Poverty of Time

A few weeks ago, I attended a church planters meeting, where a bunch of church planters from the Noblesville area of Indianapolis meet to fellowship with, support, and update one another. We’re trying to build bridges across our denominational lines. Well, the discussion topic at this meeting was poverty. What areas of our lives are in a state of poverty?

Now, to put this in context, Noblesville is in Hamilton County, which is in the top ten of richest counties in the country. Our church plant is on the west side of Indianapolis, in Marion county. I remained silent because, well, as I told them afterwards, we have the old fashioned kind of poverty. We don’t get the luxury of a choice in poverty. We are officially in the ghetto. They are opening a Popeye's Chicken joint between the check cashing place and the pawn shop, next door to the liquor store. Well, there is ghetto and there is ghetTO. In my sister’s neighborhood (what did Chris Rock say about folks who live along Martin Luther King Jr Boulevards?), they have a Smokey’s Brisket and Beauty Salon. Now how are you going to have a barbecue joint and hair stylist in the same building? Wait a second, that’s nothing short of brilliant. Nevermind.

Anyway, the common theme to the church planters comments was that they have a poverty of time and community among their people. Partly, it goes back to the idea that people say they want community, but they don’t really. The other part, however, boils down to time management. Their people complained of a poverty of time.

Their lives are lived in a state of rush. They rush to work, and work so many more hours to keep up the mortgages on their homes. They have a lot of church activities that they do during the course of a week. Their kids have soccer practice. Dance lessons. Piano lessons. There is little down time, much less family time. They are broke when it comes to time. Then that poverty of time impacts their ability to form community. There’s nothing left for their neighbors. Or keeping up with their friends, much less meeting new people. They come home, collapse in their beds, don’t get enough sleep, then get up to do it all over again. So who do they turn to? Their pastors.

And the pastors were in the same boat.

A friend of mine once gave me a crucial bit of advice: if your spouse is not a part of your ministry, your ministry will fail. Put simply, your spouse, your “help-mate”, needs to work by your side, be involved in your ministry somehow (beyond “keeping a peaceful home”, though that is important also). I say that because your spouse “keeping the home” doesn’t mean you get to check out of your responsibilities of the home.

I don’t know why I’m speaking on this, because I suck at balancing my life.

Have you noticed how we’re all so busy and have “so much to do”? How much of that is vanity? It smacks of “I’m so important” or “things would fall apart without me.” The only thing that I came up with was making my wife the keeper of my schedule. It’s easy to give lip service to the idea of your spouse getting first dibs on your time, but it’s a lot harder when you have “so much to do.” I am just as prone to stretching myself too thin and living my family life on the fumes of my day. That’s no way to sustain a marriage nor a relationship with my kids.

So my wife has veto power on my schedule. I can fill up a week, but all my activities better have a “we/our” factor to them. We don’t count time with friends as busy time. If you are busy building relationships, we count that as a good busy. If I’m off doing my own thing, be it work, writing, ministry, or whatever, I can’t do that for days on end. She won’t let me neglect my family time. That’s how she’s a part of my ministry: she won’t let it take over my life. What’s the point of “doing God’s work” if you’re going to sacrifice your family in the process?

Now, I’m not perfect with this either. I haven’t been as great with our date nights, but we’re getting better at the family nights. I’ve got to realize that being in the same room with her isn’t the same thing as spending time with her. I’m trying, but it’s time for less talk and more deeds.

Remember, what you focus on most determines what you miss. Figure out what’s most important to you in this life and don’t miss out.


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Interview with Shia LaBeouf

Okay, this is a bit of a hold over from the press junket that I went on for the movie The Greatest Game Ever Played, since the movie opens wide this week, I thought the timing is still okay. I put the interview with the writer, Mark Frost, and the director, Bill Paxton, over on my Hollywood Jesus blog, but I thought that I’d put excerpts from our conversation with Shia LaBeouf over here. The full interview can be found on my message board.

Jodie Foster once noted that there are some people who just have the personality where they can be child actors and not flame out and become adult actors.. Shia LaBeouf has one of those personalities. Frankly, unlike his co-star, Josh Flitter whom we had just interviewed right before him. I could see Josh having some Gary Coleman/Macaulay Culkin type issues in the not too distant future. I wasn’t real familiar with Shia’s resume before this film. He had a part in Constantine (and I, Robot was forgettable as a whole), but I never saw Holes or any of his other Disney grooming that is the bulk of his career.

I was immediately impressed with him, not because of his Hollywood charm (he bounded into the room, shook each one of us with the patented Bill Clinton double clasp hand shake, and got each of our names) but because he was so self-aware about the process. And, yes, he does possess an inherent amiability.

What do you think that (transition) personality is? You seem to have it, since you haven’t flamed out yet.

I haven’t sold out yet either and I think that’s a big reason people flame out, having cashed in. I don’t know what it is. If I could bottle it up I would probably sell it. I don’t know what it quite is. I know what it isn’t: it isn’t making films you know are bad. It isn’t making a movie with a plotline that’s garbage just so you can get a four million dollar paycheck and live really nice. If you’re making art, make art. If you’re going to be an actor, be an actor. If you’re going to make an album, make an album. If you’re going to do everything at once, you’re going to be terrible at all of them. I stick to my guns. I’m trying to make art. I’m not trying to cash in. I always say, if I cashed in I would probably have a really nice bed but I wouldn’t be able to sleep in it, because I wouldn’t respect myself and I would hate myself. It would be terrible, I would be depressed. It would cost me more money with psychiatrists than if I never went in.

All of these steps – Constantine, I, Robot - stuff like that that were these money films, slightly sell out kinds of things, brought me here. I wouldn’t be able to helm this film if I didn’t do that type of stuff. Nobody gets to just jump in and helm a film like that. You got to pay dues. So mostly everything after Holes has been kind of paying dues, and brought me here so now I’m able to do this.

Do you have a grand plan for your career?

After Dustin Hoffman became famous with The Graduate he flipped it and then played like a 90 year old woman in a movie. I’m just trying to flip things as much as possible, but in today’s film world you have independents that aren’t quite independents. You have big huge production companies making small movies with big actors. It’s hard to navigate this puzzle right now. It’s a tough business, this film business.

Now you’ve got this 2929 situation where they’re going to change distribution completely, where they’re going to release the film and the DVD and put it on cable all at once. That changes filmmaking completely. There’s going to be less money made by these studios, which means less movies are going to be made by these studios, which means there’s less opportunity to make great film. It’s all changing, man. I’m just trying to catch it right now, but I’m not going to make Cody Banks 5 or any garbage like that. It’s not what I’m trying to do.

How do you go about choosing your projects?

I read it and sometimes I go, ‘That’s not me, I can’t do that!’ So I have to go do it. It’s challenging yourself, it’s getting to a place you don’t feel comfortable. The minute you feel comfortable on a set, you’re working on a piece of crap. You know it right away. You can feel it. The minute you’re not struggling to get through the film, you’re not doing anything. There’s no work being done. They call it phoning it in. That’s fine, lots of actors do that. There’s nothing wrong with it. Robert DeNiro – amazing actor. What’s going on with the last couple films, you know? [Shia puts his hand to his face to make the phone call.] That’s what happens. But he’s still Robert DeNiro; Raging Bull is still the best performance put on film. But everybody does it. It just goes to show you that it happens to everyone. The goal is to never do it, but that goal is rarely reached. Daniel Day Lewis does it, but does he live a happy life? I don’t know. It depends on what you want. I’m OK with being happy and doing things I love.

[Another thing that struck me about Shia was that so often what he says sounds like he could be speaking for Francis Ouimet, his character in The Greatest Game Ever Played, as well as himself. After awhile, even he starts mixing his pronouns, saying “I” when referring to Francis. He goes on to discuss the movie, working with Bill Paxton and other famous actors. You know, the usual Hollywood marketing stuff that boils down to “we made a good movie. Please go see it.”]

What do you think the public perception of you is, and do you think it’s correct?

It’s never correct. It’s never accurate. You guys are meeting a representative. This isn’t Shia, this is the guy I’m presenting to you.

What is Shia like? Can the rep tell us?

So not Disney, I guess. I’m not Disney. Sometimes it does come out, but I’m not Disney. And I think Disney is kind of like that; they’re trying to reinvent themselves as well. They realize that old Disney doesn’t work. Ice Princess? Come on, get out of here. You’re going to make Ice Princess and try to market that to a bunch of 13 year olds who all play Grand Theft Auto? They don’t want to see Ice Princess. They want to see Pulp Fiction. Kids are growing up so fast now.

Why do you think people don’t support art? Why do you think Into the Blue might kick your ass?

Because I don’t look like Jessica Alba.

That’s true.

And I don’t look like Paul Walker. People know these are not the best actors in the bunch, but it’s not about that, I guess. Some people want to see that, that’s respectable. I mean I respect that. You can’t hate on that. I respect it. But it’s not what I’m trying to do and I don’t know if that would be my audience necessarily, or this movie’s audience necessarily. It’s not like they’re stealing our audience, it’s that we don’t know if our audience is going to show up. They might just look at the movie and go, ‘Aw, it’s a golf movie.’ We have a story not many people know about, we have a cast that not many people know about and a sport that – a lot of people don’t like the sport. But the movie is insane. The movie is really good. And it’s hard to do that.


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Paging Dr. Freud

I had a disturbing dream last night.

We were in a deserted high school building, a mutant version of my old high school (who knows what sort of unresolved issues that represents).

“We” was me, my wife and our boys, plus Lauren, a young lady that I’ve come to think of as a daughter and Mikayla, her baby sister, all of six years old. An Asian man on a motor scooter had a nuclear device. We were told that if we could get a few miles away, we would be alright.

