For RansomedHobbit...

...and all others that are overcome with a longing for prayershawls and Hebrew letters beneath their fingers and sunrise over the Kidron Valley.

For the music mostly, which rips at my heart.

More pictures

Playing tag with Gaal.
This one is very Gaal-ish, do you think so Twig?

I love this one for the fact that Jesus likes lots of kids
He seems right at home in it.
The head of Christ, by Richard Hook



Jesus looking at you like you are the only
little kid in the world....

Pictures of Jesus by Francis and Richard Hook

This one feels so real to me. The little girl sticking her head on Jesus shoulder, the little boy seems like he is relating something painful, and Jesus is listening, all the kids crowding over Him, because He loves them.



Jesus praying in Gethsemane. All that struggle, all that earnestness and grief and faith in his strong hands. For me.


Another Gaal-ish one



Jesus being a good little Jewish boy. "at three I went to Hebrew school, at ten I learned a trade.." although here it seems at three I learned a trade.





My absolutely favorite picture, in the whole world.

Joseph: learning manood--abandoned

Joseph.
Imagine what it was like for him, his life, through his eyes. See life in a troubled home, in a slavemarket, in a pagan household, in the prison---and a boy-man fighting to be holy in an unholy world. Even before he was abandoned as a 17yr old and sold to a pagan world, his homelife had not been with particularly holy people, and it was certainly bot peaceful. Reuben and Judah, Bilhah, Rachel's idols, all show that the whole family were in no way untouched by the Canaanite culture and values and definitions of manhood striving around them. And what was there of his own "culture" to fight back against it with? A clan of sheepfarmers, 1 father with troubled marriages with all 4 wives, 10 angry half brothers, and singled out for spoil treatment from a doting father. There were bitter rivalries among the mothers and bitter jealousies among his brothers. His brothers did not always keep themselves free of the habits of Canaan (Judah).
Not exactly the Shabbat-peace home, or the material that holy men are made of. And then there was his father's hope, the name of this strange God, who knew his greatgrandfather and his grandfather and father by name, who thy knew His name, like a friend, who had called his great grandfather out of all that Mesopotamian culter, into the desert.

In the face of all that sick Canaanite culture, plucked out of his own barely-there culture and thrown into an adopted Egyptian culture that says that manhood is, he had to fight to be a man. What did he have? What chance did this abandoned 17 yr old---at the age when all boys have to fight themselves and fight the definitions of manhood around them to learn how to be a man---here this spoiled child from a dysfunctional family is flung out into the Egyptian world, amid slavery, bitter injustice, temptation, his own hormones, his own hurt...What chance did this betrayed teenager have with everything stacked against him, everything taken from him, except the name of his father's God.

