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Scientist in remote Antarctic outpost stabs colleague who told him endings of books he was reading!!! A bit extreme even in that specific situation!!

https://bit.ly/2SuSM7w

Photoshop art by Zita Harrison; photo by Marco Moraes on Unsplash.com

A young woman is brutally gouged and slashed by Stigmata, the wounds of Christ. A phenomenon that is said to occur only in the deeply spiritual, deeply devout. But this young woman is the opposite of all that. She’s the ultimate “sex, drugs and rock and roll” girl, plus she says she’s an atheist. How is that possible?

Just watched the controversial movie “Stigmata” again recently, and as always, it gets me thinking. The story goes like this. When Frankie, a wild child from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania gets the wounds of stigmata, the Vatican sends an official investigator, Father Kiernan, to determine the authenticity of the incidents. She has holes in her wrists that go all the way through from one side to the other. But when she tells him she’s an atheist, he’s ready to dismiss her case. Because only the very deeply devout get stigmata. So why is she getting them?

Her mother had sent her a rosary belonging to a priest at a church in the Brazilian village of Belo Quinto, Father Alameida, who was known to experience stigmata. His church was not affiliated in any way with the Roman Catholic Church. When Father Alameida died, a street urchin had grabbed his rosary from his coffin and sold it at a marketplace to an American woman. The woman mailed it as a gift to her daughter, the atheist wild child, Frankie, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Frankie starts to get stigmata, and a message, which she scribbles all over the wall in her apartment, rakes viciously across the tops of old cars in alleys, and screams angrily to the world. The words say: “Jesus said the Kingdom of God is inside you, and all around you, not in mansions of wood and stone. Split a piece of wood and I am there, lift a stone and you will find me.”

The words, written in Aramaic, said to be the original language of Jesus, are from some ancient scrolls discovered a while back. Father Alameida was one of three people assigned to translate the writing on the scrolls. When the Roman Catholic Church, represented here by Cardinal Daniel Houseman, found out about this scroll, they ordered the three men to cease their endeavor. But the men continued it in secret.

Years later, Cardinal Houseman of the Roman Catholic Church finds out that the blasphemous words he had ordered suppressed, words saying God is in everyone and everything, and that one does not have to go the “mansions” of the Catholic Church to find Him, are spewing out of the mouth of a sinful young woman who is also showing signs of Stigmata. She must die. Fortunately the investigator priest, Father Kiernan, figures out what’s going on, and manages to save her in time.

The implication, of course, is that the spirit of Father Alameida possesses the girl, and makes her his “messenger,” hence the stigmata. Thus, the words from the scroll make their way from him to her and into the world. But Father Alameida also says only those who “believe” can be the messenger: “The messenger believes, the messenger has faith…” So the question is: how could he have chosen this atheist party animal as his messenger? Could it be that somehow she could possibly be a believer?

What does it mean, then, to “believe”? Blind, unquestioning belief in everything the church dictates? Could it be to believe in oneself? The one line from Frankie that sticks in my mind is “I love being me.” She says this in the emergency room when the doctors suggest her wounds are self-inflicted. She says she would never hurt herself because she loves herself. She believes in herself. Despite all her vices, Frankie comes across as happy, almost childlike, as if she somehow managed to maintain the purity she was born with. And like a child, she is at peace with herself. Could that be a kind of devotion? To accept and love yourself despite all your faults, despite the judgment of society? If the “Kingdom of God” is indeed within all of us, then to believe in oneself would be to believe in that kingdom.

Suppose the Kingdom of God is in everyone. Then men like Cardinal Houseman who claim that the only path to God is through them, and that those who do not support the Church are not loved by God, are wrong. The message, as I understand it, is that God cannot discriminate between those who “believe” and those who don’t, and accepts and loves everyone, because they are all a part of Him. It follows that those who love themselves, are kind to themselves, forgive themselves, in a way show devotion to God, whether they go to church or not, because they are a part of God. Moreover those who love themselves usually do not feel the need to hurt others, who are also a part of God. So that also becomes a way to show devotion to God, by not hurting others. And maybe when she said, “I love being me,” Frankie showed herself to be a believer, one who has faith in herself, and thus in God. If everyone loved themselves, and as a consequence were kind to others, maybe the world would not be so full of hate? Maybe that is the most truly religious one can actually be?

Yes, it’s only a movie. My husband thinks it went a little overboard with the possession scenes, which resembles the ones in “The Exorcist.” Okay, so it’s a little sensational sometimes. But movies, books, any form of literature and art, are ultimately drawn from real life issues, the purpose being, hopefully, to make one think about them. And this movie gets my mind going every time I watch it.

