Public Service Announcement: Moral Requirement

Part 1

Part 2

See the Operation Rescue documentary here.

Abstract:

A small group of young black men is surrounded by a large group of young white men who have indicated that they wish to do significant harm to the former. 

The small group of black men are fortunate in that they are well-fed, strongly-built, and accustomed to frequent persecution. These attributes would be a great consolation to these young men if their opponents were not also well-endowed and of greater number.

On the fringes of the conflict stands a small group of not unable white men who happen to be of the anti-racism persuasion. However, they linger in the corners and flit between shadows as the victims valiantly defend their dignity and valiantly fall, one by one. 

One would undoubtedly say that the anti-racism group had committed a moral failure by neglecting to provide assistance to their brothers in need. Nevertheless, their crime is not unforgivable, the encounter likely being non-lethal and the targeted group having some means of self-defense.

Let us now not break step, but turn directly to the picture of pro-life activism in the current decade. Of what does it consist that worthily addresses the daily perpetration of countless irreparable evils?

Imagine a large group of pregnant women sitting in the waiting room of an abortion mill. They have already been addressed, one by one, by a solitary man who has indicated that he wishes to murder their children. They are sitting here awaiting the hour of bloodshed.

The children, whose death is imminent, are unfortunate in that they are weak, small, and accustomed only to the soft beat of their mothers' hearts, the peaceful bower of the womb. These conditions are of no consolation in the face of sharp instruments created to inflict the greatest harm possible upon their tender and fragile bodies. 

Watching by the gate of the mill, quite near and totally aware of the violent upheaval of nature about to occur, stand a group of able-bodied adults who claim to oppose abortion, who enjoy declaring their fervor. They stand by as the frightened unborn dart from side to side of their sacred havens now violated and profaned, treated as a chamber of execution in the most heinous rape unimaginable. 

Their persons are torn to pieces as they die in newfound pain uncomprehended.

One could not say otherwise but that the "anti-abortion" group had been ought else but complicit in their inaction, in their political correctness of moral abdication. Can their crime be forgiven? The encounter they witnessed could not have been other than lethal, and they but spoke and prayed while blood gushed forth from innocence.

Where is the Horse and the Rider

or 'Why you see few art-related posts on my page'

"Where is the horse and the rider?

Where is the horn that was blowing?

They have passed like rain on the mountains,

Like wind in the meadow

The days have come down in the West

Behind the hills into shadow..."

Where is the love of beauty? Where is breathtaking art and poignant song, and where are those who will seek them, praise them, cherish them, and show us how to see?

Like the brief, ephemeral art of our generation, they have been abruptly hidden from sight. Rinsed as from the slate -- no tablet of wax bearing the imprint of centuries' wisdom. Rather, the clean slate of a frontier school that started clean one day and started clean again the next.

Just as we are minimalists in ownership, we are minimalists in understanding or in seeking, in knowing and in wishing to know. And so we receive what we desire, we reap what we sow, which is so close now to nothingness. Where is the love of beauty, the devout appraisal of art? It is as it is in our hearts. Do we expect the tiny race of the people of culture to shower us with the Gospel while we wonder whether we are Princess Belle in her green dress or blue, or which Buzzfeed quiz will show us our best virtues?

Can you hear the overwhelming silence of the artists? I can hear the sea ceasing to sing, ceasing to whelm us over with the peace that she has given the imagination and the further peace that the imagination has given her. Did we think the artists would not starve? But they have all starved -- starved from a destruction of beauty in the world, a destruction of real living, of the seemingly invincible subject. The world has died, and art imitates life as life imitates art. Have you seen the imitation of death? I know that I have.

"The everlasting violence of that double passion with which God hates and loves the world" has come upon the artists in their silence. And as much as they have loved her, adorned and graced her with their innumerable lavishments, they wish nothing now but for her destruction, her punishment, her fall from pride into desolation and suffering and noisome darkness and fear. Repentance.

The fuel of the artist is life -- life that breeds more life -- life teeming and bursting at the seams -- life burgeoning unstoppably and never ceasing to unfold into new and eternal glories. Is it any wonder that the artists are silent, or that the lesser imitate death until it takes them.

Here is the demand of beauty: life. What prodigies have we killed, or allowed to die? No more.

The death of society is at hand. Were we more bitter towards the slaughter of our friends, we would have burned the fortresses of darkness and salted the earth, leaving the festering fields of evil forever barren.

