There are times when, watching Vanessa at her best, it is possible to think that there has never been an actor as extravagantly gifted and expressive as she is, not even Marlon Brando. Like Brando, Redgrave is led by instinct. Her failures, like his, are in Mount Everest areas where most actors wouldn’t even be able to breathe, let alone create. . . . “If there existed something like a dream in which a recipe was concocted to create an ideal actress, that dream would end with an entrance by Vanessa Redgrave,” said Tennessee Williams.
Asked by Charlie Rose in 1995 if she was satisfied as an actress, she said, “Oh, no, because any achievement you may make at any given time, or may know you have made, immediately you arrive at a new state or field. You then perceive whole other fields that you couldn’t perceive until you’d arrived at that particular state.” Redgrave has brought audiences up to fields and vistas that had never before been seen. “I’m lucky,” she said. “When there’s a difficult mountain to climb, I sometimes get chosen to make the climb. Growing up with Shakespeare, as I had to do, you lived with the challenge of what drama can mean as a social experience for people, how important it can be.” Meryl Streep, often called our greatest actress, disagrees with that assessment. She thinks that designation belongs to Redgrave and has referred to Redgrave’s work as “the pinnacle.”
On the 28th day of every month since his passing, I’ve honored Chad in some way at The Wild Reed. I continue this honoring today by sharing an excerpt from Joshua Barajas’s September 9, 2020 NewsHourstory, “What Chadwick Boseman’s Death Means In a Year Marked By Grief.”
The grief Barajas is referring to is, of course, the grief caused by the coronavirus pandemic, a pandemic that is still very much with us, even as the roll-out of vaccines continues to slowly pick up steam.
Because the pandemic is still with us, the grief – both individual and collective – is also still with us. Barajas' article is thus just as relevant in these early days of 2021 as it was five months ago, back in 2020. Indeed, it could be retitled, “What Chadwick Boseman’s Death Means In This Time Marked By Grief.”
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A boy freezes as a TV reporter delivers the news that someone important to him has died. Wearing his “Black Panther” costume, the boy drops his action figure of King T’Challa.
“Daddy! Daddy! My h-hero is gone!” he cries in his father’s arms.
The boy is the center of a comic by artist Courtney Lovett, who at first didn’t believe the news that actor Chadwick Boseman had died. After seeing the late-night alerts on social media, she went to bed thinking it could have been a dream. But the next morning, the headlines hadn’t budged. Lovett said she doesn’t normally get emotional after a celebrity’s death. But this was no normal year.
Since COVID-19 began infecting and killing Americans, our rituals for grieving have changed. Not everyone can attend funerals of loved ones. Time spent reminiscing and honoring the dead has to be spent farther apart or over video chat. The process of grieving itself can be more isolating now.
At risk of understatement, Boseman’s death was shocking – the reactions on social media were swift in their immediate disbelief and despair. The official statement from the actor’s family revealed that he had been living with a colon cancer diagnosis for the past four years. The actor who had spent his career embodying towering Black figures in history – Jackie Robinson, James Brown, Thurgood Marshall – hadn’t been vocal about his diagnosis.
“It’s a lot to take on at one time,” said Monnica Williams, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at University of Ottawa’s School of Psychology.
“Every Black person I know is exhausted just from life right now,” she said.
Lovett, heartbroken, began to see the pictures posted by parents of children memorializing Boseman – a figure who had embodied Black lives in America and Africa. There were many Wakanda salutes, many makeshift memorials for Black Panther with superhero toys paying their respects.
With those images in mind, Lovett created a 10-panel comic that not only paid tribute to the 43-year-old actor, whose work and storytelling she admired, but to also leave a message of hope for the children who looked up to Boseman or his most famous character, King T’Challa, as an idol.
In Lovett’s comic, a black panther appears to the boy, who’s in bed grieving. The panther comforts the boy and then leads him to Boseman who delivers a message from the afterlife: The child, too, is a king.
