fame is a mask that eats the face

Posh Spice might hope to feel at home in her new life in Los Angeles, but hubris is winding its way into her week as the ratings of her "Welcome to America" pseudo-documentary come in. In the U.K., where I live, this program was billed as a light-hearted, even "spoof" piece about her reputation for excess. But it seems the U.S. audience, or at least its television critics, weren’t quite ready for this. At any rate, whether or not she was joking, Victoria Beckham and her husband have become today’s totems of consumerist overdrive.

At the same time, according to media reports, the well-known environmentalist and anti-war activist, Barbra Streisand, has apparently issued the staff of a London hotel with demands about how they are to treat her while she stays there—including instructing them not to look her in the eye. You have to wonder just why someone who is about to sing to 15,000 people who are paying up to a thousand dollars each might be scared of a little personal interaction with just one of them, but I guess Barbra feels she’s earned the right.

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soliton ventura - the year's best gathering

soliton network's annual ventura, california gathering takes place in just three weeks' time. this has become a regular fixture for many of those who attend to explore life and spirituality, to eat together, make fantastic friends, and feel just a little more alive than usual. i'll be there to help facilitate some discussion, along with pete rollins, kester brewin, barry taylor, and others, especially maestro greg russinger who puts the whole thing together with the folk formerly of the bridge.

in the midst of many competing opportunities for creative people to explore theology together, i have genuinely found soliton to be the most stimulating, enjoyable, and nurturing to my own soul over the past few years. hospitality is a hallmark of what these guys do, and so if you've never been before, and you can be in the area, then i'd encourage you with no hesitation to register - you'd be made more welcome than you could imagine.

all the details are here.

‘IF GOD WERE HERE, HE, SHE OR IT WOULD BE SUING A LOT OF PEOPLE FOR LIBEL’ – SINEAD O’CONNOR’S ‘THEOLOGY’

Sinead O’Connor’s not angry anymore; or at least not angry in the same way. Her tearing up of a photo of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live 15 years ago has combined with what we think we know about her ordination into an unofficial offshoot of the Catholic church to give a convenient excuse for people to ignore her. This is a pity, because it makes us forget that she produced one of the only memorably and honest songs about love in the 1990s with her cover version of Prince’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’; and one of the most beautiful hymns of spiritual comfort in 1997’s ‘This is to Mother You’ on her ‘Gospel Oak’ EP.

She has made her spirituality more explicit than ever on ‘Theology’ a new double album; and the anger of early Sinead has given way to songs of hope, confidence, and worship. In 23 tracks she sings of God being present in the earthiness of a life lived between the search for truth and the struggle to get by – when she relates how God met ‘my need on a chronic Christmas Eve’ it is easy to imagine the pain that many people feel at the times when the culture is forcing them to pretend to be happy.

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live free, or watch die hard

Great helicopters and explosions abound, the witticisms are barbed, and the cinematography is silver-grey in Die Hard 4.0 (or Live Free or Die Hard, depending on which empire you see it in). I was tired to start with, but the film couldn't wake me up. I vacillated between being bored and horrified, as Bruce Willis yet again stands in for the lone American male whose first resort is always violence (in the first film he was the archetype of a Vietnam War vet, assailed by terrorists on the one hand, and a frustrating civil service bureaucracy on the other; this time he clearly represents the guy who'd go to Iraq just because it's the right thing to do, even though he knows the government sending him is corrupt)...

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apocalypto and mel's mother-figures

i finally got around to seeing 'apocalypto' last night - it's a mixed bag - an undeniably exhilirating film, but extremely violent; and either a tragic reflection on how those who live by the sword die by it, or a 16th century lethal weapon, or both. the controversy that surrounded its director mel gibson just before it was released clouded serious discussion about what this film means, so let me just add one thought.

in each of the epic -canvas films that gibson has directed - 'braveheart', 'the passion of the christ', and 'apocalypto' - there is a scene where the central male character undergoes some kind of torment while a strong female character in his life looks on from a crowd. in 'braveheart', william wallace sees the ghost of his wife while he is being tortured to death; in 'the passion', mary gazes helplessly at jesus carrying the cross, and even sees him transformed in her mind's eye into a the little boy she raised; now, in 'apocalypto', jaguar paw, being led to the top of a pyramid to be sacrificed to the sun god, has a moment of almost unbearable tenderness with his mother in law.

whatever else may be said about mel gibson's ideological beliefs (which are difficult, at best, to determine; given the circumstances under which he has expressed them), ability as a director, or personal problems, it's pretty clear to me that one aspect of his career that has been undervalued is something other than the misogyny that action stars are often accused of. is it just possible that mel gibson loves women? that he loves mothers? that he wants to give them the respect they deserve?