Being! Or Nothingness

By My Betters

There is an article on "Walk the Line" over at Godspy.  It pretty much says everything I just posted about the movie, only he says it much better.  Go over to Godspy and read it!

Ring of Fire

I enjoyed the new Johnny Cash movie "Walk the Line."  It was an entertaining movie, and fun to watch a dramatic story about such a fascinating man.  I'm not among those who will lament that the movie underplayed the Christian conflict in Johnny Cash's life.  It's true that this doesn't play prominently in the movie.  But this is pretty hard to do, particularly for a good movie maker who probably doesn't understand a lot of the nuance in such a struggle.  Instead the movie takes the easy way out to show Johnny's life long obsession and eventual love for June Carter.

June is Johnny Cash's Beatrix.  As a young post-depression era boy he fell in love with 10 year old June Carter's voice on the radio.  Too young for this to be sexualized, his love for her was pure . . . her voice struck a deep chord with the boy.  As he grew older and life took the normal courses life takes he married his first wife Vivian and had two daughters.  Then he met June.

From day one Johnny is clearly taken with June.  It's as if the longing and desire of his youth comes to him, but it's fruitless.  He's married.  He has a daughter and one on the way.  She has two daughters also.  And she's married.

In a different age, these things might have mattered little.  But the drama of their fidelity and their obvious attraction plays out over years.  Their love is chaste for a long time.  Sobriety helps them.  But pretty soon the liquor and the drugs take their toll and their human resistance fails.  By this time June has had two disappointing marriages.  Johnny's is falling apart. 

Vivian was married to Johnny but she wanted him to be someone else.  Someone who stayed home, worked a safe job, spent time with the kids.  This isn't a bad desire.  It's just not realistic.  It didn't fit the man.  He wanted June.  He didn't know what it meant to be faithful, sure as hell didn't want to stay home.  It wouldn't be long before Vivian left with their three daughters and Johnny hit rock bottom.  For 9 years.

When Johnny emerges the only person who stuck by him, who was there through all of the crap, through his detox, his dark night, was June.  His obsession is transformed into love.  She wasn't so sure.  It takes 6 months for Johnny Cash to wear her down (not much time really).  And she takes the beautiful leap into the unknown.

June leads him out of the hell he has created for himself with liquor and drugs.  June leads him out of the personal hell of his depression and vice.  June (in a great scene, even if brief) and her parents drive off the demons (a drug dealer) with shotguns.  Through all of his descent and his purgation, June is the beacon of hope and purity he longs for.  Johnny is saved because of his love for June.

And he lives out the rest of his days for her.

It was a great story.  Maybe not the whole story.  But what was there was good.  The movie I give a B.  But the man . . .  The Man in Black . . . he gets an A.

Rest In Peace, Johnny Cash.  If the Devil don't take ya, Jesus will.

The Man In Pink

I just got back from watching the recently released Johnny Cash movie, "Walk the Line."  I enjoyed it.  But before I post a little about the movie and what struck me about the movie I wanted to blog about one of the previews (of which there were like 20).  What brainiac thought up the idea of 20 previews?  I was one preview away from getting up and demanding my money back . . . but that's a hole other issue.

The preview that I noticed (and I guess that's their job right?  to get you to notice them?) was for the new Ang Lee movie "Brokeback Mountain."  It stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as two ranch hands who fall in love and spend the rest of their lives trying to run from the "truth" of their forbidden love.  The love that dare not speak its name.

Zzzzzz . . . zzzzz . . . uh . . . oh . . . sorry, I fell asleep thinking about it.  I mean seriously, how many times do we have to see that worn out old story line retold in a new genre, a new culture, a new, ahem, sexuality.

There were only about 20 people in the theater with me, but the reaction to this preview can be described pretty much as discomfort.  I mean, it was just so contrived.  Two guys, out fishing, sleeping in the same tent, hugging each other, kissing each other, smelling each others clothes  . . . blegh.

The movie didn't even strike me as interesting.  It seemed way too long, way too dramatic, and way too foreign to my life.  I mean, at least when the same old story line is told in a "soldier and native" motif or a "rich and poor" motif I can identify with the guy wanting to love the beautiful woman.  But in this movie, I don't even get to share that.

I felt a little like they were inviting me to buy a ticket to watch a train-wreck.  Maybe some people like watching train-wrecks, but most people don't go to a movie to say "Holy shit, that's just all screwed up."  People go to movies to be entertained, not made to feel uncomfortable.  The only people who might enjoy this movie are homosexuals and those lefty brainiacs who go to "support" their gay friends.

