jump to navigation

Saw Gran Torino this morning January 26, 2009

Posted by Zack in Michigan | write a comment

We went to see Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino this morning at the $4 special matinee.

What an amazingly well-done movie. It was great. But it needs to be said that one bad thing about the movie is it sets up the Eastwood character as this white savior in a low income neighborhood that’s mainly black and Hmong. The not-so-subtle message is that European American culture is superior (he saves, plans, works hard, keeps up his house, etc… while everyone else is just kind of lost to chaos and laziness). A great connection could have been made between the ultimate gang violence of America’s Asian wars and the neighborhood gang violence (the central story of the film) of some of the children of American’s most unfortunate victims and proxy fighters in the Vietnam war.

Nevertheless, it was incredibly satisfying to watch scenes of a Hmong girl schooling Eastwood when he asks, “Why didn’t you people stay over there?” And she says, “We fought on your side, and when you lost, we were f**ked and everyone was going to kill us. So we had to come here.”

I’m eagerly awaiting:

  1. any reviews/reactions from anyone in the Hmong community;
  2. a review by Thom Stark on the violence/non-violence message.

Secret worlds January 24, 2009

Posted by Zack in Uncategorized | 2 comments

OK — here’s something. But then look below to see how Neil Gaiman said the same thing (at least of the first half), but in three sentences and way better! I just saw the Gaiman quote yesterday before I was about to post this.

The most important thing to remember is the infinity of the person sitting next to you on the bus, or the person bagging your groceries, or your mother.

It’s a good way to remind yourself of the truth of the principal of equal worth of all people. If you’re anything like me, you need a reminder too every now and then.

Every human brain is a universe of trillions of neurons. Even each one of those neurons is a whole world in itself, with millions of mysterious systems that still have scientists shrugging their shoulders.

These days any desktop computer with the right software can simulate a whole galaxy of stars. Astronomers plug in the positions of all the stars and the computer says exactly where they’ll be in a thousand years or a million. A galaxy is simple. The brain of the kid who sewed the tag into my t-shirt, on the other hand, is bigger and more complex than a whole universe of galaxies.

What does that mean? It means that, just like me, he has dreams in full color that he will only vaguely remember when he wakes up—dreams that would be Oscar-winning films if only they could somehow be extracted. It means that his internal musings on the meaning of life—which in his case were particularly fruitful from ages nine to eleven when the sweatshop had him mostly working on the quieter machines facing the windows—are rich enough to fuel an entire religion. If you’re not buying it, then put the book down for a minute and think back hard to some of the stuff you used to think about when you were nine. Remember it? Remember how big it was? It’s possible you’ve forgotten, because don’t we all know that nine year olds are not deep philosophers or dreamers of beautiful stories?

It’s a cruel thing that words are the only medium that most of us have to share the universes of our minds with other people. A feeling is worth a thousand billion words. There’s simply no way to really convey what goes on in our minds, even with the people we spend our lives with. Though there is no way out of this isolation, many religions have a beautiful way of dealing with it. They have an abbreviation for the infinity of the mind: God.

That’s why I fell in love with the Christians, once I got to know them. Because even those ridiculous ones, the ones with the giant planks coming out of their eyes who are always trying to pick specs out of yours — even they will admit to the infinity of your soul while they are damning it to hell.

In one version of heaven that I have heard preached in the churches I’ve been visiting, everyone who has ever lived will be resurrected into healthy, strong bodies with newly sharpened minds. Our job will be to worship God and enjoy each other. It will go on forever and we will all get to know each other infinitely.

I like that version of heaven. That kid from the sweat shop and I will talk for several lifetimes until we have pulled up every forgotten dream. And we’ll do that with everyone who’s ever lived. You and I will hang out for hundreds of years, joking around, composing poems, making movies and laying around in the grass looking at star filled skies (if there are grass and stars — I hope there will be).

Christians believe that God has a plan for humanity on Earth. We’re building toward Heaven, but it’s more than that. I’m still trying to understand. But the Bible doesn’t say anything about what God’s plan will be once everyone is resurrected and the New Heaven and New Earth are in full swing. Surely he’s got something up his sleeve, and another Bible will have to be written then.

And the image I had when I was writing that thing was of universe-sized minds connected only by thin lines of words. This picture is by a guy with a geek comic called xkcd.

What next? January 23, 2009

Posted by Zack in Missouri | 12 comments

Sorry for the long hiatus! I got busy. Also, it felt like I was in an infinite loop here. My purpose with this blog was to show my “secular”, atheist, agnostic, liberal christian friends back in DC, NY, SF, etc. something about this alternate universe of the changing evangelical church—and how, within it, along with a lot of bad old baggage, there’s something really, really good and new happening. Well, I convinced them. And so now what do I do? Maybe I should call it quits here? My work is done.

On the other hand, a whole bunch of Christians are reading the blog. Why are you guys reading? I have really enjoyed the conversation and connection. I’d love to kind of restart it in the mode of the millions of cool Christian blogs out there.

I’ve felt a lot of essays percolating up, and maybe I should be posting here, working them out here. Essays about:

What do you think?