Returning

Sorry, it's been a while.  But it's 8.37 on a Saturday morning, I'm watching Jean Vigo's 'A Propos de Nice' (a dialogue-free short film about French people being happy, any five minutes of which are better than 'Inception' - which is already very good, but Vigo doesn't need CGI to turn a Gallic city upside down), and for some reason I want to blog again. No big promises - but if you join me in the comments, I'll be grateful and try to write more often.

My thoughts this weekend:

The proposed North Carolina constitutional amendment to ban recognition of same-sex partnerships is antithetical to the best of what the US stands for in terms of personal liberty and the pursuit of happiness; it is opposed to the spirit of compassion and respect and love for neighbor that are at the heart of the Christian teaching that everyone who supports the amendment cites as their reason for doing so; even while its proponents believe (or say they believe) the amendment protects their own marriages, if passed it will actually actively hurt people who only want to be allowed to have a measure of protection and recognition for the love they share, and therefore it follows will in reality undermine community as the foundation of society; it continues a tragic tradition of fear being used to oppress people who are already marginalized; it serves no positive purpose and in fact reinforces the social structural realities that lead to stories such as this one.

Groups like Believe Out Loud, Equality NC, and Faith in America are good resources for information and how to take action, but I'd want to emphasize one thing that is often, by my sights, neglected in anti-homophobia/pro-humanity activism: Genuine dialogue.  I changed my mind about theology and sexuality partly through relationships with people wiser and more experienced than I, partly through academic reflection, and partly through my own experience.  This seems to me to fit with the Wesleyan quadrilateral of engaging scripture, reason, tradition and experience as we seek to discern what is right, among other historic Christian ways of interpreting the world.  It is not a betrayal of Christian principle to be open to dialogue with people with whom you disagree.  It has a long and noble history.  I'm happy to talk with anyone who wants to know where I stand, what I think, and why I believe that a serious conversation about sexuality and spirituality is not just important for the sake of addressing the injustice of inequality and homophobia, but for the future of peace on earth.  I'll write more about this later; for now, I want to invite a dialogue; and to ask you to seriously consider how we might persuade proponents of the anti-LGBTQ amendment that it is actually in their interests to vote against it.

In Memory of John

Three years ago tonight my friend John O'Donohue crossed the threshold that he always considered helping others to travel  one of the greatest privileges of ministry.  He died in his sleep, his beloved at his side, at 52 years old, three weeks after I had last spoken to him.  His extraordinary book 'To Bless the Space Between Us' was near publication, and when it surfaced a couple of months later the opening chapter on thresholds and the inevitability of change made a different kind of sense than I imagine he intended when writing. Those who knew and loved him were bereft; the most astonishing funeral and memorial gatherings ensued in such rapid succession, and went so deep that it seemed to be several months before we ran out of organised events to attend to remember the poet, priest, mystic, artist, humorist, and friend; a man so large in spirit that thousands of people were changed by his death.  It was a privilege to know him, and to be known by him.  I hear his voice on my i-pod all the time - I'm grateful that there were so many recordings made of his work; and I hear his voice in my inner life, calling me to live from my best self.

This year begins with remembering John on this third anniversary; and with reflecting on my own life, amidst wonder and challenge.  I, too, would 'love to live as the river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding'.  I, too, wish to be a blessing to others.  I, too, am frail and flawed and broken; and frequently fail to give to others what I want to receive myself.  John would, I imagine, say to me what he often said, quoting his mighty friend Lelia Doolan, that in times of confusion and fear, you should 'steady yourself', and let the light shine through the cracks, even - perhaps especially - those you have created yourself.

If we are to honor John's memory, we might want to devote this year to one of his other sharpest and most elegant ideas: that the first friendship we must cultivate is the one we have with ourselves.  May 2011 be the year in which you become your own best friend.

Bowie Knife

The first scene of Nagisa Oshima's 'Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence' (new on DVD and Blu-Ray from Criterion) is occupied with the horror of a soldier being forced to cut his intestines open as a punishment for being in love with another man.  The last image of the film is the smiling face of a soldier the night before his execution, beaming a greeting of filial affection to a former enemy.  We're in a POW camp run under the auspices of the Japanese military, where Allied soldiers are half-subjected to, and half-ignored by an honor code that proposes self-disembowelment as the response, it appears, to just about any infraction.  In between the attempted seppuku and the smiling greeting, the adorable Tom Conti reflects poetically on the mutually assured idiocy of war, Ryuichi Sakamoto gets angry, and then gets healed while his fascinating and eventually ubiquitous score overplays but not so much that it bothers, and gorgeous burnt light provides a mystical hue to what is ultimately a nightmare that becomes a dream and then finally a reality the audience always wanted: reconciliation between people who were otherwise ready to kill each other.

