Film invites us to see deeper

The Rev. Michael Calderwood reflects on the movie Avatar.

I must say that 3-D technology has improved considerably since I saw The Creature From the Black Lagoon wearing those cardboard frames with the red and blue cellophane. I enjoyed Avatar. It was exciting to watch, but it was more than just really cool special effects.

The movie opens on a spacecraft going to the planet Pandora, a place rich in the much-needed and very valuable mineral called unobtainium. Problems arise because there is already a well-developed culture on the planet’s surface, a people known as the Na’vi. The mining expedition, with the support of a large military force, wants to either displace the population or exterminate them. While the military is keen on extermination, a diplomatic option is attempted. The protagonist, Jake Sully, communicates with the people of Pandora by a kind of interface with an Avatar, a genetically engineered life-form.

As the story unfolds, Jake begins to question the wisdom of displacing the indigenous population and opposes extermination. Through the link with the Avatar, Jake comes to understand the Na’vi, learning their customs, language and culture. He sees that all things on the planet are interconnected through a life-giving spirit called Eywa. The Na’vi cannot be moved: they are part of the world in which they dwell. The trees are rooted in the ground; the indigenous people are rooted in the life of Eywa.

The film shows us the interrelatedness of the people and their planet. And in a way, that is what makes parts of the film disturbing. Through Jake’s relationship with the Na’vi, we are brought to a place of “wonder and awe” at the sheer beauty of Pandora, and then suddenly confronted with the “shock and awe” of a ruthless military attack. Watching the brutality, part of me was saying “Stop, what are you doing? Aren’t you listening?” That same voice cries out when I look at the world today. One member of the Na’vi wonders if the “insanity” of Jake and the other humans can be cured. And I wonder if we can be cured from the greed that gives birth to violence, the consumerism that is insatiable, the arrogance that assumes we can take as we please.

As Jake learns the customs of the people, he uncovers the richness of their language. For example, for the Na’vi, “I see you” is more than simply a visual recognition. As one of the translators explains to Jake, seeing someone is more like “seeing into someone.” In our own tradition, so much of John’s gospel is about seeing and believing, seeing more, and seeing deeper, and I wonder if the film is getting at that same kind of mystery. The human beings sent to Pandora see the environment as something to be used and consumed. They see, but they do not “see into” the planet. They are blind.

The people of Pandora, on the other hand, see into the planet, they see the signs Eywa sends to them. This “seeing into” grounds the people in their daily lives. What would it look like if we were to slow down, walk more quietly, listen more attentively, and see into things, to see the One who is always near, holding all things together?

Eywa is the all-encompassing deity, but she is not a distant kind of force. As Jake begins to “see into,” he also connects with her, hears her, speaks to her. As the battle between the Na’vi and the humans seems inevitable, James learns that Eywa is not about to takes sides in a conflict, but she is the one who holds things in balance. We can do our worst, and the scars of human exploitation can be healed. Betrayal can be forgiven.

There is something more. You and I simply need to stop what we are doing, be quiet for just a moment, live lives of balance and wonder, and “see into” the One who dwell in all things.

You don’t have to put up all those decorations!

Nancy Truscott, parish nurse at St. Paul, Bloor Street, in Toronto, writes about surviving Christmas while dealing with separation and divorce.

If you find yourself separated or divorced this Christmas, take heart. You can survive the holidays. I will share some strategies from DivorceCare, a program I run at St. Paul’s.

The rich memories of your family together, celebrating the birth of Jesus, are a painful reminder that things have changed permanently. What can you do? You need to make a plan now to survive this family-oriented, tradition-bound season.

First, how much energy do you have for this frenzied season? What is important and what can be left aside? You can turn down invitations, or leave a party early. You don’t have to put up all those decorations!

Look at your calendar and set reasonable expectations for yourself. Maybe there are new traditions you can make for yourself. Perhaps there is a candlelight service you always wanted to attend. Check out a variety of places and times to celebrate the season. New activities can be liberating and refreshing.

As far as your energy allows, seek out friends who are in need this season. Volunteer at the Christmas dinner for those less fortunate in your local community.

Plan for the care of your children, no matter what their age. They have always been a part of your Christmas and you can plan their continued involvement in this joyful celebration. Seek their support and their suggestions. Find new ways to share and celebrate together. Traditions can be started this year!

Expect to be emotionally ambushed. Your emotions can pour in like a flood, whether you are signing Christmas cards, attending holiday parties, or decorating the Christmas tree alone. Be prepared for these emotions. Remind yourself of Psalm 23: 1-3: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul.”

