Is the Tree of Life a "religious" film?
July 27, 2011
иконографияикониRELIGION- a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies…
A few nights ago, I was at an East Village bar with some friends and we started giving our take on Terrence Malick’s love-it or hate-it epic The Tree of Life. When someone mentioned that it depicts the creation of the universe, Sharon, a young photographer, asked, “Is it a religious film?” her friend Mike immediately said, ”No” as if that very idea would be insulting. “No no,” Mike said, “Malick’s background is in philosophy, guys like Heidegger and all that. He’s into asking metaphysical questions.”
I now think that Mike was way off, and that the Tree of Life is an intensely religious film. It’s just not necessarily a very Christian film, or at least what one might expect of that label.
“The Tree of Life” is about a Christian family in the 1950s, as remembered by their eldest son Jack (played by Hunter McCracken.) Christianity is a huge part of the family’s life, though each parent emphasizes different aspects of religion . Mother (Jessica Chastain) raises her sons to live with grace, love and selflessness, while The Father (Brad Pitt) demands discipline and obedience and teaches them to be suspicious of the evil in the world. That conflict brews confusion and resentment in the children, over how they ought live.
Above all this is the central question hovering over the film, which is the question at the heart of every religion. It’s the question we ask when we go to church, synagogue or mosque, when we kneel down to pray, or when burdens fall on us-”Where is God?”
This is the question that haunts Jack as he grows up in a home supposedly infused by Christianity but filled with violence and fear. It’s what his mother demands to know when one of her sons dies. It’s what his father fears to ask as he watches his dreams start to crumble.
Where the film loses its Christian thread is when Malick tries to answer the question. Instead of somehow making a case for Christianity, Malick argues that God is all around us, in creation. To make the point, he starts the film with a graphic showing God’s words to Job:
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?..When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy?” JOB 38:4-7
He then follows this with a film version of the beginning of the Genesis story: 25 minutes showing the creation of the cosmos, set to a background of hyms and requiems.
However just like God’s response to Job, Malick’s answer is unsatisfying. Showing the divinity of creation doesn’t answer WHY God allows us to suffer, why he allows evil in the world and good people to be punished. And when Malick tries to go further, showing images of an “Earth Mother” reaching out to The Mother in grief, or a beach where all people from all time meet, his images become as vague and frustrating as they are beautiful.
In the end, the Tree of Life works best as a coming-of-age story, as Jack struggles to grow from both his father’s fearful discipline and his mother’s selfless grace. His bigger questions about the presence of God are definitely worth asking, but Malick’s answers seem so far outside the lives of his characters that they ring untrue to the story.
Even with its imperfections, though, The Tree Of Life remains one of the most visually stunning and affecting films I’ve ever seen. It absolutely will leave you frustrated with unanswered questions about the nature of God and the universe, but the very fact that I could leave the film in that state is proof of its power.
I have walked out of church on Sunday on many occasions, feeling numb, my mind on brunch or the afternoon’s activities. Many pastors spend a lifetime trying to get their congregations to leave their doors with an impassioned curiosity about God and humanity. Malick has accomplished that here, along with creating a visual masterpiece.
Studs Terkel searches for the Human Voice
July 8, 2011
Studs is one of my personal heroes, a fighter for justice, a voice for the poor, and one of the most goodhearted radio journalists I ever heard. I think you’ll enjoy this one:
Watch the full episode. See more POV.
A lovely aftereffect of “Wild Goose”
June 28, 2011
This weekend, I and four other Transmissioners made our way to the Wild Goose festival out at the Shakori Hills farm in North Carolina. It was a weekend celebration of Christian social justice efforts, with music, readings, lots of talks, artwork, great food, and plenty of time to both contemplate and refresh ourselves in our effort to grow closer to God and better love our neighbors. I’m sure there will be many more posts about the festival itself later on, but I just wanted to write about an interesting encounter I just had whose occurrence I directly attribute to the energetic and nurturing spirit of the festival.
I was on the train to work this morning, and a few stops into Midtown Manhattan came a preacher woman. A black Caribbean woman in a lovely brown summer dress talking — or more like shouting — about the blood of Jesus, and the fires of hell.
Now I don’t know about you but I’m not a huge fan of subway car preachers, or subway car musicians. I get annoyed even when people play their IPods too loudly. It’s not their activity: it’s the fact that they are invading the space of me and those other passengers. It’s one thing to enter a subway station with someone standing there – you can choose to stand further away from them. But the only way to get away from one of these subway preachers is to leave the car, and sometimes lose your seat.