But not before David Bowie saves the world.

This is probably the least actorly of Bowie's screen appearances; his portrayal of callow/shallow and ultimately penitent youth is all the more resonant because he seems out of place in the movie: we know him to be something other than either the rigid Japanese or the sentimental English colonel; his off-screen status as chameleon works because he's more like us than anyone else in the movie.  He wanders through a context in which violence is sexualised, men are murdered for loving each other, and everyone is fantasising about being somewhere else.  It's probably the most erotic war movie ever made; it's a perfect companion piece to the thematically similar 'Bridge on the River Kwai', whose British Colonel is the antecedent for Sakamoto's character here: both men obsessed with honor over humanity, both undone at the last possible moment, both the points of deepest frustration for the audience.  The formal beauty of the compositions could overwhelm the point of the film: a kind of insider's apology for, or at least critique of, his nation's particular brand of nationalistic idiocy, which here is probably best summed up by the institutional nonsense of lying about killing.  Not far off my homeland's own nonsense, nor that of the day I'm posting this, when a holiday is observed in the US, marking the arrival of a genocidal maniac who no doubt believed God and his queen had told him to love the natives by burning some of them alive.  Oshima and co-screenwriter Paul Mayersberg evoke Columbus and any number of other pioneers of the sacralising of violence, by having Conti's character exclaim, 'Damn your gods.  It's your gods who have made you who you are,' at the point where he realises that he is to be killed to preserve a sense of order that was psychotic to begin with.  And it's in the confrontation of the madness of the scapegoat mechanism where 'Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence' takes on the deepest core of the human tendency to spiral downward into mutually assured destruction.  Regret for the past is why men war with themselves today; an unthinking assumption that someone must be punished is why we kill each other; and the film locates such regret and assumptions in nothing more complex than the cruelty of boys who become men without changing.

But it neither labors nor over-philosophises its point; Oshima trusts us to get it - the first scene is so memorable precisely because it starts half way through where you'd expect.  We're right there - in an attempted imposed ritual suicide; there's no introduction, no preparation, no consolation for those of us who want our war films to pretend that war isn't murder.

At the end, I'm left reflecting on three things (beyond the easy admiration for the remarkable career of producer Jeremy Thomas, who in the splendid interview series on the Criterion disc seems to prove that he hasn't lost any thirst for making films that are both aesthetically compelling and politically humane): How childhood trauma can both cause us to dysfunction within adult relationships, but might also provoke us to live differently; to avoid the suffering we caused others, or was caused to us when we thought we didn't know any better.  On the role of sexual repression as a foundation for violence; and how a well-placed kiss could end conflict between people.  And finally, as Thomas says, how certainty is often the enemy of peace, for in war, 'we are victims of men who think they are right'.  'Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence' sounds, at first glance, like a humorous title; but it's not, and it could not just as easily have been 'Happy 4th of July'.  It's a film that begins with a man being forced to torture himself to death, and ends with the anunciation of what, for Rene Girard, perhaps the thinker most capable of explaining why scapegoating kills us all, would consider nothing less than the axis of history.  Along the way there's blue light, Bowie's blond locks, Conti's smile, Takeshi's ambivalence, Sakamoto's rage.  And a war film that sometimes feels like science fiction, sometimes like romance, sometimes like nothing you've ever seen before.

Tyler Clementi and Me. And You.

Of course I never knew Tyler Clementi, the young Rutgers student who took his own life last month in a tragedy so unfathomably horrific that it doesn’t permit adequate attempts at description.  The story that has emerged so far is that Tyler was enjoying a romantic moment with another guy, while his roommate secretly streamed the encounter live on the internet.  Shortly after Tyler found out, he jumped off a bridge. Of course I never knew him, but his story demands a deeper listening than has yet been promoted or presented by our culture’s spokespeople.  This is not just a story about one man and two acquaintances whose idiotic prank appears to have caused such fear of exposure that Tyler felt he had to kill himself.  It’s a story about all of us.  And we all need to listen to it.

On the basis of what we know thus far, I think we can guess this: Tyler Clementi died as a direct result of a culture of sexual shame in which institutionalized religion is the major investor.  I am angry, and I am going to say something harsh and direct, but I am willing to take responsibility for it.  Please feel free to respond if you wish.

