An interesting new documentary. From their website:
“If you were to meet ten average Americans on the street, nine of them would say they believe in God. So why is the Gospel of Love dividing America?
Dan Merchant put on his bumper-sticker-clad jumpsuit and decided to find the reason. After talking with scores of men and women on streets all across the nation, and also interviewing many well-known activists in today’s “Culture Wars,” Dan realized that the public discussion of faith doesn’t have to be contentious.
From its opening Talking Heads sequence through its touching look at faith in action, Lord, Save Us From Your Followers is a fast-paced, highly engaging documentary that explores the collision of faith and culture in America while opening up this important conversation to all of us.”
Here’s something my friend Amy Stephenson shared with me recently:
I’ve had this prayer stuck next to my bed for the past year and have prayed it regularly. I warn you before you pray this for yourself though, it could make your life very uncomfortable, it’s totally wrecked my life (in a good way).
“May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain in to joy.
And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done” – Franciscan Benediction
Bhutan is a Buddhist sanctuary, a refuge from the world and it’s ills. In the 1930s all that was known of Bhutan was what could be gleaned from James Hilton’s novel, Lost Horizon. He called Bhutan ‘Shangri la.’ The King of Bhutan decided that, as a spiritual society, happiness was the most important thing, and in 1998 he defined Bhutan’s key aim as ‘Gross National Happiness.’
Bhutan was the last country in the world to introduce TV. It arrived in 2002, with 46 cable channels, and threw Bhutan headlong into the global culture of the 21st century. Everyone underestimated the impact that TV would have on local life and culture. One-third of Bhutan’s girls now want to look more American (whiter skin, blonde hair). A familiar proportion of girls also aspire to a new approach to relationships (boyfriends not husbands, and sex before marriage).
An editorial in a Bhutanese newspaper warns: “We are seeing for the first time broken families, school dropouts and other negative youth crimes. We are beginning to see crime associated with drug users all over the world, shoplifting, burglary and violence.” Swapping ‘Gross National Happiness’ for the joys of Big Brother may not be such a good thing after all.
US children spend more time each year in front of the television (1023 hours) than in school (900 hours a year). In Australia, children watch TV or videos for two and a half hours per day. Let’s change those stats and stop staring passively at the box while it brainwashes us. The TV-Turnoff Network encourages children to create healthier lives and communities: http://www.tvturnoff.org/.
Basically, the story is about a high-powered executive (Steven) who is forced to face the reality of his anger problem after his marriage begins to fall apart before his eyes. Delving deep into uncertainty and distress, he encounters a stranger (Andy) who claims to be a friend of the family. Through what turns into a regular pattern of encounters, Andy steers Steven through what is often a frustrating and painful journey into the realisation of his own condition: shame. Andy patiently allows Steven to discover a more authentic way of life based on the restorative power of God’s grace.
Although at times I felt like the story was a little too cliche and predictable for my liking, it did remarkably well in narrating a story that was general enough to make it personal, that is some ways it becomes our own story. You see, all of the ways in which we harm others, particularly those closest to us, are symptoms of our own pain, consequences of a deep-seated sense of shame and insecurity. We lash out in a ruthless attempt to protect a constructed version of ourselves that seeks the acceptance of others. We create masks to hide our true selves and live in guarded fear of being exposed for who we really are, a deep innate fear that we aren’t ‘enough’ and others might see it.
What “Bo’s Cafe” and their earlier work, “Truefaced,” attempt to highlight is that grace is the environment where you can move from control to trust, from protection to vulnerability, and from blame to forgiveness. Grace is all about trust. Before we can ever experience God’s true healing power, we must first trust Him. Until we bare ourselves completely to God, we will only ever be dealing with the symptoms and not the shame deep within us at the root of our issues.
Trust is also the recipe for genuine authentic community and Bo’s Cafe has a lot to say about this. Instead of trying to live a life of pleasing God and others we must live a life of learning how to trust God and others with who we really are, with all our weakness, rage, fear, love, blindness and pain, all of it. Because it is only when we are fully known, that we can ever be fully loved.
The book is set to be released September 25. Well worth a read!
“It has always seemed strange to me…the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism, and self interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first, they love the produce of the second” – Doc (Cannery Row)
“CALL + RESPONSE is a first of its kind feature documentary film that reveals the world’s 27 million dirtiest secrets: there are more slaves today than ever before in human history. CALL + RESPONSE goes deep undercover where slavery is thriving from the child brothels of Cambodia to the slave brick kilns of rural India to reveal that in 2007, Slave Traders made more money than Google, Nike and Starbucks combined.
Luminaries on the issue such as Cornel West, Madeleine Albright, Daryl Hannah, Julia Ormond, Ashley Judd, Nicholas Kristof, and many other prominent political and cultural figures offer first hand account of this 21st century trade. Performances from Grammy-winning and critically acclaimed artists including Moby, Natasha Bedingfield, Cold War Kids, Matisyahu, Imogen Heap, Talib Kweli, Five For Fighting, Switchfoot, members of Nickel Creek and Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, Rocco Deluca move this chilling information into inspiration for stopping it.
Music is part of the movement against human slavery. Dr. Cornel West connects the music of the American slave fields to the popular music we listen to today, and offers this connection as a rallying cry for the modern abolitionist movement currently brewing.”