Mikayla chooses that exact moment to throw a huge fit at the notion of being inconvenienced and runs off. We spend all of our escape time searching for her, so that by the time we find her, there’s no point in running. We go to the roof of the building. I kiss Lauren. I take Malcolm, my youngest, into my arms and take my wife’s hand. She's holding my oldest and Lauren is holding Mikayla. Then the nuke goes off and everything goes white.

The whiteness slowly dissolves into blackness and I remember thinking “At least now I get to see what comes next.”

A voice tells me to "wake up."

It was still night time. I woke up in a pool of sweat, heart racing, and so weirded out that I didn’t go back to sleep. The thing is, the dream doesn’t seem that scary in the telling. I’d like to blame my sense of unease on the idea that this is what happens when I die in my dreams. Yet, that doesn’t do anything for my feeling so completely disconcerted, having this sense of living in a state of unreality. Then there are the questions. Did I die? Am I dead now? Is reality a dream? Am I still dreaming? Am I dead? Is this heaven? Hell? Why am I so scared right now?

Maybe my fear is that one day that voice won’t remind me to wake up.

Anyone want to ask me why I write horror?


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Random Chatiness

(That's code for nothing useful being posted today.)


This is my reminder announcement to all those interested that I will be the guest of the Red Light District, a horror message board, for their “Chat with the Sinister Minister.” Tuesday night 9/27/05 at 9:00pm. (Come to find out, that’s 9:00 pm “white people time”, so I guess I’m making the appropriate adjustments to the clocks in my house.) So join the group interview, and you too can find out how long it takes someone to ask whether I am secretly married to Chesya Burke.

The Katrina jokes have started in earnest. Though this may only make sense to the uber nerds of the world, I, for one, am publicly condemning Katrina: The Gathering as wrong, wrong, wrong. Brilliant, but wrong.

While I’m at it, I am continuing to do my part to bring the races together. I have been directing some of my brothers and sisters to the video How to dance like a white guy. I’m particularly fond of the “point to the Lord.”

By the way, I think the time has come for a new horror Cabal. It’s high time for a new group of horror writers to form a clique and oppress future horror writers or at least give them something to complain about. I’m officially accepting applications. By the way, congrats to my friend Jen Orosel on her latest bit of good news. I’m officially inducting her into my new cabal. Though we need a new name. Probably a new leader, since I’d only end up hen-pecked by Chesya, but at least a new name.

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Worst Republican Ever

Chesya Burke accused me of being a Republican in name only, with the intimation being that I simply love being contrary. I hate it when she’s right.

You are a Social Liberal (71% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (35% permissive) You are best described as a: Democrat Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

We love labels. Labels make us more of a known quantity. I have another acquaintance that’s constantly trying to pin a label on me, to put me in a comfortable little box that makes me easy to figure out. However, the problem is that labels don’t work anymore. Or simply matter a whole lot less.

Black vs. white.
Republican vs. Democrat.
Conservative vs. Liberal.
Postmodern vs. Modern.
Calvinist vs. Arminian.
Protestant vs. Catholic.
Christian vs. every other religion.

Have you noticed that a lot of these “vs” arguments no longer matter to a lot of us? It’s like they are more interested in arguing with each other, not realizing that they are disconnecting from whole generations of people in the mean time. At some point, if they wish to remain relevant, they will have to turn around (or outside of one another) and start answering the questions being asked of today’s culture. Because when it comes right down to them, the terms describe camps a lot more than they do people.

It reminds me of what Wendell Berry said in his article “In Distrust of Movement”: People in movements too readily learn to deny to others the rights and privileges they demand for themselves. They too easily become unable to mean their own language, as when a “peace movement” becomes violent. They often become too specialized, as if finally they cannot help taking refuge in the pinhole vision of the institutional intellectuals. They almost always fail to be radical enough, dealing finally in effects rather than causes. Or they deal with single issues or single solutions, as if to assure themselves that they will not be radical enough.

With all those labels, you still know nothing about me. Don’t feel too bad, apparently I don’t know myself that well since what I label myself doesn’t line up with what I stand for. Politically I think I lean to the right, though apparently my love for social justice and environmental concerns doesn’t allow me to exist there comfortably. I believe in personal responsibility and the community taking care of its poor. I’m a capitalist who believes that with great wealth comes great responsibility, and spending has to be tempered with compassion. I think that Democrats take the black vote for granted and the Republicans have written off the black vote.

The problem is, apparently those labels are subjective. I see myself as Black, Conservative, Libertarian/Republican, (Integrative) Postmodern, Post-Protestant, Christian. Do you think that sums me up? Do you think you have an idea of who I am and how I think? Life’s not that neat. I barely have a grasp on what all that means. And you know what? It doesn’t matter. The end result is that you actually have to talk to me, get to know me, in order to figure out what kind of person I am.


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Missional Church

Don’t you sometimes wish that Christians would just shut up?

That’s pretty much the conclusion that I came to a long time ago, especially since so many of “our spokesmen” seem to say such silliness in the name of Jesus (and hey, since Jesus said, our spokesmen can’t possibly be argued with). It’s just got me thinking about what church is and what we should be about. Plus, we just talked about this recently. We’ve gotten the idea of what church is confused with the building that we meet in. Church is to come together as a corporate group to be transformed. To learn in community.

The typical foundation for what church has become is all about the Sunday (Saturday for our Seventh Day Adventist brothers and sisters) worship service. Look at our language, we go to the Sunday service, as in, we go to get served (or “fed” in Christianese). We as attenders and church staff focus most of our energy, effort, and resources into the weekend program and we call that our church experience. The staff and ministry teams do the work of service and our participation is in singing and then listening to the message. Everything else we do (small groups, outreach, missions or supplemental programs) are special events that spring from the weekend service.

We’ve gone from being a church to going to church. The model we usually operate under, for all intents and purpose driven lives, looks like this: I make sure my butt gets into heaven, join a church, and maybe that can impact the world. Churches have become so inward focused. Missions becomes a piece of the pie, another program we have the option of giving to or participating in, instead of the whole pie. That has led to the church becoming maintenance people, museum curators of all this precious history that has little connection to our day to day lives.

However, we, the church, should always have a missionary posture. Where the people realize that they are church through the week who gather together for corporate worship on the weekend. Where each member contributes to the mission of the church. This not-so-novel idea led to revisiting the idea of a missional church.

The term “missional church” was coined by the Gospel and Our Culture Network in the 90s.* Basically, the church is seen as a group of people on a mission in our current context (which then naturally lends itself to culturally appropriate evangelism, but that’s another rant sometime). The church is a reproducing community (as opposed to an empire or fortress building community) of authentic disciples who are being equipped as missionaries to be sent out by God. We listen to the questions asked by our community and dialogue over those questions. We don’t force questions that we think our community “should” be asking and provide those answers. That’s not real helpful.

The missional model would look something like this: God has Good News (that His Kingdom is at hand) meant for the world, He has chosen to use the church in order to share it, I am invited to be a part of it. We make disciples instead of making Christians and then discipling them (to create what? Super-Christians?).

As Christians, we have our identity in Christ. We find our mission in Christ. Missional people might not spend as much time at church because their whole lives are missions. We are all missionaries in the context of our social connections, called to love and serve the world. Some people may ask why we do what we do, and though we may share why, even if they don’t, our mission doesn’t change. Evangelism isn’t separated from social action. I’m going to serve because I’m called to serve, not in order to “trick” you into asking about my faith so that I can make my Jesus sales pitch.

We’ve gotten away from the idea of church being a hospital for broken people. These days, many of us feel more comfortable walking into a bar than into a church. Which is why I propose that we work on our own hearts and minds and shut up. We love other people and serve them as our evangelism, using our “talking time” to “do”. We need to get out of our Christian ghettos and into our neighborhoods and social networks. It’s about living in unity with the King, joining Jesus in what He’s already doing.


[*A quick summary of their thesis goes like this: The church is missional, not by its sending out of missionary ventures but by its life as a community sent by God into its place in the world. The church's origin is in the gospel of the reign of God which Jesus preached and established gives shape to the church's missional identity as representing the reign of God as its community (koinonia), its servant (diakonia) and its messenger (kerygma). The missional church lives an alternative vision in the midst of the "powers" constituted by its surrounding society's culture and socio-political, economic structures. Churches participate in the community-forming work of the Holy Spirit by cultivating in their life together those ecclesial-missional practices implicated by the gospel of Christ. All local Christian communities are intimately bound in a "community of communities" with all others, in a global church which is apostolic, catholic, holy and one.]



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The Get Out Countdown Clock

I love my kids. I cherish every minute I have with them.

And I want them out my house.

You see, as much as I’m tempted to lose all sense of my own life and re-fashion the frayed and tattered thing that my wife and I call a social life around my boys, I’m too selfish. I like my time with myself, I like my time with my wife, and I don’t get enough of either. So I’m looking forward to having an empty nest. Some parents can’t handle the empty nest. I know that my parents realized that 30 years of their marriage was spent raising kids. Thirty years. Now they have to find some hobbies. Either that, or talk to each other (and Lord knows married people run out of stuff to talk about after their first five years. That’s why they have kids in the first place). As to the problem at hand, I am torn about which date to go with:

Number of days til Malcolm (my youngest, the one that’s less than happy about having his picture taken) is 18: 5114.

Number of days til Malcolm is shipped off to college: 5145.

It’s never too soon to be prepared. This reminds me of a sign that I saw at my Barber Shop:

CHILDREN
Tired of Being
Harassed by your
Stupid Parents?

ACT NOW!
Move Out,
Get a Job,
Pay Your OWN Bills,
While You Still
Know Everything!

For the record, this has nothing to do with the fact that my wife and I just bought locks for our bedroom door due to the frequency of unannounced night time visitors.

