“Putting the Power of Film at the Service of the Poor”
“Contradictions have always existed in the soul of [individuals]. But it is only when we prefer analysis to silence that they become a constant and insoluble problem. We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them and see them in the light of exterior and objective values which make them trivial by comparison.”
-Thomas Merton
Thoughts in Solitude
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1956): 80-81.
Thanks to computer difficulties, it has been a week since I was able to add a new post to my blog. But thankfully the technical problems have been resolved. During the past week, I have been working on a new film, Cathedrals of the Poor, which I think is the most powerful film SDF has produced. The film will be ready for distribution by early December. We are still searching for sponsors for the film. Here is the text which will appear on the back of the DVD jacket:
A Note from the Director
As we neared the end of our 8th year of putting the power of film at the service of the poor, the San Damiano Foundation experienced an explosion of interest in our work from around the world. In 2008, we released our 13th film, The Fragrant Spirit of Life, which is set in Uganda. Shortly afterward, we posted a scene from the film on YouTube. The scene featured two small children, Sam and Esther, whom we found lying nearly naked in the dirt outside a remote village. They were starving and unable to move because they suffered from untreated polio.
Without question, it was the hardest thing I have ever filmed. I have shown the scene many times at high schools across the United States, and the scene never fails to still and silence up to a thousand kids. By early November of 2009, the YouTube posting had been viewed by more than 158,000 people from all over the world. People were writing us from England, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Australia, New Zealand and many nations in Asia and Africa.
After producing thirteen films, mostly on global and domestic poverty, I felt it was time to release a film that served as a true introduction to the San Damiano Foundation and our ministry of putting the power of film at the service of the poor. We carefully selected fourteen scenes from seven of our films and orchestrated them in a way that shows, not only the scope of chronic poverty, but also provides the theological underpinnings for why we have no option but to do all we can to relieve the suffering caused by the widespread, unjust poverty that is killing countless people every day. The film also contains a stunning 23-minute-long montage of images, which serves as a visual meditation on the wounded body of Christ, featuring never-before-seen footage and photographs.
While I deeply love all the SDF films that I have written and directed, Cathedrals of the Poor is the one film I would give to someone who earnestly wanted to understand SDF and the tormented world of poverty Christ calls us to heal. While it is emotionally draining and hard to watch, this film has the transformative power to change the heart of anyone who views it…and I pray it does.
Gerry Straub
Glittering Radiance
The harsh and frightening realities
of sickness, hunger, suffering and death
cover the earth, plaguing all its inhabitants,
each of whom is crying out
for the eager embrace of God’s love.
But we do not have to wait.
God’s loving arms are
always open and welcoming.
All we need to do
is to turn toward God
and accept the divine hug
that awaits each of us.
In the glittering radiance of God’s light
chaos and darkness
takes flight.
Every facet of our lives
needs to be permeated
by love
in order to grow closer
to God.
Any portion of our lives
that we have not surrendered
to love,
becomes an obstacle
to reaching God.
How sad
that we often
decide to
abstain from life,
to hide ourselves
because we have been
hurt or rejected.
Our inner cell
of self-protection
soon becomes
a prison
that robs us
of the vitality of life.
“Awaken to the mystery of being here, and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence. May all that is unforgiven in you be released. May all that is unlived in you blossom into a future graced with love.”
-John O’Donahue
“By identifying himself with the poor and the weak, Jesus reminds us that he identifies with all that is poor and weak in each of us. We are called to become more open, trusting, child-like and filled with wonder. Each person is sacred, no matter what his or her culture, religion, handicap, or fragility. Each person is created in God’s image; each one has a heart, a capacity to love and be loved.”
-Jean Vanier
The Heart of L’Arche, A Spirituality for Every Day
[Crossroad Publishing Company, 1995]
Our very woundedness
is waiting to be transformed
into compassion.
Our emotional and physical pain
helps us understand and respond to
the suffering of another.
Compassion is as elegant
as any cathedral.
When I look into
the sad face
of a starving child
living on the margins
of a slum
I find myself
looking into
the very mystery of life.
Chronic poverty
with its desperate and endless
struggle for survival
fills me with grief.
Yet these dreadful and hopeless
slums are sacraments
of transcendence
that can unlock
our unconciousness
and lead us to a place
of solidarity
with the poor.
The mystery
of poverty and pain,
the very mystery
of life and death,
is too deep,
too sensitive,
too fragile
to be understood or solved
by one story,
one person,
one church,
one religion,
one system of thought.
But in these
places of desperation
I often catch
glimpses of hope
and the feeling
that life is truly
magnificent and precious.
The cross is clearly visible
in these nightmarish slums,
but so is the joy of Easter.
“In this fallen world the unity of human beings has been broken, everything is a ‘rat race,’ and I try to free myself from the anguish that torments me by projecting it on another, the scapegoat of my tragic finiteness. The other person is always my enemy and I need him to be so. In Christ, however, death has been defeated, my inner hell transformed in the Church, I no longer need to have enemies, no one is separated from anyone. The criterion of the depth of one’s spiritual growth is therefore love for one’s enemies, in accordance with the paradoxical commandment of the Gospel that takes its meaning solely from the Cross – Christ’s Cross and ours – and from the Resurrection – again Christ’s and our own…
The true miracle, the most difficult achievement, is therefore the example and practice of love in the spiritual sense of that word (and here the Gospel speaks of agape, the Latin caritas). To enter into God is to let oneself be caught up in the immense movement of the love of the Trinity which reveals the other person to us a ‘neighbor’ or (and this is better) which enables each one of us to become a neighbor of others. And to become a neighbor is to side with Christ, since he identifies himself with every human being who is suffering, or rejected, or imprisoned, or ignored.”
-Olivier Clement
The Roots of Christian Mysticism
[New City Press, 1995]
