Hotel Rwanda
The True, the Good and the Beautiful are meaningless. Nihilistic fashion trends. These are the facts of our world.
If our world is meaningless.
If we our content with what our churches do.
If people like Bono are derided as egotistical, because they want us to love others.
Our art is hopeless.
My poetry is nothing but doggrel.
Our emotions are vain,
so is our beauty,
so is our charming truth,
so is our goodness.
We have the goodness of enuchs, people whose capacity for mischef has been removed
surgically, who call this our circumcision, and a sign that we are righteous.
Are our hearts circumcised?
We stretch our mouths to let the big words out, we kneel in our big churches* as we pray to the big god.
For all our little nonsense, for our baseball, and church skits.
We are americans, patent holders of the nuke, chemical death.
We have the ability to rend apart the tiniest, most indivisible thing.
And we do so.
We pull specks out of arab eyes, look them in the eye, and impale them with our honeyed words and big sticks.
If I can speak Russian like Tolstoi,
yet have not love
If I can speak with the tongues of angels
hold the hand of the devil,
yet have not love.
Then I'm chewed up recording tape,
I am the resounding gong,
all my deeds of artisticness are naught but the purples of Kinkade sunsets.
Americans with big smiles, we wanted walls torn down,
and they are down
rubble and souveniurs,
yet barriers remain,
cages,
bars,
boarded windows
and
walls, fortresses, guard towers, and barb wire.
We wrap our children in barb wire to protect them from men with dark eyes.
Wire and thorns make our skin tough, and our ears become calloused
so we cannot hear
"A voice was heard in Ramah,
lamentation,
weeping, and
great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children,
refusing to be comforted,
because they were no more."
"We've got information in the information age but do we know what life is like outside of our convenient Lexus cages"
"Where is the Life we have lost in living"
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
Africa has been torn apart, we abducted Africans to bring us our sugar, and pipeweed
we dismiss it, claim we owe nobody nothing,
to the big god,
we pour libations of blood.
We stepped onto the dark continent;
we set it aflame,
to light the way.
So what happened?
ChristiankillarabkilljewkillchristiankilljewkillarabkillchristiankillABRAHAM,
ShemkillJapethkillHamkillShemkillhamkilljapethkills e v e r y b o d y
white man won, liberate the world from fascist supremcists for socialist and capitalistic supremicists
seperate the dark skins from the light skins
Evolution and
big god must have their way.
Our skins must be saved but we will say a prayer for
your soul
Martyrs will be the light of the world,
read our big book bible studies
by the pyres
and stakes
(steaks medium well)
Our pet wolves drive the shepherd from the flock,
driving the flock to
Gorazde,
to Hotel Rwanda.
They paint suffering Christs as self-protraits from blood of their wounds,
we buy them,
frame them,
the fame the fame the fame
BIG TIME!
Do we paint with our anaemic blood, to show
our son,
hung on our spires,
Died for the proletariet,
and will
rise again,
To dig up the mass graves
The Africans tossed overboard
to tunes of "Amazing Grace"
will walk ashore
Walk through our souls
Acid upon paper
etching our crimes into pages
Like Milosevic's obitury
Will we hang ourselves?
Strange fruit from our prosethtic trees.
posted by Eriol @ 11:51 p.m.
6 comments
6 Comments:
So what are you going to do about it?
I think I'll start calling you the "prophet".
I liked it by the way.
What an interesting piece. I think I have something to send you to go with it.
Hmm...Beautifully written, as all your works are, eriol. Though if you mean all those things you just said, I'd say you've made some very large generalizations.
Nothing that we haven't disagreed on before, but still. As long as I contribute to this blog (and I still do, believe it or not) I will add my two cents worth.
Seems like you have plenty of criticisms, especially against your own fellow American Christians. Yes, they are your brothers and sisters, whether they "stretch their mouths to let the big words out, they kneel in their big churches", or they are "Martyrs, lighting the way for the world". You have polarized your own fellow Christians with those kinds of statements, instead of offering an alternative. For the moment, all you're doing is offering doom and gloom. But do you have a solution? Because otherwise, what's the point?