Mike Brodie aka “The Polaroid Kidd” is a somewhat accidental documentary photographer. By photographing his friends, their homes, and lifestyles, Brodie has captured a marginalized segment of the American population that’s not so prevalent in mainstream society. His haunting photos of hobos, punks, and squatters criss-crossing the country in boxcars document the architecture of today’s heretics.
When I first saw these photos, I was truly amazed by their authentic beauty. Brodie captures the rebels of our western culture, outcasts in a society of greed, narcissism and conspicuous consumption. I haven’t been able to get these images out of my head. Their faces haunt me. They make me feel irritated by my own excess and uncomfortable in my relative pretentiousness.
Their lifestyles mock my pretended freedom, their sense of community flouts my disconnected individualism, their simplicity an affront to the seemingly futile complications of my life. Before we look upon the faces of what may seem like filthy hobos, we must ask ourselves some important questions. What is freedom? What is success? What is beauty?
I see those who refuse to conform to a counterfeit culture, people that see far beyond its plastic promises. I see men and women scouring the earth for peace, authenticity, identity, acknowledgement, truth, love and community.
Last time I read the bible, those words described the church. But are we really the counter-cultural community that confronts the individualism, consumerism, materialism and self-centredness of our post-modern culture that we are inevitably meant to be? Are we a band of radicals seeking an authentic life that challenges the cultural pattern that is destroying our world?
I’m so happy that the arms of our church are open wide to the outcasts and homeless of our city. But I would imagine that people like this walk into the contemporary, “relevant” church and feel like they may be experiencing a carbon copy of the hyper-reality, obesity and vanity of a fallen world that is slowly passing away.
When was the last time you saw a hobo in your church?
[Warning: some of these images contain graphic material]
A bath and a washing machine each use 80 litres of water, a power shower uses 70, flushing a toilet 9. A garden hose will use 450 litres an hour. This water is delivered to your door. It’s high quality stuff too, clean enough to drink. It’s usually available on demand. And although you may be charged for the amount you use, it’s almost free. This is amazing when you consider that people in other parts of the world may need to walk several kilometres each day to get a few litres from the local water source.
Turning off the tap should be a reflex action. But people often forget to do it. They leave the water running when they are brushing their teeth, when they are staring at themselves in the mirror, when they are combing their hair … or even after they have left the bathroom. This is a waste of a precious commodity – especially in long hot summers or in areas where demand is threatening to exceed supply. The same is true for turning off the lights when you leave a room. It’s so basic, but our forgetfulness (or laziness) will translate into higher electricity bills, more pollution and more greenhouse gases contributing to global warming.
I was recently asked by one of the pastors of my church to write a short article about change. I didn’t have a lot of time to write a well thought-out well-written article, but here’s what I gave him…
Woven deep into the fabric of our story is the inescapable narrative of change. It is an enduring function of the human condition, a process that is with us from a dependent infancy, to a frail old age.
It can be a sweet sensation or it can leave a bitter taste. But the reality is: we must change. Things must die when it is time for them to die so we can keep walking away from the person we were a moment ago to the new person we are becoming. Every person has to change, to go from bitterness to kindness, from conflict to peace, from sorrow to joy. Change is inevitable.
But how does change happen? How can I, as just one person, hope to make a significant difference in a world that seems so far from redemption? How can I see the end to suffering, abolish slavery, or alleviate extreme poverty?
This question has preoccupied the greatest minds from the beginning of time. The attainment of change has been the dream and driving force of the most noble of human beings ever to walk the face of the earth.
The first thing we must understand is that before we start pointing the finger at the evil that exists “out there” we must first face the reality of the evil “within.” Without first coming to grips with the evil in our own heart, we will never fully comprehend the process of change.
You see, pain and suffering are inherent in human existence. But some pain and suffering is avoidable because of the simple fact of the law of cause and effect.
Hunger doesn’t just happen by coincidence; it is a consequence of conflict, oppression, unfair trade rules, social change, political instability, colonial exploitation, and natural resource depletion. All of which are rooted in the decisions that people like you and me make on a daily basis.
How? Our increasingly globalised social and political world is a complicated web of processes and networks driven by a consumer-oriented economy. Your decision to buy an iPod or a chocolate bar here in Australia has consequences for people in dozens of countries.
For instance, your iPod was likely made with metal mined in South Africa where conditions are dangerous and pay is minimal, plastics produced in China by someone working a 14-hour day, oil mined from Iraq where an unjust war continues to ravage and then was assembled in Mexico by a 15 year-old child.
The chocolate bar you eat was likely produced with cocoa supplied by a farm in West Africa (where 80% of the world’s cocoa is collectively supplied). Hundreds of thousands of children working in these cocoa fields are subjected to the worst forms of child labour and are often abducted and trafficked across borders.
Our whole system, with all its injustices, operates around the decisions of consumers and voters. Put simply, we, as individuals living in the Western world, have the incredible power of choice. Our decisions have the ability to be destructive, but also have the ability to bring about positive change.
Our choices can make a significant difference and the two major choices you can make in life to influence change relate to what you consume and how you vote. We can choose to buy only fairtrade chocolate, or buy a t-shirt made locally and not in a sweatshop, or you can vote for those politicians that care about the issues that you care about.
So before we do any finger pointing or throw up our hands in defeat, we must understand the immense power of our choices and how they can affect people all over the world, but most importantly, how those choices, when informed, can be used to create positive change in the world.
Don’t ever believe the lie that an individual can’t change the world, because in fact, it is only individuals who ever have.
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