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I have been told by people who study these things that in all the stories ever told that there are only 36 plots.  So the savior story is one we have heard before,  a person, or group of person is in predicament from which they can not escape.  Perhaps their situation is of their own making, perhaps it is the result of an malevolent other.  What ever got them into this jam, they are on the road to disaster and do not have the internal resources to find a new way to redemption.  A hero comes among them, and shows them the solution. 

There are two variations in this story, the hero who comes from within the community.  The story called "the Rabbis gift" is my favorite example of this variation, because the messiah turns out to be all of the monks -- they discover the savior in each other and in themselves.  The other variation is when the hero comes from the outside, and shows the doomed community a new way that they could not have found on their own.

Which brings me to my question.  Is it possible that a plot that holds up an outside hero saving a community perpetuates that communities disempowerment?  I think of the white savior movie.  We have seen the story in so many variations, remember the white teacher who comes into an inner city class room and through love and patience inspires her students to see themselves as bright and creative?  The teacher gets resistance from the powers that be (principals, school boards, the other teachers) who do not believe that these kids can be taught.  The empowering teacher is breaking the rules and she must show the authorities that she, not they are righteous.

These movies are often based on true stories.  There actually was a white teacher who actually did help a bunch of young people of color discover their gifts and become a community of learners.  There actually was such a person whose actions can be turned into "a white savior" plot for a movie.   Such a person should be honored and held up, along with the thousands of teachers, parents, community activists, principals and young people of color who act within their communities to overcome serious problems and ways of acting that are bringing the community to ruin.  

When the film maker takes one story out of thousands and makes a movie out of it, that is creating an artifice.  It is reconstructing reality to tell a story, a story that has been selected, and presented for its impact.  Hollywood chooses from among all the stories of  people acting to make a difference the story of the good white teacher who makes a difference in some young people-of colors lives, and it is the movie, not the teachers original action that perpetuates the dominate cultures narrative of incompetent people of color being rescued by white people.

To turn this world we live in toward a just and sustainable community will take a lot of people, each of those people acting to empower each other.  Let us honor all who act to create human community, and let us see films that tell those stories of mutual empowerment.

This was preached in early March for a Sunday with an International Women's Day emphasis.

Apparently, G.W.Bush read a book!  And he agreed with it 100%.

What is scary is that he is getting his advice on what could be central question of our times from a fiction writer.  Did I say fiction writer?  I should have said a fiction writer who got the American Association of Petroleum Geologists' annual journalism award this month.  Did I write that novel got a journalism award?  Since when do the Petroleum Geologists give awards to fiction writers?  This is a strange new world.

No more boring airplane trips.

The first season is now available at ITunes. I missed an episode of Commander in Chief and found it available for download within days.

I would like it if religious liberals learned to produce video that could be put on a computer and watched when the spirit moved me.

It has long been held that Preachers and Priests make for lousy TV, one can't make a decent action adventure story out of the day to day work of the clergy, and it would people in the United States might find the idea of situation comedy in bad taste. (The British have a different sense of the comic.) The television series The Book of Daniel (which is action packed in a Desperate Housewifes sort of way) is catching some attention from those who are attuned to the media's portrayal of religion. Albert Mohler asks "is this a satire on Liberal Christianity."
See also Jesus Politics.

In an article entitled "We shall overcome . . .  Liberals, " writer Micheal Goldberg reviews a Philadelphia political rally held by religious right leaders who have openly entered into the political struggle to confirm Samuel Alito.  The so-called Justice Sunday appropriated the rhetoric of the civil rights movement for its drive to gain control over the federal judiciary.

Meanwhile liberals wonder whether or not the IRS will investigate us if we mention that Jesus was a pacifist and would object to war stance of both Bush and Kerry.  The use of some African American clergy for right wing rallies will not change the democratic, pro-civil rights orientation of African Americans, but it will lend legitimacy to the political right.  Check it out

Also read this commentary in Prodigal Sheep.

I was an early adopter to the IPod.  In fact I liberated my SO from captivity to Windows (but there are no applications for the Mac) by giving her a IPod.  Now she is now a liberated (and computer virus free) IBook user.

