sustain:if:able kiwi

Bergman Island: a theological film review

Monthly I write a film review for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Stretching back to 2005, some 165 plus films later, here is the review for April 2022.

Bergman Island is a delightfully plotted meditation on making. Director Mia Hansen-Løve offers creatively weaves reality and fantasy, probing the nature of imagination on the island of one of Europe’s finest filmmakers.

Creating as an act of fantasy and an embrace of vulnerability are central to island, plot and character. American filmmakers – Tony (Tim Roth) and Chris (Vicky Krieps) – ferry to Fårö Island. Each brings their creativity to the craft of film. Tony will bathe in the adoration of fans following a screening of one of his films. Chris will work on The White Dress, which becomes over time a film set on the island of Fårö.

The island is the central character. It offers the actors of Bergman Island and The White Dress places to play, including forests to wander, beaches for night swimming and summer showers through which to cycle. In real life, the island is Fårö Island, where Ingmar Bergman lived and made movies for forty years. After Bergman’s death, family and friends turned his houses into places for writers to work. For readers with writing fantasies, real-life application forms are here.

Films make worlds, and Bergman Island celebrates this making in light-hearted and poignant ways. There is the magical realism of wooden ducks that make noises and beach houses that suddenly appear. Some characters move between films. Hampus (Hampus Nordenson) guides Chris around the island, appears as she imagines The White Dress and returns as film (Bergman Island) and film (The White Dress) search for emotional resolution.

The weight of creative expectation is palpable. Any retreat to write has expectations. The pressures are magnified when one writes in the house of a man who produced forty-nine feature-length films.

These expectations allow a thoughtful probing of the origins of creativity. Searching for a new nib for her fountain pen, Chris flips through Tony’s journal. His hand-drawn pictures, misogynist in nature, suggest that for some creativity comes wrapped in unhealthy shadows. Much modern art is fascinated with the darker dimensions of being human.

When Chris shares The White Dress with Tony, her act of imagination seems diminished by Tony’s disinterest. Much postmodern art is preoccupied with the role of reception as a source of creativity.

Early in the film, Chris questions if faith played a role in Bergman’s creativity. A simple response is to visit his grave at the Fårö church. A more challenging response is to probe the place of retreat in the Christian imagination. Time away, to pray, to meditate, is often lauded as a Christian virtue. But what might the valorising of isolation say about the ordinary and everyday? As Cambridge theologian Janet Soskice writes, “What we want is a monk who finds God while cooking a meal with one child clamouring for a drink, another who needs a bottom wiped, and a baby throwing up over [a] shoulder” (The Kindness of God).

A final scene of Bergman Island affirms the everyday as a source of creativity. As Chris leaves her writing desk to be reunited with her daughter, we witness the domestic energy which inspires her making.

Rev Dr Steve Taylor is author of “First Expressions” (2019) and writes widely in theology and popular culture, including regularly at www.emergentkiwi.org.nz.

Easter cross flowering as public witness

This Easter, I’ve been privileged to lead worship at Emmanuel, my local Presbyterian church. With Otago at a peak in terms of Omicron the decision was made not to gather for worship.

As a creative response, I moved the cross outdoors (left hand photo from Thursday). The “Home church Easter Friday” service I created included an outdoor benediction. Folk were invited to flower the cross outside the church at some point over the weekend.  As you can see from the Friday afternoon (right-hand side) photo, it’s allowed a delightful participation by the community.

The cross had some words attached, borrowed from a colleague, Rob Kilpatrick, who had done something similar during the covid lockdown in 2020.

There is a story
that the cross of Jesus
sprouted flowers and branches immediately after he died.
A reminder
that death is not the end.
Life springs from a seed ‘dying’
This cross is available
for anyone to flower
over Easter weekend.
To express our sadness for those who suffer pain and loss,
including in Ukraine and
invite us to hope
for new life.
Anyone is welcome to add a flower.

The outdoor flowering did a number of things.

1. Public witness. Emmanuel has a large carpark on the main road through the village. A cross, with flowers being added, was a visible expression of Easter.
2. It provided a chance for church folk to do something collectively, to express in a visible and communal way their devotion. For health reasons, folk could worship alone yet still have a way to worship together.
3. The cross, wrapped in the colours of Ukraine, offered a way for folk to be in solidarity with Ukraine. (And practically, the blue and yellow ribbon also provided a way for flowers to be placed on the cross). I have deep concerns about Christian nationalism and the fusion of faith with national identity. Hence the words – “to express our sadness for those who suffer pain and loss, including in Ukraine” – which I hope focus on the horrors of war, rather than coopting God to the side of any one particular nation.
4. As public worship, it was a chance for anyone from the community to also engage in devotion. Passers-by from the local community could add a flower and without having to attend worship.

There are risks. As I noted to the leadership of Emmanuel Church in testing the idea, it could get vandalised. A strong southerly wind could blow the flowers away. No one might put any flowers up. However the risks can be managed. The cross could be checked regularly including after strong winds. More flowers can be added if it’s a bit thin.