And therein lies one of the problems with the gay movement.  It's so oppressive.  The gay movement doesn't advocate living side by side with the rest of society, it wants to be looked at, it wants to be engaged, and it wants to make you feel uncomfortable.  I mean, even the word "queer" fits this bill.  What do "queer" things do to you?  They make you feel uncomfortable, disturbed, weirded out.

Umm, no thanks.  Not only do I not want to watch this movie, I am annoyed that I can't even go see a movie about the man in black (who probably has some interesting thoughts on the "queer" movement itself) without being totally weirded out, or grossed out, or just annoyed by this sleazy propaganda masquerading as a film.

The only refuge for me after the preview was that I tried to convince myself that this movie was written by a bitter wife whose husband fishes too much.  There is a scene where the wife of one of the gay characters confronts him and says "You don't go up with him to go fishing!" (or something like that).  I just chuckled as I thought every wife in Texas would use that the next time her husband said he was going out with the boys to catch some fish . . . "Are you sure you just go for the fishing?"

It's enough to make any red-blooded American man stay away from the lake.  But instead, I'll just stay away from this movie.

A chuckle . . .

This made me chuckle . . . Good Doctor Video

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

Abraham Lincoln instituted Thanksgiving Day as a national holiday.  Here is his beautiful proclamation:

From the collection of Lincoln's papers in the Library of America series, Vol II, pp. 520-521

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things.

They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American People.

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

The Document is Out of the Closet

And guess what . . . it says what the Church has always taught.  Surprise, surprise . . . Men who are admitted to Holy Orders must be affectively mature, chaste, and not have "deep seated homosexual tendencies" which in Italian is rendered "tendenze omosessuali profondamente radicate".  What that means precisely, is probably being left to the consciences of Bishops to decide.

"In the light of such teaching, this Dicastery, together with the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, deems it necessary to clearly affirm that the Church, even while deeply respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to Seminary or Holy Orders those who are actively homosexual, have deep-seated homosexual tendencies, or support the so-called gay culture."  -Translated by Robert Mickens

Read it at Whispers in the Loggia

For My Friends

For my friends in The Movement . . . all the pictures you would ever want of our dear Don Gius!

3 Year Rule

Drudge is reporting that the Vatican Document on same sex attraction and the priesthood will require that those with same sex attraction exhibit freedom from effects of the attraction for at least three years. 

I'm sure everyone is unhappy with this one.  It doesn't seem to go as far as some want.  And any restriction whatsoever is too far for others.  I'm still waiting to see what it "really" says . . .

On Becoming Friends, a testimony

The Holy Fool met The Movement.  It's a testimony to the event of Christ that these blogs, these electronic newsletters could spark this kind of encounter.  And so it is as it always was.  Christ passes through all of reality!

Then the singing ended. Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete filled the silence with his melodious Italian accent and his profound counsel. His lit cigarette burned in his right hand, while he made the required gestures of all Paisan with the left. His words, down-to-earth and yet sublime, challenged all of us to not take Christianity for granted. Indeed, he spoke of encounters with Christ through scripture and his Church as provocations, which is not the serene encounter I long for. Nonetheless, it remains the truth.

Friends responded. One, then another, spoke on the selected chapter that the various gathered schools of community had studied in CL founder Msgr. Luigi Giussani's Why the Church? That chapter was "Why Humanity?"

As they reflected on a book that I hadn't even read, I found myself drawn to their responses. I suddenly perceived the sheer hilarity, the insanity, of it all--the unadulterated Foolishness of the Lord God. He chose to reveal himself through his flawed creation. The Limitless sought expression through the limited. The Most High chose to encounter us through the low faces of one another! God, the omnipotent, makes himself known and felt through we the everlasting ignorant! Imagine that for a moment!

He reveals himself through us! And we, who've somehow come to experience his presence in our lives, however imperfectly, become the very community through whom others will encounter him. For we're marked by our experience from him; we really are. We've somehow been so powerfully moved by his presence that we've literally bet our lives and chosen to believe in him. We've chosen to order our lives according to him and the communion in whom he continues to live, the Church!

What I Want

I found this poem by Czeslaw Milosz on Dreadnought, and as I read it resonated so much that I said: "I want this too!"  I have it, as a beginning, with a couple of friends, but I want it with the depth of desire expressed here:

Veni, Creator (1961)

Come, Holy Spirit,
bending or not bending the grasses,
appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame
as they harvest or when they plow in the orchards or when snow
covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada.
I am only a man: I need visible signs.
I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction.
Many a time I asked, you know it well, that the statue in the church
lift its hand, only once, just once, for me.
But I understand that signs must be human,
Therefore call one man, anywhere on earth, not me — after all I have some decency —
And allow me, when I look at him, to marvel at you.