Lovett said she wanted to end her comic by telling children that, “You are so great. You can still do these things, even though you feel that your hero is gone, we still have heroes here. You are a hero.”
[. . .] Lovett said she received comments and direct messages from people thanking her for her comic. Several said it helped them to grieve. Lovett said some parents told her they hesitated in telling their children about Boseman’s death, fearing that such news would make them feel defeated. But Lovett’s comic provided a doorway to a conversation around the loss of their hero.
Lovett said the outpouring after Boseman’s death felt like a “collective release.” Grieving for Boseman and his family was, in a way, also grieving for everything that has happened this year.
[In 2008] Barack Obama and Joe Biden got themselves elected in the middle of an economic crisis after promising to pass a public health insurance option. It was a promise as clear and explicit as the $2,000 checks promise is today – their platform was explicit in pledging that “any American will have the opportunity to enroll in the new public plan.”
But then over the course of the year, as Republicans in the congressional minority kicked and screamed, the administration ever so gradually started backing down, rather than using the election mandate to try to shame the GOP into submission.
By the middle of the year, Obama said: “The public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health care reform.” His Health and Human Services secretary said that it was “not the essential element” of health care reform.
By the winter, Obama flatly lied, insisting: “I didn’t campaign on a public option.”
And then by 2010, the Obama White House had killed the plan, and Senate Democrats refused to even bring it up for a floor vote when they had the chance. Soon after, voters delivered what Obama called a “shellacking” in the midterm election, effectively foreclosing on the possibility of transformative change during Obama’s presidency.
A little more than a decade later, the public option fight should be a harrowing cautionary tale for Biden on both the policy and the politics. He had a front-row seat in watching a bad-faith Republican opposition kill a much-needed initiative, and then use Democrats’ failure to deliver to win at the polls. He of all people should know that this story never ends well.
The question is: Can he and Democrats learn from the past?
I continue this evening my series highlighting the wisdom found on my bookshelf at work. As most reading this would know, my “work” since September 2018 has been that of a palliative careinterfaith chaplain in a hospital just north of the Twin Cities.
In this seventh installment I share an excerpt from Interfaith Spiritual Care: Understandings and Practices, edited by Daniel S. Schipani and Leah Dawn Bueckert. The focus of this excerpt is on spiritual caregivers as “soul companions.”
(NOTE: To start at the beginning of this series, click here.)
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Faith is stepping into mystery. As Parker Palmer says, “Faith is a venture into the unknown, into the realms of mystery, away from the safe and comfortable and secure” (The Company of Strangers, p.64). Mystery is who God is. Becoming acquainted with God is departing from those areas of our lives that are comfortable and secure. Relating to God is a “stretch.” When we [open ourselves to] God we make ourselves vulnerable to the challenges God has for us. When chaplains step into a hospital room to visit a patient, they are entering the realm of Mystery. Patients in a hospital are often in physical, emotional, and spiritual crisis. They look to the chaplain to guide them through confusing feelings they may have about their relationship with God. Chaplains can do little to prepare for the visit. They need to become spontaneous and go with the “flow” of what the patient wants to deal with. The authority in the room becomes the patient and his or her spiritual agenda.
As spiritual caregivers we are also soul companions with and for others. Jean Stairs defines soul as “the spiritual essence of one’s existence expressed through body, mind, or any other facet of our being” (Listening for the Soul, p.10). In Genesis 2:7, soul could be understood as the breath of life God gave to Adam. Soul, in the Hebrew language means, “neck.” The neck contains the jugular vein, nerves that are connected to the brain and spine that connects the rest of the body to the head. Soul then gives us a vital connection to God as the life force, a sense of wholeness, but also a sense of interior presence about ourselves. When someone touches our soul, they reach the center of who we are.
Soul companionship is significant for [interfaith] chaplains because [through their interfaith ministry] the concern is placed on the spiritual needs of the person rather than on the religious differences. Soul companioning helps chaplains listen for the spiritual misery patients may be experiencing, and how they can help without changing or compromising their own or the patient’s faith convictions.
