Vulnerability and strength

It is difficult to resist the conclusion that twentieth-century man has decided to abolish himself. Tired of the struggle to be himself, he has created boredom out of his own affluence, impotence out of his own erotomania, and vulnerability out of his own strength. He himself blows the trumpet that brings the walls of his own cities crashing down until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, having drugged and polluted himself into stupefaction, he keels over a weary, battered old brontosaurus and becomes extinct.
Muggeridge

Forgiving the Church

"When we have been wounded by the Church, our temptation is to reject it. But when we reject the Church it becomes very hard for us to keep in touch with the living Christ. When we say, "I love Jesus, but I hate the Church," we end up losing not only the Church but Jesus too.

The challenge is to forgive the Church. This challenge is especially great because the Church seldom asks us for forgiveness, at least not officially. But the Church as an often fallible human organization needs our forgiveness, while the Church as the living Christ among us continues to offer us forgiveness.

It is important to think about the Church not as "over there" but as a community of struggling, weak people of whom we are part and in whom we meet our Lord and Redeemer."

Henri Nouwen

Commitment and repentance

Repentance is a commitment to a new course.

...to commit myself I must first know myself; the fact is, however, that I really know myself only when I have committed myself.

Commitment brings freedom

You all know that I like to think of myself as an existentialist. (a modified one, to be sure) In my reading, I stumbled across this quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the 19th century German writer.

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation. There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too, all sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen events, meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would have come their way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!"

So much of my theology is framed by "waiting on the Lord." "Be still." I much prefer the theology of commitment. Is there room for both?

Italy's natural selection

A good piece from The New York Times. "Dear Lord, I was born under Mussolini, please do not let me die under Berlusconi."
[Updated] Another good article on the state of politics in Europe.

Something beautiful

I must film what brings me pleasure, not those ugly things. The designers show their collections in a museum of Florence... And because of that I must go film them?

Aprile

Words

Who speaks badly, thinks badly and lives badly. We must do words justice: words are important!
Palombella Rossa

You know what I was thinking?

You know what I was thinking? I was thinking how sad it is that I, even in a society more decent than this one, will always find myself in tune with the minority of people. But not in the sense of those films where there is a man and a woman who hate themselves, stranded on a desert island because the director does not believe in people. I believe in people, just not in the majority of people.
Caro Diario

Dreams and Diaries II

This excellent review of 1994 Cannes winner, Caro Diario, captures what I had hoped The Cinema of Nanni Moretti: Dreams and Diaries would.

"Moretti's three-part movie-essay is structured as a wry, affectionate and very funny odyssey through the Roman suburbs, the Aeolian Isles, and the Italian health system. Relaxed and leisurely, it's an effortless blend of documentary and fiction, part road movie, part sociological satire, part polemical reminiscence. As Moretti travels around, investigating and commenting, he manages to provoke not only laughter, but the sense that we are seeing Italy anew. Accordingly, just as he includes offbeat gags about, say, movie critics being fed a taste of their own medicine, so when he drives to the site of Pasolini's murder, he forces us simply to look and listen, to take in light, space, shape, movement and music; in other words, to recognise the essence of cinema shorn of story and superfluous stylistic tropes. That's no mean achievement in these days of narrative and technological overkill, though the movie is too modest to insist even on its own quirkiness, let alone its more serious subtextual concerns."

Nanni Moretti quote

XX/XY

A problem is something which I meet, which I find completely before me, but which I can therefore lay siege to and reduce.

But a mystery is something in which I am myself involved.
Gabriel Marcel

Theology

"Theology is supposed to be the study of the fire and light that burn at the center of the world. Theologians have reduced it to the turning of pages in a catalog of ideas — a kind of butterfly collection for the mind.

As soon as we regard God from without as a mere object of knowledge, or a mere occasion for speculative study, without freshness of heart and the unrest of love, then all is over, and we have in our hands nothing but a phantom and an idol."

Hans urs von Balthasar

"Lovers are the ones who know most about God; the theologian must listen to them. Love must possess the innermost heart of man and must then 'reorganise' him. Man is then able to be a fragrance of Christ in the world."

Hans urs von Balthasar

Unsatisfied

"Love seeks with fury, through the medium of the
beloved, something beyond, and since it finds it not, it
despairs."

Miguel de Unamuno

Sing your song

" We were all born to sing - let not the contrary be said. But it is not a question of being born for the purpose. The fact is that whoever was really born in spirit, and not only in the flesh, sings, and sings because he was born in the spirit; if he does not sing, it is because he was born only in the flesh."
Miguel de Unamuno

How are you going to sing your song, in flesh and in spirit, today?