We wish to intervene against the Islamic State in the Middle East. This is a just impulse. But, in our haste to tender retribution, do we forget the thousands slaughtered daily at home. Are the lives of countless children less worthy than the preservation of political potency in names: in "Yezidi", in "Christian", in "Shi'ite". Do we wish to save lives? Is that our intent? Or do we wish to save particular lives for particular reasons? Are the unborn not our brothers and sisters, and do they not live next door. Do they not die next door.

Can you justify your willingness to stop the IS against your unwillingness to stop the Abortionist State? Is it easier to fight a tyrant thousands of miles away?

The lauds of the poet fall silent. The artist in anger and desperation hurls his brush. Is there beauty in the world.

Can you justify not -- at the very least -- standing in prayer before the clinic, adjuring those who would be murderers to abandon their course? Rationalize, I beg you. Rationalize. Rationalize a way to avoid preventing murder when power is in your hands. I have dispensed with the arguments. I have had them all. I have heard them all. There is not one left with integrity. The truth cries out like a stone. It will not move.

The poet falls silent. The artist's heart roils and burns, and a black anger rises.

If you would have the soldiers stopped who terrorize in the name of Islam, but you will not place yourself in danger for your brother who perishes at the hands of the mercenary next door, the only judgement left to you is that of coward and liar.

Go out into the world. Go out. You have been sent out to bring the good news. The good news begins with the gospel of life. You must protect life, from conception to natural death. If you have not done this basic duty, this basic act for the ongoing creation of society, if you watch society crumble -- you too will fall with it.

Go out into the streets and pray, and beg God for mercy. I too will go with you. Come alive, and reject the systematic destruction of the human person. Overthrow the deathly edifice. This is our duty. It is undeniable. It is irrefutable. It is the supreme test of faith in our time -- the supreme evil, that which requires the most devout action in opposition.

If you wish to have good things, you must give, and you must first give life.

Where is the horse and the rider?

The beauty of the warrior lies in that which he defends.

Over the Rainbow

Rainbows are gatherings often held in areas remote from the general hubbub, tucked away in the woods and fields where nature still enjoys its proper place upon the earth. People hike for miles to find the Rainbow settlement -- a city of tents. These voluntary gatherings may remain in a single place for many months.

One website, www.welcomehome.org, describes the "Rainbow Family" as follows:

• Some say we're the largest non-organization of non-members in the world. We have no leaders, and no organization. To be honest, the Rainbow Family means different things to different people. I think it's safe to say we're into intentional community building, non-violence, and alternative lifestyles. We also believe that Peace and Love are a great thing, and there isn't enough of that in this world. Many of our traditions are based on Native American traditions, and we have a strong orientation to take care of the the Earth. We gather in the National Forests yearly to pray for peace on this planet.

Rainbows are indeed nebulous. There are no formal laws, but the community often organizes itself according to unwritten values of "love, peace, non-violence, environmentalism, non-consumerism and non-commercialism, volunteerism, respect for others, consensus process, and Diversity" (http://www.rainbowtribe.net/).

The images you see above were taken from photographer Benoit Paille's Behance profile (https://www.behance.net/gallery/Rainbow-Gathering-%282010-2011%29/1193675). Observing the physical constitution, the open posture, the clear and healthy eyes, the soft light of these figures who stand at home amidst the wild calls to mind another race. A race foreign to us.

If you recall, in Aronofsky's Noah, how the simple life, the stewardship of the land above all else preoccupies the line of Seth -- then you cannot help notice the similarity here, even that of dress. Note the earthen tones, the grainy texture and spartan design. The pouches at the belt.

 

There is something impure in the Rainbow gatherings: look at the drug use, the pagan practices, the rejection altogether of beneficial technologies, etc. Yes. We say this. In our conservative towers we point over the heads of the lowly. And our towers crumble.

Is such a lifestyle not preferable in every way to the indescribable indignities of capitalism? Infused with the heights of the Western spirit, could we not become the ordo contemplativus of St. Bonaventure?

Such a radical return to the first and proper vocation of man may be required, and certainly even now is intensely needed amidst wholesale cultural degradation of the meaning and dignity of the human person. If, at the Rainbow gatherings, "we often say 'We are one.'", then perhaps this is a place we all should be (Paille).

