Reading Journal 2023: The Color Purple Author: Alice Walker
My feelings about this classic are complex. Real, but complex. Alice Walker’s exploration of the lives of African American women is both stark and raw in its appraoch. Nothing is buried here, and the book glides through many an uncomfortable reality without censorship. If that does leave the emotional experience a bit at arms length, I feel like this is intentional. It felt to me like Walker wanted to ensure that such human experiences also retained their context and their distinctiveness. She shapes a language both familiar and foreign all at the same time.
I wouldn’t doubt that readers experiences of this book will be shaped by the narrative approach as well. Walker tells the story of two sisters, tCelie and Nettie, seperated by birth and hanging on the hope that they will one day be reuinited. The primary perspective is that of Celie’s and we gain this perspective not through prose but through a collection of letters, first between Celie and God, and secondly, in the back half of the book, between Celie and Nettie. This singular perspective keeps the book intimate in both scale and depiction. Thus the depiction of domestic and sexual abuse is left largely without outside commentary. The experiences of Celie and Nettie speak for themselves, unsettling us all the more as we hear Celie processing these dynamics in particular and almost normalizing ways.
That intimacy and lack of commentary though does not mean a lack of a genuine arc. Who these characters are in the beginning of the story is not who they are at the end. The world isn’t reshaped or hidden away in light of this essential transfromation, it simply becomes part of how these characters learn to see the spirit and reconcile things like love and joy within such a world. Its engrossing. Its also quite powerful in its own, uncensored an unfiltered way.
Part of my challenge was that I was reading this book at the same time as I was reading another one (The Lost Year). I was so taken with The Lost Year, in a fresh addition to my all-timers list kind of way, that it kept stealing me away from The Color Purple. Thus, when I finished The Lost Year and came back to The Color Purple, I knew I was reading something powerful and profound, and was legitimately hearing and feeling that truth as I went, but I found myself relegating it to a cerebral experience rather than an emotional one, Which admittedly is more on me than the book, but it does speak to the books overall approach. Saying that, there is little doubt that this book is a classic in the truest sense of the word, and a must read, especially as a cultural touchpoint.
Reading Journal 2023: The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing In a Toxic Culture Author: Gabor and Daniel Mate
Might be the biggest letdown of the year for me given its hype. That’s what happens when you wait forever for your Library hold to become available.
And that is not to suggest that there weren’t bits and pieces here and there that I found helpful and provoking. I liked that he notes the prevailing defintion of myth as “a story that is untrue”, and the way he calls back to a more approrpriate use of myth as storied beliefs that anchor us in what is true. I appreciated his rejection of dualism when it comes to mind and body, spirit and flesh, and I do like how he names the modern obsession with heatlh and wellness and calls it into question. But there is so much in this book that feels inconsistent, questionable, and problematic Some of it veers well into the territory of pseudo-science. Some of it reaches for gross uses of unsubstantiated cause and effect, even using anectdotal evidences by way of a smattering of personal stories of “healing” to reinforce it.
Perhaps its worst sin though is just how negative and defeatist the book’s outlook is. To be fair, it tries to convince us that it is not, but the convcitons that inform its thesis are only reinforced by the confessions of its final chapter. if I was to take this all at face value, then the overall message is that I am essentially doomed to die early for reasons a, b, and c (and its a wonder that I haven’t already), and dying early is essentially betraying my basic responsiblity to life/the world/people (that’s a bit uncertain what he means there).
The basic premise is this. Our world has a problem, and this global problem is essentially uknown and unseen to most people. Our problem is systemic, scocietal, and, although this point is also unclear, globally based. Part of the reason the problem is unknown and unseen is because the problem has become normalized by the “myth of normal”. This means, we have simply bought into a narrative (myth), nnormalized it, and continue to believe that this story tells the truth about our society. Fixing the problem then means challenging the myth and discovering a new one that more closely adheres to the truth about the current state of our society (or world).