Limit your spending this Christmas. Your finances have changed and getting yourself in debt this Christmas does not bode well for your financial security and new reality. There are many ways to give gifts to others. Babysitting for someone, home baking, even shoveling the snow, can be a real blessing to others. Make coupons for your family and friends which they can use in the New Year. Let your imagination create new opportunities to build your relationship with others in the future. Remember, we have been richly blessed through the birth of Jesus: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Don’t compete with your ex-spouse for time with family and the value and quantity of gifts. Your celebration of the season will be remembered long after the presents are opened. You want to come to the New Year with grace and peace, appreciating the true meaning of Christmas.

This Christmas season will pass, likely with some pain and imperfection. You may continue to experience great pain. However, full recovery from divorce is possible. The good news is that when all the supports fall down around you, and you feel so rejected and alone, God will still be there. He will never leave you or abandon you. “The Lord will guide you always: he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail” (Isaiah 58:11).

I encourage you to consider joining a divorce recovery support group, specifically, a DivorceCare group. Check out the Divorce Care website and enter your postal code. They also offer daily free e-mails of encouragement for 365 days.

May I say in closing that I wish you a Merry New Christmas and a New Year that brings you to the journey of recovery, forgiveness, and reconciliation with your new life ahead.

Living with uncertainty

The Rev. Joanne Davies, ecumenical chaplain at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, on living in uncertain times

Last Thursday on the news, I heard two doctors talking about the media coverage of the H1N1 flu. I am a hospital chaplain, and for me, one part of the conversation stood out. Dr. Allison McGeer, director of infection control at Mount Sinai Hospital, spoke of the uncertainty surrounding the H1N1 flu. She emphasized that uncertainty is intrinsic to outbreaks and we need to learn to live with it. It got me thinking. How do we cope when we hear of the sorrow and improbability of a healthy 13-year-old dying from the flu? How do we cope when all the public discussion is of uncertainty? What are we certain of in our lives?

Faith speaks of the certainty of God’s love for us. When I was about 10 years old, I saw the movie Lilies of the Field. It had a great impact on me. Sidney Poitier plays a young Baptist man, Homer, who helps a group of German nuns build a chapel in the Arizona desert. The Mother Superior, a distant, autocratic character, would have it that all the work is done by God and that people are merely vessels. She is alone, without joy in her life. Homer maintains that his life and choices are worthy of acknowledgement and gratitude, but he is lonely and disappointed in what life seems to have offered him. At the very heart of the movie is the central question of how and where God is present in a world that also has sadness and difficulty and fear. I remember being so pleased to actually feel the question asked within the story and in turn to experience the answer as a certainty. I have experienced the same answer, in different ways, in my years as a chaplain.

A while ago I visited a patient who was 92 years old. Anne had lived to see her husband die, as well as her two sons. Eloquent and elegant, she liked to have me visit her private room at midday and share coffee and stories with her. She was dying. The cancer she suffered from had spread too far. Anne was at peace with her life but said that the best part was that the doctors had found drugs to remove her pain, and she was most grateful for that.

One day, she asked me to say midday prayer with her. Part of the formal midday prayer involves reading Psalm 19. Much to my surprise, as I began to read the psalm, Anne burst in to tears. Concerned, I asked her if I could help. But no, there was nothing wrong. She told me the psalm held a special place in her heart and for years she had tried to memorize it so the words would never leave her. She was so happy to hear me read it. She said she always felt it was a message to remind her everything was fine. The psalm’s words tell us that God is present in all creation and we can see God in all life telling the tale of God’s gracious hand.

Then Anne leaned forward and told me of her nightly prayers and the deep sense that God answered them. She told me that she had been very angry when her youngest son died. Desperate to calm herself, she prayed. Both her sons appeared before her briefly, directing her to read her favourite psalm, Psalm 19, to seek comfort. Anne had never before told the story to anyone. She had felt reassured by her vision, but thought others might think her troubled.

In her own dying, Anne wanted me to hear of her certainty of God’s love and her knowledge of peaceful rest in death. She felt my reading of Psalm 19 was a reminder she should share that. She also wanted me to know that, mingled with the sadness, she had found life a time of adventure and beauty. Ann told me our days and nights might be uncertain with questions, but love and hope is certain if we are open to seeing and hearing. Anne would have it as Psalm 19 says: “One day tells its tale to another and one night imparts it knowledge to another.”

Then there was George, a man who had lived through hard times, with little material wealth. He’d had a stroke and was assessed as no longer being able to cope at home alone for fear of falling. George had no living siblings or parents and he had never had children. And yet as the hospital staff fretted and worried about his uncertain future, George remained positive and seemingly unworried. As the chaplain, I was dispatched to find out his real state of mind and perhaps have him face his denial. It occurred to me that it seemed odd to be trying to help someone feel everyone else’s uncertainty.

