I find it hard to believe that we are nearing the end of our fourth day @ the Windrider Forum. I've put a Rough Cut video up @ the Windrider Forum site. It will give you a bit of a taste of what has been happening during the first few days of this week. Another video will be up on Saturday, if all goes as planned. We head home on Sunday.
In terms of the Festival, I haven't seen as many films as Imbi, Kaili and the rest of the 150+ Windrider folk here - but I have seen a few that I've found interesting. First, a short.
This morning we watched Short Term 12, a film by Destin Daniel Cretton, produced by Michelle Steffes - both with strong connections to the Windrider Forum. Though Michelle and Destin had chatted briefly before last year's Windrider Forum @ Park City - they became friends at that event when both showed their short films. Michelle showcased her short film, Driftwood. Destin and Lowell Frank's Deacon's Mondays was shown as part of the Angelus Award Winners evening.
This year, Short Term 12 was one of 5600 entrants in the Sundance Shorts program. It was one of 96 shorts chosen to be premiered @ Sundance and one of the 10 recognized at the Sundance Short Film Festival Awards last night - it was the winner!
Brad William Henke (Choke, Sherry Baby, World Trade Center) is Denim, the supervisor for a residential facility housing 15 kids who are all affected by child abuse and neglect in unimaginable ways. Inside the gates of Short Term 12, awols and fights and restraints happen every day and Denim knows how to respond. But as his personal life collides with work, he begins to realize that he is no better off than the kids he's trying to help.
Shot entirely on location at the MacLaren Children’s Center in Los Angeles, the film places viewers within the walls of a real facility and lets them feel what it’s like to live and work in a place where hope is often difficult to find. An all-star ensemble cast radiates in this gritty and honest look at how human beings, no matter the age, inevitably impact each other.
As I said to Destin and Michelle before we interviewed them here @ Windrider, the film really "messed me up." It is powerful and very well done. Not the usual cinema fare for 10am in the morning - but one well worth seeing. And further proof of the good things coming out of relationships expanded by Windrider.
Last night we watched the troubling, but very well done, Sin Nombre. The first feature from Cary Joji Fukunaga, a Bay-area man of Japanese/Swedish heritage, the film is the story of Honduran illegal immigration to the US, the gangs that feed off it and love and amongst the pain and violence. Told entirely in Spanish, with sub-titles, the film is a violent but realistic portrayal of lives hunger for the promise of the American dream - one that they are willing to die for in an effort to achieve it. It is a good film and worth seeing. I especially appreciate the photo-journalistic shooting style of Fukunaga - no shakycam, no bleached colour effects.
This afternoon we watched the lighter fare offered by Arlen Faber. The film stars Jeff Daniels and is the story of a man who creates an industry around his book, God and Me. Funny with some level of spiritual insight, the movie has some great lines. Daniels co-star, Lauren Graham is winsome in her part as Arlen's love interest though her casting seems to be a variation on a theme of her Gilmore Girl's role. I wouldn't rush to the cinema to see it, but I would definitely watch it on cable.
I'll update you with more Windrider and Sundance information in the next day or so. It's good to be here but I do look forward to being back in Toronto and back to regular blogging.
We watched streaming video of the Inauguration this morning here at Sundance. (Windrider is hosted by the wonderful folk at the Mountain Vineyard.) I confess that when President-elect Obama came out I had a catch in my throat and tears in my eyes. The catch was caused by the pure joy of seeing an African-American elected to the highest office in the United States. The tears were caused by profound concern for the new president's safety.
I was eight and in the Montreal train station, when JFK was assassinated. We were enroute to Trenton, Ontario - in four days we would leave Canada for what would become five years in Europe. A week before Easter in '68, my father told me that Martin Luther King Jr had been assassinated. Later that same Spring, in my Grade 7 class room in Lahr, Germany, we were told Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated - mere weeks before we would return to Canada.
