film about spirituality and action echoes in Tehran

It was on a warm spring night and the eve of what would become a history making event resulting in the ultimate reveal of the true beliefs one of the world’s most controversial countries, that I found myself seated in a padded folding chair in the wide open warehouse of a yacht club.

I sat there, awaiting the Waterfront Film Festival’s debut showing of “Fierce Light” a documentary by filmmaker and activist Velcrow Ripper who took a seat one row behind and a few seats down from me with guest Daryl Hannah. As the film began, Ripper introduced audiences to his friend, journalist and activist Bradley Will. Will’s breath can be heard as his hands hold the camera that is displaying the images in the beginning of the film…the volatile streets of Mexico where enraged citizens and police clash with stones, bullet proof shields and gunfire.

And then a moment erupts on screen that rips through any narration or visual imagery. As conditions became increasingly hostile, and Will’s camera became something unwanted - almost before the viewer realizes it – the sound of a bullet cracks in the air with Will’s last breath, a gasp. His camera clattering to the ground, is picked up by unknown hands and left sitting sideways on a bench.

Will’s death resonated with the activists that had gathered on the same street where he moved about with his camera and his mission to record and act on their plight. An uprising occurred in his memory an uprising against what they must have seen as a murderous and unjust society around them.

The narration continuing, Ripper explains how the death of his friend sent him on a journey to discover what happens with spirituality meets action and activism. When we act on what we believe.

My initial reaction to what Ripper is searching for, was a combination of intrigue based on a journalist’s life lost in the attempt to tell a story filled with raw emotion and skepticism for my view of the new age theology of oneness.

But Ripper began his story with the Civil Rights Movement, a movement during which the belief in equality was so fierce so thick and heavy with necessity that many lost their lives, shed their blood and continued to fight against a deep rooted hatred. And then Congressman John Lewis’s face and voice fill the screen.

“I saw hate,” he said. “And hate – was too heavy a burden to bear.”

The film explores many injustices…from the beating of Rodney King, which ignited the Los Angeles riots of the 1990s to the story a plot of desolate space in the center of where such an uprising had taken place. There, members of the community pulled up dead surface and worked in new land, new soil and created a community garden. That garden produced fresh produce, fresh flowers and fed a community with not just its product but its service, as children spent their afternoons working with the soil instead of on dangerous streets.

And then, along came a company – more interested in space that substance and so began a tumultuous fight to save the garden from blank development. A fight that lasted over 30 days and ended in the arrest of two who refused to leave the property – including Hannah and a sea of salty tears as that corporation turned down the $16 million the community was miraculously able to raise to purchase and keep the garden. The question Ripper seemed to ask is at what cost do we abandon all our conscious and all our convictions? When exactly does the soul get sold?

At least…that’s what I took from it.

The film affected me more than I had expected it to. The idea of taking what it is we believe in and combining it with activism planted a seed in my restless little mind. Think…if we love and we act on that love – in every breath and every minute of every day – it would be hard to turn to hate. It would be hard to march into a museum filled reminders of what can come from such hate and take a human life. Environmentalist and activist Van Jones calls it 'soulfulness'. And if you ask me, there's always room for soul.

If we believe in independence – in freedom – if we live and breathe that freedom in every day and wake only to act upon it, it would be hard for us to allow ourselves to become prisoners of others.

Now, I am not what one might consider a pacifist in any such sense of the word. Will was an anarchist. I am not. But I do believe in the necessity of balance. There must be the dark so we know what it means to fight our way through and choose the light. It is that choice that I believe is the divine of life. And this is coming from a girl who enjoys her dark and twisty little places and her overwhelming ponderous thoughts. But without the suffocating and paralyzing reign of a man so filled with madness – we would not be witnessing an uprising by a people who have so eloquently shown the world there is a silent majority in Iran that chooses to be silent no more.

And now – how unbelievably profound. As we question the purpose of social networking such as Twitter – we now see that it is so rapid and so resonate that members of the resistance in Iran are turning to it to keep the world abreast of the violence and the tyranny that abounds on Tehran’s streets. In 140 characters or less.

As we question whether journalism is even relevant anymore – the ban of all foreign reporting reminds us how it so undeniably is. As we lose our eyes the brilliance of the written and spoken word can still spread a message – a message of what happens in the world around us – and how it affects each and every one of us, a half a world away.

And we can remember how purpose needs action. How even in the battles that are lost – there are wars to be won. As Jones says, toward the end of the film, after the garden had been bulldozed and years after Will’s death still leaves a hole in the heart of the filmmaker – “being a rebel is important, because a rebel opposes injustice. But a revolutionary...a revolutionary proposes justice of a new order.”

That revolution is evident today in Tehran. It can be as vast as a country’s uprising against dictatorship – or as intimate as the parenting of our children or the loving of one another. It's all about soul. And you've got to have soul. Learn more about “Fierce Light” at http://www.fiercelight.org.

the visitor

I am on a current, constant search for inspiration.