Just as I was contemplating leaving, suddenly something released in me. I started waving my hands in the air, yelled out “Preach it sister!” and “Amen!” like I was the congregation at her church.
As she went on pointing at people in the crowd and talking about repentance, I got up and began singing “This Little Light Of Mine”.” As she recited passages about the gnashing of teeth, I recited passages about avoiding worry, and considering the lilies of the field. The crowd actually began laughing and smiling listening to our dueling sermons.
The woman finally confronted me after a minute or two of trying to avoid me.
She:The blood of Jesus rebukes you.
Me- I just had the blood of Jesus three days ago at a Christian conference, along with the body of Jesus.She: You have a religious demon inside of yuo.
I-I’ve got Jesus in me, just like you do! Let’s work together on this! You get more flies with honey than with vinegar!
I began to see a small smile begin to spread on her face, and I began singing “Let the Circle Be Unbroken.”
Then a funny and miraculous thing happened. The woman continued and as she did, I heard that her words were changing. She went from preaching about hell and repentance, to talking about how Jesus told us to love one another and that we can be saved by faith, and through our faith, good works will arise. She started talking about Jesus’ yoke being easy and his burden light. And suddenly this time when I said “preach it sister!” i wasn’t joking at all. She was now preaching a word of light to the people there.
I’m not sure how I feel about hell, but I know that the damnation argument has always seemed a cruel way to convert people to faith. Fear is a great motivator, but it’s disappointing when that’s the best we can do to bring people to God. And seeing how this woman went from preaching on the fires of hell, to preaching about the love of Jesus was truly inspiring.
I don’t know to what degree I played a role in that: perhaps she already had the love of Jesus part planned after the hell and damnation. All I know is that as we left that train car, and I looked at the smiling faces of the passengers, that we had lifted some spirits.
This is the great thing about the Holy Spirit: it has no limits. It can be just as strong in a sweaty New York subway car as on the green pastures of North Carolina.
On “Gods and Men”
March 2, 2011
Last night the Transmissioners went to see the new film “Of Gods and Men,” a French film that tells the true story of a monastery in Algeria that became caught in the middle of the country’s 1996 civil war. The story centers on the relationships between the monks and the villagers, many of whom are Muslims, and the struggle for the monks to decide whether to stand their ground or flee to France as the violence of the war comes closer to them.
***SPOILERS*** In the end, the monks decide by consensus to stay, even though the signs of danger are growing everywhere around them. And soon after their decision, most of them are rounded up and shot by a radical Islamic resistance group. What impressed me about the monks most was their sense of acceptance in the end, when they decided to stay. There was a sense of surrender, not necessarily out of helplessness but more out of certainty. They did not want to die as martyrs, but they saw their life together in the monastery as the most important decision they’d ever made and were not willing to give it up. As one monk said, “To leave is to die.” And in the end, even when they decided to stay, they still tried to avoid getting caught by the militants.
They didn’t stay becuase of duty, or any interest in being remembered as heroes. They stayed because their love for each other and for God and their vows was ultimately all that was keeping them whole, and giving that up would mean giving up their identity.
What struck me most about the film last night in reflection was how utterly at odds the values of these monks were with the values we are being sold here in New York. The values of profit, self-love above all other, self-service, total autonomy and independence.
I’ve been working on a story about a group called “Underearners Anonymous” which basically teaches men how to correct the “character flaws” that keep them from maximing their profitability. And here these men took to a life of poverty to grows closer to God.
I had a brief retreat last year to a Christian retreat center, but I found myself lonely. And I have worked in charity serving meal at the BRC homeless shelter for the last few months, and I for the most part find it to be a bore. And this film pointed out a missing essential in both those experiences: a sense of brotherhood. There is no sense of a common love or bond with others for me at BRC: I’m the only volunteer for lunches.
I never had a brother. I have a younger sister, but in some ways the feeling isn’t quite the same. I have known what it’s like to feel part of a brotherhood, especially in sports teams, to have that camaraderie. When I’ve been part of a team like that, the camaraderie has provided a sense of vigor and stealth, and the ability to combat difficult obstacles. These days, I feel its absense acutely. I feel I work alone and spend much of my leisure time alone. I wonder what it would do for my faith to find myself back in some kind of brotherhood.
Jesus spoke about each of us being his brothers and sisters as we followed him. What an amazing world it would be if we truly lived that way, with that same kind of love. I wonder how much braver we could be in a world like that.