If you have ever affirmed homophobia by not intervening to challenge the snide remarks that all of us have heard, you may be part of the reason that Tyler Clementi is dead.  And most of the time, I myself have not intervened.

If you have ever used ‘us’ and ‘them’ language to divide sets of people into ‘normative’ heterosexual cultures, and ‘others’, you may be part of the reason Tyler Clementi is dead.  I spoke of ‘us’ and ‘them’ for most of my life until a friend challenged me; I still find myself slipping into old rhetorical habits, for our culture is so deeply wedded to the myth that our identities depend on dividing and conquering.

If you have ever disrespected, dehumanized, or belittled a person because of their sexuality, you may be part of the reason Tyler Clementi is dead.

I think I am part of the reason that Tyler Clementi is dead.

We often say in ‘progressive’ religious circles that we want to ensure that we have a ‘conversation’ about sexuality, that we want to create a situation where everyone feels ‘included’; and for sure, this is a noble endeavor.  But too often the premise is that those of us who are straight are merely opening a space for those of us who are gay (or LBTQQI - but more of that later) to be told that ‘they’ are just as good as ‘we’ are.  This is not enough.  It does not allow for people who identify as LGBTQQI people to be seen as good in their (and our) own right; it does not permit a true exchange of gifts between different people; it suggests that LGBTQQI people are welcome despite their (and our) differences, not that they (and we) are just as much alive with gift, made in the image of God, and legitimate as the rest of us (and them).  At its best, this kind of conversation may lead to a better one; at worst, it is just another way of dressing up homophobia as reconciliation.

It emerges also in the context of a culture with a split persona: a religious one that almost always problematizes sex, and a secular one that almost always celebrates hedonism.  Churches often talk about sex and sexuality as challenges to be overcome; while the wider culture doesn’t seem to know what to do with sex except put it on TMZ.

Well, I am tired of the excuses we make for our prejudice, and the disguises we put on our repression.

I am tired of saying ‘we need to have a conversation’, and then not having it.

I am tired of sexuality being reduced in religious practice to shibboleths about homosexuality and adultery.

I am tired of pretending that our bodies are not part of the selves we talk about when we seek to become more human through opening to God.

I am tired of the misplaced shame I feel sometimes when I think about my own sexuality, my desires, my mistakes, my brokenness, the memories I have of humiliation in adolescence and beyond.

I am tired of not feeling free to discuss sexuality in church as anything other than a problem.  I want to celebrate it for what it has become for me: an astonishing gift from God, the space in which love between human beings, made a little lower than the angels has the potential to find its most elegant and connected expression.  The space where we may come closest to mirroring the divine relationship with the human.  The space that can produce such profound happiness, and is so powerful that it leave you feeling as if you've been ripped  apart.

The story of Tyler Clementi is not just about a young man and his roommates' stupid prank.  It is a story about cruelty, and dehumanization, and fear, and the lack of an understanding of how human relationships can promote the common good instead of individualistic gratification.

It is a story about the role that bad religion - most of it Christian - has played in creating a culture of shame around sex and sexual identity in America, and the distortions of human happiness that pass for healthy religious practice.

It is a story about our complicity in this bad religion, and in these distortions.

It’s a story about the end of privacy in the internet age: which could be a good thing, because we may now finally be compelled to tell the truth about ourselves: that we are broken and beautiful at the same time, and that none of us is fully who we claim to be.  We are stumbling pilgrims trying to figure out what it means to be human.  And if I tell you the truth about me, then maybe you might feel safer to tell me the truth about you.

And so, what will we do with the story of Tyler Clementi?

I’d suggest a handful of signposts.

Focus your judgment in the right direction. We should recognize that desire is confusing at the best of times; perhaps especially during the transition from adolescence into adulthood.  The same goes for learning how to behave with maturity in relation to others.  So while what Tyler’s roommates are alleged to have done was stupid and cruel, we should not direct our anger only at the two who apparently put the video of Tyler on line.  They are a symptom of a dehumanizing and childish culture.  They are not its cause.  And if we only concentrate on them, we will repeat the typical mistake of scapegoating, and never face the issues within ourselves that contributed to them thinking nothing of their actions.

It Gets Better If you find personal resonance with the fear of sexual humiliation, check out Dan Savage’s It Gets Better campaign here.

Come Out, Whoever You Are The semantic gymnastics that have been one of the gifts of the sexual rights movement are so changeable that I’m never quite sure how many letters I need to type to be sure I’m not excluding anyone.