This problem is defined as an epidemic health crisis. Rather than address it as a problem of the body, the two Mates want to argue that the problem is actually rooted in the mind. The mind then is intricately connected to the body. The problem of the mind boils down to one word- trauma- and Mate takes the time to flesh out two kinds of trauma. One describes those obvious external factors that we all know and understand (a car crash, the loss of parents, natural disasters, just to name a few). The other describes what we might call smaller traumas that might seem mundane and inconsequential, but they actually carry more weight based on their general invisibility and their cumulative effect. These traumas are at the root of most of the illnesses modern society faces.
The other part of this thesis is that these traumas connnect to the self, and the self connects to the world, with this relationship flowing in both directions. What’s clear though is that Mate sides with the reality of social formation, placing the primary formative principle in the the external factors that shape our humanity. This means trauma is rooted just as readily in our daily experiences of this world as it does in systemic realities such as racism, capitalism and poverty.
At one point Mate cites the universal consensus that “what are called the developmental origins of adult disease begin in the womb.” Sure, later he tries to weave this into a suggestion that awareness of this fact creates agency, but no amount of agency feels able enough to tackle that problem, especially when it is a given that we are every bit the product of our environment when we are older. Compoounding that issue is that our earliest attachment reltationships, which are notoriously volatile, determine how we cope and how we are able to cope. And at the heart of these coping mechanisms is the need for psychological healing, which includes dealing with the different facets of trauma like guilt and shame, anxiety and stress.
Mate also makes sweeping appeals to nature when it comes to understanding the problem and potential ways of dealing with it. These appeaals are to what we might call positive aspects of our nature, which include compassion and community and care. He makes the strong statement that we are, in fact, the only species that acts contrary to our nature, which is a rather confusing sentiment. More so, its uncertain what Mate wants to do with the not so lovely aspects of our nature, besides sweeping them under the rug or giving them their own category as opposing forces to our true nature. This is really a massive part of the inherent weakness of the book. He wants to say that there is a small minority of examples of healthy people that demonstrate a single unifying trait- a willingness to buck the trends and push back aganst the norms. If this is a mark of health, then more people need to do the same. But is this really true? The people least likely to experience trauma are the fittest, however we define fit in modern day society outside of the merely physical. They are the ones at the top of society by given governning measures, they are the ones with specific gene pools, upper class society, money, natural talent, ect ect.. They are in fact the normals of society. Worse yet, Mates appeal to a global societal falls short when measuring it against how societies generally operated, which is on smaller scales with given nationalist interests. Sure, care and community and compassion apply in this sense, but there is no good, logical reason to suggest that this would or could function on a global level. Thus, what Mate is really drawing out is how those on the bottom rings (and not just economically, but socially) of our particular socties where tauma is most prevelant can and should pursue healing. But he doesn’t have a grounding for why we should care about this.
There is some important nuance that Mate brings with something like the five kinds of compassion (Possibility, Truth, Recognition, Curiousity and Understanding, and Ordinary). But this is hardly enough to temper his sweeping claims and assumptions. It still faces the prison of these basic realities- society is killing me, the system is killing me, biology is killing me, I am killing me, others are killing me, existence is killing me. So hey, here’s the answer- learn how to live and the problems will take care of themselves, maybe, if we’re lucky and buck the odds. Simple, right?
I think Mate is right on the idea that dualism (division between spirit and mind). I think he is right to to note and define the problem of trauma. I think he is right to note that trauma is rooted in intergenerational an inherited trauma. I think he is right to note that the issues we face are not individual but systemic, and that notions of personhood flow from those external factors that shape and form us. I even think he’s right on the taking modern day health and wellness culture to task.
But I think his fundamental flaw, beyond his appeal to pseudo science and sweeping claims that don’t feel like they have much grounding, is the way he turns health into ideology without the grounding of an actual worldview. Or the points where we do get some semblance of a worldview are the places where his claims contradict his actual beliefs, or where his beliefs become incoherent in light of his claims. This is where the negative outlook becomes especially dangerous.
