Velcrow Ripper on Fierce Light
A production blog!
This week was a journey through the history of the American Civil Rights movement, a story we’ve all heard of time and time again. I thought I knew the story myself, but it was not until I actually set foot in the historic heart land of the movement - the front line cities of Selma, Birmingham and Montgomery Alabama, and spoke to some of the surviving footsoldiers of the movement, that the true depths and power of this story really sunk home. What struck me most, was that this was movement rooted solidly in love. Not the hallmark love that we have come identify with the word, but a fierce love, a love of unrelenting compassion, of unwavering nonviolence. A love that faces the bigotry and hatred of the Klu Lux Klan, of the police with their dogs trained on black dummies to attack wildly at the sight of black skin, of the average white citizens of the south who spit and taunted the protestors as they were beaten bloody for simply trying to sit a lunch counter or ride a bus or cross a bridge, and dared to see the divine spark within each and every one of those human beings. That recognizes that behind their hatred, is hurt. Behind their anger, their prejudice, is fear. Behind their violence, behind that testosterone fueled male agression of the hooded Klansman, is a sad little boy, who didn’t get enough love. The people of the movement were fueled by faith, and though I’m not a christian, and like many in this era of fundamentalism, have grown weary and wary of christian rhetoric, I have developed a profound respect for the way Christianity informed the movement. It was sheltered in the churches, the one place they could safely meet free from interference in a segregated land. Although one of the Churches we visited, the 16th St. Baptist Church, was firebombed by the KKK, resulted in the deaths of four young girls. This tragic act became one of the sparks that set off the irrepressible fire of the movement. The power of Faith, and Christ’s original teachings on justice, and peace, gave great strength to the people as they surged forward in the face of out and out assault.
Reverend Calvin Woods, one of the ‘footsoldiers’ of the movement, told me that non-violence was not just a tactic of the movement, it was a lived truth. They worked to not only stop themselves from striking back at the enemy, but learned to remove even the desire to strike back from their hearts. Rev. Mel White, who founded the movement ‘Soul Force’, talks of the love that Martin Luther King calls “Agape” and Gandhi called “Ahimsa.” It is a deep, great love that embraces all beings, sees all as a reflection of the divine, and that is profoundly non-violent. Non-violent not just in deed, but in thought. Speech itself can be violent. Ask yourself before you speak or write a violent phrase - is this love speaking? Are you a force of positivity in the world, or a force of negativity? Are you promoting biophilia, the love of life, or necrophelia, the love of death, the cyncism and hatred that is at the root of the destruction of this planet? Do you think you can create peace in the world through hatred? As Martin Luther King said, hatred does not create love, only love can do that. Darkness cannot create light, only light can do that. ?Although there are a number of severe limitations to the popular book and documentary “The Secret” (in particular the fact that is very ego based and stuff based), there is a fundamental truth to this fact: your thoughts and words draw to you the energy you put out. How do you want to live your life?
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Today Sera and I drove to Kentucky, to interview bell hooks, the brilliant spiritual activist and visionary. She wrote a must read book for anyone who cares about Love, called “All About Love.”
We pulled up through the quiet green streets of Berea, Kentucky, a progressive oasis in this Southern State, past a perma culture village, past the college, (tuition charged on an ability to pay basis), to the small brownstone home of bell hooks. She was in her front yard, putting dirt into potted plants. She waved as we pulled up and called out, “welcome!”
We sat down at her kitchen table, in large airy living room decorated with sacred art. She had a warm, glowing presence, a being infused with love.
I told her how much her book had meant to me, in my personal journey to understanding love, and how important love was to everything - to spirituality, to politics, to life on earth and beyond. Her definition of true love is the commitment to enhance your own or anothers spiritual growth. For her, love is at the core of everything. It is the meaning of life. Love and domination cannot coexist. An abusive relationship and a loving relationship cannot coexist, though sometimes people trick themselves into believing that is possible. She explained that since she had left New York City and returned to her roots in Kentucky, she’d been doing a lot of gardening, working in the land. And she was coming to see love like the way one tends a plant – watering just the right amount, not too much, not too little, giving what is needed. But not forcing the buds to open. Allowing for the autonomy of the plants own process. Autonomy does not mean seperation or the rampant individualism of post-modern narcissitic society. It means the freedom to truly be yourself, and that can happen in relation to others, fully. Freedom and commitment can co-exist.
Bell began her work on love after teaching children, and discovering that for many of them, the concept of love was foreign, a joke even. To encounter cynicism amongst these tender souls was heartbreaking to bell, and she became determined to work to address this grave issue, the issue of the lovelessness of western society.
Love is about joining in community, about connection, and this is very threatening to dominator culture, which has an investment in maintaining our disconnection. The creation of love allows justice to prevail. Love says there is nothing that can’t be healed.