I've got to say, I always enjoy reading anything from you, Eriol, because you are an excellent writer. But if you can't channel that writing towards something constructive, then why do it at all? It's ok to decry some things within your world that you don't like (within moderation), but if you don't offer a better way, then I don't understand why you would want to write it.
Eucharisto,
I'm glad you're still here, and your two cents will be continually added. I don't rule this blog, it's a community thing.
Yes, I've made some very large generalizations, about church, politics, art and what not, but I did not write them to condemn you or others, I wrote them out of self-conviction. I wrote despairingly but I did not single myself out, because I realized, everything I've not accomplished, or the good deeds I prevented others from doing, came apart out of myself, and doing so I added them to the chains of unrighteousness, that links to Adam and Eve. As people we have made a mound of suffering; this is visible every day.
As part of the church, we have done wrong. The Catholics persecuted the Reformers, and the Reformers persecuted the Radical Reformers, such as the Amish and Quakers. Obviously by the example set by these aforementioned groups, we do not have to continue this suffering. I wrote because of a question: does the contemporary America church have a willingness not to pain others, or to not allow our government to cause needless pain. This is why I referenced Bono. This is big question, will we peacemakers aka "Sons and daughters of God" or will we be a "brood of vipers"? I do not give an answer either, rather I need to and you need to, we all need to examine what we support and what we believe and see if that is reality. So obviously I cannot act better than you, I cannot act better than Sufjan Stevens, who says he can't act better than John Wayne Gacy.
It has something of a Lenten importance; we examine ourselves, so we may realize how terrible we are. "None are good but God."
As artists we cannot indulge in our mythologies while tradgies happen outside. We communicate Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. In ourselves we have a natural beauty, but not the apocalyptic glory that will save us. So this something we lack (to a degree, as Christians we have it somewhere because of the Trinity). So without the revelation of Beauty which "Nature longs for" we are left with Truth and Goodness. I doubt I've seen much goodness in art, I mean I've seen good art (which is certainly praiseworthy), but goodness is a state of being, not a adjective, we can communicate this, but we can only do so as a telephone wire carrying a signal from one place to another, i.e. From God to the world, this goodness is obviously not ours (though we can prctice it).
Big Words Big Mouths Big Churches
You probably recognize the quoted phrase is from Peter Gabriel's song "Big Time."
It's not a critique of New Life, or of Pastor Ted, or of mega-churches in general.
Rather it is about the exploitation of churches for political or social gain. Tom Cruise uses Scientology for fame; as long as he's a missionary everyone will know whom he is. Tom Delay manipulated religious organizations like Focus on the Family, and conservitive religious voters in Texas so he could maintain power and enrich himself (I'm not trying to be partisan; I'm not for either party, Delay is just an excellent recent example of corruption).
So i was trying to write more from a person who babbles like a Pharisee that others might notice. Gabriel (off-topic) wrote from a 3rd world perspective, where often people see the size and structure of building shows-off the churches' power.
I get what you're saying about pointless criticiscm and not being constructive in solutions, but i have no solutions. At least not right now. I'm going to school and seeing what good I can do with my education. I read blogs and newspapers to be informed, but these are not solutions, at least they're not grand solutions. I'm hoping you might have something, or the knight might have something. I cannot do everything. Or even anything. I can say something is horribly wrong. Right now I'm trying to let the truth about the terribleness of the world affect my worldview, to find what I honestly care about, and seeing in some small ways I can do good. What are you going do? I'm throwing down a gauntlet; I'm curious, eager, excited to see what we want to do. I haven't posted any of my poems of late, and I'm a little tired of them and myself. I can't write a poem that will save Africa, but I can write about things and people that are not my own and are not myself.
I'm glad for your comments, as they sharpen myself, and push me towards greater sublety and nuance.
P.S. I would make a terrible prophet.
Brilliant response. And I have to apologise if I came off as a knee-jerk Christian. It's not that, I just feel the need to protect my fellow Christians, and probably overact when what you were saying is true to an extent.
To take this point by point, and since this is more of a discussion than an argument (thank God! Help us keep it that way), I'll add my thoughts.
