postmodernbible

This week's Recorder headlines with opening paragraphs from the stories

This week's Recorder headlines with opening paragraphs from the stories

Some news about the College.

It shared the front page with a picture of Jesus outside Selfridges - I think the banner read something like "Embracing the Capital" - yeah! He does but...for me this is Jesus crucified again with the nails of commercialism and betrayed by 30 pieces of merchandise.

Pete

The Festival 2003

The Festival 2003

I'm Site Co-ordinating for this this week. Means I am out of blogging for a few days - compeltely harrassed by trying to keep things going on the site and wondering why I never get to actually speak at these kind of things. Funny, I speak at Spring Harvest and lecture at the College and what have you - even at this thing in Groningen in the Summer...but not at home...!

Pray for me - knackered and three days to go still...

Pete

The FA Cup, Blackhawk Down and O!

Spent an interesting Saturday - went over to our friends to watch the match - great to see United win for once although it felt a bit like running gradnma over! I mean, did they have a chance? We didn't really need a goalkeeper. It was great to se Ronaldo actually pull of a few of his tricks. You never know he might be getting good! Dennis Wise's antics made me laugh - and shout! And the referee needed glasses - but then he is 48.

Had a great BBQ afterwards - nothing better than spending an evening in the peak district with a glass of fine wine, some excellent meat and salad and even better company!

Got home and put the kids to bed and flopped in front of the TV and saw that Black Hawk Down was on Sky. I have avoided watching this for so long. But I succumbed. It was horrible. Grisly effects; awful militarism; slushy acting. Some of the film has really stuck in my head - not least the stupidity of war. There is a scene where a Somali warlord (as opposed to an American warlord) says that war is simply a way of life, that nothing would be achieved by American interference, that liberal democracy would not be the solution for Mogadishu's problems. I think he was right. The next day I saw a trailer for some C4 or BBC2 documentary of 16 people caught up in war - one was a 13 year girl who had lost both parents - her hope in life now was her being a soldier and fighting for a cause.

I sat and had lunch with some friends from church the day after (more socialising!) and reflected on how cut off we are - how unreal our societ yis from what most people experience. I am so privileged. My kids are so privileged. My society is so privileged.

Came home last night reflecting on this and lo and behold after watching Topgear while I was doing the ironing (hilarious programme - including some wonderful dialogue about Christian car drivers who parade round with fishes on their bums and get everyone really cross!), I saw that 'O' was on Sky - so watched that - a modern remake of Othello. Now I don't know Othello but did have some idea of the plot. I was really impressed with the whole film - again a kind of questioning of society - what is it all about. What does white middle class America do. Oden/Othello is a black guy rehabilitated into a white middle class society. Hugo (Shakespeare's Iago) really twists his mind playing on fear and jealousy and the worst of humanity. The tragedy is that Hugo is the monster, the thug, while Oden is the thug turned innocent who is forced by Hugo to turn back to his thuggish ways. Civilization decivilizes. Middle class white America actually turns psychotic. it wasn't Shakespeare but it did make me think and put a cap on a disturbing weekend - again in the comfort of my house and with friends and peace all around.

And Fahrenheit 911 won in Cannes! Sounds like Supersize Me was much better. Super website.

Where are we going? I have to wonder sometimes whether we are entering the last days...what will it be like then?

Some wonderful dialogue clips from the Cannes site:

GORDON BOBBIT, Marketing Manager, Kalmar Inc (equipment supplier to US Army)

There's no other single area of the world today with the opportunity for business, new business, similar to the opportunity that's available today in Iraq.

BLAINE OBER, President, High Protection Company (Atlanta-based Armored Vehicles)

Unfortunately, at least for the near term, we think it's going to be a good situation. err, a dangerous situation. Good for business, bad for the people.

MICHAEL MOORE

Governor Bush. it's Michael Moore.

GEORGE W. BUSH

Behave yourself, will you? Go find real work.

A few days ago I criticized Tommy Lapid - the Israeli justice minister. Yesterday he told the Israeli Cabinet that the pictures from Rafah/Tel Sultan reminded him of his grandmother's experience in the Holocaust. I think he got into trouble for saying that. Bless you, Tommy. You probably don't realise how prophetic you words really are!

