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Finally edited and uploaded, it's my side project from South Africa: Part one, Part two (on youtube), or here.
Most institutions that want to serve the poor play out a conflict between exclusivity and compassion. Faced with extreme need, an institution can establish rigid in/out boundaries in order to serve a few people well. Or it can take the alternate tack: It can open the gates wide and be overwhelmed, working hard to establish even a baseline standard of service and courting "burn out".
In the context of South Africa's dramatic and ongoing Zimbabwean refugee crisis, the Central Methodist Church has opted for the latter approach. An observer becomes aware of this in the South African media, where accusations of crime, sexual abuse, and "sub-human" living conditions are often made. The same realization can be had in visiting the place, which I had the privilege of doing in March: One is immediately greeted by that instantly recognizable cornucopia of stale stenches that usually accompanies human misery.
Paul Verryn, former Anglican bishop and current caretaker of Johannesburg's downtown parish, has not denied the chaos of the situation he has created by refusing to shut the doors. Rather, he has attempted to do his best to get the problems under control while reframing the discussion to talk about the national government's complete refusal to come up with some sort of plan to deal with the influx of Zimbabwean immigrants.
Beyond dirty bodies, what the place really reeks of is compassion. This dilapidated industrial-style monolith goes very far to embody compassion--black sheep of the family of Holy Spirit fruits, unmentionable in polite conversation--what with her enormous sweaty embrace, effusive, jabbering, unseemly, incapable of making all kinds of distinctions, blind to all the varieties and categories of personal accomplishment and failure claimed by those she draws to herself.
Sure looks bad now, but here's a church that might just stand a chance on the last day.
Showing posts with label Apocalypse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Apocalypse. Show all posts
A big white globe
"First Lesson About Man" by Thomas Merton
Man begins in zoology.
He is the saddest animal.
He drives a big red car called anxiety.
He dreams at night
Of riding all the elevators.
Lost in the halls,
He never finds the right door.
Man is the saddest animal.
A flake-eater in the morning,
A milk-drinker.
He fills his skin with coffee
And loses patience with the rest of his species.
He draws his sin on the wall,
On all the ads in all the subways.
He draws moustaches on all the women
Because he cannot find his joy,
Except in zoology.
Whenever he goes to the phone to call Joy,
He gets the wrong number.
Therefore he likes weapons.
He knows all guns by their right name.
He drives a big black Cadillac called death.
Now he is putting anxiety into space.
He flies his worries all around Venus,
But it does him no good.
In space where for a long time there is only emptiness,
He drives a big white globe called death.
Now dear children
Who have learned the first lesson about man,
Answer your test:
"Man is the saddest animal.
He begins in zoology,
And gets lost
In his own bad news."
-------
I don't know much about poetry. But I like this poem, which I just came across last night in an essay about the poetry of Thomas Merton. One reason I like the poem is that I find it to be a graceful interplay between tragedy and humor. But I don't know what is meant by that repeated line about man beginning "in zoology."
Man begins in zoology.
He is the saddest animal.
He drives a big red car called anxiety.
He dreams at night
Of riding all the elevators.
Lost in the halls,
He never finds the right door.
Man is the saddest animal.
A flake-eater in the morning,
A milk-drinker.
He fills his skin with coffee
And loses patience with the rest of his species.
He draws his sin on the wall,
On all the ads in all the subways.
He draws moustaches on all the women
Because he cannot find his joy,
Except in zoology.
Whenever he goes to the phone to call Joy,
He gets the wrong number.
Therefore he likes weapons.
He knows all guns by their right name.
He drives a big black Cadillac called death.
Now he is putting anxiety into space.
He flies his worries all around Venus,
But it does him no good.
In space where for a long time there is only emptiness,
He drives a big white globe called death.
Now dear children
Who have learned the first lesson about man,
Answer your test:
"Man is the saddest animal.
He begins in zoology,
And gets lost
In his own bad news."
-------
I don't know much about poetry. But I like this poem, which I just came across last night in an essay about the poetry of Thomas Merton. One reason I like the poem is that I find it to be a graceful interplay between tragedy and humor. But I don't know what is meant by that repeated line about man beginning "in zoology."
Living in Germantown has given me a brand new appreciation for birds
Hafez says:
One rosy face from the world's garden for us is enough,
And the shade of that one cypress in the field
Strolling along gracefully for us is enough.
Look at the flow of money and the suffering
Of the world. If this glimpse of profit and loss
Is not enough for you, for us it is enough.
The dearest companion of all is here. What
Else is there to look for? The delight of a few words
With the soul friend is enough.
--
Listening to Chopin in my room, both windows open and the rain pouring down outside, incense burning, watching that nocturne spinning around on a beautiful turntable. Cascading notes getting twisted up into the quiet, repetitive chaos of the rain.
I suppose it will sound hyperbolic to say it, but wouldn't it be somehow opulent to ask for another dose of this? In the interest of modesty alone, wouldn't it feel appropriate now to put away this whole business of recorded music? Surely for me one side of a good record at the right moment is enough.