Love allows us to move beyond fear. We need to respect our fear, bow to the dragon that is fear, and recognize that we will never be completely free from fear. But we can proceed with life, despite our fear, realize that the fear is not us.
Fierce Light for her, is awareness, fierce compassion, fierce love, opening to that which is, fully. The sacred is to be found in every moment, not in an isolated context, not in some distant enlightenment. It is in the flash of a red cardinal across the sky, in the new blooms of a lily in her garden.
_______________________
Velcrow Ripper
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It was an exciting first day of shooting on this mid western wing of the Fierce Light journey, which will bring us face to face with some of the greatest spiritual activists of today. I’m travelling with Sera Beak, aka The Spiritual Cowgirl (www.serabeak.com) author of “The Red Book: A deliciously unorthodox approach to igniting your divine spark.”.
This morning we had a phenomenal encounter with the world renouned mystical activist, Andrew Harvey. I first met Andrew in Washington DC, several years ago, where he was speaking at the founding conference of “The Network of Spiritual Progressives”, a broad coaltion aimed at creating a “spiritual left” as a counterbalance to the religious right. At that time Andrew, with is dramatic english accent, urged me to make the film edgy-”promise me this Velcrow-don’t make Fierce Lite.”. He echoed those words today, saying that its time to take the gloves off and tell it like it is, and if thats too much for some people right now, dont worry. Speak to the ocean, not the fish. Be the divine speaking to the divine. Dare to be a mystic.
For Andrew, the key to the global crisis is the incredible power that comes from merging the masculine energy of activism with the power of the divine feminine, of love, of the sacred. Love in action. He feels that the world today depends on this transformation.
Today is a time when the fate of the planet hangs in the balance, and where there is both tremendous possibility. And tremendous danger. When we are all called to find our personal mission. And each one of us has a mission. He believes the way through to that discovery of what our particular role is, is to follow your heartbreak. Dare to open your heart fully to the shadow, the great crisis that is engulfing the world, and find your own particular heartbreak, and do the reverse-find the light side, the healing side, and put your energies there.
He said a lot-we talked for an inspired hour and a half. Later he inisisted on taking us out for lunch, but let us buy the ice cream cones afterwards.
It was inspiring to be in the presence of such a great visionary, with a message that is critical for this time of turmoil. You can read more about him at www.andrewharvey.net
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Welcome to my new blog. I’m packing!!! Heading for another wing of the Fierce Light Journey, my new feature documentary about spiritual activism around the world. I’ll be on a plane to Chicago soon, to interview Andrew Harvey, then i’ll be renting a car and driving down to Kentucky for the brilliant visionary bell hooks, onwards to Alabama for the birth place of Martin Luther King, and then to Washington DC to interview Archbishop Desomnd Tutu, as well as some surprises along the way. Join me!
-Velcrow Ripper
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In a recent incident involving a young 11 year-old Québecois hijab-wearing soccer player being asked to remove her headscarf or leave the playing field (allegedly for safety reasons), Canada is getting a wagging finger of shame from Egypt. While the young soccer player should not have been ask to remove her headscarf in order to play soccer (seeing as a headscarf should not logically impede one’s ability to kick a ball), far be it for Egypt to accuse Canada of being “intolerant and racist.” Egypt does not exactly have the best track record when it comes to human rights and dignity.
Egypt has recently sentenced a blogger to four years in prison for writing his views on Islam and the president. International criticism and protest ensued. What was the Egyptian foreign ministry’s response to the criticism? You guessed it…the Foreign Ministry criticized the international reactions to the verdict and said it was an internal matter and up to the judiciary to decide on.
When it comes to kids, Egypt has a bad track record of abuse. “In Egypt, Human Rights Watch found that police routinely arrest and detain both girls and boys who they consider “vulnerable to delinquency.” Both girls and boys were routinely subjected to police beatings and sexual abuse and violence, and detained in unsanitary and dangerous conditions for days or weeks. Some girls reported that police extorted sex from street girls in exchange for protection from sexual violence from other men.”
Egypt was recently entangled in its own controversy over a politician’s comment on women who wear headscarves. The politician in question essentially said that wearing the hijab was bringing women back to the stone ages.
It should also be noted that according to Human Rights Watch, “Discriminatory personal status laws governing marriage, divorce, custody, and inheritance have institutionalized the second-class status of women in the private realm. The penal code does not effectively deter or punish domestic violence, and police are routinely unsympathetic to the concerns of battered women and girls.”
In short, the Egyptian foreign ministry’s response to Canada’s alleged ‘intolerance and racism’ (by the way, little factoid, the soccer referee who asked the young Muslim girl to remove her scarf was also Muslim himself) is a laughable faux pas on the part of a government that doesn’t respect human rights…not women’s, not minorities’, not religious and the list goes on.