Countdown Clock by Zoodu.com

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Finally Getting Caught Up

This was supposed to be a blog about my take home lessons on exposure versus paying venues. You see, I am loathe to give advice to (new or upcoming) writers, because I’m still figuring out the game myself. There have been some bumpy lessons along the way, but I’m tried to keep them to a minimum. I’ve been published in one charity anthology (Small Bites) and one e-book anthology (Crossings). Neither of which I regret, but that’s more than plenty when it comes to giving away my work.

I see the lure of pursuing exposure markets. Exposure is great in theory, but by exposure, you want to mean more than being read by the friends and family of the other contributors. The basic rule of thumb is that if a market doesn’t have enough of a readership to afford to pay you, the only thing exposed is their business. There are exceptions, of course, but as general guiding principles go, that’s a pretty good one.

The only work I give away is my reviews over at Hollywood Jesus. That’s legitimate exposure (almost a million hits a day), they have a new volume of their Hollywood Jesus Reviews 2004-2005 coming out soon (I have seven reviews in that one). And they sent me to Canada as part of a press junket for The Greatest Game Ever Played.


My First Junket

Some writers have mountain retreats that they go to in order to clear their heads, focus, or simply get away. I’ll take room service over the outdoors anytime. Not that I do this often (writer = no money), but I go to enough conferences where I’m put up in hotels by my day job (scientist = no money) or my work at the church (ministry = no money). In this case, Disney arranged for my impromptu trip to Toronto, Canada.

I didn’t have a lot of notice, but hey, it was a free trip to Canada and I’d never been. I loved what bits of Toronto I managed to see. It reminded me of Chicago, except with nice people. There was a mix up at the hotel, so the first day I didn’t get registered with the media group. So I resigned myself to staying in my room, ordering room service, and getting caught up on some writing projects. And let me tell you, the more expensive the meal, the prettier it is and the less it fills you up.

I ate very pretty on Disney’s dime.

As it turns out, the Toronto Film Festival was going on. If I’d had the chance, I’d have prepared better for that. I didn’t bump into too many stars, Woody Harrelson and Madonna (whose husband is about to inflict his latest cinematic turd upon an unsuspecting populace). Luckily, my years of training at horror conventions prepared me for this. Except that I missed all the parties. Though in retrospect, the last thing the church needs is pictures of me drinking out of Madonna’s bra or something floating around the internet (it’s bad enough that whenever someone Googles something like “postmodern”, “Emergent”, and “Indianapolis” they usually get directed to my web site).

It was like my first con where I didn’t know anyone. The big difference being that at a horror writer’s convention, the other writers will reach out an draw you into the community and have it was strictly every man for themself. Well, that’s probably too harsh an indictment (as well as too much a rose-tinted glasses view on horror conventions), but the sense of competition was higher. We all like our tribes best, evidently. Writers (sub-divided by the media you work in). Talking heads. Camera men. Producers.

Anyway, if you care even a little bit about the movie, The Greatest Game Ever Played, I have posted my interviews with the writer and director. I know, “who cares what a writer has to say?” But in the Interview with Mark Frost, a couple of us became utter geeks and tried to get him to talk about revisiting Twin Peaks or what he was doing in the screenplay to Fantastic Four 2 (come on, give us at least the villain!)

A Few Words with Bill Paxton was more like a monologue with someone just pushing the “play” button on Bill Paxton and letting him go. I guess he was trying to anticipate the questions he knew we were going to ask, but it was more like a politician following a script. However, I still managed to fashion an interview out of it.

We had a chance to talk to Shia LaBeouf. I’ll probably just do excerpts of that interview over here in a day or two. Shia was definitely not in diplomatic/always on point/Hollywood speak mode.



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On Kanye West

So a couple of people have been bending my ear over the Kanye West comments over George Bush's handling of the Katrina aftermath. I know they were looking for a "Negro seal of approval" on their opinion (they took umbrage and came to me, as their "lone, reasonable black friend", to echo their opinion and feel good about whatever foolishness they were about to say next). Why, I have no idea, since my opinions rarely please many people in any given argument.

For those who are unfamiliar with Kanye West, let me direct you to Rod Garvin's wonderful blog entry on him:

At a time when hip-hop was plagued with oversexed M.C.'s and superficial rhymes you could say that Kanye West flew onto the scene like an angel out of heaven. His smash first single "Slow Jam" would pre-empt any chances of being mislabeled as a Gospel artist, but the inspirational, non-preachy "Jesus Walks" earned him a place next to other Patron Saints of Imperfection and prophetic reflection, such as John Coltrane ("Love Supreme"), Marvin Gaye ("What's Going On?") and Tupac Shakur (Too many songs with spiritual force and social relevance to name just one). Hua Hsu of the Village Voice had it right when he wrote in his review of West's first album The College Dropout, entitled "The Benz or the Backpack?", that self-conflict was in. With his second album, Late Registration, West proves that he is the king of cognitive and spiritual dissonance, which helps him capture the complex nature of the human condition better than any of his peers in hip-hop and perhaps better than anyone in music - period.

Kanye's complexity is fueled by a mother who is a retired English Professor and a father who is a former Black Panther and is currently a Christian marriage counselor. Pedigree may have given him his uncanny blend of intellecualism, spirituality and revolutionary disposition, but his middle class upbringing contributed to his preppy sense of style. Sprinkle on some hip-hop pathos and you have one of the most original musical artists ever. It is this hyper-awareness of his unique stature that boosts West's ego and causes some critics to paint him with the "arrogant" label.

Artistic contradiction, West's masterful formula for success, is precisely what causes Time reporter Josh Tyrangiel to question the revolutionary potential of Kanye in his article, "Why You Can't Ignore Kanye West." "Revolutions require moral certainty, and West's default position is doubt," writes Tyrangiel. "What he's up to is more like a reformation." Another conflicted Christian by the name of Martin Luther has taught us that reformations can have revolutionary implications, but Tyrangiel does have a point. If Hsu is correct in his assessment that, "Rather than sort through his life's ethical messes or compromised alliances, West peddles self-conflict as an end itself," than we have reason to be cautious about Kanye's role in a larger social movement. In all fairness, Hsu made his comments in reference to West's first album. The question is, has Kanye become more secure in the positions that he takes on various issues (keeping in mind only one year has past between his new album and his last one)? Let's take a look at some lyrics that touch on race and class, which are among West's favorite topics: (Read rest of blog entry here)

As for what I thought of the comments, let me direct you to a remix of his song "Gold Digger":

The internets have had their way with Kanye West's new single "Gold Digger." An ass-kicking protest remix is now online at FWMJ -- it features Kanye's infamous "George Bush doesn't care are about black people" quote, and skewers the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.

Five days in this motherf*cking attic
I can't use the cellphone I keep getting static
Dying 'cause they lying instead of telling us the truth (...)
Screwed 'cause they say they're coming back for us, too
but that was three days ago and I don't see no rescue(...)

Swam to the store, tryin' to look for food
Corner store's kinda flooded so I broke my way through
Got what I could but before I got through
News say the police shot a black man trying to loot

Link to "George Bush Don't Like Black People" MP3 (8.7MB).

Remixed by The Legendary K.O, Words by Big Mon and Damien a/k/a Dem Knock-Out Boyz.

Find another Negro to Amen your opinions. In the meantime, I am hoping that the issue of poverty in this country will finally be addressed. As always, I remain cautiously optimistic.



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So I Stay Near the Door

I guess that I'm in a real poetry loving mood, because I just noticed that my last entry was a poem. This one, however, was not written by me, but encapsulates a lot of my thoughts and moods at the moment. Plus, I just got through attending a seminar by Brian McLaren (who has recently begun a new book-blog experiment) and he used the poem. To those who are wondering, I'll be posting about my jaunt to Canada starting tomorrow.

SO I STAY NEAR THE DOOR

By the Reverend Canon Samuel Moor Shoemaker, Jr., D.D., S.T.D.

I stay near the door.
I neither go too far in, nor stay too far out,

The door is the most important door in the world–

It is the door through which men walk when they find God.

There’s no use my going way inside, and staying there,

When so many are still outside, and they, as much as I,

Crave to know where the door is. And all that so many ever find

Is only the wall where a door ought to be.
They creep along the wall like blind men, with outstretched, groping hands,

Feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door,

Yet they never find it - - -

So I stay near the door.

The most tremendous thing in the world

Is for men to find that door–the door to God.

The most important thing any man can do
is to take hold of one of those blind, groping hands,
and put it on the latch–
the latch that only clicks and opens to the man’s own touch.

Men die outside that door,
as starving beggars die on cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter–
Die for want of what is within their grasp.

They live, on the other side of it–because they have found it.

Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it,

And open it, and walk in, and find Him - - -

So I stay near the door.

Go in, great saints, go all the way in–

Go way down into the cavernous cellars,

And way up into the spacious attics–

It is a vast, roomy house, this house where God is.

Go into the deepest of hidden casements, of withdrawal, of silence, or sainthood.

Some must inhabit those inner rooms,
And know the depths and heights of God,
And call outside to the rest of us how wonderful it is.
Sometimes I take a deeper look in,
Sometimes venture a little farther;
But my place seems closer to the opening - - -

So I stay near the door.

There is another reason why I stay there.

Some people get part way in and become afraid

Lest God and the zeal of His house devour them;

For God is so very great, and asks all of us.

And these people feel a cosmic claustrophobia.

And want to get out. “Let me out!” they cry.

And the people way inside only terrify them more.

Somebody must be by the door to tell them that they are spoiled

For the old life, they have seen too much;

Once taste God, and nothing but God will do any more.

Somebody must be watching for the frightened

Who seek to sneak out just where they came in,

To tell them how much better it is inside.

The people too far in do not see how near these are

To leaving–preoccupied with the wonder of it all.

Somebody must watch for those who have entered the door,

But would like to run away. So for them too,

I stay near the door.

I admire the people who go way in.

But I wish they would not forget how it was

Before they got in. Then they would be able to help

The people who have not yet even found the door,

Or the people who want to run away again from God.

