seconds. Although, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't happy Constantine is gone (I'm sorry ladies and girls and guys who thought he was cool but I couldn't stand the guy).

But the real question is this: why does America have such an obsession with a blonde guy from the Ukraine named Anthony who sings Celine Dion songs as-flat-as-can-be AND an ex-woman abuser named Scott who seems to sing even worse than the previous week, every time, every new week, guaranteed!??? Is it because, like my co-worker pointed out, we want the normal, average one to win out?

Wake up America! Let's stop voting for the ones that suck just to be funny. This is serious! This is a not a joke. This is not some insignificant childhood talent contest. This is American Idol!

Madeleine L'Engle has a new book!!!

2005-04-28T05:47:00.000+08:00

I know I can't buy it right now because I'm trying to save some money, but you can bet your pretty socks and old school shirt I'll be buying "The Ordering of Love" by Madeleine L'Engle (published this past March) as soon as I can.

Maybe I'll have to wait 'till summer, but I'll get it.