Predestination

The shooting in Pittsburgh last week…a man walked into a gym and killed several women; he had planned this for some time, was apparently openly disturbed, published details of it online and was questioned by police a week before under suspicion of having a grenade on public transport. Yet, somehow, ‘nobody noticed’ that something was amiss with him.
The murderer noted that, at church, “This guy [the pastor] teaches (and convinced me) you can commit mass murder, then still go to heaven.” A deacon of this church (from which the murderer was removed for harassing a woman) stated, “God will hold him accountable. God has his justice.” The pastor, “Knapp, who left town Saturday to care for his critically ill father in Florida, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Friday that, ‘the message of the word I preach never reflected such a thing.’” But then the deacon immediately states, “We believe in permanent security—once saved, always saved,” Rickard [the deacon] said. “He will be judged, but he will be in heaven. ... He’ll be in heaven, but he won’t have any rewards because he did evil.” (Quotes from AP.)

So which is it? You preached a message of ultimate predestination and election; that one can do nothing that would turn God away from your salvation. Yet you say that he’s going to ‘be judged.’ What, is he going to have to sit in the penalty box for a thousand years? You gave the man a message that he would find acceptance and peace in the life beyond whist fully missing all markers of his unhappiness in this life and attempting to address them here.

The gun dealer where the murderer purchased his weapons certainly does not take responsibility for anything, “Thompson [the dealer] said attacks like Tuesday’s underscore the need for people to protect themselves because police can’t respond in time to crises, he said.”

So…to be clear, the woman in the gym are to blame for this because they were unarmed. They were foolish enough to go out in public without adequate protection from disturbed men who can easily purchase high-powered weapons used in battle and designed specifically for killing people. That has to be the most pathetic logic I’ve heard in at least the last three weeks. Yet people spout it off with a straight face. Why are we checking for weapons in airports? It would seem logical that what is really necessary is to arm everyone on the plane to make things even.

Also, this man was craving attention—and now has it. His name is all over the news around the world. For however many years people did not pay attention to him; he was not important enough to note or give help to and now ‘everyone is talking about him.’ How wise is that? We are giving ammunition to others like him who feel they have no other alternative. What does this have to say about our society that we are so unaware of people with mental illness that they have to completely break down and kill for us to notice (and then we are ‘shocked and saddened’)? It is wholly destructive from all angles that we pay no heed to the warnings (and are ill equipped to deal with them regardless, I would imagine there was nothing the police could do when they encountered him a week before without ‘proof’) and give over an arsenal of tools (literally) to the socially maladjusted for bad ends.

This is going to pass right under the radar; big news for this week till the next tragedy on Wednesday. We will go right back to our lives…and right now there is a lonely person searching for an assault rifle online who thinks this will be his option out.

Oh Bother

Because of a bureaucratic glitch, I’m going to have to leave the UK at the end of this month. One is required to have £800 in the bank at all times for the three months prior to making an application for a visa. That first month of working, when I was transitioning from “student” to “full-time worker, taxpayer, and general contributor to society”, I dipped slightly below that. I realised this three months ago (after if was already too late) and called the Home Office; they said the rule was absolute but, of course, someone sits down and reviews my specific situation (e.g. that I have a full-time permanent job and a regular income). However, I called the international student advisor at my school earlier this week to get the necessary documentation from him for my application—and he said not to even bother. Apparently the government is finding any excuse to deny visas (he just had 120 denied because there was a date presented incorrectly on the graduation letter from Strathclyde). He said that, a year ago, in my situation, they would not have even blinked. “Oh, this fellow already has a job…here is the visa”. Now they are absolutely hard-line, black and white.

We are looking into what my options are; my (terrifically supportive) company is keen on keeping me. The most sensible thing is going to be to end my contract here and send me to another one of the offices abroad (France seems the likely contender at the moment, we are checking on the procedure for a French visa [which, though the French have their own reputation for red tape, seems much more at ease than the British system. The Home Office has all these guidelines and forms regarding visas; the French Consulate General website basically says, “call us up for an appointment and we’ll talk about your needs”—perhaps with a glass of wine and some cheese]). The bizarre thing is that the government is shooting itself in the foot with stuff like this; my company is not going to hire someone else in my place, they will just send me to another country…and my tax and social revenue will go there with me. I want to be here! I have a good job, plus I do NGO work on the side and want to bring in folk from the organisations I work with do training and programs here. I’m not leaching off the government or just floundering about. Grrrrrr (to use an exact expression).

