New Website!
January 2, 2012
БогородицаTransmission has a new website! Go to transmissionchurch.org
Christmas Gathering of Communities
November 26, 2011
Save the date: A Gathering of communities on December 21
The night will include a progressive journey through a candle-lit house, engaging in various traditions and ways of celebrating God With Us.
Place: 299 E. 139th Street, the Bronx. One block from 3rd Ave./138th Street stop on the 6 train
Date/Time: Wednesday December 21, 7-9:30 pm
What to expect
Each room of the the house will offer a unique way to engage, from art and music to contemplation and tradition. Expect to journey and engage in small groups as you move from room to room, then to have a time of pot-luck foods, celebration and getting to know each other at a central room at the end. Expect to meet people from living-together communities and worshipping communities around the city, as well as with our friends and neighbors in the South Bronx.
How to participate
Bring a pot-luck dish if you can. Come as a community, as a family, or as an individual. Bring friends! An RSVP by Dec. 19 would be helpful. I’ll send out one more reminder closer to the date.
How to contribute
We would like the 4 to 7 rooms to be facilitated by folks from different communities, nationalities and traditions! A room might include:
- Christmas traditions and foods from a particular country or culture, or
- worship through the creation of art or music, or
- contemplative writings, lyrics or images, or
- a provocative and challenging engagement around issues of justice and brotherly love
If you, or your community, are willing to facilitate a room, please email transmissionchurch [at] gmail by December 7.
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.”
As-Salamu Alaykum
December 25, 2010
Surely he taught us to love one another
His law is love and his gospel is peace
Christmas through the eyes of my son
December 24, 2010
I have two children – Thomas Jackson, soon turning four, and Sarah Connor Snodgrass, who just turned two. Last Christmas, Jackson was just about to turn three. He likely did not notice that the days had been getting shorter, and had just begun to get longer. Jackson did not know about the fall of humanity, and the savior God sent to get people on the rise again. Jackson didn’t even know about Santa Claus!
But one day he woke up and the whole world had changed. The house was full of relatives who’d traveled far to shower him with food, warmth, familial love and gifts. Gifts! On this day of all days, even his dad couldn’t get on his case (not with all those relatives around)! Well, Christmas passed, the relatives went home, the leftovers dwindled, the toys and clothes got toddlerized, and my son slipped into something of a melancholy. He started saying things, nonsense syllables strung together, but with that one word somewhere in there. BAH-ba-Blah-da-BLAH-blah-Christmas.”
And I realized…he was trying to remind me of something that he thought I’d forgotten. To Jackson, Christmas had not been one day of celebration, but a drastic re-structuring of society in which all energy would from henceforth be focused on lavishing food, love, warmth and gifts upon him. He thought Christmas was a revolution, and that nothing could ever be the same. But then the revolution was over, forgotten, and everybody just went on as if nothing had happened.
At the time, I’ll admit, I enjoyed this. You know, children are the most expensive form of free entertainment on Earth, so you take what you can get. And I was quietly amused, thinking “yeah, kid, just wait till you’re my age, and the most colorful thing you get for Christmas is wrapping paper, with the same gray thermal shirt I get every year.” But, as I’ve continued to think about it…maybe he was right, maybe I was wrong. Maybe that’s what Christmas SHOULD be, a drastic restructuring of society in which all energy is focused on giving food, warmth, love and gifts to children.
I study the Bible all the time, I have a Masters Degree in it, but somehow I think this three-year-old understood Christmas better than I do. The Gospel authors didn’t think of the birth of Jesus as a yearly festival of over-eating, credit cards and traffic jams… Well, traffic jam, yes, with all the descendants of David (and Solomon!) showing up in Bethlehem… But the Gospel authors really thought…after the coming of Jesus…nothing could ever be the same.
Family
December 23, 2010
I spoke with someone recently about their imminent visit with their family this coming Christmas. They were not looking forward to it, drawing up both present drama and remembering past grievances revolving around them all. Also a state of pity hung about them, confessing that visiting the family for Christmas was rather depressing.
Another person earlier in the week spoke to me about their Christmas plans with their family. This person went through some troubling times with family, but over a period of decades the situation got better and respectful. There’s not much undercurrent of resentment or residual spite leftover, or at least not enough to overshadow a celebration. Yet they still find the time wholly stressful, and find themselves depressed after watching too many christmas family movies that depicts a slice of what many people fear around Christmastime.
What is so stressful about Christmas? Perhaps there’s more to it than just the overenthusiastic commercialization vulture squads.
Perhaps just spending time with those that are closest to us, that know us the best are stressful enough. It reminds us where we come from, no matter how we wish to pretend otherwise, it reminds us what we have, and perhaps depressingly, what we lack, and it shows us the parts of who we are that we don’t let others see and like to believe aren’t there. But Family won’t really let us.
How stressful the very first Christmas must have been for the divine family. Poor mary, having to travel so much in a crowded city and forced to give birth (while still a virgin!) in a pile of dirty hay in a rock outcove adapted for domestic animals, and meanwhile travellers from all over are peering in to witness a “King,” not knowing really what all this entails.
Poor Joseph, dutifully providing for a young woman and a son of questionable origin, and knowing that there will be subtle contempt toward the family for it, and having to lead the family from the sword of a madman puppet king.
How vulnerable the family must have been.
But I know not a genuine love without vulnerability. How fortunate that we are vulnerable to our beloved family, as opposed to a stranger.
Remember, keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and your family closest
Merry Christmas. Amen