A Transmission reflection on time
February 2, 2011
Last night, half a dozen Transmissioners gathered at Caleb’s place by Columbia to talk and wonder about time. Caleb hosted us, while Katie made an excellent garlic soup and gooey glorious pie.
Last night’s Transmission was an eye-opener for me and hopefully for the others there. I wanted to talk about time, specifically how we think about time, how fast we think our lives are going by, how often we think about mortality or old age. Amber Bennett suggested setting up an “Agree” and “Disagree” group for some statements that would give a general idea of our attitudes on time. Where do you stand on some of these, agree or disagree?
“There are never enough hours in the day to do what I’m trying to do.”
“I’m balancing my time right, putting it towards the things I value most.”
“I have a 1, a 5 or a 10-year plan.”
“Life is what happens while we’re busy making other plans.”
“I fear dying before I get to where I want to be.”
“I’m still young.”
“I’ve written my will.”
“Time is money.”
Caleb noted that while most of the group disagreed with “I’m still young,” none of us had written our wills yet either. I guess that makes us “middle-age”?
The theme came to me through a combination of things. I tend to be very impatient and I’ve had times in my life when friends have died that have made me wonder “What if my life ended tomorrow? What about all the things I haven’t done?” That question could easily drive me to a panic if I thought about it enough, and even though I do believe in an afterlife, it doesn’t make the prospect of this life ending that much easier to take.
Nobody else in the group seemed to have had this same fear. Elaine said she’s learned to not be afraid of dying before she gets to her goals in life, by just trying to live each day to the fullest. If she can go to bed every night knowing that she’d lived that day to the best of her ability, she can relax about what may come next.
Elaine added though that this devotion to living the days has a downside, in that she tends to be impatient, as I am.
A new visitor to the group, Elizabeth, commented on that impatience with something her mother had told her: “Life is not made for ‘getting through.’ If all you’re doing is aiming to get through school, get through work and get through your day, what will you have gained when you come to the end?”
We then took on some of the biggest Biblical quotes around time. EPHESIANS 5:
Live wisely…
“Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, 16making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.”
Wait on God with patience from 2 PETER 3…
“With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.”
The Apocalypse from 2 PETER 3…
“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.”
Relax, in spite of the coming apocalypse, from Luke…
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. 23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. 24 Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! 25 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?”
Kind of mixed messages. As I said to the group, it seems sometimes that with the message of the imminent apocalypse mixed in, it feels like we’re being told that the plane we’re on is about to crash but that we should all sit back and enjoy the flight.
Christianity is a radical faith, as Sarah said last night, in its emphasis on being prepared for the apocalypse. It’s hard to live the usual life of working hard, saving for the future, planning for your family, when you’re being told that the end is about to arrive. Meanwhile, we’re also told not to worry about things that seem pretty commonsense to worry about: it’s hard to believe that God provides everything for all people when you look at the amount of despair and need amongst the poor of the world. Worry seems like a necessary survival skill.
For me, it comes down to realizing that the things of this world are passing, that I cannot take whatever riches I make with me, and that worrying about things that I can’t control is totally fruitless. What I can do is live the day as fully as possible, as Elaine said, as if it were my last day, but simultaneously plan for a future that may or may not happen. A future that if it does happen, will be a gift, and not just another time to “get through.”
On God’s Time
December 23, 2010
I wrote last week rejecting Advent’s principle of waiting on the Lord. To me, the Lord is already ever-present in us through the Holy Spirit and the gifts of Pentecost, and Advent seems to make it seem that Christ remains this ethereal exterior being rather than dwelling within us.
However, I have found that there is something to this waiting thing. In being challenged to think about waiting, I have been reminded of how impatient I can be, and how out of sync my sense of time is with that of God.
It happened this morning on a downtown subway platform. I arrived and like everyone else looked for the train at the end of the tunnel. Nothing. An uptown train passed by on the other side. Still nothing. Another uptown. No lights. And then a THIRD uptown train. FINALLY, there appeared some lights at the tunnel. And by then, I was fuming. I had plans to fit in some holiday shopping before work, and I wouldn’t be able to fit it in. How could the trains be so inefficient?
Then a memory: Ecuador 1999. I’m waiting for a bus in Quito, and there’s no bus schedule to be found. I ask one of the men waiting for the bus when the bus is supposed to come. He shrugs his shoulders and responds, “It’ll come when it comes.” He had no expectations, but he was hopeful.