The goal of a soul companion is, first and foremost, to listen for the soul and the presence of God who is active in their lives. Chaplains need to establish a rapport with the patient, listen for feelings, reflect feelings, express empathy, and identify spiritual issues that the care-receiver is concerned about. Chaplains do not need to take responsibility for the patient’s religious (or non-religious) faith as such. Patients can take responsibility for their own beliefs.
Secondly, soul companioning affirms the commonality of our human experience. Soul companioning can provide a way of coming together that rises above differences. In spiritual matters we can be present to one another in ways that bring clarity of meaning and new understanding that comes out of empathy. Soul companioning opens up the opportunity to make meaning out of one’s spiritual crisis in a way that can be recognized, validated, and affirmed as a human experience elevated to a level of faith. If the patient is comfortable with his/her faith, he/she can validate the new spiritual meaning that develops out of the chaplain-patient relationship.
Thirdly, soul companioning, in the words of Jean Stairs, “expands our spiritual vision and helps us cross boundaries” (Listening for the Soul, p.143). Soul companioning challenges the chaplain to become more inclusive in a way that respects differences. Chaplains are on a learning curve all the time. We are not experts, we are learners about how God interacts with us during crisis. Soul companioning provides an opportunity to learn truths beyond our awareness and to discover new meaning “outside of the box,” if you will. It is a way to be aware of the truth that is beyond us, and that sometimes comes to us in a way we did not expect.
It seems quite some time since I’ve hosted “music night” here at The Wild Reed. To remedy this, I share tonight, as I shared last July, my love of the kora, a musical instrument often referred to as the West African harp.
Last year it was kora player Mbemba Diebaté whom I spotlighted; tonight it’s Seckou Keita. And I do so by sharing “If Only I Knew,” one of my favorite tracks from Seckou’s 2015 album, 22 Strings.
Beautiful, isn’t it? . . . I sure think so.
Following, with added links, is The Guardian’s Robin Denselow’s review of 22 Strings.
Born in Casamance in the south of Senegal but now living in Nottingham, Seckou Keita can be classed alongside the great Toumani Diabaté as one of the adventurous masters of the kora, the African harp. And like Diabaté, he specialises in surprise. His [2014] album, Clychau Dibon, was a gently exquisite set of acoustic duets with the Welsh harpist Catrin Finch, and it rightly picked up a batch of awards. It was preceded by albums in which he explored everything from flamenco to jazz-funk; his latest is an elegant solo set dominated by instrumental compositions. There are African influences, of course, along with tracks that echo western themes, with quietly hypnotic, repeated phrases matched against sturdy melodies. He adds relaxed and soulful vocals to three tracks, and the charming set ends with an upbeat, but still delicate funk finale.
About the title of 22 Strings, Seckou’s official website notes the following.
In 22 Strings, Seckou explores what it means to be a modern global citizen, and yet to live with seven centuries of tradition and heritage expressed through music. He gives us the kora in its purest guise, a wondrous instrument that can soothe the bloodlust of warriors and take the human spirit to a place of deep meditation, stillness and beauty. The title of the album says it all. Centuries ago, when the djinns, the spirits of the African bush, gave the first ever kora to the griot Jali Mady “Wulen” (“The Red”), it had 22 strings. Then, when Jali Mady died, his fellow griots took one string away in his memory. But back in its birthplace in southern Senegal and Guinea Bissau, the 22-stringed kora survives, with the extra string giving the instrument special advantages in terms of tonal reach and groove. For Seckou Keita, that one extra string represents home: the place where his heart resides.
Winter’s way is one many humans have become fearful of. For it leads us to meet what is held within, the company we keep in the empty moments.
The stillness of winter does not match many people’s constant want for noise and distraction. Yet it is so important to keep a balance, an inward, outward breathing cycle.
