Wednesday, September 22, 2010

A walk in the spiritual bazaar

Finding good neighbors at the 6th Sun Valley Spiritual Film Festival


By TONY EVANS
Express Staff Writer

Joe Broadbent, left, and Sam Zitting are featured in “Sons of Perdition,” a documentary about teens who left a strictly controlled fundamentalist Mormon community. The film was shown during the annual Sun Valley Spiritual Film Festival. Courtesy photo

The writer Flannery O'Connor once said that her choice of religion (Roman Catholicism) was "largely an aesthetic one." Born into a Southern Baptist culture, she took a pilgrimage to Rome only in her later years.

What of those of us who come to a religion by birthright and stay there? Are we made luckier by knowing about the many options that exist in the marketplace of spiritual ideas? Or just more confused?

In a world where religious tensions continue to produce armed conflict, and consumerism seems headed toward a dead end, the mission of the Sun Valley Spiritual Film Festival is as important as ever: "To explore the human spirit through the medium of film and discourse."

The festival was founded five years ago in the wake of a visit to the Wood River Valley by the Dalai Lama, who spoke to a crowd of some 10,000 about the unlucky consequences of keeping too narrow and provincial an attitude about the world's many spiritual traditions. (The Dalai Lama was referring to radical Islamists in rural areas far from the mainstream of world cultures.)

Since 2005, hundreds of filmgoers, spiritual leaders, scholars, filmmakers and film business people have attended Sun Valley's fall ritual of spiritual curiosity and religious tolerance. We come to be challenged by new and sometimes complex ideas. We leave wiser to the diverse aspects of an ever-evolving human spiritual community.

The documentary "Sons of Perdition," screened Saturday night, follows the lives of exiled teens who have escaped from a fundamentalist Mormon compound in the desert straddling the border between Arizona and Utah, where Warren Jeffs (husband to 50 wives) ruled until recently over a strictly controlled polygamist community known as "The Crick."

"This is how men become gods and women become holy mothers," says Jeffs on a taped broadcast to his followers in Colorado City, Ariz.

After escaping to Salt Lake City, one of the teens, Sam, is shown a Catholic Church. He marvels at the altar: "So, Catholics worship Christ," Sam says in disbelief. On stage at the Sun Valley Opera House on Saturday night, after the screening of "Sons of Perdition," Sam's mother, who has also escaped the compound to begin a new life, says she is now attending a Baptist congregation.

And so the exploration begins, as it did for religious studies scholar and author Linda Hess, who abandoned her Jewish faith and traveled to India during the 1960s. Today she is a practicing Zen Buddhist. Hess came to Sun Valley to introduce "Come to my country: Journeys with Kabir and Friends," a documentary about the great 15th-century poet who is popular today with Muslims and Hindus in northern India.

The film follows a popular singer of Kabir's poems as he performs in the villages of India, where the poet is highly regarded. Hess said most scholars believe that Kabir was born into a Muslim family of weavers, but Hindus claim he was adopted by a Hindu widow after being abandoned on a lake.

"It was a mixed-up time in which he lived," Hess said in an interview. "Many Hindus during Kabir's time were adopting Islam because it was egalitarian and did not follow the caste system."

Hess said that despite the charismatic poet's enduring ability to transcend religious and cultural boundaries with satire and mystical insights, "singing poetry does not address the complex political and social problems. There are complex power struggles in many places of the world that are not about religion."

Another film shown over the weekend, "Brilliant Moon: Glimpses of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche," makes us wonder about the promise of political powers guided by a deep compassion, born of rigorous spiritual training. Khyentse Rinpoche, one of Tibet's most revered 20th-century teachers and a teacher of the Dalai Lama, spent years in solitary retreat in the caves of eastern Tibet. He lost everything to the Chinese invasion of Tibet, escaping with his life and little else. He later became a tutor to the king of Bhutan and eventually contributed to the rebuilding of the Buddhist traditions in Tibet, and around the world. Filmed throughout Tibet, India, the United States, Bhutan and Nepal, "Brilliant Moon" tells his story from birth to death to the discovery of his present incarnation.

If you think reincarnation is far out, it gets even more creative in "The Valley of Dawn," shot in Brazil among a group of modern people who believe they originate from the planet Capela and that the fabulous and outrageous clothes they wear connect them to their interplanetary spirit guides.

The films and the attendant discussions raised a number of questions. Is a world religion just a local myth that happened to catch on? How do visions beget traditions and philosophies become theologies? Is art at the center of religious traditions, or does it evolve from a revelation?

The response to death and dying is a universal theme in all religions. How we deal with death can say a great deal about how we live our lives. The documentary "Griefwalker" follows the work of a Harvard-trained theologian, Stephen Jenkinson, who has embraced Native American spiritual traditions and styles in his palliative-care work. His shamanistic approach includes a renewed honoring of death as the "cradle of life."

During a question-and-answer session following the screening of "Griefwalker," Jenkinson, who is known in Canada as the "Angel of Death," told the packed Sun Valley Opera House, "Grief is a skill. Grieve lovingly and love grievously."

All spiritual leaders lead, not only by expressing lofty ideals, but also by example. The ones we trust most open their own hearts to an examination of what ails the rest of us. The documentary "Raw Faith" follows, with extraordinary openness, the soul journey of Marilyn Sewell, a popular Unitarian Universalist minister in Portland, Ore., as she plans to retire. Her sermons reflect her innermost yearnings as she confronts a loneliness born of early family tragedies that she must come to terms with before she can find a lasting relationship.

Sewell is an author who completes a book on forgiveness during the filming of "Raw Faith." In it, she offers a lesson that we could all take to heart: "Forgiveness is not an act, but a way of being in the world."

The last night of the festival offered "Mister Rogers and Me." This documentary about Fred Rogers, the creator of the "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" children's show, tells the personal history of Rogers, who planned to become a minister before working in television.

It turns out that Rogers' religious faith and spiritual search was fundamental to his work on a daily kids show that had a positive effect on millions of Americans. His central message to the world was to slow down and express our thoughts and feelings clearly to one another.

"I feel so strongly that deep and simple is far more essential than complex and shallow," Rogers says in the film.

In a world of big ideas and conflicting reports, Rogers' message is a take-home bit of advice that is good medicine for these frantic times.

Of course, there was a certain amount of necessary business going on at the festival. Distributors met with directors and producers to see about getting these rather obscure films seen, despite their supposed lack of commercial potential. Filmmakers talked shop during workshops about the tricks of the cinema trade that make for effective storytelling. From this crucible, there are rumors of deals and of future projects. Contacts were made.

The festival is a celebration of the many "masks of God," to borrow a phrase from mythologist Joseph Campbell, who saw parallels in many of the world religions.

Sharing tears and laughter with people from around the world at the Sun Valley Spiritual Film Festival is an ennobling experience that brings out what is essential and good in people of all faiths: friendship.

Tony Evans: tevans@mtexpress.com




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