You can go in too deeply, and stay too long,

And forget the people outside the door.

As for me, I shall take my old accustomed place,

Near enough to God to hear Him, and know He is there,

But not so far from men as not to hear them,

And remember they are there, too.

Where? Outside the door–

Thousands of them, millions of them.

But–more important for me–

One of them, two of them, ten of them,

Whose hands I am intended to put on the latch.

For those I shall stay by the door and wait

For those who seek it.

“I had rather be a door-keeper . . ."

So I stay near the door

End


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A Sestina for Sally - the actual poem I forgot to post

First Dates

Idle chatter filled the awkward silence
Ignoring the sudden dryness of his tongue
Too old to be seeing with a teenager’s eyes
“It's not a date,” she said. “Liar” cried her heart
“Good. ‘Starship Troopers’ was not the best of date movies”
She laughed and talked to fend off her tears

An evening full of romantic jaunts and tears
“This is a date” the thought dawned in a rush of silence
Sitting in the dark of his car, waiting for the movies
Forgetting English as his native tongue
Feeling the pounding, prodding of his heart
Tricky situations entered into with open eyes

Pulling him by the arm because of his closed eyes
Fearful anticipation threatened to erupt as tears
A candle-lit table, set by her heart
She held her breath, afraid of the silence
“I never thought of you that way” he thought; “wow” tripped from his tongue
He only saw this scene played out in the movies

He pretended to fumble through her collection of movies
Not quite avoiding staring into the languid pools of her eyes
Quick and rough, darted her probing tongue
No thought to the future, the potential for tears
Just sitting on the couch, enjoying the silence
Rarely had he been entrusted with so open a heart.

He ached knowing that he grieved her heart
No happily ever afters, living lives not movies
Secret fears, secret wants, and knowing silence
Never thought he'd see this day with these eyes
Telling her those things, unmoved by tears
Ashamed of his deceit-filled tongue

Months lost, fearing that she’d gone confessed his tongue
Nearly too late he knew he burned for her in his heart
Even now he remembered tasting the salt of her tears
Before the credits rolled like at the end of most movies
To see him as he is, looking at him with love-filled eyes
Stilling the demons, the doubts, leaving only the silence

She shed her tears like she did at most movies
Stilling her tongue lest she again betray her heart
Look closely, for no lies fill her eyes, the truth lay in the silence.



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A Sestina for Sally

I’m not a poet. Just thought that I’d throw that little disclaimer out there before we move on.

A group of friends and I went to United States of Mind last night for their open mic poetry reading. I’ve been a lurker there for quite sometime, again, not being a poet, but enjoying the creative atmosphere. Last night I decided to read for the first time. The only poems that I’d written (other than that Loving Jesus People piece from a few weeks back) were for my wife. You see, one of the downsides of being a writer is that you’re probably never going to get rich doing it. So for one of our anniversaries, the paper one I think, I found myself a little short on funds. One of the upsides of being a writer, with an understanding spouse, is that I wrote three poems for the anniversary, which she framed and put in our bedroom. Yeah, it was the equivalent of being a kid and making a Mother’s Day card with crayons and a folded piece of paper (a stunt I also pulled this year with my mom, because, well, I found myself short of funds again. I’m conveniently short of funds during holidays that don’t involve me. Especially since new comic book day is mid-week.)

This, unfortunately, ties into the activity I find myself being forced into tonight because I lost our most recent debate (“debate” is one of those marriage terms that describes the wife informing the husband of what their plans are and the husband offering up mild protest before the inevitable “yes, dear”). I’m going roller-blading with my wife. You see, I only learned to roller blade in order to hang out more often with my wife when we were still dating. It was my contention that among the many blessings of marriage was guilt free sex and never having to do the stuff that I did when I was dating. My list of stuff included dancing and roller blading.

Apparently somewhere in my many ramblings, my ever attentive wife pointed out, I once said that people should always do the things they did when they were dating once they were married. My reasoning was that smart guys should thus keep that list small. It also set their potential wives expectations lower, the chief benefit of that being that anything we do above those minimal expectations would earn us brownie points resulting in delighted wives, extra servings at dinner, and our wives bragging to their friends about what a great husband they have.

Hoisted once more on the pitard of my own words. Thus, I’m going roller blading and there aren’t enough poems that I could write to get me out of it.



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Black People Sure Love Their Fried Chicken

There is a reason that I watch most shows on videotape or on DVD. It’s because I hate commercials. They interrupt the story that I’m watching (even though I know the stories are written in such a way to allow for commercials, that’s still four minutes of dead space). My oldest son, all of four, is in the “daddy, I want that” time of life, so for what it counts, I’ve been using commercials as instructional time in “you can’t always get what you want” and “commercials are made to make you want things and that’s a trap you want to avoid.”

However, the other night, during our Law and Order marathon, this commercial came on for Burger King's newest product, Chicken Fries. Darius Rucker (how far the Hootie had fallen) in the cowboy suit was one thing, because I love singing and dancing black folk as much as the next person (and, frankly, I liked the commercial).

The object of my complaint, on the other hand, featured a cast of characters called the “BK Rebel Unit”, a band of crime-fighting, fast-food-eating black super heroes. Their mission? To bring Chicken Fries to the ‘hood. (And wouldn’t you know, I can’t find a picture of them anywhere on the Internet.)

If I were in one of my “Blacker-than-thou” moods, I would have made fun of them and there’s a good chance that I would have referred to them as the “Coon Unit”. Since I’m not, I’ll have to make due with making fun of the board of marketing executives that thought this was a good idea. I can almost see the board room full of pot smoke (cause someone had to be smoking something to let this pass as a good idea).

*inhales*

“Yep. That’s a great idea. It’s got everything. Black people. Fried chicken. You so brill.”

*exhales, coughs*

“You know what we need now? Watermelon slushies.”

“Totally brill.”

It was bad enough that Ronald McDonald is suddenly “down”.







As if clowns weren’t scary enough. Now I have to worry about Ronald going all “Wayne Brady on a ho”. Sure, I’m in a sensitive mood about how I see black people depicted lately. That being said, I’m gonna leave those Red Stripe commercials alone. Hooray Beer!


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On Katrina and Race

The thing about floods is that they have a way of washing away the surface of a society and reveal what lies beneath. New Orleans will never be the same city again.

We’re talking about a city that I had been to on a few occasions and was the city that I had always said that if I wasn’t living in Indianapolis I would move there. And in the face of such disasters, we’re left to wonder why. Yesterday, I ranted on the theological implications of the question. Today I’m left to wonder about the racial implications of the questions. Partly, this could be due to the fact that whenever I am working on a racially charged project, such as my recent novella, I become especially sensitive to race-related issues. Either I see it more or I become more aware of how deeply the sin of racism runs.

Sometimes, however, it is painfully obvious that to deny it would reveal more about the denier than the evidence itself.

As reported by Jordan Flaherty, for those who have not lived in New Orleans, you have missed a incredible, glorious, vital, city. A place with a culture and energy unlike anywhere else in the world. A 70% African-American city where resistance to white supremacy has supported a generous, subversive and unique culture of vivid beauty.

The saddest part, as I’ve come to learn, is that a lot of this could have been prevented. Many voices have long warned of the dangers posed by the decaying (or rather abandoned to decay) infrastructure of New Orleans. So one is left to wonder why in such a wealthy country, so many of its own citizens lived in conditions that were already tragic. Money that should have gone toward the infrastructure of the city, dried up or were directed elsewhere. Because in this culture, the poor are the expendable.

Jordan Flaherty went on to say that the city has a 40% illiteracy rate, and over 50% of black ninth graders will not graduate in four years. Louisiana spends on average $4,724 per child’s education and ranks 48th in the country for lowest teacher salaries. The equivalent of more than two classrooms of young people drop out of Louisiana schools every day and about 50,000 students are absent from school on any given day. Far too many young black men from New Orleans end up enslaved in Angola Prison, a former slave plantation where inmates still do manual farm labor, and over 90% of inmates eventually die in the prison. [Angola only takes prisoners serving sentences of 50 years or more, thus the high number. -- NK] It is a city where industry has left, and most remaining jobs are low-paying, transient, insecure jobs in the service economy. Race has always been the undercurrent of Louisiana politics. This disaster is one that was constructed out of racism, neglect and incompetence.

An overwhelming majority of the ones left to sink or swim on their own were black. One in three black people didn’t have cars or didn’t have enough money for bus fare. Many of us take having a car and freedom of transportation for granted. I’ve been dumbfounded by the amount of commentary along the lines of “why didn’t they just move?” Kind of like the Sam Kinison routine where he was talking about Ethiopians. They weren’t his problem, if they wanted something to eat, why didn’t they move to where the food was.

An Associated Press analysis of Census data shows that the residents in the three dozen hardest-hit neighborhoods in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama also were disproportionately minority and had incomes $10,000 below the national average.

“Let them know we’re not bums. We have houses. Our houses were destroyed. We have jobs. It’s not our fault that we didn’t have cars to leave,” Shatonia Thomas, 27, said as she walked near New Orleans’ convention center five days after the storm, still trapped in the destruction with her children, ages 6 and 9.

There was the catastrophic failure on the part of the government, both local and federal. School buses could have been mobilized to help evacuate the poor. However, going further back, again according to Flaherty, since at least the mid-1800s, its been widely known the danger faced by flooding to New Orleans. The flood of 1927, which, like this week’s events, was more about politics and racism than any kind of natural disaster, illustrated exactly the danger faced. Yet government officials have consistently refused to spend the money to protect this poor, overwhelmingly black, city.

It’s not like Hurricane Katrina went out of its way to devastate poor and/or black areas. I’m afraid that sort of discriminations is strictly in the providence of people. Politics and the law, like most of the rest of our system, follow the money, and the people who lived in the areas struck hardest by Hurricane Katrina had to little of it to be of concern.