Winter is whispering her restful deepening message into the land. Speaking it into the tree people, the plant allies, the bones of animals. Furred, winged, scaled, and two legged, and they all feel it. It is time to go inwards, to rest back in darkness and quietude. To listen and to feel what lies beneath in our own inner world.
Winter invites a period of reflection, inward work, and dreaming. Our own powerful annual retreat time, should we heed the invitation.
I wonder, what would people do if they really went with what their bodies and nature are calling them to take notice of. Would they sleep more, go to bed earlier, draw, listen, snuggle, light candles, nourish their bodies with good and simple foods?
For me this time is about lighting fires, reminding us of the fire and warmth within. Bringing light and love into our darkness, acknowledging ourselves with kindness and care. Resting, dreaming, writing, listening, and honouring what has gone by, and what is to come. Honouring our home, both inside and out, through taking notice and being attentive. Embracing with care, all we find.
– Brigit Anna McNeill Excerpted from a Facebook post
December 15, 2020
On the eve of Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day, I find myself hoping that a Biden/Harris administration takes to heart a key component of one of their former fellow presidential candidate's platform. I’m talking about author and activist Marianne Williamson’s plan for a U.S. Department of Peace.
Marianne recently reminded people of this particular pillar of her 2020 presidential campaign by re-sharing it on various social media platforms. “That [presidential] campaign is over,” she notes, “but the campaign for a more enlightened political perspective must continue.”
Peace as an organizing principle
The mission of Marianne’s proposed U.S. Department of Peace is quite simple: to hold peace as an organizing principle. Upon this foundation the department will do eight key things: (i) promote justice and democratic principles to expand human rights; (ii) coordinate restorative justice programs; (iii) address white supremacy; (iv) strengthen non-military means of peacemaking; (v) work to prevent armed conflict; (vi) address the epidemic of gun violence; (vii) develop new structures of non-violent dispute resolution; and (viii) proactively and systematically promote national and international conflict prevention, mediation, and resolution.
In short, the U.S. Department of Peace will “wage peace,” something I think we can all agree is sorely needed in the U.S. and across the globe.
Time will tell if Marianne’s radical (in the best and truest sense of the word) and much-needed proposal will gain traction under President Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris. I hope so. I also hope that Marianne will be tapped to serve in some capacity in the Biden/Harris administration. If nothing else, she would make a great official adviser in any number of areas.
Inauguration Day and beyond
As for tomorrow’s inauguration, first and foremost I pray that all goes smoothly and peacefully; that there’s no repeat of the right-wing extremist violence that took place at the Capitol just two weeks ago.
And, of course, I’m relieved and happy that the inauguration will put an official end to the horrors of the Trump presidency.
As to the extent of the political progressiveness of a Biden/Harris administration and a Democratic-controlled congress, I’m choosing to stay hopeful. There are definitely some hopeful signs . . . and some not so hopeful ones. Oh, and I’m heartened by the fact that Sen. Bernie Sanders will be assuming the powerful position of chairing the Senate Budget Committee.
About this decidely good piece of news, Jon Queally writes:
[W]hile the gavel is yet to be placed in his hand, Sanders and his staff have signaled in recent days that he will be ready and willing to wield it to push the incoming Biden administration – as well as Democratic leadership in the House and Senate – to enact the kind of bold, working-class friendly policies that fueled both of his presidential runs.
Among the chief powers that the chair of the committee will be able to utilize is fostering legislation through the Senate using the budget reconciliation process – a procedural tool that will allow, even under current rules, legislation to pass with a simple majority.
I close this Inauguration Eve post with some sage words from economic advisor, professor, author, and political commentator Robert Reich.
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I keep hearing that Joe Biden will govern from the “center.” He has no choice, they say, because he’ll have razor-thin majorities in Congress and the Republican party has moved to the right.
Rubbish. I’ve served several Democratic presidents who have needed Republican votes. But the Republicans now in Congress are nothing like those I’ve dealt with. Most of today’s GOP live in a parallel universe. There’s no “center” between the reality-based world and theirs.
