Avatar: Sometimes a Movie Is More Than a Movie

The movie Avatar has just become the greatest grossing movie ever, passing James Cameron's previous blockbuster Titanic.  The movie has caused considerable controversy among certain groups, according to a recent NY Times article, "You Saw What in 'Avatar?'"

"Over the last month, Avatar has been criticized by social and political conservatives who bristle at its depictions of religion and the use of military force; feminists who feel that the male avatar bodies are stronger and more muscular than their female counterparts; antismoking advocates who object to a character who lights up cigarettes; not to mention fans of Soviet-era Russian science fiction; the Chinese; and the Vatican. This week the authorities in China announced that the 2-D version of the film would be pulled from most theaters there to make way for a biography of Confucius."

In my estimation such a ganglion of protest indicates the power of contemporary cinema.  Is there any more powerful means to reflect and inform a global collective consciousness?  

James Cameron has once again successfully engaged in the creative process of mythopoeis--of telling, in an artful way, a story of contemporary meaning.  He's taken compelling themes of the day and spun them together.  And don't forget what Joseph Campbell called the monomyth of the Hero.  (The formula of the classic hero infected Hollywood script writing and movie making at the end of the 20th century, following the success of Star Wars.)

Sometimes a movie is more than a movie.

Standing on the Side of Love: UUs Are Lovers

I am a big supporter of my denomination's (The Unitarian Universalist Association’s) current campaign Standing on the Side of Love.  Although it began with two hot button social issues, same sex marriage and immigration reform, and was instigated by a hate crime shooting spree at a Tennessee UU congregation, it is a boundless campaign.  

We UUs own a big chunk of the "love franchise."  Our Universalist tradition bends us toward Love.  “God is Love” was the Universalist motto—an essential theological doctrine that compels loving God in return, as well as loving God’s creation, especially our sisters and brothers.

In my estimation Unitarian Universalists are lovers.  We love the human condition in all its manifestations: female and male, young and old, straight and gay, every race and culture.  We love the Earth and its Nature in its many aspects.  We love the many world religions.  We love the senses.  We love the times and tides of our bodies.  We love the free mind and will to meaning we can bring to bear in every circumstance of life.  We love the richness of poetry and myth. We love the preciseness and clarity of science.  We love tradition and we love innovation.  We love contemplation and we love discussion.  We love the arts:  music, the spoken and written word, photographic image and painting, theater and cinema—all the creative forms through which human imagination seeks expression.  We love our own life and we love our larger Life, despite the reality that living means dying.

I often cite Rupert Brooke’s poem “The Great Lover” that begins: 

"I have been so great a lover: filled my days

So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise."

And continues:

"Love is a flame;—we have beaconed the world's night.

A city:—and we have built it, these and I.

An emperor:—we have taught the world to die".

Mary Daly: In Memoriam

Mary Daly, a major voice in 20th century theology has died, age 81.   She was a provocative and controversial personality, advocating a radical feminism at Boston College, where she began her career as a pioneering female Roman Catholic theologian in the 1960s.  She challenged the traditional church's patriarchal and misogynist ways and eventually declared herself to be "post-christian." She also self-described as a "radical lesbian feminist."  An obituary is in today's New York Times.

In my estimation Mary Daly's work will endure because it is perched at the beginning of what will inevitably become a post-christian worldview, an outlook that has cut loose from outworn forms of institutional Christianity and seeks to recover the revolutionary nature of Jesus's teachings, such as radical egalitarianism.  She was a courageous and creative spirit.