The man’s nonchalance was such a change from my New York City sense of time, laden with expectations of efficiency for the train, the show, the line, the drinks, the dinner, the check, the website, the download. By my clock, those minutes waiting feel like ages.
But there’s another clock that I’ve totally forgotten about- God’s clock. This is the pace at which canyons and continents are made, the speed that stalactites form and planets mature. It is a way of time that I completely forget about here, where starlight is all but gone, and nature is contained and contoured to our liking in city parks. On God’s clock, as Peter wrote, “a thousand years is as one day.”
When I become aware of this clock, of this pace, I suddenly realize how ridiculous my impatience is, like an ant marching in a fever. The train will come in its time, as all things do. And I can wait.
What are we waiting for?
December 17, 2010
Something dawned upon me today as I thought about this “waiting” thing in Advent. I’ve been puzzled over what it is I’m supposedly waiting for. As Ula and others have indicated, the Lord’s birth already happened over 2000 years ago: it feels in a way like we’re waiting for a rerun.
However, maybe this waiting for the re-enactment of the birth of Christ is actually symbolic of something else: our hoping, our yearning for Christ’s return in glory, his second coming to Earth. We’ve heard about this event time and time again throughout Christian traditions: “O Come O Come Emmanuel,” “Thy kingdom come/Thy will be done,” “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again,” “be ready, for the day of the Lord cometh like a thief in the night.” Christ’s return is something we’ve always been told is on its way.
With that belief in mind, Advent could become a far more weighty time of expectation. However, here’s the problem: I don’t know so much as I ever really believed in the Second Coming. There are many Christians out there who take it very much to heart, from the people who made the “Left Behind” movies, to those who believe global warming and the Middle East conflict are sure signs of the End Times, but for me, I don’t think I ever really bought it.
Although my Catholic upbringing made me quite aware of hell and sin, along with virtue and redemption, the Second Coming was always kind of an ancillary tenet, something we all agreed on but didn’t talk about too much.
It’s strange, because so many other “fantastical” parts of of the Nicene Creed, are perfectly legitimate to me. I honestly CAN accept that Christ was born of a virgin, that he did perform miracles on Earth and was resurrected from the dead. I can believe in these things as miracles from a very different time from ours, the distance of antiquity perhaps making it much easier to accept.
However, when I turn my head away from that age and back to ours, the idea of the Second Coming seems somewhat preposterous. It seems as unlikely and mythical as Santa’s sleigh landing on my rooftop. These days, the world seems much less ripe for such God’s arrival in fire and light: it seems more like the miracles and the disasters are ours to make. As Edgar O’Shaugnessy put it, these days it seems “we are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dreams.”
But more importantly, my Christian upbringing taught me that that Christ is here already. That the second coming already happened, in a way on the day of Pentecost, when the Lord poured out his spirit on the people and gave them the power to do his will on Earth. If we are the body and blood of Christ on earth, then what need have we to wait for his return?
As the old song goes, “We have been told we’ve seen His face and heard His voice alive in our midst:/ Live in my love with all your heart.”
If that is the commission we’ve been given, then why wait?
Visions in the haze of fictions
December 9, 2010
Last week, I wrote about my belief that Advent should serve as a time when we can prepare ourselves to receive God’s message for our lives, by slowing down in the midst of holiday business.
This week I’ve been trying to walk the walk. I’ve tried to slow down and strip myself of distractions, and yet even as I stopped turning on the TV and started trying to meditate, I found fantasies and fictions still have quite a power. I dream of television characters and movies. In times of meditative walking, or other solitary activities, my head has been filling up with pop culture distractions that had been a convenience and a relief recently, whether YouTube clips from movies, TV shows, or of the fantasy novel I’ve been reading.
These fictions serve a purpose when they help me relax after a long day, or take my mind off of heavy issues. However, I’m now finding that they present an obstacle to my ability to be contemplative.
I am missing moments of the day, washing dishes, riding on train cars, walking down city streets: I am not there in mind — I am in a scene from Inception, or imagining moments between Alison Brie and Joel McHale (Jeff/Annie), or the Terry Pratchett novel I’m reading rather than living the moment.
Realizing this, I frustratedly push to clear my mind of the distraction and find a sadness lying beneath. Why? Because without the distractions, reality seems very dull all of a sudden. I am making myself the same breakfasts, lunch and dinners every day, doing the same physical exercises, praying the same way, going the same places and doing the same repetitive tasks at my job every day.
