You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body …..love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
– Mary Oliver, ‘Wild Geese’, in Dream Work (New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986).
The video, taken on Yalukit Willam country, was shot by me on 13 February, 2022.
I’m trying to settle on a film – just one – to include in my upcoming christology unit. (I often include at least one film per unit.) So far, I’ve shortlisted the following:
Au Hasard Balthasar (Bresson)
Calvary (McDonagh)
The Last Temptation of Christ (Scorsese)
Magnolia (Anderson)
Son of Man (Dornford-May)
Offret (Tarkovsky)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Forman)
Romero (Duigan)
Waiting for Godot (Beckett)
(That’s right, neither The Life of Brian, nor Miss Congeniality, nor Jesus of Montreal, nor The Karate Kid, norRed Sonja, nor The Gospel According to St. Matthew, nor Taxi Driver quite made this year’s shortlist.)
At the moment, the frontrunners for me are Beckett’s Godot and Tarkovsky’s Offret, but I’m keen to crowdsource any other suggestions.
My local Amnesty International group in Dunedin will be screening Mary Meets Mohammed at the Pioneer Hall in Port Chalmers on Friday 28 November at 7pm. This is a heart-warming movie made by AI Australia about the friendship that develops between an asylum seeker from the Middle East and a Tasmanian woman who initially thinks that such people should be ‘sent back to where they came from’. A gold coin donation for entry will go to AI Australia to support our own Mary Morwood who has committed herself to a sponsored walk in Australia, raising money to support asylum seekers in detention, and the rights of Australian Aboriginal people. There will be refreshments available after the film. All welcome.
Amidst all that I have read, re-read, listened to and watched during this past year, I am especially grateful for having read, re-read, listened to, and watched the following:
As 2013 approaches expiration, I wish to sincerely thank readers of Per Crucem ad Lucem for stopping by, for reading my periphrastic prose, for offering comment (both online and via email), and for subscribing to and linking to posts. I hope that you have been blessed by what and by who you have encountered here, and I look forward to continuing a further leg or two of the pilgrimage with you. Ngā mihi o te Tau Hou ki a koutou katoa.
We Need to Talk About Kevin. This is one of the most extraordinary films I’ve seen in many years, with an absolutely astonishing performance by Tilda Swinton. (On a less enthusiastic note, Australia’s ‘MA 15+’ rating is severely misjudged.)
Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl. An impressive and well-researched biography on one of the most untwitter-like characters of the twentieth century.
Wild Red Horses by Alan Marshall. This one’s worth reading just for the great story ‘Singing to God’.
The Word of God and Theology by Karl Barth. An energetic and fresh translation, with excellent critical notes, of some of Uncle Karl’s most important essays. An absolute ‘must-read’ for preachers!
Tradition and Dissent by Davis McCaughey. A fascinating collection of addresses from one of the great Antipodean minds of the twentieth century. Thank you Belfast!
It’s been a while since I really looked forward to a film’s release, but I’m on the edge of my seat awaiting Margarethe von Trotta’s award-winning Hannah Arendt. The film’s focus is Arendt’s controversial reporting for the The New Yorker on the 1961 Adolf Eichmann trial, what Arendt named the ‘show trial’. Of course, one of the reasons for why this and other similar trials were so named by Arendt was because of her deep-seated conviction, expressed in a letter to her Doktorvater Karl Jaspers and published in Correspondence 1926-1969, that ‘the Nazi crimes … explode the limits of the law’. Indeed, ‘that is precisely what constitutes their monstrousness. For these crimes’, she continues, ‘no punishment is severe enough. It may well be essential to hang Göring, but it is totally inadequate. That is, this guilt, in contrast to all criminal guilt, oversteps and shatters any and all legal systems. That is the reason why the Nazis in Nuremberg are so smug … We are simply not equipped to deal, on a human, political level, with a guilt that is beyond crime’. As she would write in Eichmann in Jerusalem: ‘The purpose of a trial is to render justice, and nothing else; even the noblest of ulterior purposes — “the making of a record of the Hitler regime which would withstand the test of history” … — can only detract from the law’s main business: to weigh the charges brought against the accused, to render judgment, and to mete out due punishment’.