Here’s the AFP article mentioning Egypt’s criticism of Canada:
Egypt cries racism after Canada football ban for wearing hijab
Thu Mar 8, 12:39 PM
CAIRO (AFP) - Egypt warned against racism and intolerance in Canada after a young girl was expelled from a football tournament for insisting on wearing an Islamic headscarf, the foreign ministry said on Thursday.
Ihab Fawzi, a senior official at the ministry, met on Tuesday with Canada’s deputy ambassador to Cairo, Christopher Hull, to express concern over “mounting signs of racism and intolerance in Canada” after the incident, it said.
“The question of wearing the headscarf should remain a part of individual freedoms, so long as it does not harm security, public order or the values of a society,” the ministry said in a statement.
Hull was quoted as saying the decision was taken by a referee and did not represent the position of his government.
Asmahan Mansour, 11, was ousted from a tournament on February 25 in a Montreal suburb after refusing to take off her hijab.
Brigitte Frot, executive director of the Quebec Soccer Federation, told AFP that she was not allowed on the field for safety reasons, not religious objections.
“It’s unfortunate,” she said. “I believe (football’s world governing body) FIFA will have to rule, yes or no, whether hijabs are permitted on the soccer field. Whatever they decide, we’ll abide by the rules.”
Media reports said the referee, who is Muslim himself, feared Mansour could be choked if the scarf were tugged on.
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Velcrow
September 22, 2005
View from the Ferry to the Sunshine Coast. I’m setting out on a mini farewell tour of the West Coast, as I prepare to solidify my ongoing move to Toronto. Each of the towns I’ll visit to screen ScaredSacred in the next few days have a personal connection to me. First up is Gibsons, where I was born and raised, and where my mom and dad still live.
This is my mom, Joyce Ripper, on the ferry to the Sunshine Coast.
A picture of me a few years back that my parents have hanging on the wall. It is from a Zapatista rally, but was published in the paper under the heading, ‘Doggone Miserable Weather’. The dog is Barney, my beloved beagle.
Speaking at the screening at the Heritage playhouse. A sold out home town crowd.
A picture of light.
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Velcrow
September 19, 2005
Once again, time for the Monday morning moment of truth. The subject heading of the e-mail from Tinseltown cinema this morning gave it away - This One Has Legs. We’re holding, staying on at Tinseltown Cinema, and opening at the Park Cinema on Wednesday, and in another week, at the Van East Cinema, so we’ll have theatres on the west, east and center of town. We’re doing it! We had another successful weekend, and the buzz is growing. After all this work, it’s wonderful to be able to actually pull it off. Yeah.
Tommorrow I’m off on tour, so watch for reports from the field- the Sunshine Coast, Tofino, Nelson and Iceland.
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Velcrow
September 16, 2005
Friday, and the beginning of the ‘Second Weekend’. Little did I know it’s as important as that first push, the First Weekend. We’ve been on the phone with a distributor from New York, who had been waiting to see how we did, and now wants to come on board. Meanwhile, there’s another in L.A. The film is now hot, but needs to prove that it can sustain itself. They’re all watching this weekend.
Turns out the Theatres do too: I’m beginning to learn that the Monday after is the day when the films fate is decided in the world of theatrical distribution.
Now, my life isn’t always like this. There’s many phases to making documentary films, from the introspective time of writing, to the extroverted phase of shooting, back in the hermits den for the editing and sound design, and then out into the world as you launch the film.
On the whole, it’s a balanced life, though the individual bits can be a bit intense.
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Velcrow
September 14, 2005
It’s the morning after our launch. The week after. And we’re sailing. We did it, with the help of the audience - we had an amazing opening theatrical weekend. Our indepedent feature documentary out did Star Wars and Willie Wonka, not to mention Herbie the Lovebug. We’re also the number one rated film in Vancouver on Cinema Clock -
www.cinemaclock.com/clock/bri/Vancouver-top10.html
We are now held over and playing, as well as opening at the Park Theatre on September 21st, so we’ll be running at two theatres. U.S. Distributors were really watching this weekend, and they are happy - it’s looking good for a North America wide launch.
But most exciting of all is just seeing the audiences reactions. The film is really striking a chord.
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Velcrow
September 10, 2005
An amazing opening night. The theatre was full, the speakers were moving and profound, and the audience was engaged and dynamic. A great, high energy Q & A is always a good sign. Joy Kogawa spoke beautifully on the story of Nagasaki, the Raging Grannies offered some humourous irony at the absurdities of war, and Poets Against War were sharp and deep.
Distributors across Canada and the US are watching attentively the numbers at Tinseltown this weekend. The first weekend of the film will determine if it could continue to make a difference and transform audiences across the continent! More sitting on the edge of seat to come over the weekend.
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