I would have hoped that when I cleared away my distractions, I would have begun to have some sense of vision, or an ability to connect with the voice of God. Instead, there is silence, and the dull white walls in my apartment and office.
But rather than just turn on the radio or TV again, rather than seek somebody else’s fiction to fill up that lonely space, maybe it’ll be helpful for now to be in that emptiness and hear what it might have to say. I’d rather be with my lack of vision, and the unaccompanying unhappiness, than just shake it off and turn on the holiday tunes. Because maybe the emptiness has something to say.
On the Day of the Lord’s coming, it was written in the book of Joel,
”I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.”
I pray that I, and all people of faith, may find dreams and visions awakened by this Advent. It may take some slowing down, and wrestling with emptiness, rather than settling for easy distractions (of which there are plenty) but maybe there is something we can hear once we reach the silence.
The Better Part
December 3, 2010
I’ve been reading recently about how Advent is supposed to be the time of waiting and preparation for the coming of the Lord. I’ve never been one for waiting—when I travel, if I have the option of driving on a highway at 10 miles an hour, or get off at an exit onto a local road that’ll take me the same amount of time to reach my destination but lets me drive at 40-50 miles an hour, I take the exit. Because it allows me to keep moving, keep busy, avoid being idle.
When I think about this tendency of mine in relation to my faith, I think of the story of Martha from the Gospel of Luke. Jesus visits two sisters, Mary and Martha, and during his visit, Martha gets all wrapped up in the chores associated with his visit while Mary sits at his feet, listening. And Jesus turns to Martha and says,
“Martha, Martha, you worry and fret about so many things and yet few are needed,
indeed only one. It is Mary who has chosen the better part.”
Martha sounds a lot like many of us in these busy holiday times, juggling busy work deadlines, getting ready for holiday vacations and trying to take care of gift buying for friends and family.
But few of these are truly needed. We are called to choose “the better part,” to stop fretting, and prepare ourselves to take in what Christmas 2010 may have to reveal to us.
For me, Christmas ceremonies don’t reveal much, don’t mean much in my faith life when just sandwiched into my busy schedule. Such church ceremonies, whether at Easter or Thanksgiving, often seem the stuff of TV re-runs. I’ve seen the mangers and the plays, sung the carols, and sat in the candlelight. Though the feelings and sentiments are often quite comforting and peaceful, I find it can also be all too familiar by the end.
The inherent problem with the liturgical calendar is that on their own terms, they largely take us in an annually-repeating circle. And for those of us who like to think of our faith journey as a road, that involves exploration, breaking barriers, going new places and reaching new heights, what’s the point of going in circles? The cyclical repetitive nature of these holiday can leave their messages meaning less and less every year they’re repeated.
Unless we stop ourselves. And observe. Look for a way to sit at God’s feet, and listen to his Word for signs of where we are being called in our faith journey. Armed with such a vision, Christmas 2010 goes from being a re-run to a source of nourishment for the journey ahead.
Psalm 46:10 said, “Be still and know that I am God.” The existence of Advent prior to Christmas seems to me to be a message, a warning of the stillness it truly demands to know that fact and what it means in our lives. We can be still for one late December night, and know the joy that Christ was born, but to know what that birth means for us this year, at this moment in our journey, may take a little more time. When it comes to our spiritual journeys, this is a time calling us to sit in the traffic, and take in exactly where it is we’re headed.
Passover vs. Holy Week
April 2, 2010
On 3/28, several Transmissioners attended the Interfaith Seder, sponsored by Faith House. It was quite a lovely event, well-attended and well-prepared. One thing came to me upon reflection that I wanted to discuss with you, a fundamental difference between the traditions that I hadn’t realized before. In the Jewish tradition, the Exodus is a story of the Jewish people, and it seems to unify as it reminds the people of their history, and of the God who delivers them. Holy Week varies in that we are not celebrating the history of our people. We are remembering the history of ONE person, and it is not a history that we can exactly share. When rabbis tell the story of the exodus at synagogues, they are telling the people their own story, but when priests get up at church this week, they’ll be telling the story of a far more enigmatic character. Although Christian, I don’t feel like Christ’s death is MY history.
So there seems to be a fundamental difference in the sentiments being created by these two remembrances. One tells a people their shared history of survival through the will of God. The other tells a people of the survival of their God, in SPITE of the will of the people. Strange, huh? Both reveal that God is more powerful a force than death and oppression, but in very different ways… Anybody else have any thoughts on the difference between these two?