Last Wednesday, fully 95% of House Republicans voted against impeaching Trump for inciting insurrection, even after his attempted coup threatened their very lives.
The week before, immediately following the raid on the Capitol, more than 100 House Republicans and several Republican senators objected to the certification of Biden electors in two states on the basis of Trump’s lies about widespread fraud.
Prior to the raid, several Republican members of Congress repeated those lies on television and Twitter and at “Stop the Steal” events.
Trump has remade the Republican party into a white supremacist cult living within a counter-factual wonderland of lies and conspiracies.
According to various surveys, more than half of Republican voters – almost 40 million people – believe Trump won the 2020 race or aren’t sure who won; 45% support the storming of the Capitol; 57% say he should be the Republican candidate in 2024.
In this hermetically sealed cosmos, most Republicans believe Black Lives Matter protesters are violent, immigrants are dangerous and climate change doesn’t pose a threat. A growing fringe openly talks of redressing grievances through violence, including QAnon conspiracy theorists, of whom two are newly elected to Congress, who think Democrats are running a global child sex-trafficking operation.
How can Biden possibly be a “centrist” in this new political world?
There is no middle ground between lies and facts. There is no halfway point between civil discourse and violence. There is no midrange between democracy and fascism.
Biden must boldly and unreservedly speak truth, refuse to compromise with violent Trumpism and ceaselessly fight for democracy and inclusion.
Speaking truth means responding to the world as it is and denouncing the poisonous deceptions engulfing the right. It means repudiating false equivalences and “both sidesism” that gives equal weight to trumpery and truth. It means protecting and advancing science, standing on the side of logic, calling out deceit and impugning baseless conspiracy theories and those who abet them.
Refusing to compromise with violent Trumpism means renouncing the lawlessness of Trump and his enablers and punishing all who looted the public trust. It means convicting Trump of impeachable offenses and ensuring he can never again hold public office – not as a “distraction” from Biden’s agenda but as a central means of reestablishing civility, which must be a cornerstone of that agenda.
Strengthening democracy means getting big money out of politics, strengthening voting rights and fighting voter suppression in all its forms.
It means boldly advancing the needs of average people over the plutocrats and oligarchs, of the white working class as well as Black and Latino people. It means embracing the ongoing struggle for racial justice and the struggle of blue-collar workers whose fortunes have been declining for decades.
The moment calls for public investment on a scale far greater than necessary for COVID relief or “stimulus” – large enough to begin the restructuring of the economy. America needs to create a vast number of new jobs leading to higher wages, reversing racial exclusion as well as the downward trajectory of Americans whose anger and resentment Trump cynically exploited.
This would include universal early childhood education, universal access to the internet, world-class schools and public universities accessible to all. Converting to solar and wind energy and making America’s entire stock of housing and commercial buildings carbon neutral. Investing in basic research – the gateway to the technologies of the future as well as national security – along with public health and universal healthcare.
It is not a question of affordability. Such an agenda won’t burden future generations. It will reduce the burden on future generations.
It is a question of political will. It requires a recognition that there is no longer a “center” but a future based either on lies, violence and authoritarianism or on unyielding truth, unshakeable civility and radical inclusion. And it requires a passionate, uncompromising commitment to the latter.
As a tumultuous presidency draws to a close and an uncertain inauguration looms large, let’s acknowledge where we are: Donald Trump has earned the unprecedented infamy of becoming the only US president to be impeached twice. Trump’s words fueled the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol – inciting fascist white supremacists to nullify electoral results by an attempted coup, destroy federal property, and violently riot to subvert the democratic process. Five people unnecessarily lost their lives.
Mitch McConnel and Senate Republicans won’t grow the balls to convict and remove Trump before Joe Biden assumes office. We must continue to explore the possibility of holding an overt white nationalist accountable for such actions. However, impeachment, or even conviction, does precious little to confront America’s pandemic of white supremacy, which has permeated our society long before COVID-19 was declared a public health emergency. Let’s keep it real: the match was lit 400, not 4 years ago.