Why do we have the desires we do? Why is it necessary to sacrifice the person for his betterment? Why suffer the deadening effects of the corporate desk job for health insurance, for a nice car? We are slaves to a system we ourselves have created, a system that literally values material gain over the fulfillment of truly human needs, truly human desires. We lay ourselves down as fertilizer for a machine, and when we are gone -- dead from laboring in its service -- it too will die. We have created a new meaning of ephemerality.

But rainbows will endure. And in these communities that bear their name, human beings come together in harmony, attempt to see each other, to see the person in each other: "We experience all these differences and confrontations, and experiment in matters of conflict management. We learn to talk, look, understand, to become more tolerant." (Paille).

Paille says that "All ideologies and beliefs coexist in harmony." and yet "decisions are not made through a majority vote, but truly through a common consensus. It can take days." What seems to be some sick offshoot of liberalism is rather a reconciliation of all beliefs into the most universal -- and this is seen as so important that "It can take days." The entire human family, from every conviction, is welcome. And every conviction may have its say until only one is agreed upon. Why do Church councils take so long?

We see in Rainbow gatherings a practical model for human life that seeks post-lapsarian remediation, that values the posture of the human community in reference to the spiritual world above all else, and that does not stoop to violence even in preventing it: "If someone becomes dangerous, violent, it can happen, people will make a sina shanti (a peace circle), where men will peacefully surround the individual by holding hands." (Paille).

I may yet see a Rainbow.

All photographic images are the property of Benoit Paille. Please check out his beautiful work:

http://benoitp.prosite.com/

https://www.behance.net/Benoitp

I. Trois Couleurs: Bleu

Krzysztof Kieslowski

For quite a long while, I have been putting off these posts on Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy. Perhaps this is because they are so dear to me that I hesitate to touch them lest their significance be lost in too ponderous and compact a thought.

Regardless, I have made my disclaimer, and so refuse to accept any blame for the comments that follow. They are meant as a guide, or a jump-start, to contemplation of what must be privileged the name of masterworks.

It is held that these films are themed according to the values of the French Revolution: liberté, egalité, fraternité. And while said values are expressed in these films far better and in far purer a manner than was within the capability of those revolutionaries, themes of human sorrow, love, loneliness, regretted revenge, and great joy are also compellingly portrayed in Kieslowski's characters. As Kieslowski himself stated, "The words [liberté, egalité, fraternité] are French because the money is French. If the money had been of a different nationality we would have titled the films differently, or they might have had a different cultural connotation. But the films would probably have been the same." (Wikipedia)

Just as there may be found the themes mentioned above, there may also be found the traditional elements that make a story in film: plot continuity, character development, appropriate setting and costume.

Yes, there is a story in Bleu. It is the potent tragedy of a female musical genius who loses both the husband she made famous and her young, innocent daughter in an automobile accident.

However, just as the capricious human element forces the film to transcend its presumed themes, the dynamics of music and color accentuate those archetypal human compulsions so that the film transcends a particular plot, a particular character -- while yet retaining the indispensable characteristics of particularity. We are conscious, ever, that we are watchers, that even Julie is a watcher, a voyeur, of her own daily life, a tableau of the cosmic fable of which she too is a part -- the giant, the miniscule at times overwhelming each other, but always interpenetrating.

Bleu is a display of this participation. We are meant to understand that the score is composed by Julie herself. And yet the score plays throughout the film, as if pre-existent, ever-present. It is outside and inside. It is also outside and inside of Julie's ownership. There is a man who plays the recorder in the streets of Paris; he plays her music -- or they play a common music. She asks him how he knows it: "I like to play. I make up lots of things."

Moreover, the cosmic purview of the music -- or the great silence to which it gives birth -- enhances the intensity of every particular emotion, every personal encounter, every knock on the door at night. Even Julie seems aware of its rare effect, and appears at once detached and submerged in the flights and plunges of agonized self-isolation, passionate self-destruction. She seems intuitively aware of the spiritual significance of suffering, in a fashion -- at least aware that it is leading onward to something, and this is why she does not complete her attempted suicide.

Onward and onward to the purge of loss, a heart speared and quivering. And strangely finds peace in the knowledge of her husbands affair.

She is not so indebted, not so deeply bound by ties of identity. The relationship between husband and wife is revealed to be less than she had perceived -- and so she is more of the heroic composer of great music than she had created in her husband -- he detached with the lover, he only a face, a name, she the reality.

