Who Dat?

Ok, so I don't claim to be any kind of sports fan, but New Orleans winning the Superbowl last night makes me really happy.


Photo credit: AMY KIRK DUVOISIN, Times-Picayune



Geaux Saints!!!!!

Daily Life in Haiti

My friend Peter Daniel made this short video during the year that he spent teaching in rural Haiti:



Even before the quake, most images I had seen of Haiti showed only devastation and extreme poverty. These scenes of baking bread and playing soccer, a funeral procession and a new baby, reveal a different Haiti, one where life is hard (it is common in this village not to eat one day out of the week) but suffering has not extinguished hope.

Thankfully, the village of Bayonnais was not badly affected by the quake, although two students studying in Port-au-Prince are missing. For more earthquake updates and information on how you can help, visit Peter's blog at http://peterbdaniel.wordpress.com/

Please keep the people of Haiti in your thoughts and prayers.

Peace Rising in Charlotte, NC

If you live in or near the Queen's City, check out this event... wish I could be there myself.

Heather is a good friend and has pulled together this event largely out of her own initiative, passion, and vision. On Saturday, Heather and Sean are opening their home for a full-day workshop. Catherine Cadden and Jesse Wiens of the Center for Nonviolent Communication in Chapel Hill, NC will speak at both the film and the workshop.

Visit Heather's blog to rsvp or learn more...

Evangelizing Hate

The line between religiously justified bigotry and state-sponsored violence is whisper-thin.

U.S. Evangelicals’ Role Seen in Uganda Anti-Gay Push

Photo Credit: Marc Hofer

People like Nikki Mawanda may soon face the death penalty in Uganda, due in part to the words and actions of American evangelical missionaries.

Read article.

Christmas Song

Sometime in the past few years I lost my taste for nearly all holiday music. But this spare and haunting arrangement by Amherst's own Tim Eriksen is worth sharing:

"Lo How a Rose..."

Wishing everyone who reads this blog safe travels and a few days of blessed peace and rest.

God's Teeth

Saw the Coen Brothers' latest, A Serious Man, over the holiday weekend. It's not as funny as Raising Arizona or The Big Lebowski, not as dark as No Country for Old Men or Barton Fink. This seems to be the directors' nod toward naturalism, of sorts -- and autobiography. Set in the suburban Jewish community of 1960s Minneapolis, the film stars Michael Stuhlbarg as Larry Gopnick, a physics professor whose life quickly unravels, in a manner not entirely dissimilar from that of the Biblical protagonist, Job.

I have always had a fondness for the Job story, probably because it never really lets God off the hook. But when you make a movie about it, the really interesting part is not so much the questions, but people's reactions to them. As Professor Larry Gopnik, standing in front of a blackboard filled with an incomprehensible swarm of equations, tells his baffled students, "Even if you don't understand the material, you're still going to be responsible for it."

Throughout the movie, the only character who attempts much in the way of responsibility is Larry, in his own meek and largely ineffective way. But the events of the film beg a larger question -- can God be held responsible? At a certain point in the movie, Larry begins to believe he has been cursed by God. This of course, requires a belief in something other than random chance and rationalism.

The film walks an artful line. Is the strange old man in the prologue a dybbuk or an innocent murder victim? Is the ghost of Larry's wife's dead lover who keeps appearing a hallucination or a supernatural apparition?

Most tantalizing of all is the story related by a rabbi about a Jewish dentist in his congregation. The dentist had come to the rabbi after discovering that the back sides of the teeth of one of his gentile patients contained a mysterious message inscribed in Hebrew characters:

"Help me."

The dentist struggled with the meaning of this revelation, pondered, and sought guidance. Finding no answers, he went back to his ordinary life.

Like most of the events in the movie, the story is open to multiple interpretations. I doubt this is what the filmmakers had in mind, but my first reaction was this -- what if it meant just what it said? What if God were trapped and in need of help, crying out to humanity for rescue?

Note: the above photo is not the original film still, but Aroid on Flickr does a pretty decent job of getting the idea across.

Mailing List for Survivors of Spiritual Abuse

Posting this on behalf of my friend Renee: http://lists.ianua.org/listinfo.cgi/sass-ianua.org

Check out her blog at http://www.ianua.org.