The icing on the cake is, of course, the thing that is fueling all of this. Its the thing I could see coming from a mile away, because it has become that predictable. His convictions are born from his experience with pyschedelics (ayahuasca). This turns his claims essentially spiritual in nature, coloring around the edges of the doom and gloom. This experience proves to him that his sense of reality had been closed off, that the mind is far more powerful than even he had once imagined, and that manipulating the mind through the power of nature is the key to curing our health problems.
Well, not really though, because most people can’t afford to see a Shaman. But if they could, all our problems would go away, because that’s the way to deal with the epidemic crisis. As it is, he will take one for the team and dole out his now God given wisdom for the rest of us. The end result? This overstuffed book full of doom and gloom and packaged in candy an gloss.
If I sound cynical, its because I am. I’ve seen this story play out countless times with the same results, and it always seems extraordinarily odd that people unwillng to see reality through a certain lens are suddenly willing to afford credence to such experiences, particularly when ones worldview can describe precisely what these experiences are- manipulations of the mind. All of these words written about attending for reality and trauma, only to come to a point where the value somehow is rewriting the story in a way that medicates this reality straight out of us. It creates a mess of contradictions and confusions and dangerous inconsistencies.
And yes, I say this as someone who believeas in the existence of God an who holds a religious worldview.
Film Journal 2023: The Killer Directed by David Fincher
Came into this one with high hopes. Found myself slightly let down. I feel like I understand what it wanted to be- a smart, patient, artsy thriller. I also feel like it thinks it’s better than it actually ends up being on all those fronts. A bit deceptive even to that end.
The film wastes no time setting the stage for the existential crisis that drives it. There is a nihilism to the way it plays out its main characters point of perspective on the world, and in many senses it feels set up to challenge that perspective and take him on a transformative arc over the course of these structured and subsequent killings. That’s really where the issues begin, as I found the main character, played by Micheael Fassbender in a visibly physical performance, is never really fleshed out beyond the fatalism. He ends up very one note and uninteresting.
The other issue I had was the way the film is structured. The film moves us mostly through different points in America, following the killer from city to city as he chases after the implications of a job gone wrong. We get, by design, these different locations, each which become repetitive as we find him in similar situations saying similar things and straddling that similar line between staying consumed with his point of perspective or being challenged to reconsider. The film had a chance to use a particular event to play out some complicated and nuanced motivations, but instead it seems to be more interesting in going for style. And even there, it felt a bit like it only really had one trick up its sleeve.
The idea is strong enough though to at least keep it afloat. There is also one really cool fight scene that employs an old school approach about a third of the way through the film. And the philosophical interests were enough to at least hint at what this could have been had it taken that seriously and actually lived up to its ambitions. Instead, I found the majority of this to be treading water.
Film Journal 2023: Anatomy of a Fall Directed by Justine Triet
At one point during this riveting legal thriller, one of the characters ruminates about the uncertainties surrounding the issues on trial, suggesting that when we are faced with doubts about what is true and what is not, at some point we simply need to choose a side and decide what it is, or who it is, we are going to believe. This is the only way we can actually move forward in meaningful and constructive ways.
Anatomy of a Fall is largely a film about how we navigate those uncertain places. As the title suggests, at the center or the story is the investigation of a fall that results in one man’s death, a man who is both a husband and a father. The investigation itself digs into the details of what happened, attempting to determine if it was an accident, a suicide, or a murder.
It is within this that the film allows the term “anatomy” to play as allegory, both for it’s legal drama and the ensuing court case, but also for the characters themselves. It’s as much about the question of what happened as it is about the ways this event impacts the different people involved, beginning with the family itself.
And for as captivating as the court room drama is, it is in the character development that the tightly drawn and layered script really shines. The more the court case goes on, the more we get to know about the family dynamics, and it provides a way for the viewer to consider the intricacies of these relationships, especially where they are thrown into a state of such uncertainty. Its not just the results of the case that hang in the balance, but so much about who they are and their ability to move forward with any real sense of direction and intention in their lives. As one character suggests, when we can’t figure out the what, perhaps that’s when we start looking at the why.