The European part of my childhood was framed by the assassinations of three key US leaders. When the tears hit me this morning, I realized that I have an expectation of impending doom for American leaders based on events from more than forty years ago.
Although many of his political positions scare the stuffing out of me, I pray for President Obama every time I think of him. I pray that he will experience God-given wisdom that will allow him to be all that people want him to be. But my consistent prayer for him is for his safety - that he will live to be a ripe old age and be an inspiration to future men and women who aspire to public office from non-dominant ethnic and racial backgrounds. May it be so, Lord.
...borrowing by churches became more common in the 1990s, reaching $28 billion* nationwide in 2006, including mortgages, construction loans and church bonds...viaJordon Cooper's links post
Estimate of cost to save African children from hunger and easily preventable diseases (who die at the unfathomable rate of 25,000/day) - $25 Billion.
Note: The $28 Billion figure does not represent all the monies that have been raised and spent in an attempt to sate the appetites of church leaders' edifice complexes.
If you're plugged in enough to be following @dashhouse and @miketodd07 on Twitter (and maybe even me, @kinnon) you would have read some fun repartee around our ever-brilliant and always open to conversation Prime Minister Stephen Harper convincing the obviously convincible and very beautiful Governor-General Michaëlle Jean to allow PMS (that's Prime Minister Stevie) to prorogue parliament. (Sounds like the work of a proctologist to me.)
I always thought Parliament could use a good prorogueing. And after PMS and the GG's good time, Mike Todd thinks perogie sales will go through the roof. (It's funny, every time I see prorogue, I read pro rogue - and we all know what a rogue is, right. Americans excluded of course.)
(Apologies up front for the length of this post. It began as a short comment on the video above - viewing of which was prompted by a Tweet fromPresenationZen's Garr Reynolds- @presentationzen. It grew to over 1300 words.)
If you've followed this blog for any length of time, you know I often write about Roy Williams, the Wizard of Ads. Roy is one of the more prescient business/thought leaders on the planet. Roy wrote this five years ago,
At the peak of the Baby Boom there were 74 million teenagers in America and radio carried a generation on its shoulders. Today there are 72 million teenagers that are about to take over the world. Do you understand what fuels their passions? Can you see the technological bonds that bind them?
Baby Boomer heroes were always bigger than life, perfect icons, brash and beautiful: Muhammad Ali... Elvis... James Bond. But the emerging generation holds a different view of what makes a hero.
Boomers rejected Conformity and their attitude swept the land, changing even the mores of their fuddy-duddy parents. But today's teens are rejecting Pretense. Born into a world of hype, their internal BS-meters are highly sensitive and blisteringly accurate. Words like "amazing," "astounding," and "spectacular" are translated as "blah," "blah," and "blah." Consequently, tried and true selling methods that worked as recently as a year ago are working far less well today. Trust me, I know.
The world is again changing stripe and color. We're at another tipping point. Can you feel it?
Most people couldn't feel it. Some still can't.
The video above acknowledges today what Roy was talking about five years ago. Though I might challenge Gen-We co-writer, Eric Greenberg's assertion (in the video) that Generation We are progressive. To a boomer, progressive suggests a pure liberal agenda. I don't believe that accurately describes millenials.
Might I suggest that Generation We are more correctly Progessive Conservatives - concerned about social justice, social welfare, family stability, community life and more. (Red Tories in the Canadian political vernacular.) They have many of the attributes of what Tom Brokaw called the "Greatest Generation" - the parents of the Boomers.
Williams again (posted on my 49th Birthday),
Baby Boomers were idealists who worshipped heroes, perfect icons of beauty and success. Today these icons are seen as phony, posed and laughable. Our cool as ice, suave lady's man James Bond has become the comic poser Austin Powers or the tragically flawed and vulnerable Jason Bourne of The Bourne Identity. That's the essence of the new worldview; the rejection of delusion, a quiet demand for gritty truth. We're seeing it reflected in our movies, our television shows and our music.
