Transforming Darkness to Light

Mind is the Master
Power that molds and makes
And Man is Mind
And evermore he takes
The tool of Thought
Shaping what he wills
Brings forth a thousand joys
A thousand ills

James Allen begins his book, “As Man Thinketh” with this poem—setting the stage for an understanding of the Kabbalah principle of how we are reflected in the mirror of our own making—how “I am reflected in the life I live.” I was introduced to this book by Clarence Moses-El over coffee at Einstein’s Bagels last week. Moses-El was released from prison after 28 years, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, for a “crime he never done.” I was meeting him with a common friend and long-time KE student, Robin Glickstein. Moses-El did not have a Dylan song written for him but his cause was no less righteous than the Hurricane—and his false imprisonment was eight years longer than that of Rubin Carter. Robin, among many others, was an advocate for Moses-El. He needed many advocates to balance his “thousand ills with a thousand joys.”

As I sat across from Moses-El, I did not see even a flicker of the shadowy darkness of imprisonment—he was free not just from the physical cell and the societal cell—he was free of recrimination, free of vengeance, free to live life, to find and express joy and to share wisdom from his years before he went to prison, from his years while in prison and now, from his seat at Einstein’s bagels. As a Man Thinketh was a book Moses-El had read when he was 17, many years before he was falsely accused of raping and severely beating a woman. His is not a story of finding God, or direction, or peace in jail—he was investigating the world religions at a young age, seeking God, seeking direction and truth and wanting to find peace.

Moses-El will share with us his journey—from darkness to light–at the Evening of Jewish Mysticism at Mile Hi Church on Sunday February 19th. I have been blessed to study with world renowned teachers, to have the gift of being in the presence of well-known holy women and men. I am moved most by the encounters with people who have endured, whose spirits soar in spite of their suffering, whose flame flickers on to bring light to the shadows of man’s inhumanity to man.

6 Comments

Marcel Kahhak · January 7, 2017 at 1:25 am

I wish I could attend. great work.

Hedy Anselman · January 7, 2017 at 2:57 am

Hi David! I plan to attend on Feb 19. Don’t know if you remember, but I doubted Hurricane’s innocence. 28 years! People have gotten less time for murder! Looking forward to this and hope you will be there also
Hedy Anselman

Anita Khaldy Kehmeier · November 29, 2018 at 1:38 pm

“If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark.” St. John of the Cross

Anita Khaldy Kehmeier · December 10, 2018 at 12:55 pm

Movie – Boy Erased – The most honest thing the film depicts, dramatizing the way someone raised in a conservative religious community wants nothing more than to be “normal,” frightened by his attraction to other boys and desperate to “fix” whatever is wrong with him. “Boy Erased” is true to that turmoil, telling the story from Jared’s point of view while also treating his parents’ convictions as valid — in their own minds, at least.

Jared’s dad, Marshall, is a Baptist preacher (he also owns a local Ford dealership) who loves to remind his congregation that they are all imperfect people and that only faith can make them whole. One would never guess from the expression on Jared’s face during that sermon what kind of secret shame he might be hiding — in fact, the movie is oddly withholding when it comes to acknowledging him as a sexual being, as if doing so might be manipulative or exploitative: Its lone sex scene features a horrific encounter with a college crush (Joe Alwyn), who brutally rapes Jared, then calls his parents to out him.

When his mom, Nancy, hears the news, a single tear slides down her cheek, and she retreats to her room, where no one will see her mascara run. Marshall is more proactive, calling two church leaders to advise him on what to do. Following their advice, he confronts Jared directly, asking the boy whether he sincerely wants to change and then sending him to conversion camp, a place run by self-anointed therapist Victor Sykes (Edgerton) and a group of men who, we are led to believe, have “overcome” their homosexuality through sheer willpower — plus Flea as an aggressively homophobic drill sergeant type who coaches them on masculinity.

Edgerton never goes as far as “Cameron Post” did in ridiculing gay conversion therapy, intuiting that even a relatively restrained portrayal will make audiences’ blood boil, while a more snide or disrespectful approach might alienate those who believe in such methods. The ultimate goal of Edgerton and his creative collaborators may be to put an end to conversion therapy (end-credits statistics suggest that 700,000 young people have undergone such programs), but that will only happen if concerned parents can be convinced that it does more harm than good — which is why a pair of third-act scenes between Jared and each of his parents have such a powerful impact (bring a hankie).

