Act of God: Meditations on Lightning, Life and Chance

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:00:00 +0000

What happens to a person whose life is touched by lightning? How does getting struck by lightning—or losing a loved one to lightning—change a person’s world view? Are such events random acts of nature or are certain people destined to be struck by lightning? Questions of fate, destiny, God’s will, and nature’s intention permeate Act of God: Meditations on Lightning, Life and Chance, a 2008 film directed by Jennifer Baichwal.

Baichwal says the idea behind the film was a simple question: how do people find meaning in randomness? Getting struck by lightning is the “quintessential example of the paradox of being singled out by randomness,” she says in an interview also included on the DVD. So what are different responses to that event? she wondered. “Is it possible to experience something so violent... and not ascribe meaning to it?”

The question, as it turns out, has a lot of different answers.

Getting struck by lightning feels like an act of destiny, intentional, speculates one of the film’s participants, a writer who feels he was forever changed by his close encounter with lightning when he was fourteen. Ultimately, though, he concludes that “there’s no meaning to this. It’s absolutely meaningless. And yet this is the way the world works.”

Every participant in the film has a different interpretation of what lightning means. One suggests that his fascination with lightning, his pursuit of it, allowed him to gain his soul. Another participant says that getting struck by lightning taught him what life was all about. He claims to have died, to have met some spiritual beings who showed him the shame of his past, but who reminded him that he has free will and he can change his life. “Lightning and change go hand in hand,” he says. “And in a single moment, I was changed.” One participant suggests that lightning and thunder indicate Shango’s anger (Shango is a Yoruba god, and likened to Santa Barbara in Santeria); the faithful must provide sacrifices to propitiate him, he suggests. Yet another of the film’s participants feels only grief about her children, who were killed as they knelt and prayed in front of a cross at the top of a mountain in Mexico. Finally, she decides that what God does is for the best. “The Lord doesn’t make mistakes,” she says.

The film’s premise is fascinating, the stories told compelling, and the speculations worth considering. It would have helped to have a narrator linking the scenes and meditations together, instead of a disembodied and disconnected voice occasionally providing some narration. I ached for more information on lightning itself, though Baichwal says that she deliberately avoided the physical and scientific aspects in order to focus on the metaphysical questions. Ultimately, the film feels fragmented and unfinished. But of course, this is another aspect of the film’s artistry. There are no answers to the metaphysical questions in this movie, only speculations. Is it possible to do anything but hypothesize about destiny, fate, nature’s intention, the will of God?

Written by: Jessica Powers, March 8th 2010

Grandmothers Counsel the World: Women Elders Offer Their Vision for Our Planet

admin — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:49:00 +0000

By Carol Schaefer

Trumpeter Books

The year is 2007. We can still see the impressive footsteps of Betty Friedman, Margaret Sanger, and Gloria Steinem in the sands of time, yet women, as a whole, seem more concerned with which pop icon has fallen from grace, or how their Coach bag stands up against the other soccer moms' Gucci one. I don't carry a handbag, and I don't watch much TV, yet this book was a sobering and gentle call to action. "Grounding" is the best descriptive word that I can place on this book.

At the beginning of the book, I was informed that “When the grandmothers from the four directions speak, a new time is coming.” The fulfillment began in 1986 with a sacred fire outside the United Nations Building, ignited by a chief of the Iroquois Nation. From that fire, a torch was carried through 62 countries in 86 days by runners. The fire now resides in New Mexico, continuously burning. It traveled once more in 2004 to spark the meeting of thirteen grandmothers, called the “keepers of their tribe’s teachings from original times.”

Each of the grandmother's give a personal account of their lives. These wise women saw some hard times, but it was throughout these times that they received great revelations. Their biographies resonate with warmth and compassion; their photos define true beauty. Their simple lives and passion for healing their people and the Earth are a loving call to action for every woman. Their "Guidance for Our Times" (Part Two of the book) includes chapters on "Prophecies," "Women's Wisdom," "Sacred Relations," "Our Mother Earth," "Oppression," "Nature's Pharmacy" and "Prayer." "Prayer is the greatest thing I have as I walk upon this earth," Grandmother Agnes says. "I am nothing without The Creator."

Author Carol Schaefer, a well-known journalist, has done well with this compilation. Not terribly poetic, but straight to the facts. The contents more than make up for that, however.

Can Grandmothers Counsel the World actually change the world? The concepts within the book could, but probably not anytime soon. If you take the time to read this book, I guarantee that it will press you to see the world through the eyes of indigenous wisdom, and perhaps ground you like it did me.

Written by: Gina Hobbs, April 26th 2007

metaphysics

Act of God: Meditations on Lightning, Life and Chance

Grandmothers Counsel the World: Women Elders Offer Their Vision for Our Planet