An element of the divine comedy

I’m currently reading up on a book called “Dystopian Fiction East and West: Universe of terror and trial” which I’m really enjoying at the moment to be honest. The chapter I’m on starts by detailing the contents of Plato’s “Republic” and the vision of a perfect society where “law and reason” reign and the poets who live by “pleasure and pain” are exiled from the fabled land, it likewise mentions a similiar work by Thomas More written in the 1500’s detailing the island of “Utopia” in which similiar things happen. The author then goes on to mention how just as Plato attempted to dispel the concept of tragic from the Republic so did the Soviet Union in it’s conception and indeed the removal of such things from it’s future.

The author then goes on to comment on how Marxism simply tried to simply suppress the tragic as there was no room for it amongst the pride of scientific principles and that Christianity (she mentions the book of Job and his plea for justice) puts it’s hope amongst the greater narrative of the divine comedy. The Christian scheme of resurrection and redemption which Marx critiqued for enabling religion to function as the “Opiate of the Masses”. Marxism saw itself as a mechanism, a means to fulfill the gradual (‘evolutionary’ even) enlightenment of all people into a leisurely, classless and just society, Christianity on other hand follows the line of entropy as it dances along the arm of a clock and the process of time.. the indication that things get worse as time goes on, not better. However both have this eschatalogical or view of how things will end despite Marxisms apparent secularism. However they show the massive divergence in their view of things.. in this instance Marxism is utopian in looking towards what is required for a brighter future, dystopia offers a tragic warning of how things will become in the current situation, however both utopian and dystopian literature ‘attempt’ to point to something better or an awareness which tries to comment on the current time with a view which is echatalogical in nature.

The reason I’m reading this is because I’m hopefully going to be examining life under Burmese oppression for my dissertation. Burma is the worlds second most heavily censored country in the world and boasts one of the largest armies in Eastern Asia.. and yet has no enemies, the army is at war with the civilian population of the country. The Generals in charge of the military junta are politically unschooled and fear any challenge to their power or more expressly their ideology.. so any divergence or hint of anything going in the direction of a pluralistic or democratic way of life between the components of society is fiercly oppressed. I’ve already been looking at the U.S.S.R and it’s approach to things.. and how that could be compared to Burma’s ‘modus operandi’ but I’m also now examining dystopian literature to see what that has to say on the topic..

But to be honest I’m really fascinated by the whole concept of the tragic and this referral to the Christian worldview. Even the crucifixion of the Christ is an element in the tragic worldview of Christians, it really is at the core of what we believe. Pilate asked “What is truth?” and didn’t bother to stick around, he instead trusted or if anything relented to the justice of Rome and I guess that is compliant with the Soviet’s view as it was with the tower of Babel. The Christian concept of joy is intrinsically linked with that of hope.. I think it was in some movie because I don’t remember hearing this when I read the original myth but in the tale of Pandora, after she opened the box and unleashed evil and suffering on the world at the bottom of the box was hope. It isn’t something immediate and it’s out of our hands but we hope that God will rescue and redeem this existence.

This book then goes on to talk about the divergence of purely tragic literature like Oedipus and King Lear (or much of Shakespeares work) with dystopian literature.. in the tragic.. the individual becomes aware of his place in ‘existence’ and the absurd nature of that existence and yet by his sacrifice or often just his or her awareness we see a divergence from the way of the world… an elusive ‘another world’ just beyond the horizon, in dystopia the main character is often purely a victim. I think this touches on something I read by a guy called G.K  Chesterton, he said something like “there are two types of death.. the martyr and the suicide.. one dies to this world.. the other is crushed by the world” (or something like that).

I remember watching an interview with a Journalist and a Burmese dissident, the old guy was on a breathalator or something but wanted to meet the journalist to tell him about what was going on he then said something like “This time when they come to pick me up after you leave I won’t come back, not this time I know that.” and even though he knew that and for all we know was taken away he believed in something, what happened to that guy was tragic no doubt.. but he was witness at the same time to the hope of a deliverance.. admittedly a literal deliverance of Burma.. but I think this struggle is written into us as human beings it’s right there at our core. Deliver us from this absurd existence, this way of the world, this way of ourselves. I think that is starkly different to something like.. I dunno the message given in something like Taxi Driver.. however I think that film says a lot of interesting things about human nature.

I really like this book..

Oscar Romero

 

Oscar Romero

Before I became a Christian I was sympathetic to some of the notions of the faith but I couldn’t reconcile the “opiate of the masses” mantra that came with a lot of the marxism I learned towards at the time. I heard about the idea of liberation theology though and a guy in the 1970’s, a bishop who represented a church who did not confirm to the role as an ‘ideological state apparatus’.

Just after I became a Christian I went travelling round Peru. I wasn’t bothered enough at the time in all honesty to take a bible but I did take a book called the ‘violence of love’ which was a collection of homilies  or talks given by Oscar going right up to the one he was giving when he was assassinated. I didn’t agree with everything in it but I think it actually changed my life, I read it about three times whilst backpacking in Peru.

The thought of him just popped into my head a minute ago so I thought I’d just read about him, I then thought i’d share it with whoever might read this thing.

—

In 1980, in the midst of a U.S. funded war the UN Truth Commission called genocidal, the soon-to-be-assassinated Archbishop Oscar Romero promised history that life, not death, would have the last word. “I do not believe in death without resurrection,” he said. “If they kill me, I will be resurrected in the Salvadoran people.”

On this 20th anniversary of his death, the people will march through the streets carrying that promise printed on thousands of banners. Mothers will makepupusas (thick tortillas with beans) at 5 a.m., pack them, and prepare the children for a two-to-four hour ride or walk to the city to remember the gentle man they called Monseñor.