The trouble with such films — really, with any story set in a rigidly conservative institution, be it a mental hospital (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”), boarding school (“Dead Poets Society”), boot camp (the first half of “Full Metal Jacket”), or conversion program (“The Miseducation of Cameron Post”) — is that they inevitably feel like prison movies, falling back on reductive tropes (like the idea that the authority figures are hypocrites) to make the case that the only solution is to break out. It’s a standard cliché, for instance, that someone winds up being pushed to suicide, thereby serving as a wake-up call to outsiders that there’s a problem. The only question here is who that victim will be.

Real life is more complicated than that, and Edgerton shows an admirable sense of restraint, even when hitting all the usual beats. He includes moments of quiet introspection for the characters and the audience alike, staring at the back of Jared’s head as he presumably tries to pray the gay away (although the movie never answers whether he’s able to reconcile his sexuality with his faith, or else is forced to leave the church ito live his truth). Sykes needn’t be depicted as a villain for his methods to be deemed harmful, and it’s actually more interesting if some of Jared’s camp mates believe in the program. The film might have been stronger if it had given some of the other teens more of a chance to express their views.

Audiences who know Xavier Dolan’s flamboyant reputation as a filmmaker may be surprised to see his near-total transformation into the sullen, emotionally shut-down Jon. Australian online personality Troye Sivan offers the opposite perspective, playing bleached-blond Gary, who offers Jared tips on how to fake his way through the program (he also supplies the soundtrack with two heart-rending ballads, including the terrific original track “Revelation”). Despite his forlorn Charlie Brown-like face and confidence-lacking posture, Hedges looks perhaps the least gay of the group — which is itself an important statement, since communities like those in Arkansas still conflate homosexuality with effeminacy.

If “Cameron Post” served as a useful tool for teenagers, “Boy Erased” feels like its greatest value will be to parents, particularly those with LGBT children of their own — and Crowe and Kidman have seldom been better in their supporting roles. So often, parents view this news as a reflection on themselves, searching to understand their own failings, or else looking for a way to repair the problem. For Garrard Conley, whose memoir inspired Edgerton’s film, sharing his story was the key to repairing things with his parents. Maybe there’s a lesson in there for us. There is for me: My father also lives in Arkansas. Since I came out, we have come to an arrangement: I never talk about my private life, and he never asks — which means, for nearly the last 20 years, he hasn’t really known me. That’s what it means to be a boy erased.

Film Review: ‘Boy Erased’

Anita Khaldy Kehmeier · December 10, 2018 at 1:00 pm

Queers in the kingdom -tells the story of LGBT survivors of Christian colleges while examining the roots of Bible-based homophobia in the United States.

Anita Khaldy Kehmeier · September 10, 2019 at 6:45 pm

“This is a capitalist society. It’s a fatalistic mantra that seems to get repeated to anyone who questions why America can’t be more fair or equal. But around the world, there are many types of capitalist societies, ranging from liberating to exploitative, protective to abusive, democratic to unregulated. When Americans declare that “we live in a capitalist society” — as a real estate mogul told The Miami Herald last year when explaining his feelings about small-business owners being evicted from their Little Haiti storefronts — what they’re often defending is our nation’s peculiarly brutal economy. “Low-road capitalism,” the University of Wisconsin-Madison sociologist Joel Rogers has called it. In a capitalist society that goes low, wages are depressed as businesses compete over the price, not the quality, of goods; so-called unskilled workers are typically incentivized through punishments, not promotions; inequality reigns and poverty spreads. In the United States, the richest 1 percent of Americans own 40 percent of the country’s wealth, while a larger share of working-age people (18-65) live in poverty than in any other nation belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (O.E.C.D.).
Or consider worker rights in different capitalist nations. In Iceland, 90 percent of wage and salaried workers belong to trade unions authorized to fight for living wages and fair working conditions. Thirty-four percent of Italian workers are unionized, as are 26 percent of Canadian workers. Only 10 percent of American wage and salaried workers carry union cards. The O.E.C.D. scores nations along a number of indicators, such as how countries regulate temporary work arrangements. Scores run from 5 (“very strict”) to 1 (“very loose”). Brazil scores 4.1 and Thailand, 3.7, signaling toothy regulations on temp work. Further down the list are Norway (3.4), India (2.5) and Japan (1.3). The United States scored 0.3, tied for second to last place with Malaysia. How easy is it to fire workers?” Countries like Indonesia (4.1) and Portugal (3) have strong rules about severance pay and reasons for dismissal. Those rules relax somewhat in places like Denmark (2.1) and Mexico (1.9). They virtually disappear in the United States, ranked dead last out of 71 nations with a score of 0.5.” With Trump on board…it has only become darker. He does not want the crime ridden and drug infested Bahamians to land on our shores…Never mind the 70,000 people who lost everything to Climate change.How much darker can it get?

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