This morning I experienced the glory of God on my front porch--I was eating a grapefruit at 830 in the morning, jobless "downwardly-mobile" bourgeois dilettante that I am; I was surveying the front yard. A moment of silence creeps up on you and then the foreground of Yard and Breakfast and Schedule and What-I-Am-Doing-With-My-Life starts disintegrating, like expanding holes of acid consuming a piece of paper (where the acid is the dull, stubborn insistence of the Background to be noticed). White noise becomes colored noise and suddenly I get startled to notice all of these birds, singing, taking turns, overlapping and interrupting, screaming, calling from every direction, up in the trees all around, at every distance, at varied volume, all shapes and sizes. Lord have mercy I live in the center ring of a bizarre circus. Help, my homo sapiens frame of reference is outnumbered, drowning in the chaotic net of delicate sounds and drowning in what it represents: The day-to-day routines of a million tiny winged bodies (twitching, contracting, jumping into the air, pooping, hungry again), none of whom for even a moment have felt the need of taking up the burden of self-awareness. For goodness sakes what has the Robin or the Cardinal ever done to accommodate the grand narrative of the human race, much less the arc of my life?
Surely for me a half an hour with these little chirping aliens is enough. Surely I could move back to the cement jungle of North Philadelphia and live there for the rest of my life without ever seeing another exotic-looking migratory bird, protected by the reality of one such encounter.
One rosy face from the world's garden for us is enough,
And the shade of that one cypress in the field
Strolling along gracefully for us is enough.
Look at the flow of money and the suffering
Of the world. If this glimpse of profit and loss
Is not enough for you, for us it is enough.
The dearest companion of all is here. What
Else is there to look for? The delight of a few words
With the soul friend is enough.
--
Listening to Chopin in my room, both windows open and the rain pouring down outside, incense burning, watching that nocturne spinning around on a beautiful turntable. Cascading notes getting twisted up into the quiet, repetitive chaos of the rain.
I suppose it will sound hyperbolic to say it, but wouldn't it be somehow opulent to ask for another dose of this? In the interest of modesty alone, wouldn't it feel appropriate now to put away this whole business of recorded music? Surely for me one side of a good record at the right moment is enough.
This morning I experienced the glory of God on my front porch--I was eating a grapefruit at 830 in the morning, jobless "downwardly-mobile" bourgeois dilettante that I am; I was surveying the front yard. A moment of silence creeps up on you and then the foreground of Yard and Breakfast and Schedule and What-I-Am-Doing-With-My-Life starts disintegrating, like expanding holes of acid consuming a piece of paper (where the acid is the dull, stubborn insistence of the Background to be noticed). White noise becomes colored noise and suddenly I get startled to notice all of these birds, singing, taking turns, overlapping and interrupting, screaming, calling from every direction, up in the trees all around, at every distance, at varied volume, all shapes and sizes. Lord have mercy I live in the center ring of a bizarre circus. Help, my homo sapiens frame of reference is outnumbered, drowning in the chaotic net of delicate sounds and drowning in what it represents: The day-to-day routines of a million tiny winged bodies (twitching, contracting, jumping into the air, pooping, hungry again), none of whom for even a moment have felt the need of taking up the burden of self-awareness. For goodness sakes what has the Robin or the Cardinal ever done to accommodate the grand narrative of the human race, much less the arc of my life?
Surely for me a half an hour with these little chirping aliens is enough. Surely I could move back to the cement jungle of North Philadelphia and live there for the rest of my life without ever seeing another exotic-looking migratory bird, protected by the reality of one such encounter.
No discount to be found when paying the ultimate price
VALLEY STREAM, NY—Until now, late November's violence and upheaval had been confined to south and southeast Asia. This morning the terror touches down on American soil, as horrific eyewitness accounts begin to trickle in from the idyllically-named Long Island suburb:
"They took the doors off the hinges..."
"He was trampled and killed in front of me."
"They're savages..."
"They took me down too...I literally had to fight people off my back."
"There's nothing we can do. The baby is gone."
"They took the doors off the hinges..."
"He was trampled and killed in front of me."
"They're savages..."
"They took me down too...I literally had to fight people off my back."
"There's nothing we can do. The baby is gone."
The One
This just in: Biblical scholars in Colorado Springs argue that presidential candidate John McCain exhibits telltale characteristics of the Antichrist. Read more here.
This is next
--
Oh, you Axis!
You dark prince!
Wielding your scimitar, bloodthirsty.
Castle of Pure Evil:
Shimmering, oriental palace;
Standing in sharp, foreboding profile on the horizon of the American public discourse.
--
This article presents a fairly well-documented genealogy of a key brick in the ideological bridge that would link Saddam Hussein with "Al Qaeda" in 2001.
Both capitalism and democracy are premised upon the "well-informed consumer," who will make the best self-interested decision based on that knowledge. But in our information-based economy, hidden-fee cell phone pricing plans and insidiously suggestive but unfounded front page news stories both seriously threaten the integrity of each system, respectively.
What satisfies me about this article is the same thing that satisfies me about reading Noam Chomsky and Paul Farmer re-trace American foreign policy Haiti: It is the incomparable pleasure of The Instant Replay. The semi-processed "data" that shapes public opinion is incredibly fluid--it zips by at a hundred miles per hour in a constant fluctuating feed of small information parcels. The Feed is not physical but spiritual, never complete but always coming into being (constantly reshaped based on its reception and consequences). Who among us mortals can possibly keep track of what was said, who said it, what happened as a result, much less whether or not it was true?
Thus, as an information consumer, I am always surprised by and grateful to anyone who has the resources and tenacity to exhume, reassemble and re-present an "information play" in slow motion, that it might be processed in a way that can yield understanding.
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