Here is the official trailer for “Stigmata”. If you have thoughts, I would love to hear them!

I sit in front of the fire, sipping chamomile tea, seeking calm now that everyone has gone, and everything is done. That calm that I look forward to amidst the madness that signals the end of a year. The frenzied spending, eating, drinking, like life is about to end and there will be no more opportunities to spend, eat and drink, so we have to do it all, and more, right now. As if death lies just around the corner. A thought that makes people frantic and crazy. Desperate. Mad to the point of hostility and ugliness to others, strangers. I don’t care about you. You are in my way. Get out of my way. Oh, yes. I feel that at this time of year more than any other. The glares, the impatience, the pushing and shoving, the belligerent honks on the road. God forbid you go a little too slow for the driver who is in a mad rush to make it to the store last minute. So many middle fingers in the air. Goodwill towards all.

So I should be enjoying the calm. After all, we can’t live all year like we do at the end. We need order, sanity, patience, civility, or the world would fall apart. But now that all that is about to be restored, I feel empty, despondent, like I’m coming down from a sugar rush and don’t know what to do with myself. Panic and anxiety hover in my heart, and I feel like I need a drink, or dessert, something to raise me up again.

I take a deep breath, and a word appears in my mind, a concept we practice awareness of in meditation and yoga. Impermanence. Never a better time, I tell myself, to ponder the impermanence of things than in December, when the previous year has come to an end. Everything is impermanent. Everything will pass. This feeling of emptiness will also pass, is passing already as I think about it. The bad passes. And also the good. We cannot hold onto anything forever. Death is truly right around the corner and life is transient. A dream. Which leads me to my next thought.

Could the end of the year, in fact, be considered a death? The death of the year? We don’t like to think of the word “death” because it scares us, brings us pain. But what is an ending if not, in so many ways, a death? Hence the words “die down.” The celebrations have “died down.” The madness has “died down.” There are those who have actually left us. Family, friends whose time it was to move on beyond this life. And that brings us pain. But the end of the year, in fact, is also the death of all that the last year brought, the good and the bad both. Failures, successes. The death of a failure brings us hope, the drive to strive. The death of a success brings us grief, but also, perhaps, hopefully, the drive to strive. A loss can be a blessing in disguise. So death is not just about pain, but so much more. It’s complicated. Like life. And death is a part of life.

Maybe even though we don’t talk about impermanence, try not to think about death, we are constantly aware of it. How could we not be with all the death around us? And maybe that’s what drives the madness, the frenzied spending and eating and drinking and pushing and shoving and honking. A reaction to the death of a year. We really know very little of what the next year will bring. And whatever it was that happened last year is definitely not coming back. It might return in a different form, in different circumstances, but it will never be the same as it was last year. Because everything is constantly changing. The future is suddenly right around the corner, defined by the calendar, the seasons. All of a sudden we are steeped in new year’s resolutions, the prospect of re-inventing oneself and starting over. A rebirth. Next year one is a year older, hopefully wiser, but definitely changed in some way, for better or worse, hopefully for better! So “Carpe Diem” – seize the day, live in the present. And the last month of the year whirls by faster than the whole year, like a climax, after which we hope that things will settle down.

So what are we celebrating? Christmas, yes; but is that all? People of all cultures and religions celebrate in December, not just Christians. And Christmas is just one day, not a whole month. So are we celebrating the death of a year? Can one celebrate death? Maybe we’re celebrating that we all made it through another year of change and impermanence, and live to see the birth of another year. During which we will, of course, be different. Eat less, exercise more, work towards goals, etc., etc., right? Right. Or maybe we take the opportunity to release all the efforts we have made all year. Because those efforts are impermanent also. They must “die down” at the end of the year, and give us a much needed holiday without which we might be crazy all year long! And there it is.

Death has to happen for the rest of life to mean something. If things lasted forever and never changed, they would not mean much. They certainly would not be appreciated as much.

I stare at the fire, down to embers, my tea gone. Impermanence. A sudden chill sweeps through the room. The warmth is gone. The year is gone. I rise and go to the dying fire, put another log on, bring it back. The warmth spreads over my cheeks and I close my eyes in gratitude. In a few days a new year will begin. But soon that will also pass. A hand touches my shoulder and I smile. I know that touch. It is my husband, my soul mate. I lean back as his arms go around me, melting into him. He is home. For now. I breathe deep, inhaling the precious smell of him, relishing the feel of his strong arms, completely in the moment. Seize the moment for it will not last. I feel it. So maybe at the end of the year we celebrate in appreciation of the beauty of a life shaped by death. The beauty of impermanence, or of “anicca” as the Buddhists say. Peace.