So I have  a few gadgets for my IPod (this one is my second, my first is functioning usefully as a Linux voice recorder.)  I have a connector to plug it into my car radio cassette recorder, and a mike attachment to turn the IPod into a voice recorder.  Since the IPod carries an electonic calendar, address list, and notes I have not needed a PGA for three years.  I never did get that graffiti thing down.    So, I can be sold an useful IPod accessory.

But what the hell is this good for?  Mathew Honan writes: "Is that a joystick in your pocket? Why, yes it is. Levi's announced its new line of RedWire DLX Jeans, available worldwide in fall 2006. The jeans feature a built-in iPod docking cradle, joystick and retractable headphones.

Designed for both men and women, the jeans are designed to be compatible with most iPod systems. A special joystick is built into the jeans' watch pocket, with four-way controls to allow the wearer to play, pause, track forward, track back and adjust the volume control without ever removing the iPod from the pocket.

An iPod docking cradle is housed within a side pocket. Levi's designed the pocket so that the iPod buldge is "virtually eliminated." The cradle has a red conductive ribbon that allows users to remove their iPod from the pocket to view its screen while staying connected. The jeans are machine washable once the iPod is removed.

A white leather patch and joystick, bluffed back pockets with hidden stitching, and minimalist buttons and rivets allude to the iPod's famously pure design."

Since 34 million of IPods were sold last year,  I guess I will have to get used to such announcements.  There was a spartan purity to be a Mac user before the IPod.

That geek test gave me a 7.662% and dismissed my application.

I read Latin, and a few other languages in addition, and know my mythologies. I have programmed a mainframe with punch cards in Fortran, run statistical analysis and I am a historian.

Alas I bought a Mac in 1985 and have kept up had to learn to write some applescript, and keep up with the shareware.

Star Wars got old, and the Lord of the Rings was slow.

So they have very definate ideas about what it takes to be a geek. I just follow a different drummer.

A man has applied for and received a U.S. patent for a religious shrine, in particular a miniature replica of the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem as described in the New Testament of the bible. In a modification, the top cover of the shrine can be raised by a mechanism activated by rolling the round stone at the entrance into an open position.

See the patent and read the comments in Godlorica.

This is the thirty-fifth anniversary of the annual Day of Mourning on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas.  I was there in 1970, and while I have returned on many occasions, I have been there in spirit and solidarity every year.  It is hard to witness the fact of genocide in face of the national ritual of self congratulations and privilege.  But there are signs that more and more dominant culture people are willing to look at there past to help them understand the violence and arrogance of the present regime.  If one wants to understand Bush and Cheney one must look back to opening chapters of the European settlement of the Americas.  What was the first act of those who arrived on the Mayflower?  Upon arriving at what is now Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod, a boat of armed men was sent ashore who stole the entire winter food supply of the village of Native people.  Then they proceeded to what is now Plymouth where the people of God founded their armed and aggressive Bible commonwealth.  The children of the Mayflower (joined by those who aspire to that heritage) now use their power to steal the natural resources of the entire world.

Robert Jensen writes:  "Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers. 
The first president, George Washington, in 1783 said he preferred buying Indians' land rather than driving them off it because that was like driving "wild beasts" from the forest. He compared Indians to wolves, "both being beasts of prey, tho' they differ in shape."
Thomas Jefferson -- president #3 and author of the Declaration of Independence, which refers to Indians as the "merciless Indian Savages" -- was known to romanticize Indians and their culture, but that didn't stop him in 1807 from writing to his secretary of war that in a coming conflict with certain tribes, "[W]e shall destroy all of them." 
As the genocide was winding down in the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt (president #26) defended the expansion of whites across the continent as an inevitable process "due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway." Roosevelt also once said, "I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth." 

Jensen argues that those who overcome this legacy must join the witnesses on Copes Hill, and make the fourth Thursday in November into a day of awareness and renewal, by taking stock of the genocide that is foundational to the national history.

So let us  celebrate and feast, with awareness of our history and a commitment to transformation.