[NOTE: Daniel Craig's James Bond is truly James Bourne - more Matt Damon than Pierce Brosnan, Sean Connery et al.]
Baby Boomers believed in big dreams, reaching for the stars, personal freedom, "be all that you can be." Today's generation believes in small actions, getting your head out of the clouds, social obligation, "do your part."
A Baby Boomer anchored his or her identity in their career. The emerging generation sees his or her job only as a job.
Baby Boomers were diplomatic and sought the approval of others. The emerging generation feels it's more honest to be blunt, and they really don't care if you approve or not.
Boomers were driven, self-reliant and impressed by authority. Emergents are laid back, believe in working as a team, and have less confidence in "the boss."[For his own sake, the President Elect needs to keep this in mind.]
Idealistic Boomers had an abundance mentality, believed in a better world, and were opulent in their spending. Emergents see scarcity, believe in doing what it takes to survive, and are more fiscally conservative. [Make a point of reading this, as well.] All emphasis added.
Responding to Roy, I wrote this in my long essay/short book, A Networked Conspiracy (now available as a free pdf download here - or click on the link in the right column to get the CD/Booklet version from Amazon or Wizard Publishing),
...to begin to understand Emergents*, we need to understand their attitudes and values.
They have:
- A hunger to be part of authentic community.
- A commitment to lasting relationships.
- A desire for their stories to be heard.
- A disdain for hype and empty rhetoric - Don’t tell us what you believe, show us – be real.
- A mission in life beyond money, sex & power.
[*The word "Emergents" is used here to mean millenials.]
Boomer Progessives want to believe these Millenials have idential values to them. They don't!
Gen-We played a huge role in giving President Elect Barack Obama his mandate - but if he becomes simply a Chicago Pol in power - they will abandon him. (I hope the decision of Rahm Emanuel as Chieif of Staff has more to do with Emanuel's steel-willed pragmatism than it does with his and President Elect Obama's strong ties to Chicago's Daley Machine.)
The Gen-We video rightly states that these millenials are not interested in partisan politics. They did not vote for Obama because he was a Democrat. They bought his message of Hope and Change. (Note the stat that 41% of college students consider themselves independents - and as a further example, over 30% of the Colorado electorate are registered independents.)
Greenburg and Weber (acknowledging the impact of Generations writers, Strauss and Howe - who also had a significant impact on Roy Willams understanding of generational change) highlight the difference between the confrontational world of Boomers and the civic-mindedness of Gen-We,
Every survey and attitudinal study— including our own—confirms that today’s young people respect and are eager to learn from well-intentioned people of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. This is a dramatic change from the experi- ence of many people from past generations, who grew up believing that intense intergenerational conflict is natural and unavoidable. In their massive study Millennials Rising, generational scholars Neil Howe and William Strauss report, “Most teens say they identify with their parents’ values, and over nine in ten say they ‘trust’ and ‘feel close to’ their parents. The proportion who report conflict with their parents is declining.”
Although Baby Boomers may have invented the motto, “Don’t trust anyone over 30”—and even lived by it, at least until they themselves turned 30—their children, Generation We, are ready to trust and work with them. Page 141, Generation We pdf document.
In the hyper communication speed of the third millenium after Christ, Gen-We have a realistic expectation that the incoming president will live up to his post-partisan positioning/posturing. Follow their discussions on Facebook, on Twitter and in blogdom. They are watching, talking, texting and blogging and President Elect Obama will have a very short time frame in which to show he can and will live up to his statement,
As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, “We are not enemies, but friends…though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.” And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn – I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too.
With God's help and our prayers, I believe he can. The strong hope of Gen-We, is that he actually will.
UPDATE: In further scanning Generation We, whilst still seeing much good in it, I feel it's important to recognize that there is a level of anti-Christian sentiment in the book. Christians (specifically evangelicals) are seen as part of the problem. (Greenburg surveyed evangelical Christians in Denver, CO and Birmingham, AB. Those particular locations would tend to skew results, methinks.) See the comments and quotes on pages 110, 114, 142 and 167. And though he is quoted extensively, from Greenburg's perspective, Dr. Martin Luther King's strong Christian faith appears to have had no bearing on his actions. The book is significantly more pro Alternate Spirituality - reflecting Greenburg's own spiritual journey - Page 186 pdf document.