And there we find him in a oppressive pagan world, hammering out precept by precept what it even meant, to be a man.
He must face betrayal--what its like to have your brothers hands on you, this far from killing you, hating you. The humiliation of being stripped and sold like so much livestock. The brutality of the desert journey and the Egyptian slave block.
Then even when sold and bought, he rises to the top, tries hard, behaves like a king in chains, with honor and command. He grows, he's handsome and temptation is thrown into his face. The chapter before we are given the picture of how his big brother falls, him who hasn't been betrayed, who isn't alone and has other men to pray and sing to God with. How many college freshman fall---good Christian kids from good homes, because the fight is so hard. Its internal too. And he stands up to it. He fights it, and himself. Why? For love. He recounts the goodness of his master and "how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?"
For the love of his master, for the love of perhaps even the wellbeing of this woman, and most of all, for the love of the God of his father, this fledgling man fights to be holy in a pagan world.
His reward? Flagrant injustice, he is maligned as a rapist, thrown into prison, with no friends and the whole world thinking you were a scummy jerk. And even there, he prays.
Where did he get the strength? To stand when everyone else was on the ground, when no-one else thought sin was really sin, among the Canaanites and the Egyptians, and even his own troubled family. Where did this boy-man get the strength to stand, and to take the punishment for standing? What had he to look forward (or backward) to? He was a slave in a pagan world. He was an exile, unable to reminisce and hope for home, from a family that wanted him dead. He was a boy trying to learn how to be a man when all the other men had failed. Out of all this mess comes this one shining man, who must fight, fight so hard to be a man. What did he have?
Through it all, it says “and the Lord was with Joseph, in prison.”
With Joseph, in Prison. With him. Not watching over, not seeing, not looking down, with.
You get the feeling that Joseph is learning it all, from God. The only one that hasn't left him or sold him or wanted to 'eat him up' or betrayed him at this point. Point by point, God and this abandoned Hebrew teenager are hammering it out for the first time, how to be a man, how to be righteous, how to be a God-fearing Hebrew in a pagan world, with no mentor, no solid precedent, step by step with God and through suffering, he learns.
It's not that the others didn't try. God alone knows, how hard Abraham tried, coming from that pagan world, setting out with nothing but his tents and household into the wilderness, to learn who this God was, who had called his name. He was plagued by doubt, and family problems and banished children, and an estranged wife. He tried, and he was the first one, to follow God. Then comes Isaac, he too tries. And he too deals with the aftershock of struggling to live in a pagan world, and with his sons deceiving and trying to kill eachother. Then Jacob. Perhaps the best example, of "struggle". His whole life was a struggle, it seems there was no peace, between a deceived brother with murderous intent, a blind father, a manipulative mother, fleeing for his life, a con-man of a father-in-law, 4 wives with much jealousy and strife and hatred, that only passed onto his 12 sons who he didn't know how to control very well, between them sinning against God and wiping out cities. And then comes Joseph.
In Haiti, my father remembered the Catholic saying "it takes 7 generations to make a priest"
For the first 6 generations coming out of a pagan world, with pagan laws and pagan thought, it took that long for the mess of destruction caused by unholiness to die out, lessened in each generation. The drunkard beats his children. The drunkard's child manages to stay dry, but struggles with forgiveness and healing and wanting to control everything to keep it from being the nightmare his own childhood was, the drunkard's granchild deals with his father's over-control and strange reactions and quick temper, formed by that, then comes the drunkard's great-grandchild, and he can laugh easier then his father did and reaps the benefit of the struggle of his forefathers.
"The punishment for the sins of the fathers pass down to the third and fourth generations" said Moshe. The results of unholiness take generations to be eradicated.
And now we have Joseph, the fourth generation from a pagan culture, a fresh young 17 year old, learning what it is to be a man, with the Holy God of his fathers.
It is a story that I think could bear repeating, in our modern time.
And of course being the romantic sucker that I am I start wondering about Joseph’s wife, the pagan priest’s daughter. The gods of Egypt always struck me as so terrifying, so nightmarish, I wonder what it was like for her to marry this red-headed Hebrew that spoke of the God of his fathers, a new God, a God that would be with you in prison. And I wonder what his kids were like, and how they felt not really being Egyptian in a sophisticated Egyptian world, and choosing instead to intermarry with their shepherd cousins and become the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim. There are stories there, pulsing with blood and tears and human sweat, in the Bible, we see their faces, glimpses of their faces in those brief moments where it mattered most.
And out of Joseph's suffering, came life for all of his family. Grain in Famine. Forgiveness, the first real unmistakable example of unwarranted forgiveness that we see in the Bible.
The history of Joseph is pulsing with life, and symbolic significance--- as the entire children of Israel subsist on Joseph's grain in the drought of the world-- written into things by the great Storywriter of the universe.
Joseph has a lot to teach us.

Books that will make Good Movies

-Enemy Brothers (by Constance Savery)
(the sets will be comparatively cheap, however, it all depends on the acting. We'll have to get British actors for this one. And everything depends on the actor we get for Dym. I have a feeling that this one has alot of potential in book-to-screen transitions. (trying to get what the narrator lets you know translated back into raw life, do you know what I mean? Like when the narrator says "the others tried to cheer him up, but he was sulky" you can have this whole 3 minute scene that further develops all the characters. It has to flow. Plus for some reason I would like the opening to be in the Norwegian sea, or maybe something with Dym in a plane. I dunno, but he opening has to kind of suggest war/struggle...like what is going on. Tony also somehow stands for humanity, I think. Maybe. That's kinda weird sounding. But doh mean? Then it has to catch all that wwii-struggle, people in Minas Tirith (book) , the Alfred the great Saxons are coming and the onslaught of Sophie Scholl's enemies feeling of the whole era...

-Lantern Bearers (by Rosemary Sutcliff)
This one will make a very very good movie. It says most in what it doesn't say, in what happens between the lines. In the symbolism, the not even overt enough to be called symbolism...the pattern of sunlight through the branches on the monk's wall, and the sound of bees. There is so much there, and must be carefully book-to-screen, to catch it all. Especially that what the book is really about is not lost between the cracks of action that the book pretends to be about. Lots of scenery. Lots of focusing on trees and stuff, for some reason, lots of Britain.

-Joseph
This, I am afraid, has a bigger price tag. The sets will have to be Egypt and Palestine. Maybe the Negev.Alot of what it means to be a man, and to be Holy, when everyone and everything (around you, and back at home) isn't. To know the God of your fathers when an exile in a prison.I feel like this one will mean alot, but am unsure how. Right now I feel like I have enough sense to realize I am not smart enough.