Black joy and celebration will be mandatory when the Trump administration has entered the history books. Complacency is tempting after enduring four years of unvarnished racism, bigotry, xenophobia, transphobia, homophobia, and misogyny emanating from the Oval Office. But it is dangerous to hail Joe Biden as a compassionate savior to “restore” American democracy. Such a concept never existed.
The US will continue to perpetuate violence and murder throughout the world during the Biden administration – affirming an imperial and colonial foreign policy as the American way. Trump's insurrection was only a microcosm of the consistent paradigm of regime change the US has conducted, or attempted, against countless states – Libya, Honduras, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cuba, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Haiti, Yugoslavia, Syria, Palestine, and most recently, Venezuela.
It is morally hypocritical to abhor Nancy Pelosi’s office being ransacked, or members of Congress fearfully sequestering for their lives, while lauding Muammar Ghaddafi’s open assassination or anointing Juan Guaido to undermine Nicolas Maduro as a democratically elected president.
Building collective power, through organizing, activism, mutual aid efforts, and political education, are the only lasting means of creating a society that values human rights and transformative justice. The impeachment process underscores how severely limited electoral and political institutions are in confronting racial capitalism and systemic oppression.
We must inevitably prepare for more violent insurgencies in the future. Doing so is disheartening but can never dim the brightness of our vision for a better world. The ongoing pandemic illustrates how deadly and unsustainable the ancient global order is. As we behold this ancien régime crumble before our eyes, we must learn to radically place more hope in ourselves, communities, collective dreams, hopes, talents, joys, abilities, and resilience, than in any elected official or political figure.
The road ahead is long and uncertain but the possibilities for transformation are infinite if we remember who we are and where we are going. We got this, peeps! ✊🏾 🖤
In marking this special day, the contemporary reading at yesterday’s Zoom gathering of Spirit Catholic Community, which is my faith community here in Minneapolis, was an excerpt from an article Martin penned for Ebony Magazine in 1957.
As I’m sure you'll agree, Martin’s message is both timeless and incredibly challenging. It’s also essential for our current times of political and social turmoil.
I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world. It is not an expression of impractical idealism; but of practical realism. To return hate for hate does nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Moreover, love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys.
The aftermath of the “fight fire with fire” method is bitterness and chaos; the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and the creation of the beloved community. Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permanent; only love can do that.
Yes love – which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies – is the solution.
– Martin Luther King Jr. Excerpted from “Advice for Living”
Ebony Magazine
November 1957
Today marks the 60th anniversary of the assassination of Patrice Émery Lumumba (1925-1961), a leader of the Congolese independence movement who served as the first Prime Minister of the independent Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Republic of the Congo) and who throughout much of his adult life resisted colonialism and corporatism.
As I noted this time last year, I first became aware of and interested in the life of Patrice Lumumba when I attended a special screening of Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck’s film Lumumba at the University of Minnesota Film Society in 2000. (Today, Peck is probably most well-known for his 2016 film based on the writings of James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro.)
According to The Guardian, Peak’s 2000 film, Lumumba, which features French actor Eriq Ebouaney in the title role, is a “commendable effort” and a “corrective to imperialism.”
After seeing the film shortly after its release, I did some research on Lumumba and found myself moved by the images that show him captured and bound while on his way to be executed. I was struck by his calm countenance, even as he no doubt knew what awaited him. To this day I find myself wondering if I could be so brave and calm in the face of torture and death.
In commemorating the life of Lumumba on the anniversary of his murder during a US-backed coup 60 years ago, I share Raoul Peck’s reflections on his 1991 feature-length documentary, Lumumba: Death of a Prophet, a film that came out nine years before his feature film Lumumba. These reflections were first published in the book Stolen Images: Lumumba and the Early Films of Raoul Peck (Seven Stories Press, 2012).