In the beginning, after her release from the hospital, she seeks out a colleague who keeps the record of her music, and destroys the only known copy, but in a strange foreshadowing, the music continues.

By chance, Julie catches a glimpse of television, where her husband's colleague (Olivier, who is and has been in love with her) is being interviewed concerning his attempt to finish the incomplete composition. (Another copy has been kept -- "one cannot destroy something so beautiful.")

After the interview, photographs are displayed on the screen of her husband (Patrice) and his lover, of whom she had theretofore been ignorant. In this strange moment of ... grace, if you will, both she and her music are freed in some way -- she from a portion of grief, the music from its limbo of spousal ties beyond the grave. The old is not lost, but a new life can begin -- Julie awakens to a frustration with Olivier for presuming to attempt the fulfillment of so great a work of art freighted with such personal memory. She sets out to stop him, but instead hears him out.

She helps him to understand the beauty, the strain. A new thing is formed. What is broken is renewed, and the human story is woven with a new complexity, hence a new beauty.

"I may speak with every tongue that men and angels use; yet, if I lack charity ..."

I simply insist that you hear the soundtrack. You will live ... better. ... I certainly have. The film is part of the ostentatious Criterion Collection, and therefore may be found on hulu. Alternatively,

:)

Enjoy. Tell me about it.

Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked

Caravaggio, "The Conversion of St. Paul"

There is something very hopeful about the life of a man who sins with enthusiasm.  Unlike many people we encounter today, the enthusiastic sinner does not settle for being content.  Rather he is always finding something else to do, seeking another zing to thrill him, until his heart is stuffed with whatever he desires.  

Herein lies the difference between a headstrong, confident sinner and a typical post-modern man suffering from contentedness (we’ll call him Mr. Smith): the said sinner recognizes he needs more, whereas Mr. Smith believes he has found peace and happiness in being content with his mock-paradise he set up in his gated community.  Ask Mr. Smith if he’s happy and at peace, and he will undoubtedly say “yes” without giving it much thought.  Take his earthly paradise away, however, and you won’t get a yes out of Mr. Smith any more.  Unfortunately, there are too many Mr. Smiths in our world.  We would be better off with more headstrong sinners.

Let me explain.

I think the problem with Mr. Smith is his understanding of what it means to be content.  Understandably, people strive for contentedness because they get it confused with happiness and peace.  In reality, contentedness is more akin to lukewarmness, something that Christ adamantly condemns (see Revelations 3:16).  Even the words “peace and happiness” have a connotation today that is very different from the “peace and happiness” that we should be striving towards.  Peace goes beyond the mere absence of wars or other physical evils, and being happy isn’t measured by how much pleasure one can obtain.

The Greeks had a word for this happiness and peace; they called it “eudaimonia.”  While this word is often translated as “happiness,” it is perhaps better understood as fulfillment, specifically in regards to one’s soul.  When man acts according to virtue (that is to say, when his will is under the direction of his intellect), he obtains true happiness, and nothing can disturb him.  Socrates hit the proverbial nail on the head when he said, “no evil can happen to a just man, neither in life nor after death.” 

Seen here: Socrates at peace before his unjust death.

I think the headstrong sinner alluded to earlier understands this concept of eudaimonia better than Mr. Smith, for the consistent seeking and sinning of the sinner stands as a testament to the fact that fulfillment is not obtained through the material world.  His seeking and devouring affirms Augustine’s philosophy of the human person - our hearts are indeed restless.  The irony for the sinner, of course, is that the human heart will never find fulfillment until it rests in God.  Thus in heavy sinning does this man continue to search, yet he will only find disappointment everywhere he turns until he comes to face the disturbing truth - nothing on earth can put to rest his restless heart.  Nothing.  If he’s a reasonable fellow, he will then appeal to the spiritual realm in order to to find the next zing.  Consider it a process of elimination, and consider the hope for the sinner fulfilled.