Addendum: Please note that Eric Greenberg and Karl Weber's book, Generation We is availableas a free download.
Also note that this post has been written before I've actually read Generation We. The end notes and the search function in Skim, the pdf reader I use, helped me discover the impact of Strauss and Howe on Greenburg and Weber. And that search provided the quote five grafs above.
A part of me is well pleased that the US has elected it's first African American president. And another part of me is profoundly concerned that President-Elect Barack Obama will follow through on promises made to folk like Planned Parenthood. This is a time for Christians to pray for the new leader of the declining Empire of the United States and to, as best as we can, speak with one voice against those particular issues where there is such strong disagreement - and I again refer to the FOCA.
As a citizen of a nation whose life is closely intertwined with that of the USA, I commit to pray for the new president and his family on a daily basis. I hope and pray that the dreams so many have placed in him will turn out to be justified. I will also pray that we Christians will find a less partisan way to engage in the political process - a via media perhaps.
I've read lots of gracious comments this morning from those Christians who were in the McCain camp as well as those in the Obama camp. I confess, however, that I found this comment particularly graceless, from a member of the Obama camp I have previously experienced as grace-filled (though not through this election cycle.)
Thanks to everyone who had the courage to vote for change over entrenchment, hope over fear, diversity over homogeneity, and reconciliation over division.
UPDATE 2: Brian McLaren digs his divisive hole deeper with his Response from Friends. As I know that he's received responses from other friends who graciously hold a contrarian opinion to his own, Brian seems to hold fast to his opinion of those folk who did not vote for President-Elect Barack Obama are backwards racists. I'm stunned - but perhaps that's to be expected.
...a few people interpreted my thank you note here ... as an insult to all people who voted for McCain. I'm so sorry for giving this impression. I keep trying to figure out how I could have worded this differently to avoid offense. Please be assured, I believe that many people voted for McCain for reasons that had nothing to do with entrenchment, fear, homogeneity, and division. I simply wanted to thank everyone who voted for Senator Obama for reasons of hope, diversity, and unity. Thanks for understanding.
I'll cut Brian a little slack in that perhaps his exuberance got way too far out in front of his editing. However, I'd say many of us (rather than "a few") read Brian as so "in the tank" for Obama during the campaign that his statement was read within that context. After all, his undergrad and Master's degrees are in English.
There's a passage in scripture that says," Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life" (or as Eugene Peterson would have it, "but a sudden good break can turn life around.")
A lot of my American friends and acquaintances have already voted in the advance polls. They'll spend November 4th getting the vote out for the Changeling candidate. Many others have marked their calendars in eager anticipation of November 4th. Hope and Change are in their thoughts, on their lips and in their writing.
My friend, Ed Brenegar, made this comment on the We are Stupid post below.
This is a therapeutic election. Who one votes for is intended to make one feel good about oneself. One of my closest friends, an Obama supporter, told me that he believes that Obama will not lead according to his past political convictions, but from the middle. My heart sank. Not because I though he was mistaken, but that he, the smartest guy I known, invested so much hope in a narrative that is clearly designed for him to get elected. I felt he was hoping against reason, and that has become the meme of this election. (emphasis added)
When my boys were younger, I used to take elements from their previous day or two and weave them into what we called the "Little Lion" bedtime stories. (Liam was the Little Lion, Rylan the Littler Lion - sorry Kai that I didn't continue the tradition with you - I guess you would have been the Littlest Lioness.) I took some of the hard things they'd gone through and turned them into fun stories of overcoming. But. They were stories. They weren't truth. And they were designed for a specific audience to promote change and bring hope. (And, yes, sometimes they were successful.)
