Wonderings & Wanderings

Save Us - The Search for Generous Dialogue

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Overheard at "Bean Traders" - the coffeehouse that connects to my office:
"Some Christian just tried to save my soul. Don't those fools know they're the ones who need to be
saved!"

After the Derek Webb concert on our deck behind 9th St, Sam, one of the other tenants in the building and a practicing Hindu, asks...
"Was this a 'no pagans allowed' event?"

Tim's pithy reply...
"It was BYOP. I would have invited you, but I think I was already someone's guest!"

From the film "Saved" — Mary, a senior at American Eagle Christian High School, fearing that she's pregnant and hoping for another explanation for her morning sickness:
"Oh, please, please, let it be cancer!"

Also from the film "Saved" — Tia to Mary while inviting her to a prayer circle for Mary's boyfriend:
"I'm sorry about your boyfriend's faggotry."

That might have been the point when the film's dialogue went over the top. I don't know many teens who liberally use the terms "faggotry," "fornicators," and "perverts" like the in-crowd at American Eagle High School. Or do I? When our group watched this movie on Saturday night, many us freely admitted that we are expatriots from the school of harsh religious dialogue. "Saved" is stereotypical, overly stylized, and entirely predictable at times. But the humor and the power of the movie resides in its stereotypes and the frequency of these heinous offenses in the dialogue between church and culture in the present.

The reactions to the film were varied. A few were offended and felt the need to defend the portions of Christian theology that were manipulated or skewed. Others wondered if anyone was that self-righteous and hypocritical. Sadly, I would have to argue against the latter point. Most affirmed, with no small measure of disappointment the accuracy of many of the stereotypes of the film.

Saved is certainly a religious remake of the genre of teen comedy that made John Hughes famous. The outsiders become the insiders. The insiders are publicly punished for their transgressions. The morally self-righteous are shown to be at best inconsistent, at their worst morally bankrupt. Friendship is sufficient to overcome the injustices of the teen social world without challenging the sacred value of personal autonomy. And, of course, the "right" couples get together at the end.

For our viewing crew, we lamented the state of the dialogue between the Christian community and our culture - morally, socially, artistically, and politically. If anything, this teen spoof is one more reminder of the desperate need to fashion a new dialogue between these parties.

Several asked on Saturday evening what this dialogue would look like. I have many opinions on this.

•A new dialogue between Christians and our culture would have a strong sense of "shared place" and "sacred place." By shared space, I mean that we cannot see ourselves as the rightful owners of our cultural values and cultural idioms. This sense of ownership drives us to not only inhospitality to those with whom we disagree, but to intentional efforts to eradicate these voices. Often the church's language and posture with its surrounding culture is militaristic. We dream of beating our "adversaries" with the bare minimum of marginaliziong and colonizing those who don't admit defeat. A sense of sacred space would acknowlege own ideological space while also acknowledging the ideological space of others. Sacred space calls us act respectfully while in the living room of another. Stanley Hauerwas and others have written powerfully and persuasively that we should see ourselves as aliens and strangers in this land. Such a recognition frees us to authenticity in our space, respect in the space of others, and collaboration in shared space.

•This new dialogue should be driven by the collaboration of needs and urgencies that we find in the shared space of our world. We have so many shared needs - the environment, the global impact of poverty and injustice, human dignity, and primary human needs. The urgencies of the shared space are so great that it makes little sense to spend all of our time in arenas of philosphical/ideological disagreement.

•This new dialogue would blur the lines between "in" and "out" from the vantage point of the church. This boundary has always been the province of God yet we have appointed ourselves as exacting stewards of this decision. In reality, the lines are deeply blurred. This does not mean that one cannot have a sense of inclusion in God's community nor allow for the most obvious exclusions. But so much of our efforts in clear definition are idolatrous demands for definition and control.

•A new dialogue would affirm that neither God's voice nor God's love is not confined to that which we call "church."

•A new dialogue would not water down the essential path of following Christ or the essential realities of Jesus' way. On the contrary, this dialogue would free us up to express this path rather than to defend it against intruders.

•A new dialogue would be guided by hospitality, humility, the fearful acknowledgement of the limits of our understanding and abilities to make boundaries, activism on the essential needs of humanity, love for all of God's creation, striving to embody the characteristics of Yahweh and the fruits of God's Spirit, trust in God's sovereign ability to manage the story, and a worshipful thankfulness for being included in these plans.

Such a dialogue would merit the grand title of salvation.

Bright Leaves

Durham, NC is a tobacco town. Bull Durham was a brand of tobacco long before it was the minor league baseball home of Javy Lopez, Joe Morgan, Andruw Jones, and so many other stars. There really was a "Crash" Davis — though I daresay that the fictional Crash played by Kevin Costner probably hit for more power. Everywhere you look in Durham, you see the evidence of the tobacco industry - huge, sprawling warehouses, fading advertisements on falling buildings, and the Gothic spires of Duke University built with the tobacco fortunes of the Duke family. Even the renewal that graces our city bears the mark (or stain) of tobacco - Brightleaf Square, the American Tobacco Amphitheatre (a beautiful downtown shopping/dining venue on the property of the largest Duke family warehouse), the American Tobacco Mueseum, the Tobacco trail that winds through Durham county, and the spacious downtown flats in formerly vacant tobacco industry buildings.