George picked up on my own uncertainty around my visit immediately. He sought to put my mind at ease by explaining that he knew the reality of the situation, but with everyone else taking on the burden, he did not really need to. He would just wait with God, he said, and he gestured at the religious picture on his bedside table. George explained the picture was from his childhood, a gift from his Grandmother, and he always looked at it to remind himself that God was there with him. His Grandmother had told him it made people good to not only give help, but also to ask for and accept help. Right now, George said, the best thing was to accept help because he needed it. Accepting help and thus being made good showed him with certainty that God was with him. I was pleased to pass this message of certainty to the staff.

That brings me back to where I started, thinking about how we cope with uncertainty. What does God call us to do? We help each other. We notice and mark the day, the night, and the sadness and the joy. We share what we do know and support each other through what we do not. What was the answer in the Lilies of the Field? The uneven and sometimes uncertain work of this earthly life is ours to do, to learn together, and to support each other. We will come to notice joy and to experience God.

I think Dr. McGeer was right about uncertainty. What can we learn from her statement? How can we help each other through the questions of H1N1? We could report and discuss with clarity what we do know about the illness and the vaccination. Give assurance when we can. Seek to understand and share practicalities. Share the sadness of the family when a 13-year-old boy dies. Help them know they are not alone. Share the certainties we do have. I am ever grateful to George and Anne. Their words enrich my days in the hospital and help me bring my certainty of God’s love to others.

Words that changed the world?

The Rev. Dr. John Hurd on the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum

When in 1948 the first news of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was announced by Millar Burrows, Director of the American Schools of Oriental Research (A.S.O.R.) in Jerusalem and Professor of Biblical Theology at Yale University, I was still an undergraduate at Harvard and interested in other things. In 1950, when I was a theological student, the A.S.O.R. began publishing the photographs and transcriptions of three of the major scrolls. I was taking Hebrew and began to take considerable notice. In 1952, when at Yale and studying for my doctorate, I jumped at the opportunity to take Prof. Burrow’s course on the Dead Sea Scrolls. What a pleasure! It is hard now to imagine the debates which raged over these texts both inside and outside the scholarly world. Dan Brown would blush at some of the conspiracies that were alleged.

So now, sixty years after the initial discoveries, some of the scrolls have come to Toronto. The ROM’s slogan is, “Words that Changed the World." Certainly there are a lot of words. The fragments discovered in caves along the Dead Sea represent approximately 930 individual manuscripts. Of these, about 207 are Biblical texts, chiefly copies of Deuteronomy, Psalms, and Isaiah. The rest are mainly texts relating to apocalyptic Jewish sects of the first two centuries B.C.E. These words did not “change the world,” because they were forgotten when the movements that spawned them died.

The “Words that Changed the World” are the texts from the Hebrew Bible. But we already knew these words, which had been written centuries before these manuscripts were copied. These are not new words, although we rejoice to see such ancient copies.

What then is important?

(1) The Biblical scrolls predate the earliest previously known text of the Hebrew Bible by at least seven centuries. There are several relatively complete Biblical books among the scrolls, although most are present only as fragments. The scrolls reassure us that these texts (by contrast to New Testament texts) have been amazingly well preserved. The Hebrew Bible itself, which predates the scrolls by centuries, is, of course, of supreme importance to Judaism. It forms, with the New Testament, a major part of Christian scripture, and is held sacred by Islam.

(2) However, three-quarters of the scrolls are non-Biblical, and many of them were not previously known. Most of those that are religious reflect the widespread apocalypticism within Judaism of this period, and it is the light which the scrolls shed on these apocalyptic sects which is the chief value of these discoveries. This apocalypticism fueled the two Jewish revolts and largely disappeared after their crushing defeat. However, the followers of Jesus, another such apocalyptic group of the period, did not disappear. Mainly through the work of Paul the Apostle, this group adapted to the Gentile world and became the Christian church. Here lies the Christian interest.

(3) Of equal importance to the Scrolls in the present exhibition are the many artifacts and illustrations which show the immense cultural diversity in Palestine at that period. It seems that every time one puts a spade into the soil there a new variety of Judaism is discovered.

It is ironic that, in a period in which the Anglican Communion faces major disruptions which appeal to conflicting understandings of Scripture, there should be such intense interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls and so little interest in serious Bible study. When I retired as a leading New Testament scholar, I expected to be called upon by the Church for help with the study of Scripture. Only a few of my best students requested sessions for their parishes. Now this fall I have a dozen urgent requests for presentations on the Scrolls. Go figure, as they say.