What Then Is Love?

Hello folks!

It has been a rather long time getting here, but I’d like now formally to acknowledge the opening of The Living Room and to invite you to come and visit me there. The provision of this new place and its ongoing management is a gift from the contemplative Carmelite Order that many of you will already know from Clarendon Street Church.

The Living Room is a beautiful and silent space for rest, reading and reflection and is most conveniently located in the city centre.

The route there is indicated on the map below. Click on the image for larger view.

The Living Room is open from 9am until 3.30pm every weekday.

It is, however, closed on alternate Wednesdays. (That is, for October and November, it is open on Wednesday 21 October, on Wednesday 14 November, and on Wednesay 18 November.)

For more details, please bookmark on The Living Room website which will be in full swing very soon.

Hello there Everyone! Just to let you know that tomorrow night’s film ‘Sisters-in-law’ which was postponed on February 3rd due to the weather, will go ahead at the usual time of 7pm in the Edith Stein room in Clarendon Street Spirituality Centre. Looking forward to seeing you there.
That’s Tuesday February 10, 7pm.
Best wishes,
Christine

Hello there Everyone,

Just a quick note to let you know that the fourth film in our HOPE series is going to be shown on Tuesday 3rd Feb as opposed to Monday 2nd of next week. As usual, kickoff is at 7pm in Clarendon St. Spirituality Centre (which is just opposite the Brown Thomas Car-park in Clarendon St).

To refresh your memories I include a short description of the film ‘Sisters in Law’ which continues the season.

*SISTERS IN LAW: STORIES FROM A CAMAROON COURT*
Cameroon/UK Kim Longinotto, Florence Ayisi. 2005

Sisters in Law is a feature-length documentary film portraying aspects
of women’s lives and work in the judicial system in Cameroon, West
Africa. The film follows the saga of lawyer Vera Ngassa and judge
Beatrice Ntuba as they prosecute crimes against women and girls — crimes
long ignored by Cameroon’s patriarchal society. This
fascinating, often hilarious doc follows the work of State Prosecutor
Vera Ngassa and Court President Beatrice Ntuba as they help women fight
often-difficult cases of abuse, despite pressures from family and their
community to remain silent. With fierce compassion, the two feisty and
progressive-minded women dispense wisdom, wisecracks and justice in fair
measure, handing down stiff sentences to those convicted. A cross
between Judge Judy and The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency,
SISTERS IN LAW has audiences cheering when justice is served!

* As a new initiative the Contemplative Cinema Club would like to invite people to offer donations at the door. These donations will be transfered to a project working against human trafficking and slavery. I am currently researching Cambodian projects working to free women and children from enslaved prostitution, and hope to have further information for the next season at the Contemplative Cinema Club. This season will begin on Tuesday 10th February at 7pm, in Clarendon Street, and continue the theme of Hope.

Wishing you a very bright St. Briget’s day, and hoping you jump up and join in on the celebrations!

Christine

YO, YO, YO, and a Happy New Year to You.

It may have lost a little of its sparkle by now, but I’d like to wish one and all a blessed new year.

Given the huge possibilities of  “turning a new leaf” (god, I wish I had been a girl guide) I’d like to wish anyone reading this a hopeful 12 months!  And, to celebrate the human condition of hope, I’d like to focus this season’s films on that great transformative energy.   So here are four films starting this Monday on, or around the theme of hope.   And, of course, I hope you like them…

I like them because I think they show the inevitability of hope rearing its spiky head often against a landscape of bad odds.  I like seeing how hope works in the world, and how it humbles and inspires everything it touches. Thomas Merton rendered it thus:  

“Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.”

Yep, that’s what I mean, I guess… the paradox of letting it all go, to hold on (god, maybe I am a girl guide) and just like so many other four (and five) letter words I reckon it’s much easier to spell than to practice: love, faith, trust par example…

So now, given that there are teeshirts walking around the world which say, “HOPE WON” -  I think we have a right to indulge a little bit of hope for the new year. 

That agreed, I’d like to invite you to this season’s CINEMA OF HOPE which runs for consecutive Mondays in  CLARENDON STREET SPIRITUALITY CENTRE, Dublin. It’s just off Wicklow Street. If you or a friend who hasn’t been beofe are not sure where that is, type in Clarendon Street, Dublin, Ireland in Google Maps.

The evening holds the familiar format of watching a film and holding a reflective conversation afterwards. 

So, without further fuss, let me welcome you to the wonderful world of cinematic hope, and hope that something in this rather eclectic collection tickles your fancy.

Here goes!

