mountain masala

optical realities

Today I discovered Bruce Cockburn's website and have been enjoying listening to songs from the few albums that I don't have. He has one streaming song from each of his 25 albums. OK, I'm missing about 10.

But I first found a fans' site, the Cockburn Project which among other things talks about his current tour and new instrumental album Speechless

The site mentioned that he works with photographer Linda Panetta, whose website Optical Realities is a stunning record of people in Nicaragua, Haiti, El Salvador, Mexico, Iraq, Colombia, Afghanistan Guatemala.

SUCH AMAZING PICTURES!

The website says:
All proceeds made from the sale of photos displayed at exhibits or purchased online, help to fund our ongoing educational campaigns and outreach to communities affected by war, internal conflict, and ecological devastation. All photographs are made available and provided upon request to organizations and individuals advocating for human rights and sustainable change. Additionally, every attempt is made to send back copies of photos to the individuals and communities shown on this website.

She provides a US phone no. but no email: (215) 473-2162

Polish Poster Gallery

Here's an amazing Polish Poster gallery website.

Link: Polish Poster Gallery - vintage and original, movie, theater, circus and music posters.

walk on

I was taking about this in a multimedia class the other night, so I thought I'd post it here. I'd previously mentioned it over at youthmultimedia. I know it's out of season, but....

This was the first station of our Lenten "Stations of the Cross", focusing on Pilate's trial before Jesus.

We potato-stamped "I Am" many times on a sheet of cloth and stapled that to some black card to make a life-size body for Jesus. Then we stamped words like "bread", "life", "way", "peace", "truth" etc on the black card. We projected the Jesus Morph movie as the head. We ended up projecting onto the black card itself as white looked too stark and 3D white face shapes looked too misshapen. So the face was a bit dull but that was fine. It suited the mood.

At the foot of the figure we laid a purple cloth with candles. To the right was the Scripture passage from Luke 23, to the left was the poem below. At the foot of the figure was a bowl of small stones, with a sign inviting people to place one in their shoe as they continued to walk the stations.

On the left wall was a whiteboard. We had written the words "Crucify Him!" several times in red. We were going to ask people to write the same words, but didnt bother. However, that's just what they did!

Music was track 2 from Peter Gabriel's "The Passion" album/soundtrack, looped

The morph and "I Am" were an expression of Pilate's questioning of Jesus' identity, and, in a sense, Jesus' question to Peter "Who do you say that I am"? The morphing movie suggested various perspectives of Jesus over time, yet the one figure. The "I Am" conveyed that Jesus' identity was bound up in Yahweh, the great "I Am", so that regardless of the morphing faces, there was and is an "I Am". The surrounding words _ Bread, Life, Way... actually looked as if they had fallen off the garment, as if some of the peripheral identity was being, or about to be, stripped away. So I guess there was a sense of a final snapshot of Jesus before the trial to come.

Of course, most of that wasnt evident to us as we made it, we just kind of did it. Here's the poem. You can download a Powerpoint file of it here 52 kb.

walk on

here it begins
each season, each moment

a slow dance of death
grace seeping
from the world
as though to disappear forever

an open invitation
to be undone, or revived
perhaps both

so lonely the journey
one we can’t bear to watch
much less walk

a path not taken, at least
not before this day,
in this way

we wish that he, like we
could take a road
more travelled
instead of these twisted stairs

like a dark forest
shadows loom with each step
powers poise in balance

like a danger cry
harsh words eclipse hope
crucify him! crucify him!

even today
mystery hangs waiting
is he for or against us?

would we praise or punish?
defend or deny?

can love make this journey
without being dissembled by evil?

walk on in this twilight
if you desire the courage
to find yourself in this story

walk on in this twilight
if you long for patience
to wait through the night beyond

walk on in this twilight
if you seek for faith
to believe that God can be so weak
yet this large

walk and watch
wait and wonder

place a stone in your shoe
as you walk this path

may it break your skin
and spike your soul
may it alter your path
may pain birth promise

may love
burst through
flesh and bone
spirit and soul

so that hope
may rise again
and earth and heaven
be as one

walk on
knowing that love also
walks this lonely road
with you

walk on

craig mitchell, 2005

when God made me

Here's a song from the new Neil Young album Prairie Wind

"When God Made Me"

Was he thinkin' about my country
Or the color of my skin?
Was he thinkin' 'bout my religion
And the way I worshipped him?
Did he create just me in his image
Or every living thing?