The AP analysis showed:

* Median household income in the most devastated neighborhood was $32,000, or $10,000 less than the national average.
* Two in 10 households in the disaster area had no car, compared with 1 in 10 in nationwide.
* Nearly 25 percent of those living in the hardest-hit areas were below the poverty line, about double the national average. About 4.5 percent in the disaster area received public assistance; nationwide, the number was about 3.5 percent.
* About 60 percent of the 700,000 people in the three dozen neighborhoods were minority. Nationwide, about 1 in 3 Americans is a racial minority.
* One in 200 American households doesn’t have adequate plumbing. One in 100 households in the most affected areas didn’t have decent plumbing, which, according to the Census, includes running hot and cold water, a shower or bath and an indoor toilet.
* Nationwide, about 7 percent of households with children are headed by a single mother. In the three dozen neighborhoods, 12 percent were single-mother households.

The land of equal opportunity. Don’t worry, I get that this isn’t exactly a new problem. President Lyndon Johnson, in a speech to Howard University in 1965, laid it out for us: "Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences - deep, corrosive, obstinate differences, radiating painful roots into the community and into the family and the nature of the individual. These differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice and present prejudice. They are anguishing to observe. For the Negro they are a constant reminder of oppression."

Lastly, I’m not one to castigate the media (I can’t help but think of the classic Chris Rock routine whenever someone is about to blame the media for its portrayal of black people), but the media does have a role in this also. Don’t think that it went unnoticed that white folks walking out of grocery stores with bags of things “found” what they needed to survive, but black folks walking out of the same stores were “looting”. (By the way, the photos have since been removed due to complaints about the language.) It strikes me as quite the deflection from examining the real causes and problems represented by the devastation.

The problem is that we as a society like to sweep the poor, especially the poor of color, under the rug. Under resourced, with help who knew how long in the offing, people hustled to survive. This in no way excuses the “survive by any means necessary” mentality that often grips people, but put in context, these weren’t people caught up in a societal pathology. And continuing to label the people as “refugees” continues to allow a distance between “us” and “them.” We think of refugees as people in other countries, not our own. It’s more comfortable to believe that this happened to some “other” people, not our own.

"When a man is hanging on a tree and he cries out, should he cry out unemotionally? When a man is sitting on a hot stove and he tells you how it feels to be there, is he supposed to speak without emotion? This is what you tell black people in this country when they begin to cry out against the injustices they're suffering. As long as they describe these injustices in a way that makes you believe you have another 100 years to rectify the situation, then you don't call that emotion. But when a man is on a hot stove, he say, 'I'm coming up. I'm getting up. Violently or non-violently doesn't even enter the picture - I'm coming up you understand'." –Malcolm X

Our social and economic policies continue to reflect our priorities. Contrary to some religious voices, Hurricane Katrina was not God’s judgment against our embrace of homosexuality and abortion. It does, however, serve as quite an indictment, revealing many unsavory truths about our country. If we’re going to be judged, it will be on how we treat, in Jesus’ words, “the least of these”. The poor.

Too bad it took a hurricane to remind us of them.



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On Katrina and God’s Will

AIDS. Rwanda. 9/11. Tsunami. Hurricane Katrina.

One of the first question people ask in the face of tragedies like this is “why?” And it is a perfectly reasonable question to ask: how could a good God allow such evil things to happen? Even if you make the distinction between evil that people do to each other, such as 9/11 or the daily barrage of violence documented on the evening news, and the evil caused by nature, the question still lingers in want of answers. In fact, the question gains a more terrible weight in light of the fact that the laws of nature is so out of the control of humans, and the “evil” of nature can only be set at God’s doorstep.

Listening to NPR this morning, I was glad to hear reports of how churches have stepped up and been a source of relief and comfort. Churches, especially given how long it takes the government to organize assistance, are one of the first places people turn to for shelter as well as answers in times like these. Churches were rarely so packed as they were in the weeks after 9/11. In a lot of ways, I don’t think the Church was ready for it, had any answers, or didn’t offer up anything people wanted to hear. You can talk to me about this televangelist or that radio preacher or that wacko group speaking in the name of all right thinking Christians, but unless I’m directed to the latest bit of lunacy people expect me to comment on, I don’t subject myself to them.

Some of our more conservative Evangelical brethren would chalk such natural disasters up to this simply being a consequence of living in a “fallen world” (that because of Adam’s sin, nothing about God’s created order is as it should be. The violence and evil we experience is the result of our alienation from God and the alienation from creation itself). If you find comfort in the cool arms of some systematic theology, then more power to you, but some people want to hold God to account for allowing things to unfold as they have. Others of our “beloved spokesmen” (who shall go nameless because I fear many of their comments are meant solely to generate headlines for themselves rather than actually help anyone) are quick to proclaim:
-God is trying to get our attention.
-God is judging us (for our rampant homosexuality and abortions).
-We brought this on ourselves.
-The hand that smites is the hand that heals.
-The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

Does that mean that the drunk driver who kills a family of four was doing God’s will? By their reasoning, God is behind all of the evil and suffering in the world. “Hey, you killed a couple hundred thousand people to get my attention. Sign me up.” With that as the take home lesson, obviously people are going to turn to Him now. This brand of theology torments me. If their view of God is correct, then I would have to end up praying “God, obviously we’re stupid. We don’t get it, we won’t get it. So You might want to ease up because now it’s just abuse.”

Or maybe we need some new spokesmen.

Part of the problem is that we have to have answers to everything. That much is understandable, however one of the consequence has been that we treat the Bible like an answer book, turning to it for absolute certainty and truth. In turn, this gave rise to formulas and cliches that we need to work past. In the Bible, we have wisdom writings, stories, revelations, and an account of human suffering and divine redemption. So our wrestlings boil down to two things:

I. The God is Good Theodicy. Okay, a theodicy is a justification of God. It was a philosophical term first coined by the German thinker, Gottfied Wilhelm von Leibnitz, but the idea is an old one as we try to reconcile the idea of a good, all powerful God and the reality of evil. The fact of the matter is that God is good and is also omnipotent. God created a world which contains evil and had a good reason for doing so (for reasons of greater good that we don’t understand right now). So the fact that the world contains evil is consistent with a Christian view of God. Yet we still want this all knowing, all powerful God to do something about the evil. We want to accuse God, point out how He has screwed up and turned His back on us for too long. We’re tired of His seeming silence and indifference to our sufferings.

II. God is sovereign. Cliches such as “there is a divine blueprint from above” or “there’s a reason for everything” sound good. Look, there’s a couple of ways to look at sovereignty. God as the ultimate engineer, controls the world like a mechanism. There’s no free will, only God pushing us around like chess pieces. Another view, getting around that prickly “no free will” problem, says that God allows all choices, using his foreknowledge to move things toward his greater purpose/good. Either way, God does not explain Himself. Evil is neither explained nor denied.

All I’m left with is God is God, I’m not, so I’ll be quiet now.

For the sake of my own mental noodling, I believe that we often project onto God our understanding of all the attributes we think He should have. If we’re going to do that, we need to project it out a bit. One thing I have come to realize during my time as a parent is that sometimes I look evil to my kids. They don’t have my experience nor my (bigger picture) view of how I want them shaped to be the men they ought to be. That’s just the leap from child to parent, so I can’t imagine the differences in perspective from human to God. I remember the “answers”God offered to Job when Job wanted God to account for Himself for how unjustly Job had been allowed to suffer [Job 40:8-14 (as rendered in The Message)]:

“Do you presume to tell me what I'm doing wrong? Are you calling me a sinner so you can be a saint? Do you have an arm like my arm? Can you shout in thunder the way I can? Go ahead, show your stuff. Let's see what you're made of, what you can do. Unleash your outrage. Target the arrogant and lay them flat. Target the arrogant and bring them to their knees. Stop the wicked in their tracks--make mincemeat of them! Dig a mass grave and dump them in it--faceless corpses in an unmarked grave. I'll gladly step aside and hand things over to you--you can surely save yourself with no help from me!”

So most times, my best theological answer to many questions is “I don’t know,” but the questions are worth struggling with and working through. Honestly, what answer would satisfy you? That is why I question the value of such exercises a lot of the time and choose to tread the road of mystery. Some things can’t be taught, they have to be lived. No amount speculation will comfort those truly suffering (nor will the most rational or well framed argument win an “unbeliever”). Some questions have no answers, at least not here and not now.

So I could sit here, stuck in a tortured rut of intellectual navel gazing, or I could view the victims of tragedy the way the good Samaritan viewed the man who was left beaten and beside the road. He took him in and showed compassion for him. He lived out Christ’s message of loving your neighbor as yourself. Tragedies aren’t the victims’ problems or that region or country’s problem, but all of our problems.

I can’t help but be struck by the fact that while disasters like this are horrific, and sometimes bring out the worst in some of us, they also cause us to pull together in ways few other things can. They cause us to shake ourselves and take stock of our “problems” by forcing us to step outside of our daily complaints. Tragedies bring out our generosity as we reevaluate what is truly important, how much many of us have, and how good we really have things. Think of how stunned person after person was by the compassion of strangers.

Religion does not have a monopoly on morality, but it does offer a different perspective on problems and solutions. If godlessness is the problem, then worship is the solution. If immorality is the problem, then godliness is the solution. Christians are to be a witness for hope (in the form of Jesus Christ) and the first ones to protest this violent order of the way things are. We have hope, and in light of that hope, we act. We draw near to the suffering, continue to ask “why?”, and then act in compassion. That is our response to how could God allow this: be the arms of God in comforting the victims of suffering.