MONDAY 12th January
JOHN O’DONOHUE, ANAM CARA, Ireland, Betsy Scarborough, 2008

This portrait is a truly wonderful evocation of sacred imagining and the connection it holds with the landscape by the Irish poet, philosopher and former priest John O’ Donohue.  Born in a limestone valley, Caherbeanna, near Blackhead, County Clare, John was the son of a stonemason who, he used to say, “was in that realm of the mystically sacred”. The author of Anam Cara and a number of other bestselling books on spirituality, philosophy and poetry, John O’Donohue articulates a vision of deep renewal rooted in ancient tradition and a holistic approach to the human experience of life and death. One of his great influences, the German mystic Meister Eckhart, believed that nothing resembles God like silence and O’Donohue suggested that the highly strung character of western life was explained by the absence of silence. “When you acknowledge the integrity of your solitude, and settle into its mystery, your relationships with other take on a new warmth, adventure and wonder.  Based on more than five years of filming John O’Donohue in his beloved native landscape of the Burren and Connemara in the west of Ireland, this documentary is a tribute to the  life and work of one of Ireland’s leading contemporary thinkers. 

MONDAY 19th January
THE COLOR OF PARADISE, Iran, Majid Majidi 1999.

“The Color of Paradise” is a fable of a child’s innocence and a complex look at faith and humanity. Visually magnificent and wrenchingly moving, the film tells the story of a boy whose inability to see the world only enhances his ability to feel its powerful forces. Mohammad, a boy at Tehran’s institute for the blind, waits for his dad to pick him up for summer vacation. While waiting, he realizes a baby bird has fallen from its nest: he chases away a cat, finds the bird, climbs a tree, and puts it back. His father finally comes and takes him to their village where his sisters and granny await. The lad is a loving student of nature and longs for village life with his family, but his father is ashamed of him, wanting to farm the boy out to clear the way for marriage to a woman who knows nothing of this son. Over granny’s objections, dad apprentices Mohammad far from home to a blind carpenter. Can anything bring father and son together?   “As much as any film can, this explicitly religious movie offers a visionary experience of the natural world. Moving through fields of flowers and misty forests, across streams and into the craggy backwoods country, ”The Color of Heaven” makes sure that we hear as well as see the rugged Iranian landscape in all sorts of weather.  And in Majid Majidi’s stunningly beautiful film, ”The Color of Paradise,” the relationship between man and nature is evoked with an ecstatic sensuousness along with an awed awareness of nature’s destructive power that are nothing less than extraordinary.” Stephen Holden, New York Times.  Winner of NYT’s critique award

Monday 26th January
CENTRAL STATION, Brazil Walter Salles, 1998

The film centers on a young boy (Vinicius de Oliveira) whose mother is killed in front of Rio de Janeiro’s Central Station. Homeless and with nowhere to turn, he is reluctantly befriended by a lonely and cynical woman (Montenegro). Resisting her initial impulse to make a quick profit off the child, she commits to returning him to his father in Brazil’s remote Northeast region.  As buses and trucks carry the motley pair through the increasingly unfamiliar terrain, they defy their initial aversion to each other, journeying closer together and deeper inside themselves. Set against an epic backdrop of vast, majestic landscapes, the trip becomes a quest for their own identities: one boy’s search for his father; and one woman’s search for her heart  The film was an international co-production between Brazil and France.  The film’s title in Portuguese, Central do Brasil, is the name of Rio de Janerio’s main railway station. 

Monday 2nd February
SISTERS IN LAW: STORIES FROM A CAMAROON COURT Cameroon/UK Kim Longinotto, Florence Ayisi. 2005

Sisters in Law is a feature-length documentary film portraying aspects of women’s lives and work in the judicial system in Cameroon, West Africa. The film follows the saga of lawyer Vera Ngassa and judge Beatrice Ntuba as they prosecute crimes against women and girls — crimes long ignored by Cameroon’s patriarchal society.The film centres around four cases involving violence against women. It shows women seeking justice and effecting change on [universal] human interests issues.  It also shows strong and positive images of women and children in Cameroon.
“It’s always poverty, war and other problems: a staple diet of negativity. Of course, those things are there but it bothers that we don’t see any other reality. Also, as a woman I wanted to make a film about a strong woman,” says the film’s director Florenece Ayisi. This fascinating, often hilarious doc follows the work of State Prosecutor Vera Ngassa and Court President Beatrice Ntuba as they help women fight often-difficult cases of abuse, despite pressures from family and their community to remain silent. Six-year-old Manka is covered in scars and has run away from an abusive aunt, Amina is seeking a divorce to put an end to brutal beatings by her husband, the pre-teen Sonita has daringly accused her neighbor of rape. With fierce compassion, the two feisty and progressive-minded women dispense wisdom, wisecracks and justice in fair measure, handing down stiff sentences to those convicted. A cross between “Judge Judy” and “The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency,” SISTERS IN LAW has audiences cheering when justice is served!

Donations accepted..