Importantly, the vulnerability is actually deeply congruent with the events of Easter Friday. A man is being exposed to violence and his disciples might not turn up to. So the risks resonate with the Easter story.

There is more to follow, with “Home church Easter Sunday” service going to invite another way to engage …. what this space …

The colours of easter

the colours of easter – a short 3-minute participatory all-age reflection I wrote for Easter Friday at my local Presbyterian Church – to listen click here.

Hybrid Christology as resistance and innovation

Published! ““Hapkas” Christology as resistance and innovation in The Mountain,” Melanesian Journal of Theology 36 (2020): 81-101.

There are lots of feels in this piece of work – a lot of fun to dive into anthropology, literature and art – a real interdisciplinary piece of research. And to write about the country of my birth – Papua New Guinea. Full edition of the journal is online here. That’s right, no paywall! Scroll down to page 81.

The article analyses The Mountain, a novel by Australian writer Drusilla Modjeska. It describes a contemporary Christology – in particular her use of Jesus as “good man true” and the shifts in understandings of hybrid identities in the term “hapkas” (which is Pidgin English for half-caste). I argue for a contemporary Christology of resistance and innovation, in which ancestor agency is affirmed and Melanesian masculinity tropes are challenged.

The article has taken quite a few years to get from acceptance to print. It offers a particularised, Melanesian, reading of some research I had published in Mission Studies in 2019. (“Cultural hybridity in conversion: an examination of “Hapkas” Christology as resistance and innovation in Drusilla Modjeska’s The Mountain,” Mission Studies 36 (3) 2019, 416-441).

After the article in Mission Studies was accepted in 2019, one of the peer reviewers reached out and on behalf of another journal they review for – Melanesian Journal of Theology – suggesting a reworked piece would be of benefit to their readers. The suggestion gave me the opportunity to tighten the argument, as well as include some unpublished research from a visit to Te Papa, plus undertake a literature review of Melanesian Christologies.

Given the Melanesian Journal of Theology retained the original date of publication, it also means I had seven academic journal articles published in 2020 – much of it fruit from my 15-week sabbatical from Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership in 2019.

Abstract – This essay assesses a hapkas christology in Papua New Guinea. A declaration of Jesus as “good man true” in Drusilla Modjeska’s The Mountain is located in relation to hapkas themes of indigenous agency, communal transformation, and hybridity, each in dialogue with New Testament themes of genealogy, redemption as gift, and Jesus as the new Adam. This hapkas Jesus who is “good man true” is then placed in critical dialogue: first, with Melanesian masculine identity tropes as described in anthropological literature and second, with Papua New Guinean christologies, including “wantok,” brother, and protector. The argument is that a hapkas christology acts in ways that both resist and innovate in the reception of the gospel across cultures. This demonstrates how a received message of Christian mission can be creatively transformed in the crossing of cultures and a hapkas christology provides resources in the tasks of contextualisation in a rapidly globalising world.

Keywords – Christology, gospel, ancestor, genealogy, Drusilla Modjeska, post-colonial, indigenous

Learn Local as a uniquely Southern resource

(written for Southern Presbyterians newsletter, April 2022).

Cheese rolls, Bluff oysters and tītī (muttonbird) are local delicacies. They remind us of the unique richness of this southern land. While often we look elsewhere for inspiration, there is plenty to savour in local churches across the Southern Presbytery.

The first Learn Local happened in October 2021. Amid the uncertainty of COVID, people from seven Southern Presbytery churches gathered in a community hall in South Dunedin on a wet Saturday morning. An outdoor community walk was paused. Instead, members of the Seedling Presbyterian ministry shared stories of what it meant to establish a missional community in South Dunedin.

Local immersion continued with lunch at Dunedin’s longest-standing traditional Chinese restaurant. In the afternoon, Student Soul led cafe worship in ways that demonstrated new approaches to technology. The spring weather had improved, so a walk around the University encouraged prayer for local mission among student communities.

Learn Local participants left stimulated by a day packed full of new ideas. There was excitement about different ways of being church, encouragement to work in individual giftings and affirmation of the value of small things with love.

So what? It is easy for resourcing to remain in the “good-day-out” basket.

During the following four weeks, Learn Local participants gathered online. They reflected on what they were learning as they walked their local communities. The questions asked by Learn Local Saturday generated further learning:

• getting started
• who else in our communities can help us provide service for God
• creating cultures of openness
• discerning paths forward
• staying anchored in Christ and motivated in mission
• discipleship and worship in forming faith
• ways to remain connected in mission

Learn Local offers a unique way of learning. Rather than learning from books, the community is the classroom, and the speakers are Southern Presbyterians involved in community mission. Generous funding from the Synod makes Learn Local possible.

A second Learn Local is planned for October 2022. Teams and individuals from Southern Presbytery looking for resourcing in local mission are strongly encouraged. To go on the mailing list for information regarding dates and details, contact Steve Taylor at kiwidrsteve@gmail.com.