One of the things Obama has said is that people project their ideas and convictions onto him, as if he were a blank slate. I find this quote from an Obama supporter on the BarackObama.com site rather telling,
...specific public display events, like festivals, often have intentionally ambiguous meanings so that individual members of that society can project their own personal meaning onto the representations. So while you have one singular event, you have multiple understanding of that event (which we like to call postmodern hermeneutics).
This is so Obama. He is criticized for being vague and lacking substance in his speeches, but that's precisely the genius of him as a public figure (not a public festival, but still a public figure that operates by using discourse in the public sphere). By remaining somewhat ambiguous, he allows many different people to project their own meaning onto him. That's how he can reach across party, racial, and gender divides: he means something different for everyone. This is also why I consider him to be an important figure as a politician: through his presence in the public sphere as a politician, he has the ability to change our national imaginary.
Perhaps Obama will truly be the first post-modern president - one who "has the ability to change our national imaginary." Or, and I'm afraid more likely, he will turn out to be a thoroughly modern Chicago-bred politician - fully indebted to the machine that brought him to prominence.
While finishing this post, I read a tweet from an Obama supporter, who is a Christian leader, twittering about watching a documentary on how the Republicans stole the '04 election - and how he is so ashamed he was once one of them. He's bought the narrative - Republicans Evil, Democrats Good. (Because, of course, the Democrats would never attempt to steal an election, right!) But I do wonder what he and others will be writing four years from now.
My fear: many happy voters today will have their hearts made sick by hope deferred... once again.
We want simple solutions. Keep it simple, stupid. This one's better than that one. No need to dig too deep. Just go with your gut. Everything will be fine. Trust me. Everyone wins in the end. Really.
This would seem to explain why Fireproof, the movie produced for half a million has grossed $23.6 million in its first month of release whilst Amazing Grace, the intelligent movie about William Wilberforce which cost $29 million, grossed a million less than Fireproof at the end of it's entire run.
You see, Amazing Grace deals with 20 years of Wilberforce's parliamentary fight against the slave trade. It is an epic battle that leaves him battered and bruised. It deals realistically with the ugly side of humanity, even, dare say, the ugly side of Christians. Fireproof, on the other hand, provides a simple message - Get Jesus, He Fixes Everything. To quote John Armstrong,
There are no tensions in this film that go unresolved. There are no problems that cannot be met if you simply love Jesus enough. This is not life.
The first part of this post was triggered by Andy Crouch's post, Amazing Gross. The gross speaks volumes about the "Christian" audience as Crouch suggests quoting William Goldman, "nobody nows anything." Crouch adds, "let the reader understand."
Fireproof is the kind of movie where the writers start with a solution and work their way backwards. It reminds me a lot of what's happening in the church's response to the US elections.
Most of my friends have bought "Change You Can Believe In." One wears a shirt emblazoned with the date of Bush's last day in office. We need CHANGE. Whatever that might mean.
Those of us who would dare to suggest that Obama's abortion position is cause for more than grave concern are written off as single-issue voters. In near Orwellian doublespeak it is explained, as if to children, how Obama's presidency will actually lead to fewer abortions. This, of course, right after he signs the Freedom of Choice Act as his first act as president - a promise he made to Planned Parenthood on July 17th, 2007.
The simple narrative is Bush = Bad. McCain = Bush. Obama = Good. Vote Obama.
It's a narrative pushed by the Main Stream Media and a narrative that many of my friends echo - people who I would have identified as prophetic voices. They have become shills for a political campaign. (Note, as Imbi and I discussed with an American friend last night, I would probably write-in Bugs Bunny if I had a US vote. Our American friend can't and won't support either candidate. )
In a post never published, called Not for Prophets, I wrote this:
I spent almost a decade (in my teens and twenties) actively involved in Canadian politics - with one party. The Liberals. (Ostensibly similar to the American Democratic Party.) I disengaged from active involvement in party politics when I became a Christian at 27. (Though my political leanings became more Red Tory than Liberal.)