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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

(Or “Ruminations on a Black Jesus”)

I don’t want to set off one of those geekier-than-thou debates like “which is the best Star Wars movie?” (The Empire Strikes Back, for those in need of the answer), so I’ll just state my bias upfront: not counting the original series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was the best of the modern Star Trek incarnations. The show found its groove a lot quicker than The Next Generation (whose first two seasons are practically unwatchable). It featured steadfastly unsentimental, fully developed characters like Lt. Commander Worf (Michael Dorn), Constable Odo (Rene Auberjonois), Major Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor), Garak (Andrew Robinson) and Quark (Armin Shimerman). And it had the most action of all of the Star Trek incarnations.

One reason I believe that the show never quite got the due it deserved was because it was seen as the “black” Star Trek. Hear me out. The show was a black show like The Wire or Homicide: Life on the Streets–a predominantly black cast that didn’t create a lot of fanfare about it being a “black” show. This was the first incarnation of Star Trek to feature a black Captain, Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks, though he was only made Captain later in the series, I will only refer to his as Captain; he even had to wait a few seasons to get his own ship). There was a substantial black supporting cast, including his black son Jake Sisko (Cirroc Lofton) and a black love interest, Captain Kasidy Danielle Yates (24's Penny Johnson). Captain Sisko’s interests were unapologetically black (jazz, Negro League Baseball, collecting African art). This isn’t even including Worf, whose struggles with his Klingon culture (delving into it like some black people delve into their Afro-centric culture) closely mirrored the struggles that a minority faces having grown up cut off from his people.

Brooks could chew scenery with the best of them, easily on equal footing with Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard) as demonstrated in the pilot episode. Captain Sisko was under-utilized the first two seasons, though I think part of it may have been his discomfort in the Star Trek universe. By the fourth season, head shaved and goatee in place (becoming, for all intents and purposes, Hawk–his character from the show Spenser for Hire–in space), Brooks had come into his own.

The premise of the show led to a lot of early comparisons to J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 since both featured an orbiting space station as the only thing standing between humanity and invading forces. To understand the rest of the review, a bit of the mythology of the show has to first be explained. In the Alpha Quadrant of the galaxy, Deep Space Nine orbits the planet Bajor, which had been occupied by Cardassians who had only recently withdrawn. A stable wormhole, known to the Bajorans as the Celestial Temple of their Prophets, is discovered by the crew. The wormhole leads to the Gamma Quadrant, home of the Dominion, and intergalactic alliance of dominated species led by the Founders (Odo’s changeling people) whose will is administrated by the cloned Vorta and enforced by their elite warriors, the Jem’Hadar. The political landscape of the Alpha quadrant shifts as old enemies unite, tentative allies betray, and all out war is declared.

Another comparison to Babylon 5 is the fact that the examination of faith and the importance of religion undergirds the series. Bajorans draw their courage from their spiritual life, their life force (read: soul) referred to as their Pah. Benjamin Sisko is revealed to be the Emissary, a figure fulfilling Bajoran prophecy, to carry out the will of The Prophets. The nine orbs of the Celestial Temple have shaped the theology of the Bajoran people, basically relaying scripture and commandments from on high. So it is not a leap on my part to conclude that the Emissary is meant to be Christ. The main part of Captain Sisko’s character development involves him developing a Messianic consciousness, him growing into the role of Emissary.

Faith is a journey.

There is not just a Christian worldview represented on the show. Most of the characters have some sort of faith to their lives. Obviously, a Jewish worldview is seen through the eyes of Major Kira Nerys and the Bajoran people. Subtle in that Star Trek sort of way, the Cardassians represent the rule of Nazi Germany. Worf follows the traditions and mythology of the Klingons of old. Vorta Weyoun (Jeffrey Combs) walked and worked alongside his gods, the Founders. Constable Odo, in a way, represents a Buddhist notion. A drop of water losing itself in the ocean. Becomes absorbed in the whole of things. The goal of many Eastern religions is to lose your personal identity and become one with the oversoul. Even Quark lives out his faith (The Emperor’s New Cloak, 7-12), offering this prayer (while sticking gold laced latinum into the statue of his god) which is how some people view/treat God anyway: “Blessed Exchequer, whose greed is eternal. Allow this humble bribe to open your ears and hear this plea from your most devout debtor.” However, I wanted to examine some of the pivotal episodes that shape the essentially Christian spiritual worldview of the series.

The Emissary (season 1-episode 1)

“It is the unknown that defines our existence. We are constantly searching not just for answers to our questions, but for new questions.” –Benjamin Sisko

The Emissary is the bridge between humanity and the divine, a combination of both (we come to find out later). Sisko, at the time of his calling, exists at the moment of his greatest pain, the death of his wife. He carried it with him so long that it defined his existence. Our humanity is so often shaped by the pain that we carry with us, and the scars that it has left on our souls. His encounter with the Prophets jump started his healing process, putting him on the path to being fully human and fulfilling his created role.

The first two seasons followed the intricacies of Bajoran religion/politics. Candidates vied for the position of Kai (religious leader of the people, basically their pope). The show followed the political intrigue of the varying interstellar governments. However, soon the show was overshadowed by the brewing war between the Federation and the Dominion, moving away from the Bajoran focus of the first couple seasons. By Season 4, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has become the most action-packed of the Star Trek franchise. To the surprise of no one. For a start, the Federation-Dominion war is heating up and you have a command staff (Captain Sisko, Major Kira, and Lt. Commander Worf) who adhere to a shoot first policy of engagement.

In the episode Accession (4-17), time lost acclaimed Bajoran poet, Akorem Laan, returns claiming to be the true Emissary. Captain Sisko relinquishes the title to him. However once Akorem begins instituting policies more indicative of his time, such as caste systems, Sisko challenges him for the role of Emissary. They go to the Prophets to have the issue settled. Much like the spirit coming down on Jesus like a dove at his baptism, the Prophets make it clear that Sisko was the Emissary that had been prophecied.

(On a more badass note, in the episode Call to Arms, 5-26, Sisko was forced to abandon the station, but he left his beloved baseball on his desk because he intended to reclaim it. Nothing necessarily spiritual, just a favorite moment of mine.)

The Reckoning (6-21) In an earlier episode, Sacrifice of Angels (6-6), the wormhole aliens destroy the Dominion ships due to enter the Alpha quadrant, at a cost to be exacted later. By this point, Sisko is taking his role as Emissary much more seriously. Kai Winn (Louise Fletcher), her Eminence/religious leader of her people, stews in less-than-silent jealousy of his position. The Prophets announce that “The time of Reckoning is at hand” which leads to a bit of another test of faith. In a scene reminiscent of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Sisko cries out as he tries to do the will of the Prophets: “Why do you always have to be so damned mysterious? Answer me. I am tired of your riddles. If there’s something you need me to do, say so!”

Prophecy is fulfilled, but not in the way that anyone expected, no matter how hard they studied the original texts. The Reckoning (“The end or the beginning”) is a battle between the Prophets (possessing the body of Kira Nerys) and the Kosst Amojan , a Pah Wraith (“The Evil One”, possessing the body of Jake Sisko). This would be the final battle between good and evil for the fate of Bajor. Because of whom the combatants have chosen to possess, Sisko’s faith is tested to the point of breaking. Still, he tries to convince Kai Winn that they are on the right path: “Now, sometimes, it’s not easy to see the path they’ve laid out for us. Right now, I don’t know what they want from me, but I’m willing to take a leap of faith and trust that they’re guiding me and I’m asking you to take that leap with me.”

While Kai Winn and Sisko both believe that the Prophets have a plan for Bajor, Winn’s faith is found wanting, no where close to that of “an infidel, an outsider” (Sisko). She interrupts the battle due to her lack of faith and jealous (or as Kira diagnoses, the Kai has confused faith with ambition).

Tears of the Prophets (6-26) Sisko still tries to walk both worlds as Starfleet officers and religious icon, epitomizing the clash of the scientific/modern interpretation of the universe (wormhole aliens) versus the spiritual interpretation (The Prophets). Starfleet was as uncomfortable with him being seen as a Messiah figure as he was in the role, leading to this exchange between Captain Sisko and Admiral William Ross:

Sisko: "The Prophets don't see me as a Starfleet captain. They see me as their Emissary."
Ross: "That's the problem, isn't it? And for the past five years you've tried to be both. And up to now I've been patient. I've indulged you. I've gone out on a limb for you many times, but this is it. You need to make a decision. You are either the Emissary or a Starfleet captain. You can't be both."

Captain Sisko is ordered to launch attacks against Cardassia and the Dominion. Gul Dukat (Marc Alaimo), possessed by a Pah-wraith, attempts to destroy the wormhole, succeeding in sealing it shut and deactivating the orbs. Thus the people, The Emissary included, are cut off from the Prophets. A devastated Sisko takes a leave from the war, and not knowing whether or not he would return, took his treasured baseball with him.

Sisko didn’t realize how much the Prophets meant to him until he was cut off from them. By Season 7, Sisko had fully embraced his role as Emissary for the Prophets. He learns that to ensure his birth and guarantee his destiny, a Prophet possessed his mother, thus taking her form for the rest of the series. This proves a clearer image of the relationship between the Prophets and their Emissary and also called to mind the image of Mary comforting Jesus.

Covenant (7-9) Kira’s faith in the Prophets was so strong–was so much of who she was, and took up so much of her time–that it made Odo (who, in essence, worshiped justice’ logic and reason being his preferred method of communing with it) want to accompany her to her services. His detective’s mind wanted a sign, some evidence, some experience to allow him to believe in the Prophets. Kira explains that it doesn’t work like that, “Faith has to come first”, to which Odo replies “That’s too bad. I have a feeling it must be very comforting to believe in something more powerful than yourself.”

Kira’s faith is challenged by the Pah-wraith cult, led by Gul Dukat (still seeking to be loved and accepted by the Bajorans despite his role in overseeing their occupation). The Pah-wraiths claim to be the true gods of Bajor, cast out of heaven for trying to assert themselves. As evidence, they ask the tough questions such as why would the Prophets, who claimed to love the Bajorans and have a plan for them, allow the Cardassian occupation of them that killed tens of millions of their chosen people? What if everything you have been taught was wrong, not just wrong, but the inverse to how you were taught?