"Bright Leaves" is a remarkable documentary that seeks to come to grips with our local history. Filmmaker Ross McElwee has created an autobiographical narrative that searches for his own legacy in tobacco-stained history and economy of North Carolina. McElwee's great grandfather actually developed the "Bull Durham" brand, accumulating great wealth from the product only to see this brand wrested from him in a series of court struggles by the infamously ruthless Duke family. McElwee presents this legend and his own ambiguous feelings about his heritage with a series of humorous images. The Duke mansion is contrasted with the asphault parking lot that now stands on the site of his great grandfather's former stately home. Images of the beautiful parks and Duke Forest that are the philanthropic gifts of the Dukes to our community are compared to McElwee Park in Salisbury, NC — a couple of benches in front of deteriorating building! As he films the vast imprints of the Duke fortune, McElwee wonders aloud, with a tongue-in-cheek wistfulness, saying "All this could have been mine!"

The film also includes clever and arbitrary insertions of his family life in Boston, haunting scenes chronicling the horrific consequences of tobacco addiction, and scenes from the 1934 Gary Cooper film "Bright Leaves" which is inspired by the epic McElwee-Duke struggle. As the historical portrait widens, a distinct irony emerges. The Duke family funds the development of Duke Medical School and the world class Duke Medical Center. The next generations of the McElwee family become doctors and surgeons with an occasional filmmaker thrown in. McElwee jokes that both these families mastered the essence of capitalism, creating the "perfect" product - a product that creates an incessant demand and also creates corrollary needs such as medical treatment. Talk about working both sides of the fence.

For Christians, the film offers several disturbing, challenging, and honest portraits. We see the awe-inspiring Duke Chapel built with tobacco money. From all over Durham, one can sees its heavenly oriented spires. Yet it was also built as a mausoleum of the Washington Duke and James B. Duke. Other images include tobacco farmers whose fields surround their places of worship. One devout farmer expresses both his and his pastor's discomfort with the subject. For Southerners, particularly North Carolinians, we have long struggled with the collision of the addictions of a tobacco economy and the potential liberations of Jesus' gospel. McElwee editing of church services, gospel music backgrounds, and scenes of addiction or disease related to cancer probes this comfort and challenges our historical silence. My rural Baptist upbringing often came to mind as I watched. I have vivid memories of strong moral judgments on dancing, alcohol, divorce, and contemporary music made by cigarette smoking Deacons.

But the film's theme transcended even the moral dilemma of tobacco. McElwee expresses a deep love for North Carolina and its beauties. Our mountains, beaches, and rolling hills fill the scenes of his narrative. The hospitality and warmth of our citizens are constantly evident. This film is about the search for a legacy and the painful work required to come to grips with the moral complexities of one's personal story. Our search for legacies always transcend simple portraits of good and evil. McElwee eventually realizes that the character played by the heroic Gary Cooper in Hollywood's version of "Bright Leaves" combines the traits of his great-grandfather AND James B. Duke. His exploration of family narrative does not sustain neither a villification of the Dukes nor a wistful martyrdom of his own family.

I was constantly reminded of a great Biblical narrative as I enjoyed this documentary. The Old Testament story of Jacob also explores these same themes of a stolen birthright, deceptive and unjust economic gain, and the difficult challenge of coming home in the midst of such legacies. Jacob's journeys in the Bible includes both a great flight from home and a bold, brash return. In the second half of Jacob's story, he courageously faces his legacy and travels back to Bethel, a sacred place where he encountered God but sadly did not know it. Our own confrontations with our pasts often takes this form — deception, flight, penitent insight, renewal, and courageous re-engagement with not only our own stories but God's redemptive presence in even the worst of our stories.

In "Bright Leaves," McElwee returns home and finds his own legacy. He is honest with the residuals of his family's association with tobacco and their redemptive responses to this stain. In the midst of his clever contrasts with the fates of the McElwee's and the Duke's, he explores meanings that go far beyond wealth, power, disease, and death.

Revenge of the Sith

I finally got to see the final episode of the Star Wars trilogy last night. My kids, Keenan (rising 5th grade) and Kendall (rising 3rd grade), had been begging since it opened to see it. Watching a film with your kids is a very informative and challenging context — a new context for me (we just haven't gone to many movies as a family) that offers a whole new perspective on message and delivery.

My kids alternated between engrossed, overwhelmed, and even impatient with the intense action and battle scenes. Seems that you can only see so much of multi-dimensional, high speed, spacecraft chases and battles before the point becomes redundant — "Anikan and/or Obi Wan are in big trouble and it will take a heroic effort to get out of this situation." But they were deeply engaged by the drama, betrayal, and good vs. evil themes. The great narratives of life seem to grab us, whether portrayed poorly or skillfully. One of the best parts of the experience was our conversations of these themes on the way home — why one who knows good chooses evil, the fine line between love and betrayal, the fine line between trust in a community, taking responsibility, and autonomous foolishness. We used a different language, but my kids really got these points. It was fun to translate these themes into their world of experiences and understanding. And, of course, they loved the epic light saber duels on high places above tumult and ruin! And they loved, as both would put it, "not so much mushy-mush!"

I felt like Anikan's journey to the dark side merited 500 pages in a novel or its own trilogy in film. It is so hard to compress complex journeys into a medium like an action movie.

George Lucas has often commented in interviews about his use of color in these movies —
•A New Hope — dominated by the desert sand, tans, and browns of Luke's home
•Empire Strikes Back — white ice and snow, white clouds, and the murky slime of Yoda's exile
•Return of the Jedi — the deep greens of Endor

The deep, fiery reds of Revenge where breathtaking to me — warfare, fiery explosions, red sunsets, the fire of the Jedi temple, and the apocalyptic scene of Vader's battle with Obi Wan in the midst of a volcanic meltdown. This color conveyed the level of rage, evil, horror, and imminent collapse of an era found in the story.

I want to be friends with the wookies. Everyone needs — huge, furry, not overly conversant, intensely loyal, clever, and utterly fearsome to enemies — companions in life.

By no means was this a "perfect movie." But I thoroughly enjoyed it and will see it again. I'm a very willing consumer for grand stories of betrayal, redemption, and hope.