I am worried that as a writer...I may have nothing important to say.

I worry that the stories I may tell may be better told by someone else.

But sometimes, in searching for inspiration...through movies or music or books - I find a quick moment of it. And the song, the film, the paragraphs or the pages...they make me tear up. Like this one did.

the devil and the dog

I received as a gift on Christmas Eve, "The Devil Wears Prada". I shamelessly begged for it. I usually, bashfully, refuse to answer the "what do you want this year?" question, but this year...not so much.

Aside from the sweeping and beautiful New York City shots, the kind of fashion/crafty dialogue reminiscent of Sex & the City and a deliciously devilish Meryl Streep in silver hair - there was something else that made me love that movie.

At my previous job, I worked for the devil. Willingly, but still... I did whatever she wanted, appeared when she beckoned, watched as she talked down to my mother one afternoon when she dropped me off from work - my car in the shop. I came in at seven in the morning and shuffled out the door at midnight. I nodded and obeyed, telling myself that I was a hard worker and forcing the phrase "kiss ass" out of my head - a hard thing to do - as so many were calling me just that.

When she said I had to fire a couple of employees...I took it on as an experience I'd be thankful for later. But in her eyes I could see the look of a woman who just tossed some fresh meat to a pack of wild, prehistoric wolves.

"Make it quick," said Ms. Human Resources. "No emotion. No questions." I fired them both in under two minutes. One just after her husband had died, the other a few weeks before Christmas.

Every year the furniture industry flocks to High Point, North Carolina for the annual Furniture Market. Working for a furniture e-tailer, we lowly sales-people and supervisors gathered around the catalogues and rep photos our president and ultimate boss would cart back with her. New lines of sofas and chairs and dining room tables that would soon find their way on the site.

I was more interested in finding out just how these furniture people partied. According to the devil - every Market was a big deal. All key players in the industry spend an obscene amount of money on showrooms catered with the finest foods, gifts for buyers, big fancy dinners etc. etc. etc. When we landed in North Carolina, the scenery was beautiful. When we turned the corner of what was the center of High Point - the scene was chaotic. People stood on corners passing out free copies of Domino Magazine and fliers and brochures. It was literally like a million people all on one road. I couldn't take the thing seriously. It wasn't like we were shaking hands with the craftsmen, whose hands would have been rough around the edges from hours of painstakingly arching those occasional chair seat backs. We were shaking hands fitted with gold rings of the sales people who were paid healthy for little work.

And we were escorting a Food Network star. I will say that it wasn't a male and it wasn't Paula, Rachael or Giada. But she wasn't exactly a treat. She was trapped in her own, two-bit cable TV stardom. She practically said so, over and over again to countless furniture people who didn't know the Food Network from MTV. I didn't even care about furniture and it was embarrassing. We sat in secluded conference rooms at the back of fancy showrooms to discuss endorsements and it was a thirty minute commercial for her show.

Her publicist/agent/rep was about as clueless as she was. Perhaps it was all the botox. Neither had noticed she left her "thousand dollar" coat at our first stop, six hours prior. I'd held my bladder for as long as I could and begged the devil for a minute. I'd been at her side all day, her ankle wrapped in gauze due to a fracture. They were supposed to stay where they were. Long story short - they didn't. I was completely lost, with no cell signal. When I got to the lobby, she reached me by cell and said she was on the top floor. "Food Network Star has forgotten her coat. Wait outside for it, Jim is going to drop it off." Jim never showed up. I went up to the top floor - and she was in the lobby. "Where are you!?" she said.

With my feet aching and my legs tired, I emerged from the lobby and the front door into 4o mph NC winds. The devil propped herself up against the front wall, giving her ankle a break, smoking a cigarette and yammering into her cell phone. The publicist paced back and forth tapping into his palm pilot. The star was nowhere to be found.

But there on the street, an arm held out a black, floor length coat. Due to all the chaos, traffic was being directed by police. If it was moving - it wasn't stopping. The arm and the coat were moving. The devil swung her head around and caught my eye. She pointed angrily and I was off...a dead run past busy shoppers and buyers and people and children and elderly and as quickly as possible - I snatched that damn coat from the greasy sales rep guy and returned it to its rightful owner.

It wasn't just that I ran. It was that I ran for a two-bit TV star. Some woman who carried her Louis Vitton in the bend of her elbow and popped Altoids into her mouth with manicured nails. And that it wasn't her creepy botox filled publicist guy who was doing the running. And that I was completely unimpressed by her and that she should have hoofed it up the street to get her own damn coat.

"Did you see that?!" exclaimed Botox Publicist Guy. "Damn, that was like a quick moving, kind of, retriever dog or something." For four months creepy publicist guy would call into the office and refer to me as "Robbie the Retriever".

I knew then, that even in terms of a career - integrity is not negotiable.