However, Kira knew what she believed and had no time for their attempts at deception. “In fact, I’ve always found that when people try to convince others of their beliefs, it’s because they’re really just trying to convince themselves.” There was no room for compromise between their two faiths because “There’s only one problem: we can’t both be right.”

Til Death Do Us Part (7-18) “Your path is a difficult one. She cannot share it with you,” the Prophets inform Sisko in the episode before this one (Penumbra (7-17)). This typifies the classic “hero’s journey” wherein part of the cost of being a hero is that while you may have a love interest, you don’t get the “happily ever after”. In Sisko’s case, the Prophets tell him that “If you do, you will know nothing but sorrow.”

Sisko is forced to count the cost of his devotion. The Prophets didn’t say that he couldn’t marry Kasidy, only that he shouldn’t. He still had a choice and like all choices, it has its consequences. Kai Winn also had choices to make regarding her faith. She had long lamented, after scrapping and scheming her way into the role of religious head of her people, that the Prophets had never spoken to her. Sisko regularly communed with the Prophets, yet the (co-)spiritual head of her people didn’t. She finally has her ecstatic experience, and “Prophets” speak to her. Unfortunately, the “Prophets” where actually the Pah-wraiths. Hearing from spirit beings is a tricky business, since it is difficult to tell the difference between a “good spirit” and a “bad spirit”; for example, the Pah-wraiths were only fallen Prophets, but could easily be taken as Prophets themselves. Without commenting on the nature of Kai Winn’s faith, one can see how easy it is to stray from the path of your faith. Deceptive spirits speak with just enough truth around their lies to sound true and with just enough error to make you stray from true doctrine.

Sisko and Kira debate his chosen course of action, and the possible consequences of going against the will of the Prophets. They both know that the Prophets wouldn’t ask him to do something without a reason. He could trust in the past (since the Prophets have never led him astray) or doubt his present situation (there’s always a first time). He opts to marry Kasidy.

What You Leave Behind (7-26) “We live in uncertain times.” –Garak

The war between the Federation Alliance and the Dominion comes to its bloody end. If this show were truly about the war, the episode would have ended there. However, the second half of the episode focuses on the climactic role of the Emissary. Initially aided by a fallen Kai Winn, Gul Dukat evolves into an anti-Emissary, with all the attendant imagery of a demon from the flaming pits. In a pitched one-on-one battle, Sisko topples himself and Gul Dukat into the fiery pits. The Emissary’s triumph and death fulfills his earthly mission and binds the fire demons. His story doesn’t end there. Following his death, the Emissary ascends to the Celestial Temple. He learns that he still has a great deal to do, so he promises to one day return.

The two-part series finale proved unsatisfactory to some. Probably because it didn’t have any tidy happy endings, but in fact, wrapped up the series with a less than pretty bow. The episode concluded all of the story lines bringing a sense of completeness, wholeness, to the series. It also remained true to each individual character’s arc, as each walked the paths they were meant to walk.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was the lone inheritor to the mantle of Star Trek: The Original Series, no matter how hard Star Trek: Enterprise may try. Many people debated who was the better Captain, Kirk or Picard, but who else but Sisko would’ve punched the near-omnipotent cosmic trickster Q upon his first encounter with him (leaving a stunned Q to retort “Picard never hit me.”)? Deep Space Nine explored and fleshed out the mythos of the alternate universe. Deep Space Nine’s single greatest episode (Trials and Tribble-ations, 5-6) was an ode to The Original Series classic, The Trouble with Tribbles, when the Deep Space Nine cast walked into the original episode and mingled with the original cast. Deep Space Nine didn’t stick as closely to Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's commandments, such as everyone having to get along. There is nothing sentimental about the series. Not the characters, not the storylines, and when the show tries (such as the farewell/memory montage in the finale) it doesn’t come off well. The show had multi-episode arcs and had season/series long meta-narrative (the other comparison to Babylon 5). In short, it demanded more of the viewer.

With themes involving fathers and sons (unlike other Star Treks, Captain Sisko had a son, the relationship between them being a key dynamic on the show) and rebirth/growth (the characters, like each of us, have a past, a convoluted history that we want to shed and grow past), the show’s most important lesson is that all people not only have the capacity for good and evil, but have a need for something greater than themselves. The show is about having and respecting faith.

I’m still waiting for Captain Sisko to return and collect his baseball from his desk.


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Persecution From Within and Without

Texas gunman kills 4 in church, then self

SASH, Texas (AP) -- A gunman killed four people near a small-town church, then killed himself early Monday after a nine-hour standoff with police, authorities said.

Police said witnesses told them that A.P. Crenshaw, who lived across the street from the Sash Assembly of God church, exchanged words in the church parking lot Sunday night with church member Wes Brown, who asked Crenshaw to leave.

Crenshaw returned a short time later and shot Brown, 61, at close range, and then shot the pastor, James Armstrong, 42, the witnesses said. Deputies found both men dead in a grassy area next to the church parking lot, Fannin County Sheriff Kenneth Moore said. He said it didn't appear that they were shot inside the church, as initially reported.

I’m still getting caught up on issues, but it hasn’t been a good week for the home team. When the church isn’t getting attacked from the outside, we seem to do a good job screwing up our message of love. First with Pat Robertson and then with our old friends Repent America chiming in on Hurricane Katrina.

Just days before "Southern Decadence", an annual homosexual celebration attracting tens of thousands of people to the French Quarters section of New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina destroys the city.

"Southern Decadence" has a history of filling the French Quarters section of the city with drunken homosexuals engaging in sex acts in the public streets and bars. Last year, a local pastor sent video footage of sex acts being performed in front of police to the mayor, city council, and the media. City officials simply ignored the footage and continued to welcome and praise the weeklong celebration as being an "exciting event". However, Hurricane Katrina has put an end to the annual celebration of sin.

"Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city," stated Repent America director Michael Marcavage. "From 'Girls Gone Wild' to 'Southern Decadence,' New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin. From the devastation may a city full of righteousness emerge," he continued.

Zealots always have to DO something. On the one hand, I should give them the benefit of the doubt and believe that this is the sincerest expression of their faith in wanting to see all people come to know Christ. On the other hand, half the time I feel that either their “faith” masks their personal hatreds or it’s a matter of them trying to convince themselves what they believe, not others. I suppose that with this sort of vitriol in the air, it’s no wonder that message board threads decrying a hate crime can so quickly derail into religion bashing.

Sometimes I want to shake people. At some point, I’ll sure I’ll wade into what real persecution looks like from around the globe. Maybe it will give some folks some perspective on what it is they believe and what it is they are to be about.

P.S.
To my “friends” at Repent America, allow me to introduce you to Jeff Strand. Jeff Strand, Repent America. Jeff, Repent. Repent, Jeff. (Okay, it wasn’t funny when Letterman did it either). Anyway, Jeff offers up An Open Letter To God.



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Astonishing X-Men

Written by Joss Whedon
Art by John Cassaday
Published by Marvel Comics

Marvel Comics have staged a resurgence in popularity built around name writers from other media. Kevin Smith (Clerks, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back) wrote Daredevil; Reginald Hudlin (House Party) on Black Panther; J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5) on The Amazing Spider-Man. And that trend continues with Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel) on Astonishing X-Men (not to be confused with Ultimate X-Men, The Uncanny X-Men, or New X-Men).

Writing X-Men should come naturally to Joss Whedon, since he’s always been writing X-Men. By that I mean that if you watch any of his television shows (Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly–soon to be the movie, Serenity) you will see that he’s always been writing teams. Buffy, herself, was patterned on his favorite X-Men, Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat), which was why the first thing he did in issue #1 was bring her back to the fold.

Whedon’s run is reminiscent of the best of the Chris Claremont/John Byrne classic era of the X-Men (the era that introduced Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Storm, Colossus, and Phoenix to the group), replacing the stuffy wordiness Claremont was fond of with witty banter. He’s also the inheritor of the mantle left when Grant Morrison ended his imaginative run on New X-Men, wherein he left no “sacred cow” unturned and rejuvenated the franchise. The team dynamics have changed since those runs. Scott Summers (Cyclops) and Emma Frost run the school that Professor X founded. Kitty Pryde and Emma Frost take an immediate dislike to one another (the fact that Kitty’s first adventure as a part of the X-Men involved Emma Frost trying to kill her has something to do with this). Cyclops and Wolverine have their rivalry, fueled by testosterone and a mutual love of Jean Grey (Phoenix), upped a notch since her death. For that matter, Cyclops and Emma Frost are now in a relationship that is attempting to flower under the long shadow of Jean.

Also, I want to point out that Cassaday’s art (Planetary) is phenomenal. Crisp and clean, he captures both the cinematic scope of the X-Men and the richness of their characters. The X-Men have seen a return to the spandex, ditching the black leather outfits that marked Morrison’s run and their depiction in the X-Men movies. The return of their colorful outfits symbolize a renewal of their purpose.

“We will never live in a world of peace. Which is why control and non-violence are essential. We must prove ourselves a peaceful people. We must give the ordinary humans respect, compliance, and understanding.” –Emma Frost

The Astonishing X-Men is about a mission: the reconciliation between people groups, mutants and humans, to bring them together for peaceful coexistence. The mutant struggle has been used as symbolic commentary on racism for much of its run (such as in the classic X-Men graphic novel, God Loves, Man Kills), but has come to also symbolize the plight of homosexuals (the legacy virus that afflicted mutants standing in for the AIDS virus or even the current worldview of mutants suffering from a genetic condition that possibly has a cure). The X-Men have sworn to use their gifts for a world that fears and hates them.