When God made me
When God made me

Was he planning only for believers
Or for those who just have faith?
Did he envision all the wars
That were fought in his name?
Did he say there was only one way
To be close to him?

When God made me
When God made me

Did he give me the gift of love
To say who I could choose?

When God made me
When God made me

When God made me
When God made me

Did he give me the gift of voice
So some could silence me?
Did he give me the gift of vision
Not knowing what I might see?
Did he give me the gift of compassion
To help my fellow man?

When God made me
When God made me

When God made me
When God made me

eminem advertising iPods

Link: Apple - iPod - TV Ad.

come on feel the illinoise

i finally bought sufjan stevens' five-star Illinoise album from the Australian iTunes store, seeing as I havent seen it anywhere, and besides, one-click purchasing!

every song on this album is bubbling over with muscial ideas. you'll hear nick drake, paul simon, badly drawn boy, broadway musicals, ryan adams, the polyphonic spree... it's cinematic, operatic, folky, rocky, everything really.

some god-references in there too. not sure what that's about yet. given that this is his second of fifty albums focusing on states of the US (!), it might be historical.

he also has great songs titles, like "Let's Hear That String Part Again, Because I Don't Think They Heard It All the Way Out In Bushnell" and "They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!"!

It's not pop music. well some of it is. kind of.

go listen!

[re]generate

in 2006 i'm hosting [re]generate in Adelaide, which will be an occasional conversation about fostering new and fringe faith communities. venue is an iner city pub tba. I don't have a venue yet (darren has sent me a list of city pubs to visit!!), but we do have dates - 13 Feb, 3 April, 7 June, 7 August, 17 October. there'll be a guest contributor each time, with the emphasis being on conversation rather than presentation. I am hoping that we'll have steve collins from the UK here on 7 june, thanks to cheryl (and steve!). steve hosts the alternative worship and smal ritual websites. more info and some kind of ecardy thing soon!

new college logo

finally here is our new college logo with slogan "deeper faith, wider vision". this has taken several months to work through. hope you like it! parkin-wesley is the theological and ministerial education/training college of the Uniting Church in Australia, Synod of South Australia. It's where I work as a lecturer and co-director of lay education for the synod. The logo was designed by claire from redfishbluefish.

thanks to nic and anne for their logo submissions too, which were all part of the process. I won't tell you about the rejected slogans!

we've got a new website on the way.... more to be revealed soon!

destroy everything you touch

I've just come across the video clip for "Destroy Everything You Touch" by dance-electronic group Ladytron.

You can view it here or download it here. 5.8 mb Quicktime movie.

It's a stunning clip of a winter scene.

some of the lyrics:

Destroy everything you touch today
Destroy me this way
Anything that may desert you
So it cannot hurt you

You only have to look behind you
At who's underlined you
Destroy everything you touch today
Destroy me this way

Everything you touch you don't feel
Do not know what you steal
Shakes your hand
Takes your gun
Wants you out of the sun

What you touch you don't feel
Do not know what you steal
Destroy everything you touch today
Please destroy me this way

what's it about? a good question. certainly about our capacity to hurt or destroy other people, to distance ourselves from the effects of our actions. The winter scene is clearly about coldness, and the song lyrics speak of becoming icy, frozen, lifeless, disconnected.

an alternative to browser text?

If you're into web design, have a look at this:

With today’s release of sIFR, or Scalable Inman Flash Replacement, we finally have a standards-compliant way to deliver rich typographical text in a flexible manner to over 90% of web users.

Link: Mike Davidson: Introducing sIFR: The Healthy Alternative to Browser Text.

Download whatever it is here. It's done with Flash and Javascript but I havent exactly looked at it yet!