Pete

Noam Chomsky

Did you see him on Newsnight last night? Fantastic interview with the ever sneering Jeremy Paxman. They were talking about Chomsky's new book - Hegemony or Survival. Chomsky was arguing that Americo-British politics are not about liberal democracy at all but about subordination and subjugation. I actually think Chomsky misses the point - A-B politics is about the spread of capitalism - as the American General said yesterday - it's a doctrine problem. Rather than understand that there can be alternatives to democratic capitalism (or what we call democratic!), we enforce it across the board. Who in the end is the winner - Haliburton, Exxon, the Enrons of this world - George's cronies.

Paxman also did an interview with the East Timorese Govt who are being fleeced by Australia over oil found in the Timor Sea between the two countries. Why do so-called advanced societies always have to be so grasping? One of the statistics on the programme was incredible - the annual budget of East Timor is 75 million dollars. What they are losing everyday in oil revenue to Australia is 1 million dollars. This means that they could increase their domestic budget over fourfold if only Australia would agree to the normal equidistance ruling. Australia - get a life! well done, East Timor on your second birthday...apparently 1 in 10 kids in East Timor die before they reach the age of 5. Does that include new countries as well? Poverty, destitution, despair and how many swimming pools in Sydney!!!

Pete - rabid!

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | America hit by storm of insects

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | America hit by storm of insects

And I think to myself, what a wonderful world!

Pete

Too busy to blog...aaaarrrrgggghhhhhh!

Kyrie eleison

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Israel to destroy many Gaza homes

1 Corinthians 4:11-13

To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.

How long, O Lord...How long?

Pete

The Day After Tomorrow?

Saw this great ad on the tube yesterday.

Thought it was worth sharing...available in loads of different languages - see the link

Pete

Selfridges and other stuff!

I was down in London yesterday for a theme day discussion for Spring Harvest next year. Fun day and it was great to meet up with some cool people and some good mates. Great to hear some passion from some bigwigs as well - Joel Edwards is such a cool guy and what he is doing at the EA is just stonking!

Anyway, I didn't have much time to sample the sights of any exhibitions which I usually do after my London meetings (I LOVE the Tate Modern - one of my places of connection with God!), but I took my colleague off on a jaunt down Oxford Street to see Jesus on the front of Selfridges. I thought it was done well...but...

On the one hand...I agree with the idea of Jesus blessing everyone - a massive Jesus with his arms outstretched showering his grace on all those hapless punters spending their well-earned dosh...fine. I love the idea of extravagant grace. But Jesus blessing Oxford Street - ha! Why not over Abu Ghraib? Why not over Hackney? Why not on Brixton High Street (if there is one)? Just made me laugh - I wondered whether a cross would have been more appropriate.

I think our postmodern society is giving itself a good kick in the proverbials at the moment. I mean, hold up a mirror to postmodern man and what do you find - his very worst fears realised, he is just the same as his enemy. Is there so much different between George and Osama, between Arab torture and American Torture? What is the new Empire. Have we just moved from Athens vs. Sparta to Washington vs. Mecca via London vs. Berlin? The issue is that we are all the same...all with same faults, all with the same sins, all with the same potential for love and for hate, all loved by God.

The open arms of Christ invite us all to be blessed. Let us pray in these horrific days that we who know that truth will share it and bring more and more into the scope of his love.

I loved weather at the Tate Modern. I loved sitting in the light of the sun/lightbox...I want to just lie in the light of the Son.

Pete

Vanunu

Just received this email via the Development Office of the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem and my good friend Nancy Dinsmore...

Dear friends.
This is my first Email to all my friends, my supporters, around the world. I would like to thank all of you for your support and for the campaign work for my release.
Thank you very much for walking with me all these years. It was great and wonderful to meet some of you here, on the day of my release, the end of 17.5 years of isolation.
Now it is a new beginning, I hope, soon I will be able to meet all of you.
Thank you for all your prayers.
I am staying at St. George’s Cathedral Close, and my thanks for being able to stay here.
You are welcome to send me messages, my email is [email protected]
For a Nuclear Weapons free world.
Vanunu - MVJC