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When [my 1988 film] Haitian Corner was shown at the Berlin International Film Festival, a Swiss producer offered me a story of a Swiss doctor in Africa, the usual descent-into-Hell, story of war and the clash of civilizations. I was curious and, frankly, relieved and happy that right then, at what you might call the beginning of my career, a producer who had seen my movie was offering me a new project. So I agreed to read the script. Eventually, I declined, but I maintained a good relationship with the producer, who later on became one of the producers for Lumumba: Death of a Prophet.
It is my belief that you can still make your mark as an artist, as a film director, with a project that falls into your lap. The challenge has to do with how you transform it. It doesn’t have to be your own idea; you can also transform someone else’s idea. And I thank God that this has always been my approach because otherwise I would still be waiting for, you know, the miracle that was going to take me to Hollywood Heaven. I would have waited forever. Instead, I have always worked, and part of my work was to take projects that happened my way and make them my own: to transform each one into something that had personal meaning for me. As an artist I don’t always need to start with my vision, but I must always end with it. And you could say Lumumba: Death of a Prophet is the most dramatic example of this. It was my second full-length feature and my first feature-length documentary.
My parents had worked for the UN in Congo and for the Congolese government for twenty-five years. My father was an agronomist and my mother worked for many years as the assistant to the mayor of Leopoldville (now Kinshasa). I’d gone to school there for three years, starting when I was eight, before we moved to New York. But my parents later moved back to Congo, and I returned often to visit them, even after they sent me off to boarding school in France.
When I started writing my letter of intent for the Lumumba feature[-length documentary] film we were planning on making, I realized that I was in fact writing about a totally different story – the story of the Haitians who went to work in Congo, and of how a newly independent African country asked for help from the people of Haiti, a proud and militant country that for nearly two hundred years had been the only one in the world. The history of how the huge and rich Congo had looked to the small Haiti for help is in some ways an absurd story, the work of a Machiavellian mind. The Belgians had all just fled, and so they sought to bring in black doctors, teachers, engineers, and agronomists from Haiti to replace the European ones that had suddenly left. This endeavor could have failed miserably, but the Haitians were well received and integrated. These themes all belonged in the film, it seemed to me. This had happened at a time, the early sixties, when most African countries were just becoming independent. Up until then one was summoned to choose either the Russians or the Americans. The non-aligned movement of Nkrumah, Nasser, Ben Barkah, Gandhi, etc. was still a radical provocation, not the status quo. So this film became my first confrontation. With whom? With myself. By posing questions about images of black mythology, black politics, and black aesthetics, I was questioning my own place in the world – and it became my story as much as it was Lumumba’s. I became the instrument with which to engage the audience.
The rest of the film was the story of an assassination, of the making of a martyr, of a man who was doing nothing more than asking for independence at a time when this was not permitted in this part of the world, in Africa, and so he was killed.
What I learned while making the film turned out to be a deeply painful experience for me. First of all, it took me a year and a half before I could begin to accept Lumumba as a sympathetic character. I couldn't warm up to him, and the reasons for my alienation eluded me. Then I realized that everything I had learned about Lumumba came from the same sources – journalists or politicians from the West who had covered the crisis in the Congo. For them, it was a fearful, traumatic, and arrogant confrontation and they had responded by investing their understanding of Lumumba with all the usual, often racist, clichés. I had been contaminated by those clichés. The underlying racism of the world’s biggest newspapers, of the New York Times, of Le Monde, was naïve in a way. It represented how the world saw Africa, not in political terms, but in primitive, one-dimensional, tribalistic terms. Politics is understood to be complex when it is happening in New York or London, but not if it is happening someplace in Africa. This was, of course, a major obstacle.
So my perception of Lumumba began with him as this crazy, uneducated, ambitious, and corrupt leader. But after a while I saw him as an autodidact, someone who had not much to start with, who was totally isolated, and who could not manage the complexity of the task before him other than as a martyr. The only forceful imprint Lumumba could leave was to die for the cause of African independence.
An important outcome of this creative process was that it taught me the importance and challenge of shaping one’s image. You must hold the key to your own image-making because if you don’t, other people will. And this is the real problem of storytelling: who controls your image, who tells your story.