The patient and attentive approach to the direction goes a long ways here, never pushing for concrete answers but rather sitting in the formative space of its relationships. It is rich with nuance, allowing the scenes to show rather than tell, and much of the game here for viewers is searching the different scenes for clues that might help us understand things just a little bit more than we did before.
Part of that process is allowing each voice the freedom to speak and to say what they will from their own point of perspective. Where voices clash, this becomes integral to drawing out a minutia of hope in what feels like an increasingly hopeless situation. We might see different things and interpret the same things differently, and that becomes part of the bigger picture at play. As one character suggests, we can’t take a moment and make it everything. A moment is a moment, and every moment has the power to tell the story as it will in it’s own way. And yet this is precisely where those doubts become necessary decisions. Its one thing for a trial case to be proven beyond a doubt, it’s quite another to live within the decisions that follow. No matter the trial, no matter how much we want to believe in something conclusive, it is still left to those looking in from the outside to make their own decisions about what it is they are going to believe. And that’s really where the true trial happens, in the everyday of our lives, in the eyes of the public, in the ebb and flow of our relationships with the people we feel we know, or should know, the best.
Decisions remain necessary. Decisions have implications. They hold the power to tell the story and control the truth in that everydayness. Can we be okay with that fact of our human existence? True to form, the film leaves that question for viewers to decide for themselves.
Reading Journal 2023: Milwaukee Mayhem: Murder and Mystery in the Cream City’s First Century Author: Matthew Prigge
I visited Brewtown, or Cream City last summer. While I had been to and through Chicago a few times over the years, I had always been intrigued by its much smaller counterpart barely an hour north over the Wisconsin border..
When one speaks highly of a place, it’s usually with the phrase “character’. And character is typically closely related to history. The less history, the less character.
Milwaukee has history, but as this books title suggests, that history is connected to its murder and mayhem. So much so it is literally imprinted into the place’s cultural evolution. When we were there it seemed every bit as vital to know about its Harley’s and its brews as it was to know the history of its fascination with the madness. A place made of ghosts and horror stories. And no matter how the city has been built up around these stories, boasting spacious streets, historical neighborhoods, a grassroots vibe, and a definite rivertown spirit, there remains a sense of fascination with the cities shadowy corners and darker edges. Something to embrace and to celebrate as part of its character.
I had picked this book up at one of the local shoots, but I decided to hold off until spooky season to give it a read. It’s not exactly what I expected. I was hoping for something more narrative driven and substantive. Something with a bit more reflection and commentary. What this is instead is a series of short true stories that fit into one of the following four categories- Murder, Accidents, Vice, and Secrets.
Which is not to say it’s bad. I really liked the opening intro which sets the stage for the history of mayhem, formulated as it is around the river and it’s brides. The East-West divide, as it typically goes. When one doesn’t like the other? Just tear down their bridge.
For what it is though, a very casual romp through stories with limited but verified data, it’s a fun read. It was easy for me to imagine these stories through recalling the still existing streets and buildings today, especially from our Dahmer walking tour.
Gotta love when a small city sitting in shadow of the much bigger metropolis down the road finds their own way by just embracing the crazy. As they say, history breeds character, and Milwaukee has a good dose of it to share.
Picked this up at my local bookshop. A random paperback with an alluring and interesting cover. Felt like it would be a good fit for spooky season, and it turned out to be a decent page turner. It’s not out and out scary as far as horror goes, but it’s the sort of thing that works to unsettle you psychologically.
It’ follows a photo journalist, a wealthy man with issues, a murderer, and a sleep specialist, all of whom are being targeted by Sleep.
As the synopsis says, Sleep is waiting to rip the world apart, and when that’s the case, even the insomnia becomes a nightmare. Much of the unsettledness of it all relates to the existential crisis of sleeps association with deat.h. certainly there is terror in imagining the dream giving way to nothingness, but the real struggle here is depicted as more of an engagement with the true terrors that huant us in our sleep. Not the things that end life, but the things that redner life meaningless.