It’s a sudden upheaval; just as I am getting settled in, I must leave because of a relatively minor technicality. I will try to come back (as I have till next September to apply for a post-graduate study visa). However, once the visa I have expires (this month), I will have to apply from abroad; applicants from a third country must have £2800 in the bank at all times for the three months prior to application. So wherever I go, it will be for at least three months plus the processing time.

This is all a huge bother and I feel like I’m not dealing with people; just up before a big machine. It is an education though; as an American, it’s easy to fall into an slightly rosy understanding of what one’s rights are to travel and live abroad since my passport opens so many doors. However, my country is famous (now at least) for not reciprocating that openness (e.g. the citizens of many of the places I have been can not travel to the US as readily as I can to their countries). I understand the reasons for all these things on paper; but, when one is dealing with a system that defines people’s lives by an unwavering observation of a set of rules, it’s difficult to maintain an un-biased view.

What happens

I’m back in Glasgow for a few days to pack up my things and prepare for the move to Dumfries and Galloway where I will start work at The Green House, the main offices of Natural Power (See more on The Green House itself at this link.) My title there will be marketing assistant though my role will focus a good deal on internal communications (the company is rapidly expanding and we need to keep track of what everyone is doing in the several offices worldwide). I’ll also produce design and layout work (something I’ve been wanting to do more of) as well as put those cinema and video production skills back into play.
We mostly consult on the design and construction of on and offshore windfarms (the company is well respected and has a 100% success rate for planning acceptance; this is from a combination of careful sighting and a good ethos for working with communities where farms are proposed). They do everything from small sites of a couple turbines to very large offshore installations (such as a 1100 MW site in Ireland that will provide 10% of the country’s electricity).

This will be a big change for me after ten years sporadic freelance work; however, If I’m to take a “proper job”, I’m glad it’s at a place such as this. I think energy is the topic of the moment (how it’s produced, used and abused). I’m looking forward into getting into the thick of it with a group of people who are at the forefront of renewable energy (that’s not an attempt at marketing spin, they really do good stuff). The friend who originally told me about Natural Power said this is one of the best working environments she has encountered (she was working as a headhunter for the renewables sector). These are the “bright green” people who are changing the face of “corporate society”.

Much much more to follow.

A different sort of MSc

You know you are in a different sort of master’s program when one of your classmates tries to glue himself to the Prime Minister! The details are a bit sketchy but see the BBC story here.
I’m—not entirely sure what to make of it; apparently Mr. Brown just laughed it off and allowed Dan to stay at Downing Street for a while. I think in the US he might have been shot or something.

Update: there is a CNN article and video interview with Dan here.

The Greatest Silence

Just came across this film on systemic rape in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Having visited the DRC, I’ve had a little primer on the situation there; yet, some of these stories shake me to the core. I am amazed and saddened that one of the most beautiful ways of sharing between people is made into such a horrible violation of humanity.

Living by Metaphor

We had last week the first session of Food Culture and Agriculture, a course on how societies view the growth of food and the customs that surround it. “Customs” here are far-reaching; we are not merely discussing table customs, but the cycles of consumption and waste that are necessarily connected to our “modern” food “industry” (perhaps food should also be in quotes as the pre-packaged frozen salted preserved irradiated bar-coded best-by dated substance purchased in the supermarket bears little resemblance to what was once considered cuisine).

There are any number of criticisms one can raise concerning food culture; there are arguments that we have larger issues at hand to consider. However, until the Industrial Revolution, the world was based on agrarian societies. We planned our years based on agricultural cycles; we lived near the soil. Now we think of soil as something dirty. It is something dead and dusty that gets tracked into the house and must be vacuumed up and disposed of (as an aside, most of the dust in one’s home is dander or the faecal material of dust mites who have fed on sloughed off skin). At best, we look upon soil as an inert medium in which we grow plants.

We consider ourselves the benefactor of the agricultural cycle. However, we are not the end product of agriculture; plants and produce are not the final product either. Soil is the product of agriculture. Without the regeneration of soil, agriculture is impossible.

I’m going to meander and come back to this in later postings as I’m interested in the interplay between the environment and religious belief.

We all live by metaphors; societies function by the consensus of ideas (or, to be harsher, often we live by the consensus of delusion). The primary metaphor of western society is that humankind is cursed and in need of redemption; we’ve been developing the components of this metaphor for the past several thousand years and its influence and consequences have now spread over all the Earth. We are a fallen race; the consequence of the fall is this:

And unto Adam He said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
—Genesis 3:17-19 KJV

This has been the basis for social custom and cohesion for millennia; the primary activity of humankind has been to toil in the fields. Yet, suddenly, within a few generations, we have surpassed this original curse (and burdened ourselves with a new one). These verses tend to get read through quickly, as if they are of secondary importance to the whole “we’ll be fighting against Satan till the end of time” thing. But, what we fight against is dust. The felt consequence of the curse are not primarily the fight against cosmic forces or the fact that we have to wear clothing; it’s that we will forever struggle against dust. And we are made of dust; we face an intractable situation. We are bound to tend the soil till we return to it; or, at least, we were until we unleashed the powers of industry on the world.

