Hi everyone!
If you listened to my sermon this last Sunday, you learned that when I was a teenager I wanted to be a missionary. What happened to my career goals after that dream fell through?
I spent the years between 17-37 striving to be a filmmaker. I was convinced that what the world needed was a radical transformation of consciousness, or a mass paradigm shift to a culture that was more loving, inclusive, and healthy for ourselves and the planet. A spiritual awakening. I still believe the world needs this, and I still believe that film could do it. I don't know if I have the chops as a filmmaker to pull this off, but I still have filmmaking in my heart and this may be something I strive for again someday.
In "Killing Rage: Ending Racism," bell hooks says, “There must exist a paradigm, a practical model for social change that includes an understanding of ways to transform consciousness that are linked to efforts to transform structures.” I think this statement cuts to the heart of what needs to happen in our world. Ultimately, it's structures that need to transform. Societal structures such as the economy were created by people and can be rebuilt to include justice and everyone having their needs met. To get to that point, we need to transform consciousness, change our paradigm. I see my work, both in ministry and in film, to be this consciousness shifting work.
Arundhati Roy says, "Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness -- and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling -- their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."