If that sounds heavy, it’s actually more entertaining than a deep philopshical exploration. But there is enough substance here to keep it real.
Film Journal 2023: Five Nights at Freddy’s Directed by Emma Tammi
My entire frame of reference for Five Nights at Freddy’s was: 1. It is based on a video game 2..it stars Peeta from the Hunger Games
From what I knew it was a single concept idea given a feature length story. What I know now is that there is in fact a whole universe of existing lore out there for this film to pull from. Having zero familiarity with any of that lore I confess I was a bit lost. Its not exactly a simple story to follow going in relatively blind.
The elements of the film that do speak for themselves- the relationship between brother and sister, the jobless young man struggling to find his way amidst his responsibilities. Grief and guilt- work well enough. It’s the worldbuiilding that gets complicated. Feels like a film made for the fans, and from what I can tell the fans in my crowd seemed to dig it. For myself, while I had a decent enough time, all I could think was, this film is missing Nic Cage.
It’s worth pointing out that this is solidly in PG13 territory, which means the horror elements are relatively subdued. On this front, I think, and hope, it’s a good stepping stone into the genre for its younger fans.
Film Journal 2023: Priscilla Directed by Sofia Coppola
One of the things that Sofia Coppola’s films tend to ask of viewers is to expect to have a complicated relationship with an iinitial viewing, but to also trust that subsequent viewings will ultimately bring the pieces together in a coherent fashion. She is not prone to catering to easy tricks of the trade or telling simple stories. Often her films will create a dance between certain genre placements and narrative approaches (biopic/character study) while using metaphor and allegory to become something else entirely. This has a tendency to create certain illusions within the experience, while simultaneously allowing those illusions to challenge ones perspective on both the subject matter and its aims.
One of the tools Coppola uses to achieve this is a willingness, or tendency, to play around with a scattered narrative. In Priscilla, part of the ebb and flow of the film is its abrupt editing, alluding to things and then never showing or addressing them, randomly jumping forward for unknown reasons at different times. And yet this scattered sense is part of what allows those identifiable arcs and themes to take root in far more subtle ways, emphasizing certain scenes and shots and moments as a means of redirecting our attention towards what the Director really wants us to see.
Priscilla of course comes on the heels of the extremely successful release of Elvis last year. The two films couldn’t be more different in style and approach, but this actually sets them up to be a perfect compliment to their different points of perspective. Elvis sees the story of Priscilla from Elvis’ perspective, and what’s super interesting to note is the positive light he places Priscilla in and the weight of the blame he places on his own shoulders for their eventual decline. In Priscilla, Coppola identifies Priscilla as the one with a rise and fall arc, bringing into the mix questions about her own self blame for the situation she finds herself in. One big difference as well, is that while Elvis uses its arc of the famed singer to evoke a degree of empathy for his downfall, in Priscilla there is no other surrounding characters on which to place culpability and blame, such as the agent who is manipulating things in Elvis. The figure of Elvis is presented in an even worse light in Priscilla, identifying again the differences in perspective. Two people telling the same story from different vantage points, and it results in partial pictures that gain their fullness when brought together.
The frenetic, mile a minute depiction of his dramatic rise and fall in Elvis is contrasted directly with Priscilla, who sees Elvis primarily in the context of Graceland, out of sight of the craziness of his public life. What she knows of that side comes from the media and newspaper clippings and magazine articles. Thus when Elvis leaves, her life essentially submits itself to the slow, mundane realities of a life now confined to the gated premise of an empty Graceland. What this results in is a film where the action takes place largely within the internal transformation of its lead. One might be tempted to say this is ultimately a transformation from innocence towards its loss, and from idealistic young woman with the world seemingly at her doorstep to enslaved housewife with all sense ot agency effectively stripped away. But I actually think it’s not quite that straightforward. She’s not presented as innocent as it might first seem, and the things driving her towards this singular obsession feel largely undefined and complex in nature. The film raises interesting questions regarding her manipulation of her parents and Elvis’ manipulation of her parents, quietly attaching this to these moments in the film where the power dynamics between themselves ultimately shift back and forth within the dynamics of their relationship.