In accordance to the first point, about the church doing wrong:
Yes, you are right. The church has done very much wrong to very many people. But I'd say (and this is in accordance with your comment) that Christians have suffered more at the hands of the "church" than any other group. Really, this isn't about Christians persecuting non-Christians, as much as it is far more about so-called Christians persecuting the real Christians. So, in effect, me and my ancestors haven't necessarily done wrong. Perhaps they were the victims, not the violators. So, I suppose what I'm saying is, I don't feel I have anything to apologize to the world for. I can't answer for anybody but myself, in the end. I certainly won't group myself with those who have been violators of goodness in the name of Christ. I fight against them. I will say that in today's world, I don't apologize for the church, either. The church, with all of it's clumsiness and pondering, and stepping in mud to deep for itself, is still the bride of Christ, and I cannot and will not ever abandon her. It doesn't mean I have to agree with everything every church ever says. But it does mean that I can only do as much as I can influence. When you say you can do no more than any other man, you are right. But you aren't trying to measure up to man. You're trying to measure up to God. You can do that in Christ. Through Christ, we are being made into his image, his workmanship. We are a work unfinished, for sure, but every man is made good through Christ. It would be easy for me to think lowly of myself. To think in the negative, in sadness and darkness. For goodness sake, I'm an artist, aren't I? But what keeps me going is remembering that through Christ, I am made new, I don't have to try to be better than the next guy that comes along. I do think that we should be humble about it, for sure. God despises the proud but gives grace to the humble. But, it should give us a healthy confidence in who we are in Christ. Kind of encouraging, really.
In reference to your thought about Truth, beauty and goodness:
It may seem that there is not beauty, but I'd say that there is something that most of modern Christianity misses, that is the real way to bring beauty about, and in so doing, we find we are living out truth, in goodness. It comes from living incarnationally. The whole idea is about bringing life to art, and every other part of life, through Christ. Just as Christ was God incarnate, and brought life to the world through it, we also, through Christ, have the ability to bring life into whatever we do as Christians. So don't give up, beauty isn't unattainable, we've just got to know how to obtain it. And that is only through Christ.
On the issue of politics, social issues and the church: Weirdly enough, I probably agree with just about everything you said. As a matter of fact, I totally agree about Tom Delay. As a matter of fact, I was glad to know that he was stepping out of office. In regard to Dobson and him, I don't even think Delay had to manipulate Dobson. Dobson walked straight into it willingly. Weirdly enough, and I don't know this for sure, just have kept my eye on it, but for some reason, even though they are only three miles apart on the ground, New Life and Focus have practically no connection. It's almost like they've distanced themselves. I think it's because there is a difference between having Christian convictions about social and political issues and discussing them in a church format, as opposed to using the pulpit to exploit a political idealogy. I don't have any true right to judge Dr. Dobson, it seems that he's a Godly man, but it also seems that he will...almost blindly support anything conservative, fudamentalist Christian, at the cost of the truth. That is not the way we as Christians want to present ourselves. We want to present ourselves as smart, intelligent, able to think apart from any conservative pre-conceptions or right-wing idealisms, and think independently. Not that we aren't conservative, but that if we are, we've come to those conclusions in an intelligent and educated manner. I will say, there's nothing wrong with having convictions about politics or sociology based on your religion. That's the same thing every person does. Everyone has some sort of belief system, and that will influence how they view the world. But we've got to be careful how we go about it.
In regard to constructive criticism, I'd say that you've missed the point. The point isn't to write poem that saves africa. That's way the heck out of your sphere of influence, so to speak. You can, however, write a poem that affects your class, or your teachers, or your church (or me, for that matter! It's happened before!). You are influencial, whether you realize it or not. There's this great quote from this new movie about this girl and a spelling bee, and I can't remember the exact phrasing, but it says something to the effect of:
Our greatest fear is not that we lack greatness. Our greatest fear is that we have an abundance of it.
You have greatness inside you, whether you realize it or not. You have the ability to influence others around you, just by the words you say, or the things you write. Look at the other comments on this page. People were convicted by what you said! You have (just as I have, and the knight has, and most everyone has) great potential. You should take hold of it, and make use of it.
I don't hold all the answers, but I do have convictions that lead me to speak my ideas and inspirations and fears and concerns into the lives of others. That is why I blog. That is why I write. That is why I am an artist. And that is why you are an artist too, eriol.
That's all I got for now! Hope it made some sense.
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