Pete

RSC : Macbeth

RSC : Macbeth

Amazing. Absolutely amazing. we had a great time in Stratford. It was just immense. Great meal at The Oppo Cafe beforehand and then into the theatre for a horrorfest. The play was just so dark - staged in nineteenth century, kind of russian military setting. For me Macbeth came across as so evil - calculating, hard, ambitios - crying out to his servant Seyton (pronounced all the way through as SATAN) all the time - almost as though Satan was his henchman - Seyton present at Banquo's death, although trying to pre-warn Macduff's wife minutes before her and her kids are slaughtered. Lady Macbeth came across much weaker than I have seen before - a pitiable character rather than the fiend suggested by Malcolm. Yes, she does urge Macbeth on but she only seems to realise the immensity of what they have done when her hands are covered with Duncan's blood. It was just so good. The whole way in which the tension was built up - only to be diffused by the Porter or the Macduff family scene. You needed these interruptions to cope with the rest.

They did this amazing thing with the succession scene at the beginning - where Duncan bestows the heir status to Malcolm - as he introduces what he is going to do, Macbeth steps forward - thinking this is the moment the witches prophecy is going to be fulfilled...but no - it goes to Malcolm instead and Macbeth falls back astounded that the prophecy is not fulfilled.

Afterwards we stayed on for the feedback - I wish this could have been in the pub with a group of pm Christians and we could really have explored the whole thing so deeply. As it was the feedback was a bit tame -disappointing. Had a fantastic conversation with Theresa all the way back to home talking about the different levels - the whole heaven and hell imagery, the use of a real witch in the rehearsals (!) and so on.

In the programme there is an amazing mini-essay on Tragedy - thought I might quote a couple of passages from it and if you're reading this - then spend sometime thinking of the theology of this...

This is why talk of a tragic flaw is misleading. The theory of the flaw arises from a misunderstanding of Aristotle's influential account of ancient Greek tragedy. For Aristotle, hamartia, the thing that precipitates tragedy, is not a psychological predisposition but an event - not a character trait but a fatal action. In several famous cases in Greek tragedy, the particular mistake is to kill a blood-relation in ignorance of their identity. So too in Shakespeare, it is action (or in Hamlet's case inaction) that determines character and not vice versa.

Note that word 'hamartia' is one of the New Testament words used for sin...not a psychological predisposition but an event - not a character trait but a fatal action - what does this say about sin in us?

Lear cannot let go of the past. Macbeth cannot wait for the future. Hamlet cannot stop worrying about the future: none of them is content to live in the moment. This is not so much an individual flaw as a universal human failing. We are creatures bound in time but always longing for another time.

and...

The trouble with Stoicism is that it neglects the capacity to feel, something which makes us human just as much as the capacity to reason. The counter-movement in Shakespearean tragedy is towards an acknowledgement of the emotions, as they express themselves in the body. Gloucester has no eyes and yet he sees how the world goes by: he sees it feelingly. Before Macduff can act like a man in taking revenge against Macbeth for the murder of his family he must first feel his grief as a man - he must let himself be a weeping human before turning himself into an alpha male.

and the essay closes echoing some of what I suggested yesterday about the Macbeths and the psychosis of individualism...

Macbeth is the bleakest of the tragedies because the Macbeths, having begun the play as one of the few happily married couples anywhere in Shakespeare, drift apart - embittered by their childlessness? - and each dies profoundly alone. There is no Horatio or Kent to give sorrow words on behalf of the audience. Only in this play could Shakespeare have described life as a walking shadow, a poor player, a tale 'Told my an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.'

Just amazing...

Pete - in awe

p.s. - Malcolm's closing words won't go away...what does he really mean - the grace of Grace - there's more to it than meets the eye!

We shall not spend a large expense of time Before we reckon with your several loves, And make us even with you. My thanes and kinsmen, Henceforth be earls, the first that ever Scotland In such an honour named. What's more to do, Which would be planted newly with the time, As calling home our exiled friends abroad That fled the snares of watchful tyranny; Producing forth the cruel ministers Of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen, Who, as 'tis thought, by self and violent hands Took off her life; this, and what needful else That calls upon us, by the grace of Grace, We will perform in measure, time and place: So, thanks to all at once and to each one, Whom we invite to see us crown'd at Scone