You're Invited to An Experience, North Coast of Ireland, Summer 2010

I am thrilled to announce that Ian Morgan Cron (author of Chasing Francis: A Pilgrim's Tale) and I plan to facilitate a Contemplative Spirituality and Social Action experience in my home of northern Ireland next August.

Northern Ireland is a society birthed in deep spirituality and profound artistry; its stark and beautiful physical landscape parallels the ruggedness of the Celtic soul.  We have also experienced civil conflict in the recent past, as the struggle over our identity and questions of social justice found expression in sectarianism and violence. Religion has played a role in both the conflict and the process that has led to enormous change and political stability.

You're invited to see this amazing place for yourself as part of a unique communal gathering in Summer 2010.

We'll lead a week of intensive experiences - we'll deconstruct and reimagine questions of spirituality and activism, trying to find the fingerprints of radical spirituality and make connections between an ancient landscape, a modern conflict, and a better way of being in whatever world each us will be returning to.

Our programme will include excellent speakers and conversation and enjoying the land, visiting centres of reconciliation and meeting participants in the conflict and the negotiations for peace, and enjoying everything the northern Irish culture has to offer in the evenings (which will of course include live music).  We'll use film and literature as lenses through which we explore the fusion of contemplation and action; and it is our hope that everyone who joins us will have a life-changing encounter.

We'll stay in the beautiful character-filled setting of the North Coast; there will be visits to Belfast, the Giant's Causeway, Dunluce Castle and other fascinating sites; there will also be ample free time to explore on your own.

The retreat will be open only to 15-25 people; all (home-cooked) meals will be provided.

We'll be announcing further details, including confirmed dates and costs soon.  For now, if you'd like to register your interest (with no obligation), or if you have any questions, please fill in the form here.

Why the USA is Different #1: Overheard in the Line at the Social Security Office, August 7th 2009

Security guard: "Now you all have important business to transact today.  So there are no weapons allowed inside.  No knives, guns, no pepper spray. Don't worry, you can just leave those in the car." Response: One of the guys in the line in front shook his head, and groaned the kind of groan you hear when an announcement is made that the movie theatre is sold out, or the restaurant doesn't have any shrimp; and put his gun back in his car.

The Hurt Locker

Let's get one thing straight: I have no idea what war is really like.  I've seen 'Saving Private Ryan' and 'The Thin Red Line', and I grew up in a place colonised by a long-running civil conflict, and I've been to Jerusalem and Bethlehem and all kinds of other places where people inhabit the false consciousness described by de Niro's Al Capone in 'The Untouchables' as 'you can get further with a kind word and a gun than just a kind word'.  But I have no idea what war is really like.  And I don't think it's too dogmatic to say that unless you've actually been in a war, that you are in the same position as I am.

That doesn't mean you can't form a substantial and meaningful opinion about war; just that the opinion needs to be tempered by humility.

With that in mind, some thoughts about 'The Hurt Locker', Kathryn Bigelow's deep focus minimalist action film, in which Jeremy Renner's bomb disposal technician wears a suit that makes him look like an alien, strides up to mortar shells, and hopes he's cutting the right wire, in Baghdad, in 2004.

It's easy to respond to the tension created by such scenes by saying that this is one of the most exciting films (in the sense of forcing you into your seat, afraid for what is going to happen to the characters), or one of the most expertly edited and shot (no matter what is happening, you know precisely where you are).  It's true that 'The Hurt Locker' sets the bar for thoughtful action cinema very high.

What's more valuable, however, is that it does three things that such movies rarely achieve.

It's not an anti-war movie; nor is it jingoistic or flag-waving.  It might be true to say that 'The Hurt Locker' has no politics.  It just attempts to portray what young US American men have been doing, and how Iraqi people have been responding, for the past six years.  It doesn't have to tell us that the decision to go to war was utterly wrong: glimpsing what truth is told about the men in this film makes it obvious.

It manages to almost completely avoid cliche - the young buck doesn't have a moment of breakdown or redemption; the race-against-time to save someone ends as it probably often does in real life; the characters talk to each other the way real people talk.

And in its attempt at saying something about the war in Iraq (which it does better than any of the previously released similarly-themed movies), it also illuminates questions of masculinity, the responsibilities of adulthood, relationships between men, and the yearning that each of us has to lead a meaningful life.  It takes the audience seriously enough not to invite us to a show of cathartic violence; but a relentless portrayal of hell on earth where there is no release until somebody decides to STOP.  A hell of our own making; and I think many of us who opposed the war could benefit from seeing a film that aims to take the experience of being a soldier more seriously than some of our rhetoric has done.

The final image of the film, which implies that there are some people for whom combat is an addiction (let's assume that includes the whole human race) evokes with the sharpest clarity two more challenges: to replace the myth that chaos can be turned into order through violence, someone needs to tell different stories about how change occurs; to offer a choice between brutality and cowardice, someone needs to offer a different vision of masculinity than the false choice between warrior or wimp.  Finally, 'The Hurt Locker' is an accusation: If all that 'peaceful' society offers is a vast choice of breakfast cereal, then it's no wonder so many of us still want to fight each other just to feel alive.

Disappearance/Re-appearance

My friend Jamie Moffett is currently editing his new documentary about the legacy of the El Salvadoran civil war; it looks like his film is going to be a genuine work of discovery, rather than one of this non-fiction movies where everything seems decided in advance.  Philadelphia's City Paper printed a story today about one of the unexpected and tragic stories the film-makers want to bring to our attention: the murder of Gustavo Marcelo Rivera Moreno, a teacher and community activist, whose disapperance and horrific death are associated with the people's attempts at opposing the destruction of the land by mining operations. 'Return to El Salvador' asks why 700 Salvadorans leave their country every day; and aims to remind audiences why the fate of these people is intimately bound to the recent history of the United States and its people.  We'll be able to see the film in November.  For now, the hope is that US politicians will be willing to support an investigation into Rivera's death.  If you believe that we should take responsibility for the misdeeds of our predecessors, then it's clear that we owe the people of El Salvador something more than we've been prepared to grant before now.  But I imagine that most of us don't know much about this recent history; never mind what's happening in El Salvador today.  Disappearance doesn't just apply to the physical removal and killing of human beings; for we're very good at hiding from ourselves the truth about our own complicity in the suffering of others.

We've been very good at 'disappearing' the murky parts of our own history; but denying the fact of the role played by the Reagan administration and others in destabilising Central American nations will not get us any closer to preventing the disappearance of more people like Gustavo Marcelo Rivera Moreno; nor in honouring the people he was trying to help. Hopefully 'Return to El Salvador' will contribute to a renewed engagement with these questions; questions that should never go away until they are answered.

(If you want to read more, Walter Lafeber's 'Inevitable Revolutions' is a good way in to understanding how and some of the reasons why successive US administrations have kept Central America in a state of dependency; and Don Shriver's extraordinary 'Honest Patriots' cuts to the heart of how we should face our own country's past.)