They are about an ideal, the peaceful coexistence of people, one in which they often can’t live up to themselves. Mutants may see themselves as a community, and that may be the goal that they work toward, but they aren’t there right now. The X-Men start by trying to be an example, a team. Despite their different gifts, their different temperaments, their different socio-economic backgrounds, they rally around a common goal. Unity in diversity.

“If none of us had limitations, what would God do with his time?” –Professor X

This set apart group of mutants see themselves as an elect, a group called for a purpose. Part of their mission is to provide a place for “evil mutants” to find redemption for their actions (Wolverine, Rogue, Gambit, Emma Frost). They have come to realize that they can’t be that example by being away or outside of the world in which they inhabit. That only increases the world’s distrust of them and view of them as freaks. They have to get into the world, be a living example of their goal among people. They have to incarnate their mission.

Joss Whedon has committed to a second year of The Astonishing X-Men. This first year has seen two major story arcs, so the second year will probably see two more. The X-Men are being ushered into a new era by recalling the greatness of their past. And believe me, it’s about time they’ve been handled this well.

Enjoying the Honeymoon

Yes, I’ve been quiet for a week or so. I’ve been–to borrow Edo van Belkom’s definition of the phrase–“enjoying the honeymoon” after completing my novella, Devil’s Marionette: “The time between the completion of the first draft (when everything is just perfect) and the first day of real roll-up-your-sleeves revision (when you realize how much it’s going to take to make things work).” (From the September 1, 2005 issue of the Hellnotes newsletter. What do you mean you are interested in the comings and goings of the horror field but you don’t subscribe to the Stoker award winning newsletter? Stop reading this blog right now and correct that mistake now.)

I haven’t been completely idle. I declared this past week “Hollywood Jesus Week” and tried to post a review of something everyday on my review blog over there. I originally started doing reviews over there to do television reviews, but that has expanded into movie and comic book reviews. Though I ended up seeing a sneak preview of the movie, The Greatest Game Ever Played (more on that at a later date), there hasn’t been many movies that I’ve wanted to see lately.

That left mostly comic books. Yes, I’m a writer’s fanboy, thus I reviewed Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men; Brian Michael Bendis’ Powers (volume 2) and his House of M; Mark Millar’s Ultimates 2; J. Michael Straczynski’s Strange; and Frank Miller’s All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder.

My personal favorite was my television show review for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Yes, it is the greatest of all iterations of Star Trek. Yes, I did title it “Ruminations on a Black Jesus”. Let the arguing begin.


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Powers (volume 2)

Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Mike Avon Oeming
Published by Icon

Fan favorite Brian Michael Bendis may write a great deal (Ultimate Spider-Man, Daredevil, The Pulse, House of M, New Avengers; he oversees the Marvel universe) but Powers is his first love. Along with his co-conspirator, Mike Avon Oeming (Hammer of the Gods, Thor), the title and creative team jumped under Marvel Comics umbrella with the creator-owned imprint, Icon. The premise is simple: “Homicide Detectives Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim investigate murders specific to super hero cases ... powers.”

Let me start off on the art. Originally I wasn’t a fan, but it grew on me. Its simple, almost overly cartoony, style belies its complexity. Oeming’s art is as much a part of the character of the book as Walker or Pilgrim. Powers is a cop book first, the other side of the super hero universe, chronicling the cases of the cops who have to work there, among the powers. It is also more than a police procedural as the stories often take on wider critiques of societal issues. Bendis perfected his “talking heads” writing style in Powers.

“Do we create a society where heroes can’t exist?”

The series reset (thus the volume 2) after a “power” went crazy and did some genocidal level damage which caused the world governments to declare all powers illegal. The inevitable happened as the good guys disappeared and the bad guys took over in a “big super villain turf war.”

Deena returns to the job, still pulling herself together after the events of said power going mad, and is trying to prove herself. Walker, a former power whose ancient history was explored as a controversial epilogue to volume 1. The death of Retro Girl was the first case Walker and Pilgrim worked together. Volume two involves Retro Girl’s apparent return and the ensuing chaos that entails. One of the books current underlying themes explores what happens when good people don’t do what they’re supposed to: fight the good fight.

“It’s not our fault bad shit happens ... Bad people do bad shit. We do what we can.” -Det. Christian Walker

For all of the over the top cases, Powers boils down to us. Our humanity. What makes us human and do the things we do. Deena is often the focus of the series, mostly because she seems the least informed (due to her absence) and gets to be the stand in for the audience. It’s her role as the normal one, and fanboy “hot chick”, that has made her a standout favorite. But it is her humanity that draws us into the story.

We all have desires. Desires are good in and of themselves; it’s when they stray from their intended purpose that things go awry. Desires are also potential areas of temptation and sin. The desire to enjoy things can lead to evil desires that express themselves in physical activity (“lust of the flesh”); the desire to obtain things can lead to a covetous heart (“lust of the eyes”); and the desire to do things can lead to focusing our lives around such activity (“pride of life”).

The same scenario plays out time after time in the cases that the detectives work. Like the cult of personality that springs up around powers, with its attendant celebrity worship diminishing everyone. Like the woman who goes on a killing spree because she always wanted a more exciting life for herself. Like Deena’s ex-boyfriend who loves her so much that the pain of her rejection causes him to lash out with tragic consequences.

The purpose of desires is to lead us to right relationships, with God, with each other and to live in harmony with creation. We have to be met where we are, broken and lost, in order to move where we need to be.

I look forward to what Bendis has planned, especially for Deena after the events of issue 11 which will shape her character for the foreseeable future. Riveting cliffhangers make up for the often languid plot movement, but Bendis’ deliberate pacing plays to his strengths as a writer. His is a return to the art of witty banter, dialogue that captures how people sound. Powers is easily Bendis’ best work.*



*This is also the only time when I can say that the laugh-out-loud letter pages alone are worth the price of the book. In an era when some comic books have eliminated letter pages, the one for Powers clocks in at ~5 pages.


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House of M

Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Olivier Coipel
Published by Marvel Comics

House of M is one of those comic book “events”, a re-defining mini-series that promises major changes in its wake (and by strange coincidence, has many tie-in issues among other titles in the Marvel Comic universe so that you have the option to purchase them in order to have the central story fleshed out for you). You know, the sort of marketing stunt that has a way of burning out the casual comics fan when done too often or not handled very well.

The story arises from the events of the “Avengers Dissembled” storyline wherein the Scarlet Witch, daughter of Magneto and member of the Avengers, lost control of her reality altering powers. During her nervous breakdown, she kills several Avengers, including her husband, the Vision before being subdued. Professor X of the X-Men, rebuilding the mutant nation of Genosha, decimated in the war between humans and mutants, has taken her in to attempt to heal her.

Got all that?

House of M can’t help but bring to mind the Onslaught/Age of Apocalypse storyline from the X-Men not too many years ago. Reality gets altered. There’s a quest as our heroes seek to undo things. Reality gets unaltered and most things return to normal with few lasting consequences (and maybe a new book or two get launched with carry over characters). Though we are promised that events from this mini-series will have long lasting impact. We’ll see.

We can’t help but have somewhat high expectations with fan favorite Brian Michael Bendis at the helm. Though he seems to be writing every Marvel Comics book (Ultimate Spider-Man, Daredevil, The Pulse and pitching in here and there), through House of M, he is taking on the mantle of (re-)focusing and care-taking the Marvel universe of heroes. There are flashes of what Brian Michael Bendis does best. Engaging dialogue. Super hero action tension. Extended bits of exposition (a consequence of such mammoth storylines is that you have to set/explain the rules of the game so that the story has some sort of interior logic).

In an effort to spare his daughter, Magneto has combined Professor X’s mind powers and his daughter’s ability to alter reality to re-create the world. Genosha is restored, with him in place as its leader. The story brings together two teams of heroes, the X-Men and the Avengers, as a lot of our beloved heroes are given the lives they think they truly want only to have to watch them unravel. Spider-Man has his Uncle Ben (the man who taught him that “with great power comes great responsibility” before he died) and his first love, Gwen Stacy restored. Cyclops lives the happy life with Emma Frost (particularly telling is the absence of Jean Grey). Captain America is an old man (not having been in suspended animation during the waning days of World War II). Hawkeye, killed during Avengers Dissembled, is once again among the living.

(This is also why the Ultimate line was started or why DC occasionally resets its entire universe: it gets complicated to tell stories when you have decades worth of continuity to explain or take into consideration.)

Yet the book does have some spiritual connections. This is a book of regrets and reclaiming those moments, those lost chances in life, and live parts of our life over again. We often dream of getting second shots at chapters of our lives to live them the way we think we always wanted to. Life on our terms, for our maximum happiness, not realizing how selfish this is. This points to our secret desires to set ourselves up as our own gods, determiners of our fate, and not realizing that we’re the problem. We all have friends who have lives that aren’t turning out the way they wanted so they decide to solve their problems by moving someplace new and starting over fresh. Then their lives proceed to go to seed all over again, because if the problem is within them, within their interior, and then no matter how far they run, there they are.

Regrets and dreams; we long to be rescued from our past transgressions, from those out of control elements of our lives. Yet, too often, we believe ourselves too far gone, too sinful, too tainted to be loved or accepted. It’s never too late. We can be met where we are, by finding a community, and with their help, become the people we were meant to be. No matter our past and how many mistakes we’ve made. We are never so far gone that we can’t turn our lives around, starting now. The path sounds “easy” (though not really because there are costs and sacrifices to changing our lives around, and we still have the consequences of our choices to date to deal with). However, it starts as simply as asking for and accepting forgiveness (from others and yourself), then going and “sin no more.”

A bit over blown and slowly paced, House of M feels like it could’ve been easily wrapped in six issues. But, a longer story means more Brian Michael Bendis (a fact that I’m sure didn’t escape the publishers and marketing department), and even slightly off his game, that’s better than most stuff out there.