If you’re still not convinced of the hope that lies within the most headstrong of sinners, consider the war that the sinner declares against God.  If you asked him if he is a wicked person, he would laugh and probably say, “yes, I am wicked and I’m on my way to Hell,” recognizing that his murdering and conniving ways are indeed immoral.  Ask the same question to Mr. Smith and he would most likely take offense and respond, “of course not!” (even though he is a liar in the workplace and lusts after his neighbor’s wife).  While Mr. Smith is indifferent towards God, this isn’t the case for our treacherous sinner.  No.  The great sinner sees the Creator’s presence as an annoying, blinding light that must be eliminated if he wishes to continue down his path of sin.  Of course the sinner’s quest is destined to end in defeat, for God is not known for losing battles.  He reigns as the Eternal Victor.

Perhaps it is necessary that I add a disclaimer: I am not advocating a festival of sin.  What I am advocating is that you get off the fence - the fence that separates you living according to God’s statutes from spitting in His face.  Choose, for goodness sake, something, anything, making a stand one way or another.  I do not believe I need to tell you what the correct choice is, but I feel it appropriate to tell you that not choosing is the surest way to your own destruction.  Moving towards something is better than not moving at all.

Flamme, Citron, Fear of Death

Flame and Citron (2008) (or Flammen og Citronen, if you prefer) is a film about 2 Danish Resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Europe.

In the main, they are sent on assassination missions, eliminating prominent Danish Nazi collaborators -- mostly military figures. When a female Nazi is involved, Flamme must clean up after Citronen's failure of emotional resolve. Hard times.

Viewing the film, few of us would even wince at the death of a Nazi colonel or SS officer. Most of us would sit still, applying a grim sense of justice to the scene, happy that an enemy to humanity had been neutralized.

We do not fault Flammen and Citronen. We do not fault Flammen for his anger, his frightful impetuousness, his coldness of execution, for he sacrifices his more human capacities for the sake of others, for the sake of those who suffer. Even for an uncertain future, he sacrifices sweetness and light for blood and death and danger.

We do not fault Citronen. His wife and child are poor and hungry, but we only reproach him a little. Indeed, his wife takes up with another man because Citronen is never home, always away in hiding or on the warpath. But he is noble enough to say, "Take care of my wife and child."

Why do they fight? Why kill? We all know. We have heard the stories, seen the dream-like horrors. We do not forget. We have hated the Nazis in our turn. We do not forget. We have seen the tortured, corpse-like human bodies shuffling in the cold. We have seen the corpses. We do not forget.

Those who survive hold on to the flame, the torch of indignation, of sorrow, of love, of despair, of newfound hope, of wisdom hard-won. We have heard them. We have listened attentively. We do not forget.


We forget.


There is a deeper horror that even as I write surfaces once more, insidious, in our minds.

And how do we meet this horror? With swift relentless unfailing justice toward a real and present monstrosity? Or with diplomacy and statecraft. Do we treat with hell?

We treat with hell.


We forget.


We have swallowed the lie that words can win the day. I believe they can. But someone must be listening.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was willing to be arrested, abused, killed for the cause of a better life for African Americans -- not for their lives en masse, but for equal rights as citizens. Not for clothing, not for food, not for water, not for shelter, not for life and breath -- for equal rights as citizens.

Our glorious generation has achieved a complacent sidewalk counselorship. Yes, we are those on the sidelines who watch and say a few words, impotently waving our signs, hiding behind a false piety that says "Prayer is all you need!" without proaction. We treat with hell.

We say that "We are the pro-life generation!" with cries and shouts and smiles and free concerts in Washington, D.C.. But we care only -- really -- for our own lives. We are pro-life in that regard. Our rationalizations are petty and false. We say that we act in this way in the name of "compassion" and "charity," that we are the "peaceful" demonstrators amongst the carnage.

When compassion means sloth, when charity equates to a failure of love in a failure to act for the prevention of murder (and thus the salvation of the would-be murderer), there is no peace. When the mills grind day after day as we plod -- we asses, we dumb chattel -- along the sideline begging our betters -- yes! for they are cold, and we are lukewarm -- to please obey natural and divine law, there can be no peace. There is no peace. There is no peace. There is no peace.

And to pretend to Culture in such a world?!

If the wars are not fought -- if we do not at least stand firm in peaceful civil disobedience: blocking entries, closing down buildings with whatever measures necessary -- then there will be nothing left when the self-loathing of the West has wreaked its havoc upon the last child in the womb (or out).

We fear death. We do not see it, and so we avoid its screeching call for justice. We avoid. We wimper.


There is no peace. There is no peace. Awaken.





Addendum: I do not advocate the murder of abortionists.