One of the great things about Coppola’s choice here is that this is a larger than life story about larger than life characters that seems to tell a story that anyone could find themselves in. Coppola does some really interesting things with the way she crafts this film, using the absence of Elvis’ music and the absence of his performances, save for a momentary television segment and a brief backside shot (the way the film captured the quiet and subtle interactions between the two of them in this moment was cinematic perfection) to play this as a relationship drama. And one of the things I latched on to, and it’s one of the more subtle and sub-textual elements to be sure, is the way it depicts the relationship between Priscilla and her parents. Anyone who has ever had the experience of wanting to protect their child from the potential consequence of certain decisions, but where they also know that child is going to make the decisions they have settled on no matter what, I think can find something in this part of the story to connect to. The parents know somethings not right, even outside of the 10 year age difference between Elvis and a young woman in grade 9, and yet they also know that that she has made up her mind and they have lost all point of influence on their daughters decision. They are up against a much more powerful force. And while the film leaves no doubt that this force at least in part lies in the powerful enterprise that surrounds Elvis, Coppola smartly writes in these subsequent observations about how it is that we understand liberty to begin with. Part of what Priscilla is clearly chasing after is an illusion of liberty, and what becomes unmasked is the power of those worldly draws- sex and power being at the forefront, to frame this illusion within an inescapable draw. This blurs the line between liberty as “the right to be and do what I want”, and the ensuing question that emerges from the idea that we are all always shaped by some external force over our lives. And certainly this adds to the complexities of what it is that drives her into this relationship to begin with. We never do see any sort of reconciliation with the parents, so that is left in the air for us to consider, but it is a part of what makes Priscillas innocence or lack of it difficult to define.
It might sound odd to say this too, but even with all that, somehow Coppola manages to evoke this sense of the evil forces that hold this relationship in its grip, imploding it bit by bit, without ever completely condemning the relationship itself or the persons themselves. We will no doubt make our judgments, as the film invites us to do, but it steers clear of making them on it’s own. It’s a fascinating way to hold the two things in tension, making for a film that is filled with the Directors sensibilities while possibly being her most mature effort to date.
Reading Journal 2023: Rethinking the Atonement: New Perspectives On Jesus’ Death, Resurrection, and Ascension Author: David M. Moffitt
Right off the top, one of things I most appreciate about this book is Moffitt’s extremely graceful and careful presentation of this theories. He makes clear distinctions between where he is dealing with theory and where he is dealiing with the facts and information informing his theory. He also does a really good job at tracking the flow of his argument, clarifying as he goes along which subsequent arguments depend on prior established statements. He offers a lot of “if this true, then…”, and that goes a long ways in allowing room for engagement with the ideas he is tabling.
The general thrust of Moffitts argument rests on where we locate the concept of atonement, how we unerstand its relationship to reconciliation, and how we undersstand atonement as a progression from one place to another. He begins by noting how Tyndale’s decision to translate atonement and reconciliation began a long and problematic history of tying the two languages, words that imply reconciliation in the Greek and words that imply atonement, or sacrifice, in the Hebrew, together. This ultimately led to connnecting the reconicling act to the blood, which subsequently resulted in reading the blood as a necessary death rather than what it represents in the Hebrew, which is life.
To put this more simply- atonement became Jesus’ death on the cross which then reconciles us to God as the necessary payment for our sins.