This is the problem today for those of us who do not rule the world. Cinema has already been molded by and for a Eurocentric point of view, albeit by wave after wave of immigrants. Lumumba: Death of a Prophet, for me, is about those who do not have a history of being on the side of power, and who have to begin to take control. Lumumba failed in his attempt to do that, and was killed for even trying, but he succeeded in one sense, in the same way that, in American history, for example, John Brown did. John Brown failed in his mission to liberate slaves and was also put to death, yet the freeing of slaves came in the wake of his actions and it came in large part because he had made the case for emancipation so compellingly.
Above: Patrice Lumumba, about whom Colin Legum, a journalist, author, and notable anti-Apartheid activist, wrote in 2001: “I had got to know Lumumba reasonably well. . . . I found him gentle, and advanced in his social ideas, formed by his Christian beliefs and admiration for social democratic ideas. . . . Under different circumstances he could have been an impressive leader and saved the Congo from its terrible fate under the likes of the kleptomanic Mobutu.”
I established The Wild Reed in 2006 as a sign of solidarity with all who are dedicated to living lives of integrity – though, in particular, with gay people seeking to be true to both the gift of their sexuality and their Catholic faith. The Wild Reed's original by-line read, “Thoughts and reflections from a progressive, gay, Catholic perspective.” As you can see, it reads differently now. This is because my journey has, in many ways, taken me beyond, or perhaps better still, deeper into the realities that the words “progressive,” “gay,” and “Catholic” seek to describe.
Even though reeds can symbolize frailty, they may also represent the strength found in flexibility. Popular wisdom says that the green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm. Tall green reeds are associated with water, fertility, abundance, wealth, and rebirth. The sound of a reed pipe is often considered the voice of a soul pining for God or a lost love.
On September 24, 2012,Michael BaylyofCatholics for Marriage Equality MNwas interviewed by Suzanne Linton of Our World Today about same-sex relationships and why Catholics can vote 'no' on the proposed Minnesota anti-marriage equality amendment.
"I believe your blog to be of utmost importance for all people regardless of their orientation. . . . Thank you for your blog and the care and dedication that you give in bringing the TRUTH to everyone."– William
"Michael, if there is ever a moment in your day or in your life when you feel low and despondent and wonder whether what you are doing is anything worthwhile, think of this: thanks to your writing on the internet, a young man miles away is now willing to embrace life completely and use his talents and passions unashamedly to celebrate God and his creation. Any success I face in the future and any lives I touch would have been made possible thanks to you and your honesty and wisdom."– AB
"Since I discovered your blog I have felt so much more encouraged and inspired knowing that I'm not the only gay guy in the Catholic Church trying to balance my Faith and my sexuality. Continue being a beacon of hope and a guide to the future within our Church!"– Phillip
"Your posts about Catholic issues are always informative and well researched, and I especially appreciate your photography and the personal posts about your own experience. I'm very glad I found your blog and that I've had the chance to get to know you."– Crystal
"Thank you for taking the time to create this fantastic blog. It is so inspiring!"– George
"I cannot claim to be an expert on Catholic blogs, but from what I've seen, The Wild Reed ranks among the very best."– Kevin
"Reading your blog leaves me with the consolation of knowing that the words Catholic, gay and progressive are not mutually exclusive.."– Patrick
"I grieve for the Roman institution’s betrayal of God’s invitation to change. I fear that somewhere in the midst of this denial is a great sin that rests on the shoulders of those who lead and those who passively follow. But knowing that there are voices, voices of the prophets out there gives me hope. Please keep up the good work."– Peter
"I ran across your blog the other day looking for something else. I stopped to look at it and then bookmarked it because you have written some excellent articles that I want to read. I find your writing to be insightful and interesting and I'm looking forward to reading more of it. Keep up the good work. We really, really need sane people with a voice these days."– Jane Gael
"Michael, your site is like water in the desert."– Jayden