Oscar Romero gave his last homily on March 24. Moments before a sharpshooter felled him, reflecting on scripture, he said, “One must not love oneself so much, as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us, and those that fend off danger will lose their lives.” The homily, however, that sealed his fate took place the day before when he took the terrifying step of publicly confronting the military.

Romero begged for international intervention. He was alone. The people were alone. In 1980 the war claimed the lives of 3,000 per month, with cadavers clogging the streams, and tortured bodies thrown in garbage dumps and the streets of the capitol weekly. With one exception, all the Salvadoran bishops turned their backs on him, going so far as to send a secret document to Rome reporting him, accusing him of being “politicized” and of seeking popularity.

Unlike them, Romero had refused to ever attend a government function until the repression of the people was stopped. He kept that promise winning him the enmity of the government and military, and an astonishing love of the poor majority.

Romero was a surprise in history. The poor never expected him to take their side and the elites of church and state felt betrayed. He was a compromise candidate elected to head the bishop’s episcopacy by conservative fellow bishops. He was predictable, an orthodox, pious bookworm who was known to criticize the progressive liberation theology clergy so aligned with the impoverished farmers seeking land reform. But an event would take place within three weeks of his election that would transform the ascetic and timid Romero.

The new archbishop’s first priest, Rutilio Grande, was ambushed and killed along with two parishioners. Grande was a target because he defended the peasant’s rights to organize farm cooperatives. He said that the dogs of the big landowners ate better food than the campesino children whose fathers worked their fields.

The night Romero drove out of the capitol to Paisnal to view Grande’s body and the old man and seven year old who were killed with him, marked his change. In a packed country church Romero encountered the silent endurance of peasants who were facing rising terror. Their eyes asked the question only he could answer: Will you stand with us as Rutilio did? Romero’s “yes” was in deeds. The peasants had asked for a good shepherd and that night they received one.

Romero already understood the church is more than the hierarchy, Rome, theologians or clerics—more than an institution—but that night he experienced the people as church. “God needs the people themselves,” he said, “to save the world . . . The world of the poor teaches us that liberation will arrive only when the poor are not simply on the receiving end of hand-outs from governments or from the churches, but when they themselves are the masters and protagonists of their own struggle for liberation.”

Romero’s great helplessness was that he could not stop the violence. Within the next year some 200 catechists and farmers who watched him walk into that country church were killed. Over 75,00 Salvadorans would be killed, one million would flee the country, another million left homeless, constantly on the run from the army—and this in a country of only 5.5 million. All Romero had to offer the people were weekly homilies broadcast throughout the country, his voice assuring them, not that atrocities would cease, but that the church of the poor, themselves, would live on.

“If some day they take away the radio station from us . . . if they don’t let us speak, if they kill all the priests and the bishop too, and you are left a people without priests, each one of you must become God’s microphone, each one of you must become a prophet.”

By 1980, amidst overarching violence, Romero wrote to President Jimmy Carter pleading with him to cease sending military aid because he wrote, “it is being used to repress my people.” The U.S. sent $1.5 million in aid every day for 12 years. His letter went unheeded. Two months later he would be assassinated.

On March 23 Romero walked into the fire. He openly challenged an army of peasants, whose high command feared and hated his reputation. Ending a long homily broadcast throughout the country, his voice rose to breaking, “Brothers, you are from the same people; you kill your fellow peasant . . . No soldier is obliged to obey an order that is contrary to the will of God . . . “

There was thunderous applause; he was inviting the army to mutiny. Then his voice burst, “In the name of God then, in the name of this suffering people I ask you, I beg you, I command you in the name of God: stop the repression.”

Romero’s murder was a savage warning. Even some who attended Romero’s funeral were shot down in front of the cathedral by army sharpshooters on rooftops. To this day no investigation has revealed Romero’s killers. What endures is Romero’s promise.

Days before his murder he told a reporter, “You can tell the people that if they succeed in killing me, that I forgive and bless those who do it. Hopefully, they will realize they are wasting their time. A bishop will die, but the church of God, which is the people, will never perish.”

The Ordinary Radicals Documentary

 

The Ordinary Radicals Documentary

Psalters

The Psalters

Pretty bored at work and things are quiet at the moment. So I thought I’d write something.. what? Well I might of even mentioned something on these guys before and their associations but I’ll write it again now..

Towards the end of my first year at Uni I heard about a band of musicians who were quite unlike anything else I’d ever heard before. They have a lot of indian, gypsy, klezmer and middle eastern influences going on despite being American and white; they then take those influences and blend them with punk elements and a fair use of sampling. It’s strange that any of these things work together, it’s even stranger then that the original Psalter, Scott Kreuger calls the band a religious vocation with the aim of writing 21st century psalms. They live a nomadic life on a big black American schoolbus which has been converted to run on vegetable oil and they travel around the world playing music and spouting theology. They don’t always play gig venues but just set up shop in parks, houses, churches and streets. I’ve heard over the last 8 years over 100 people have been Psalters at one point or another. They’re Christian, I’m fairly sure they’re anarchists too.

You can download a fair bit of the music the Psalters put out via free download off their website, but they’ve also released two albums.. which apparently you can get by post.. if you live in the US. A year after hearing about them though I had a Norwegian friend tell me she’d seen them in Norway and let me borrow the albums she bought. Apparently during the gig they told the audience “Feel free to take a CD, give whatever money you want.. or take whatever money you want.” Which I thought was kind of cool. I heard they’re playing a festival in Norway next year so I might try and get out there with my friend sometime. I wonder what it’d be like to be a psalter?