Of flash mobs, Christology and the church
Watching this video somehow struck a chord.
Especially, since last Sunday I broke my months of absence at church. Months ago I've somehow lost interest in attending worship services, because I feel as though like I've just been spending years of my life going through the motions of standing up, sitting down; reading the Bible; singing long praise songs that repeats the words Jesus" and "me" to the point of abuse; and sitting for an hour to listen to unchallenging messages and reading bullet points flashed in a multimedia projector.
Because actions speak louder than words
Last weeks’ celebration of Greenpeace 40th founding anniversary reminded me that this year I am also celebrating my 6th year as a part of Greenpeace Southeast Asia’s Philippine office, and I am proud to say that it was 6 meaningful years that I will forever treasure as an individual that have chosen the path less-traveled of environmental activism that finds its personality in direct action – in “cutting out the middleman” and becoming an instrument of defense for this precious blue marble that we all call Earth.
Amchitka: the beginning of a movement
Vancouver, Canada 40 years ago: a ragtag band of hippies, Quakers, American draft-dodgers, journalists and ecologists would change the face of environmental activism as we know it...
Lean Alejandro on being a revolutionary
In this day and age of technological overdependence and internet activism I believe there is wisdom in re-visiting what being a revolutionary meant to those who have actually given their all for their vision of a better world.
Lean Alejandro was an activist who was murdered at 27, ironically in the democratic space instituted by the Aquino administration. May his words challenge us to go not gently unto the dark night of complacency and romanticized notions of awakening an upheaval with our mouse clicks of 'likes,' 'RTs' and online petitions...
"A revolutionary must know how to compute the distance of the stars, how to differentiate a fish from a shark.... He must know how to distill wine into liquor, how to arrive at e=mc². He must know how to cook bacon, butcher a pig and roast lamb. He must be capable of leading enemies into battle. He must know how to follow orders and he must know when to disobey them.He must know how to soothe pain, comfort the sorrowful, maintain his composure in hot water, drown gracefully, sink with his ship with honor together with the mice.... He must be able to debate, he must know how to analyze difficult political situations ... he must know how to sail a ship, dig a latrine, wash clothes, wash dishes, plan an offensive, plan a retreat ... take care of babies, manage a state bureaucracy.He must know how to discuss Mao and debunk Zinoviev, ridicule Stalin, correctly read Mabini, recruit members to the party, motivate members to struggle, host a party, be critical, be self- critical, be honest...."
The makings of a beautiful mess
A beautiful mess is somewhat of a term that I use to define cathartic moments in life. That's how I would like to describe how clutter when thrown in a mix seems to come out with something beautiful. Just like how chaotic experiences brings out the best in people. Or the experience of being caught the middle of a Sonic Youth song. It is an experience of long lost aural blasts of resonating guitars and the staccato of pounding punk rock drumbeats. It is an experience that can only be found in the middle of PayItForward’s live performance of A Childlike Response To The Nearness Of You.
The world needs whipping boys...
A meme is an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. We can see this at work whenever we'd log in to Facebook or Twitter and the pause for a while and watch the updates feed refresh in real-time. I've often seen this at work and to tell you honestly I am starting to question the kind of collective consciousness that flourishes in the world wide web. Christopher Lao's 'I was not informed' news clip is a case in point of how we've come to exploit recent strides in technology for making juvenile and asinine pokes at people like Lao. Don't get me wrong I myself see him as an arrogant douche, however I think what was done to him is not only harsh but destructive. This I think shows our unquenchable thirst for self-assurance that we are not as bad as this and that person. But reality check we are what we post, like and share on our social media personas. The memes that have come to popularity since the advance of the internet in the late 90s is a testament of our twisted sense of humor that comes at the expense of unwilling victim whose lives are forever scared for our sake. God help us all...
Graphic novels, The Fall and the nuisance of human existence
I often find it strange that in my case theological constructs are derived out of my exposure to what many dub as juvenile entertainment, which includes graphic novels. Perhaps there is something that I hit upon as profound in the action-packed artworks that are situated in separate panels that represent individual scenes which make up a plot. After all, human experience unfolds in story and its meaning is fashioned from places, plots, and players fused in real-time.
In like fashion Biblical narratives function as vehicles of divine revelation that helps us makes sense (or better yet find) our place and meaning in this sizeable and ever changing storyline that we call life. That perhaps explains why we often find ourselves identifying with the characters in Bible stories because in a way they lay bare a part of ourselves that we exhibit we whenever we cope with the harsh realities of life as well as when we feel like we are brought face to face to the actuality of the divine in our midst.
In this reflection for this class on Christian anthropology I would like to turn our attention on the primordial creation narrative of The Fall, looked at from the vantage point of a graphic novel: Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s Batman: The Killing Joke, where I will attempt to find parallels between the two comic book storylines in relation to the fall of man and the predicament of human existence that follows it.
Ave atque vale Rainbow Warrior
I remember first meeting the Rainbow Warrior during my first year working for Greenpeace six years ago. I will forever be grateful to have been given that rare chance to go on board as a volunteer blogger during its Asia Clean Energy Tour of 2005.A wise man once said: “endings are mere beginnings that are looked at the opposite direction." Today Greenpeace stand on the crossroads in eager anticipation of its new vessel as it tearfully gives the well deserved retirement for its flagship, that has carried out daring campaigns and inspiring actions that have pave the way to making our collective aspiration of a green and peaceful future a step closer to its realization.
Bon Voyage Rainbow Warrior, thanks for the memories
MCC as a necessary intentional community
The Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) has gotten a lot of flack recently from both theologically conservative wings of the Roman Catholic and Evangelical Protestant Churches for administering same-sex mass wedding last June 25 in Baguio City.
As an Evangelical Christian, I still have a lot of questions about the theology and praxis of how Evangelical Christianity ought to conduct itself with regards to the reality of homosexuality.
Looking at Scriptures through the lens of Gadamer
Yesterday we had a very stimulating discussion about Hans-Geroge Gadamer’s work and philosophy which is mainly related to his magnum opus Truth and Method to which he tries to put forward a philosophical approach to interpreting text which involves what he calls as a ‘fusion of horizons’ where the interpreter finds the ways that the text's history articulates with their own background, which Gadamer intends to be a description of what we always do when we interpret things (even if we do not know it) to which he writes: "My real concern was and is philosophic: not what we do or what we ought to do, but what happens to us over and above our wanting and doing[1]".
How this relates to sacred scriptures like the Bible, I believe Gadamer offers thoroughgoing insights that can be very important to theologians whenever they would approach scriptures.
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