Twenty-six years later I still remember the thrill of the campaigns. The demonization of the opposition. The creation of talking points to put our opponents in their place. The door to door thrust and parry. It was a blood-lust, team sport.
I should also have written that it was all about the creation of simple narratives. Us - friend, them - enemy. Destroy the other.
I've watched this simple narrative with the same blood-lust play out on blogs, Twitter and Facebook. Writers who are Christians have been as politically partisan and graceless as those who claim no belief system whatever.
Earlier this electoral season, Ben Witherington quoted his friend James Howell, pastor of Myers Park UMC,
People ask me: are you liberal? or conservative? Sometimes my reply is: it depends on the issue – but my true answer is: neither! The Church drifts into absurd irrelevance if we do nothing more than baptize one or the other of the prevalent options society has dreamed up. We have our own perspective, which at times seems in sync with this or that policy – but then Bam! …we surprise everybody with a wrinkle, a twist. We are not middle of the road, although when we are most faithful to God we are likely to annoy (and occasionally to please) liberals and conservatives in equal measure.
How could this be? Human institutions, political parties, and even the noblest people who choose public service, are sinful, flawed; self-serving agendas get in the way, or the perils of the moment blind us to a greater good God would have us pursue. And frankly, not everybody out there is exactly “lost in wonder, love and praise,” deeply immersed in the Bible, and prepared to “take up your cross and follow” (Mark 8:34). Many citizens in both parties don’t think twice about God, or God is like a good-luck charm they think will help them get the goodies they crave. Politicans fawn over the electorate; they will “say anything,” and they even hire wizards to advise them on how to talk religious folks into voting for them. Parties and politics are not surprisingly out of sync with God.
Howell later quotes Hauerwas (who was prominent in our conversation last evening) and then Lincoln,
“The Church is not simply a ‘voluntary association’ that may be of some use to the wider public, but rather is the community constituted by practices by which all other politics are to be judged” (Stanley Hauerwas).
Abraham Lincoln told the truth about “sides” who boast of God: “Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; each invokes His aid against the other. The prayers of both could not be answered… The Almighty has His own purposes.” Knowing this, we treat each other charitably, and look to God for something better: “With malice toward none; with charity for all… to bind up the nation’s wounds – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
UPDATE: John Armstrong has an important post from earlier today that needs to be included in this discussion - a post triggered by Peggy Noonan's book, Patriotic Grace. Armstrong says,
This will all be over in one week. It appears that Barack Obama will soon be President Obama. When I tell conservatives that I want him to succeed they go into orbit, especially conservative Christians. They seem to genuinely hate this man. They think he is a criminal who has no right to live in the White House. I ask: "What is different from this response and the way the far left has attacked President Bush so fiercely for nearly eight years now?"
Who is worse in this constant polemical tearing down of our social fabric? Both sides point to the other. Peggy Noonan suggests we need to rise above our fierce partisanship and reaffirm what it means to be Americans. To this end I will not only pray for Barack Obama if he wins but I will do everything in my power to support him as an American while I remain committed to my political philosophy. One thing I do know---this angry, mean-spirited period in our history needs to end, the sooner the better. Nothing serves the nation's real interest when we engage in non-stop name calling and character assassination.
Original Ending: Let me end this long-winded post by pointing you to another post of mine which I wrote on March 30th called We Need A King. Like Dan Edelen has done recently, I remind my brothers and sisters of the people of Israel and their desperate desire for a King in 1 Samuel 8. Please read God's response to Samuel again as you prepare to vote.
The following Chris Falson and the Amazing Stories video is in that post - I'm sticking it in this one to belabor my point - as is my wont. (Back in the early 90's, Imbi and I produced and directed the project from whence commeth this song. BTW, this version is a rough cut. The Muppet on piano is Rob Mathes. This was shot at Dana Point Calvary Chapel behind the Orange Curtain in SoCal.)
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