The problem with this is that it makes no sense of the actual language of atonement that we find in the text. This is not to say that the death has no significance. Its also not to say that reconciliation isn’t a necessary part of the story. It is to say that if we are to understand atonement in the text, we need to understand the world behind the text and where it locates atonement. If it is true that Jesus saves from sin, how Jesus does this becomes deeply relevant to the story we tell about both the death and reconciliation. An important step in this endeavor is for us to recognize how the Hebrew language, be it the figure of Moses, the messianic expectations, and the language of atonement, defined as it is in relationship to sacrifice in the Hebrew scriptures, gets applied to Jesus as a way of understanding what He did, not the other way around. It was the available language of their day, and it has become muddled by translating that into the language of our day in a way that loses its force of meaning.
Part of the earlier chapters tackle some of the issues that flow from a tendency to reduce the Hebrew scriptures and its language in light of Jesus. This has made us, as Christians, resistant to the language of the Hebrew scriptures, believing it has been superseded, underwritten, or proved wanting, and thus leaves us ignorant to the ways we have imported wrong ideas into our present understandings of atonement. Thus it becomes important to do the work first of establishing why the language of sacrifce in the Hebrew scriptures matters to our understaning of Jesus. This is true and necessary because two of the primary languages used to describe the person and work of Jesus- the Passover and The Day of Atonement- actively depend on these languages to say what they want to say about atonement.
Some key ideas that he touches on: 1. The blood is not associated with Jesus’ death but his life, and death is never ritualized in the Hebrew rites of sacrifice. It does in fact occur away from the tabernacle/temple space, and is seen as incidental to the wilderness space where sin and death holds reign, or incidental to taking on the flesh. Death in this sense is not the necessary act, but rather is the thing the necessary act is responding to. In covenantal terms, death becomes the thing that inaugerates the covenant and makes it active.
2. Jesus is clearly presented as performing a priestly duty with His own blood. In the ritual act of sacrfice, atonement is brought about by way of a progression from outside the temple to inside the temple where God resides. This is where the lifeblood, which is where the life is contained, enters the presence of God both as a gift and in its effectiveness to cleanse the space where God dwells from the pollution of sin and death, the result of the tabernacle existing in the wilderness space.
3. Righeousness is not tied to moral works, as in Jesus ultimately becomes the perfect sacrifice because He followed the laws perfectly and never sinned, righteousness is actually tied to the perfected covenant, or Jesus being perfected in His resurrection and ascension. This is why death no longer has power. Prior to his resurrection (or death) death has that power, and thus righteousness cannot be claimed. Its also true to say that atonement belongs to the larger story of this movement from the wildenress space into the garden space, then, as Jesus says, bringing heaven down to earth as He establishes His reign over the new creation space.
4. Given that reconciliation operates in a different category of thought (how it is that we move into the new space or new reality that atonement brings about in and for the world), it becomes necessary to note that Jesus’ work as a high priest doesn’t end with the resurrection or ascension, it is depicted as an ongoing work. That is why Jesus’ depiction as the eternal priest is deemed to be effective. The sacrifice doesn’t need to be repeated, but the work that the blood does in relationship with and to the world is something that is always acting.
5. The blood is closely related to the idea of space. Its about a movement from one space into another, and in Jesus’ person and work this new space is the whole of creation. When we move into the space where God dwells “in Christ” we occupy a new and different reality or space- a new creation space. And as such we witness to this new reality in an already-not yet world still awaiting the fullness of time. This is what the ancients understood as the eschatological resurrection, which for the NT writers is bound to the conviction about Jesus being a singular resurrection in the middle of history.
6. Jesus is not a moral example, or a chief model of suffering, He is the righteous one, the proclomation that God has at long last did what He promised to do. The two spaces then are defined by the finite and the eternal, one according to death and decay, the other according to life and transformation.
7. Ritual and moral purity, intentional and unintentional sin, are all given the same category of atonement and follow the same process, defined as all the rites are by the singular unifying dynamic- the burning. The burning is the moment of rising up into God’s presence. And it always carries a directional force. Thus the blood from the cross enters the tabernacle space where the blood of life is given to God so as to go up and reside with God apart from Sin and Death. In so doing, a new space is created where this blood then removes the pollution that results from living in proximity to sin and death.