L(esbian)G(ay)B(isexual)T(rans)Q(ueer)Q(uestioning)I(ntersex) is a pretty good start; but another category has been privileged to join: A(lly): which, although its status is ambiguous in the cohort to which it wishes to orient itself, to my mind means anyone who cares enough to commit themselves to be educated about the structures of injustice faced by people whom the dominant culture defines as sexual minorities.  Ally can be a patronizing concept, of course; but I think that the more people who don’t identity themselves (or ourselves) as LGBTQQI consider the A label, the sooner we will experience conversation about sexuality as something that is good for us all, rather than merely stigmatizing socially constructed minorities.

Beyond that, I’d like to suggest a new category.  After A comes E, because E(veryone) is affected by our sex-negative culture.  We may all have been stigmatized because of our sexuality; especially those of us raised in the church.  We are not sure how to make sexuality ‘fit’ with spirituality.  And so we live in a constant state of struggle or denial.  Those of us who are straight could learn from those of us who are gay.  Those of us who are straight might indeed yearn to be invited into a world where sexuality has been such a source of struggle that its stewards have had to learn to transform it from an invitation to suffering into a source of strength.  E(veryone) belongs here.

Like I said, I am angry today, and so I apologize if I have gone too far.  Or, actually, perhaps I’m not sorry at all.  Maybe I’m going to get angrier.  Maybe I need to.  I certainly need not to forget Tyler Clementi, a young man who died because our culture made him ashamed.

I’m sorry, Tyler.  I wish I’d known you.  I’m sorry that I have been part of the reason you were humiliated.  I am sorry that I have been so divided within myself that even though I know what it’s like to experience sexual humiliation, I held onto my own homophobia because it felt safer and more known.  I owe something to you.  I owe it to you to be honest about myself, to stop dehumanizing others, and to do everything I can to make sure that your place in history is simple and clear: that you would be the last.

Slow-Burning Americana Report: 'Mystery Train'

Small town America may rightly fear that it has been overfilmed; certainly after watching Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Mystery Train’, one imagines that it would be difficult to show anything new that isn’t already telegraphed from or curled up inside this vision of Memphis.

What a gorgeous, beguiling film - beginning with the incongruous image of a young Japanese couple traveling through Tennessee industrial wasteland. We are in a space that is at once familiar and alienating; and inviting - for in about fourteen seconds at the beginning of ‘Mystery Train’, Jarmusch reels us in to ask the only question that really matters at the start of a movie: ‘What’s going to happen next?’

Where is this train going? Well, we know from the title that Jarmusch isn’t going to tell us. Deeper than that, we know from his other films that he doesn’t really care about the future.

What matters is now.

Where we are. Why we’re here. No matter how far we travel we’re going to face the same inner conflicts that we had before. So it goes for the characters in Jarmusch-land; who, while they may not immediately seem to remind us of ourselves, become familiar through the repetition of their ordinary extraordinary actions.

A debate between lovers over what music to listen to; a slightly unhinged barber struggling with his red and white pole; a woman unnerved by a strange encounter at a diner. ‘Mystery Train’ is an ally of Scorsese’s ‘After Hours’, which itself takes place in a heightened vision of New York City as hell; Memphis here is a kind of magical hybrid of sacred and profane, as if an old Western saloon town was built around the hotel in ‘Barton Fink’.

Jarmusch creates worlds in which people are humane to each other; or when they’re not, we feel it. His characters are stuck in their ways, and noticeably more like real people because of it. His vision of the American micro-urban landscape is as evocative as the way Ansel Adams saw mountains. His exploration of the weirdness of American mythology represents a dimension of the culture that doesn’t easily fit into red and purple state schismatics; his characters are authentically American (or American dreamers), but they are neither wearing ten gallon hats, nor would they read the Huffington Post.

The guy knows how to do atmosphere; how to pace his whole world to within an inch of its life. He does incredibly sexy incredibly well; and utterly normal utterly right. He can put a skinny guy from Yokohama in a hotel window and make him look like James Dean. He can get Screamin’ Jay Hawkins to wear a red suit as if no one else on earth has the right. He can make you feel nostalgic for trains, aware of the absence of peace and quiet in your own life, amused at the mistakes of others, because they are your mistakes too; and he’s not afraid to make you wait til you remember.

‘Mystery Train’ looks like it was made tomorrow, in a world where computers had not replaced heartbeats as the cinema's focus, so clean and crisp is the transfer on Criterion’s Blu-Ray; and Jarmusch’s welcome habit of avoiding audio commentary in exchange for recording answers to questions submitted by thoughtful fans is a genuinely enriching addition to this disc’s splendid special features. Extras aside, ‘Mystery Train’ is so good I’m going to watch it again tonight.