I wonder if the environmental and societal issues we face now are rooted in a grand attempt to abandon the metaphor of dust. What greater power could our species show than to gain the upper hand on God and his feeble curse? What greater expression of pride could we display?

Yet, in this attempt, we drain life from soil. We have replaced life with chemistry and killed the mystery. The substance of our lives is humus; but it is this substance we seem to disdain and distance ourselves from. I think that, unless we return to a closer understanding of soil and the consequences of its loss, we can never have a healthy respect for others (or for ourselves, for the future, for the environment). If we do not consider or respect the base substance of life, there can be no respect of any living thing.

Disturbing

Today I read one of the most profoundly disturbing things I’ve seen in some time. One of the big supermarket chains here in the UK is experimenting with “in-store chaplains.” It’s a way for churches to “get involved in the community.”

Video from Congo and Albania

After a couple years; International Ministries has finally posted some video from my trips to the DRC and Albania. I did most of the videotaping of this material. Francisco Litardo did all the editing and post-production (he is the narrator and, I’m assuming, chose the swanky hep muzak as well).
First, an overview of their work in Albania:

Then, Into the Heart of Darkness:

And Wayne (note that the video rather sounds like Wayne and Katherine are siblings that later married and came back to Congo as missionaries; don’t fear, they grew up in Congo as the offspring of two distinct sets of parents).

And, this is the kind of thing that makes me bust out crying behind the camera…

I’ll not post them all here; you can go to the God at Work page on the International Ministries website to see more. There are selections from all over the world showing what IM missionaries are up to. One thing I especially respect about them is that they are looking at the real physical needs of people instead of just dropping Bibles from 10,000 feet. The IM missionaries I’ve worked with are seriously dedicated people who are right there on the front lines with people in palpable need. Even if you don’t share the same religious ideology or fervour, it’s the commitment these people have to making real change in the here and now of people’s lives that commands respect.

We spend all this time and effort to get the highest quality video possible; I obsess over all the technical details—and the final product gets compressed down and shown on YouTube. Alas.

Abusive Viewpoint

Earlier this week, As part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival, the Centre for Contemporary Art hosted a day-long seminar on using the arts to work with youth experiencing mental health issues. I attended several discussions and workshops; Lorenzo Mele, of 7:84 Theatre Company Scotland led a brief workshop on producing collaborative drama (or Forum Theatre...this is “of the oppressed week” for me as we are reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed for my MSc and I am now reading Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed from which forum theatre is based). After the workshop, Lorenzo invited me to a performance today at The Tron, a theatre here in the city.

The performance (though, as you will see below, that’s not quite the correct term) is short drama dealing with domestic abuse. The material for themes and scripting came from youth in several Glasgow schools. It was staged with two actors; one actor played the part of a man at various stages from youth to adulthood. The other, a woman, played his girlfriend, mother, father, teacher, and counselor (both wore masks). The viewpoint character was the man (this was rather disturbing to some in attendance because, at first consideration, it seemed he was supposed to be a sympathetic character).

The actors went through the whole performance once (about 45 minutes) then began again; however, the second time through, members of the audience could call for the action to stop and request that one or the other characters lift the mask and reveal his or her thoughts. (The dialogue here came from a mix of the actor’s understanding of the character and the young people who contributed to the scripting).

Unfortunately, we were not able to proceed on to the third (and, arguably, most important) stage. The actors would go through the play again; this time though, the audience would become actively participative in the story itself. At any time they could call out, stop the action, and make suggestions for how the characters should act to change the situation (or actually step into the role of one of the characters). I think this would have cleared up some of the misgivings about showing the man as a sympathetic character; this was drama written by and for a very specific audience (young people at risk of abuse or becoming abusers).¹ The point was to set up a space where they could explore these issues head on—yet still be in a “safe” place where the action can play itself out. The session this afternoon was an adult audience who work with youth in these situations and are considering ways to address them creatively.

Kudos to 7:84 for doing this project; it’s not something that can just be done on paper and it’s not something that can be performed “at a distance.” The actors involved have to have a good understanding of the issues and be willing to “act” face to face with someone who may be playing these things out in reality.

¹ though I think that is not really a separate group of any society; everyone is at risk of some form of abuse and we all hold the potential of doing great harm (or great good) in the lives of those close to us.