-Mimitsrayim. Out of Egypt. Moshe will be the main (though barely there) character, and it will seem to center around a random Hebrew girl and her family, and how they adjust to this whole, wander-in-the-desert/Holy God/being a people of God thing. It will focus on the dynamics within her family, her aunt loving Egypt once she is in the wilderness, her mother complaining, her father still having faith and trying to understand why his brother had to be killed for unholiness, the rabble rousers, the girl struggling to form an understanding of who this Holy One is out in the wilderness. The whole holiness coming to a very unholy world, and the purifying the desert. But it will really be about Moshe, somehow.

-Acts. The book of Acts is fairly bursting with movie scenes. Peter of course would be a main character. Perhaps better to aim at it from a different level, like through the eyes of a random Jewish Kid or greek slave, and play up on what they hear. See it from the eye level of a first century worker, and how they got the information, etc. We could do it told through the eyes of this person, as if they were telling you their life. We could go from the omnipresent angle, because I really want the Peter before the sanhedrin scene. I think it would be better to do it through the eyes of a child. I don't really know why.

-StoryKeepers
(http://www.storykeepers.com/intro.html)
this sounds so lame, and probably violates a copyright. But StoryKeepers cartoon touched me deeply as a kid. I feel like it was a deep story translated into cartoon/slapstick language so the kids could "get" it. But it touched the kids (me) because they meant so much more than the slapstick thing. It really meant something. Someone has to make a grown up movie about he early church that is NOT really about extolling the *glamorous* lives of the pagan Romans, soap operas involving gorgeous red headed early Christians, or the cool swishy capes of the soldiers.
The arena wasn't glamorous. I thought it was, I really did. But it wasn't...any more than concrete gaschambers or Stalin's re-education camps. But the amazing thing is the Presence of God coming into even that...and making something that can only be called, for lack of the right word, beautiful.
A story about the early church that tells it as it really was. About real people. Real suffering, real courage, real faith, and a real God.

-Anthropos, as of now is the brainchild and intellectual property of one of my esteemed friends.

-Among the Nations [not final title, which must be very clever 2sided and poetic]
For this one, I see a picture. A young girl, perhaps 12, stands by a wall of brick, pressing the side of he face against it, thinking. It is on the side of a street, no bishops in chariots are coming, but she is afraid, and thinking. Blended with that is another young girl, Russian...and I am not sure what she is doing.
A side by side story of two girls growing up in the middle ages, probably in the Ukraine or something. One a Jewish girl, one a Christian Russian. Its a bifurcated story, where the two never speak to eachother, perhaps at the end, they will pass in the street. There will be two plot lines, two stories, two lives. It will show persecution, faith, a whole bunch. This one is going to be done by me and B. She will do the Russian side, I the Jewish. We will both have to research a whole lot, and I regret that I only have 1/8 instinct to go by (great grandma from Ukraine...) but will read a lot. I suspect this one will be emotional. But most of all, not trying to prove a sharp point, or get a message across, but just be, a slice in the life of then. As it really was. All the messy issues, everything, thrown out there in 2 1/2 hours with no easy little recipe to sort it all out, without making you think, and think, and think.

Christian Men

You are, Christian men
Men of authority,
to whom others look---
Reverends, Teachers, Good solid conservative men,
you have the secure positions
the titles
the respect.

Why are you mockers,
Why do you not understand?
Why do you spit in another man's face
(suffering)
strutting in what you are?

Surely there were men like you once,
They were good men,
observant men,
good solid conservative men,
Who did good,
had the secure positions
the titles
the respect
strutting in who they were

They killed God.
(on a spring morning, on a rocky hill)

Oh, they had done it long ago,
somewhere between the prayers, and the carefully embroidered prayer shawls
Somewhere where the face of God became obscured
By who you were, and your brilliant Bible Studies
That were bestsellers at Christian Book.
Somewhere in the expositing of the levels of Yeshayahu
The different opinions of the Rabbis
the shades of meaning in Deuteronomy
The fan letters from church study groups,
And somewhere your yearning for the face of God
was lost.

They killed him long ago
Between their prayers,
And making sure Rev. So-and-So knew his theology correct
With your more conservative mainstream Protestant blog
and the Shema said clear enough so that the people could understand.
It was amid good things
Good upright things--and a few nods from respected friends
The shining eyes of disciples, and young men in the pews
That you killed God long ago.

And so when it came down to it,
Just before dawn, it the cold cramped hours of the morning
---annoyed by that ache in you left middle back
still half of tomorrows sermon forming in your head--
That you cast your groggy vote against that man
So unrespectable, un-mainstream, offensive, standing so
in chains.

And he was executed, as the unrespectable are
outside the gate

Outside, Outside, Outside the gate.
The face of suffering is hard
It bleeds, and the cuts ooze blood
And its clear eyes cut
straight to your soul
No, it is too much, we must leave
the face of suffering,
the man of suffering,
outside, outside,
Outside the gate.