Its worth pointing out here a dominating facet of this book- Moffitts work in the letter to the Hebrews, which is what he specializes in. Hebrews functions as his pirmary point of reference, moving from Hebrews outwards towards these ideas about atonement and sacrirfice and reconciliation. It adds a compelling and fascinating layer to the overall arguments in the book, as he is similtaneously tackling misconceptions about Hebrews at the same time. Namely the long standing assumption that Hebrews is not concerned with the idea of Resurrection. He makes a powerful case for how resurrrection informs and drives the entire letter, reshaping how we read much of it in relationship to sacrfice.
Definitely a must read for anyone interersted in the current body of work challenging some long held assumptions about Old Testament Jewish sacrifice. He cites and references some of the primary books in this field of study. He brings his own unique slant to the discussion though, exploring some big ideas along the way.
Film Journal 2023: Fingernails Directed by Christos Nikos
A brilliant premise undercut by an unsatisfying ending. For me, the overall experience still held up though, finding ways to take a particular concept/idea with a particular focus and applying it to some lofty and important cultural and societal realities.
The premise is simple. Our main character, a youngish woman trying to figure out her life, exists in a world where a controversial procedure involving the scientific analysis of fingernails has become a culturally accepted means of determining relational compatibility. The young woman’s current point of crisis revolves around her search for employment, but as the film goes on another crisis takes center stage- she starts to question her relationship to her partner, throwing her entire worldview into disarray. What if her entire conception of love as something we can tangibly study and analyze and understand and control is not trustworthy? What if the science has been left wanting? What if our confidence in humanity and each other is undercut? What if we can longer trust ourselves?
This is where the personal commentary bleeds into a broader commentary, echoing some of the touchpoints of what has been largely coined as the great meaning crisis of our modern times. At the heart of the film sits these poignant questions about what happens when the systems that inform our pursuit of knowledge and give it reason and purpose begin to fail us. What happens when our need to understand and know the nature of human and social function confronts us with a conception of humanity and social constructions that crumble under the weight of such reductions to simple facts and data points. All of this forms a solid playing field for the kind of existential crisis the film wants to confront, especially where it pertains to the question of authenticity.
There is no mistaking the heavy parallels to our present fascination with things like the enneagram, or even the gradual push into genetics. Taking the fingernail test to determine whether a relationship is compatible and to assess the likelihood of its success is akin to taking a personality test that allows us to locate how given we are to specific character traits. Both are anchored in physiology/biology. Both offer the same appeal to some level of promise and trustworthiness in the science. They invite us to place our trust in a certain kind of knowledge of our biological selves and the material world we occupy. However when the world that surrounds this knowledge begins to show cracks in terms of its ability to afford us meaning, it leaves such knowledge inevitably appealing to illusions rather than to reality. In these moments, what do we trust? How do we trust? Who do we trust? This is one of the big dilemmas that the present meaning crisis is concerned about. Where does the social construction give way to something true? Where do we reconcile the failure of these systems and worldviews to satisfy our need to know something such as love as a reality that exists beyond such reductions? When such forms of knowledge appear to have failed us and have been left wanting, how do we in turn give ourselves to the experiences of reality itself?
Big ideas. As I mentioned above, the ending takes these ideas and ultimately narrows it to a social construction in response- individualism. Or perhaps its better known form- individual liberty. It seems to suggest that the answer, even if its not clearly stated, can be found in slipping between the notion that we are products of our environment and creations of these socially constructed realities, and somehow exist apart from these things as an individual entity free to become our own selves. Perhaps most apparent is that this effectively underides the moral truths and values the film wants to bring to the table as necessary universals and given foundations for thinking about the crisis. The ending ends up feeling every bit the illusion and question as the thing it is battling against.
As momentary experiences go though, I was drawn in by the premise, fascinated by the characters and performances, and genuinely invested in the dance that leads up to the ending. Whatever reframing the ending does, or at least tries to do, this aspect held up for me as worthwhile and effective.
The Stories of my Life 