I’m really interested to see how von Trotta deals with these difficult themes in the film. By the way, for those interested in reading an outstanding and critical (here meant in both senses of the word) engagement with these ideas may I commend to you Lawrence Douglas’ The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust, a book that I shall probably re-read in preparation for seeing the film.
The film’s synopsis reads:
HANNAH ARENDT is a portrait of the genius that shook the world with her discovery of “the banality of evil.” After she attends the Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, Arendt dares to write about the Holocaust in terms no one had ever heard before. Her work instantly provokes a scandal, and Arendt stands strong as she is attacked by friends and foes alike. But as the German-Jewish émigré struggles to suppress her own painful asso- ciations with the past, the film exposes her beguiling blend of arrogance and vulnerability – revealing a soul defined and derailed by exile.
The film portrays Hannah Arendt (Barbara Sukowa) during the four years, (1961 to 1964), that she observes, writes, and endures the reception of her work on the trial of the Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann. Watching Arendt as she attends the trial, staying by her side as she is both barraged by her critics and supported by a tight band of loyal friends, we experience the intensity of this powerful Jewish woman who fled Nazi Germany in 1933. The fierce, chainsmoking Arendt is happy and flourishing in America, but her penetrating vision makes her an outsider wherever she goes.
When Arendt hears that the Israeli Secret Service has kidnapped Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires and brought him to Jerusalem, she is determined to report on the trial. William Shawn (Nicholas Woodeson), the editor of “The New Yorker” magazine, is thrilled to have such an esteemed intellectual cover the historic process, but Arendt’s husband, Heinrich Blücher (Axel Milberg), is not so sure. He worries that this encounter will put his beloved Hannah back into what they both call the “dark times.”
Arendt enters the tense Jerusalem courtroom expecting to see a monster and instead she finds a nobody. The shallow mediocrity of the man cannot be easily reconciled with the profound evil of his actions, but Arendt quickly realizes that this contrast is the puzzle that must be solved. Arendt returns to New York and as she begins to discuss her groundbreaking interpretation of Adolf Eichmann, fear ripples through her best friend, Hans Jonas (Ulrich Noethen). Her philosophical approach will only cause confusion, he warns. But Arendt defends her courageous and original perspective and Heinrich supports her all the way. After two years of intense thought,
additional reading, and further debate with her best American friend, Mary McCarthy (Janet McTeer) her German researcher and friend, Lotte Köhler (Julia Jentsch) and of course, constant consultation with Heinrich, she finally delivers her manuscript. The publication of the article in “The New Yorker” provokes an immediate scandal in the U.S., Israel, and soon in the rest of the world.
HANNAH ARENDT provides an insight into to the profound importance of her ideas. But even more moving is the chance to understand the warm heart and icy brilliance of this complex and deeply compelling woman.
So far, I’ve been unable to find out any details about when the film opens here in New Zealand (only that it seems that Curious is bringing it out here) and have had to try and satisfy myself with watching the promos and reading a few reviews, including this one published in Der Spiegel. If anyone has any details about when and where I can see it south of the Waitaki, then please let me know.
A combination of conferences, travel, editing and teaching – and a Kilimanjaro of admin – has meant that it’s been a little bit of a light month on the reading front, and that the pile of unread books amassing on and under and around my desk, bed and toilet bowl are scaling to unforeseen heights. That said, my daughter’s school teacher – the lovely Margie Hanning – introduced me to some of the wonderful titles listed here.
Reforming the Scottish Parish: The Reformation in Fife, 1560–1640 by John McCallum. [Another great read, and one of the most interesting (revised) doctoral dissertations in history that I’ve read this year. BTW: Does anyone know what John McCallum is up to now? I’d like to get in touch with him to express my appreciation for his book.]
Stylish Academic Writing by Helen Sword. [Helpful in parts, encouraging in others, but promises much more than it delivers.]
Stirling Presbytery Records, 1581–1587 edited by James Kirk. [A fascinating read, indicating, among other things, that some Presbyterian elders have always tended to be a bit fibre deficient.]
Patterns of Reform by James Kirk. [A re-read of an outstanding collection of essays. First-rate reliable scholarship!]
I’m trying to settle on a film – just one – to include in my upcoming christology unit. (I often include at least one film per unit.) So far, I’ve shortlisted the following:
jasongoroncy.com 