Progressive Christian Reflections by Chris Glaser: extraterrestrial

Wednesday, July 17, 2019

What Is Your Golden Record?

Equinox full moon rising behind the haze in New Mexico.

Photo by my friend Trudie Barreras. Used by permisson.

On this week’s 50^th anniversary of the first Apollo moon landing, I invite us to consider, what are we—you and I—putting “out there” in the universe?

Week before last Wade and I were fascinated watching The Farthest, a documentary about Voyager I and II, still travelling through interstellar space with a “golden record” intended to depict earth and its inhabitants to extraterrestrial sentient beings. It’s amazingly diverse—amazing given the seeming narrowness of our vision these days. It includes audio greetings in more than 50 languages, a variety of musical offerings, and pictures of numerous plants, animals, places and actions to give the recipient a sense of life on Earth.

And I thought of each of us, what would our golden records be? What would we put out into the universe to represent our individual and communal lives? How would we summarize our life experience in images and words, tastes and aromas, touches and sounds, thoughts and feelings?

I considered St. Ignatius’s self Examen as a possible process to choose what best represents our individual experiences and choices, particularly Jesuit Anthony de Mello’s accessible Testament. Briefer still is my adaptation of his effort for a contemplative retreat, which I share with you in hopes you find these prompts useful in articulating what might be on your golden record:

1.These experiences I have cherished:

2.These ideas have brought me liberation:

3.These beliefs I have outgrown:

4.These convictions I have lived by:

5.These are the things I have lived for:

Numbers 1 and 5 could include images as well as words, though, with a little imagination, images could be included in any category. For example, liberation could have been felt hang-gliding, and conviction could have been the result of a baby’s smile. Outgrown beliefs could be pictured in a stack of books.

Another thought that came to me is that personally, my whole life could be summed up in the mantra that Jesus spoke to Lazarus: “Come out!” Come out of the closet, come to life, come out of your fear, come out of other’s expectations and even your own, come out of shame, come out of “resting in peace,” come out of isolationism, come out of narrow concepts and beliefs, come out and join the party, help the neighbor, enjoy abundant life!

So what is your life’s mantra(s)? And what are the contents of your golden record that you are putting out to the universe?

Only a handful of us may land on the moon. More vitally, all of us have landed on this oasis named Earth. So the question is, to what purpose, to what pleasure, to what hope, to what love?

The link on The Farthest is to the original trailer on PBS. For info on its present venue on Netflix, go to: https://www.netflix.com/title/80204377. It is also available on Amazon Prime. (I receive no remuneration for these links!)

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Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Man Facing Southeast

Scene from Man Facing Southeast

Man Facing Southeast is a 1986 film from Argentina. It depicts a man who commits himself to a mental hospital, while claiming to be an extraterrestrial. Every day, he stands in the same place in the hospital yard, facing southeast, contemplating or communicating with his planet of origin.

As I write this, it suddenly occurs to me I do the same thing during my morning prayers on our deck, facing southeast while seated, contemplating and “communicating” with my point of origin, as well as yours! But this is not why I’m writing this post.

Wednesdays, after promoting my blog on 30 or so relevant organizational Facebook pages, I walk in nearby Grant Park, a walk I used to take with Hobbes. Over the past month or so, I have encountered a man standing in the same place along my path: a 30-ish African American, neatly dressed in vintage clothing, a roller bag at his side, maybe homeless, and intently gazing straight ahead. Sometimes he has something in hand, his free hand gesturing, occasionally moving his lips. Sometimes he is standing motionless and staring straight ahead. I try to acknowledge him with a simple nod or a one-word greeting as I pass, not wanting to interrupt his focus.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed he was holding a clump of pages from a Bible. He looked as if he was soundlessly mouthing words, his free hand motioning to an unseen audience, and it occurred to me that perhaps he was practicing a sermon. I wondered if he served a congregation, or if, as a modern-day Saint Francis, he was offering his words to the birds in the branches of the tall old trees before him.

This man facing northwest made me think of the movie Man Facing Southeast. I wondered if he too was in contemplation and communication with his place of origin.

I was shown the film by my friend Scott Rogo, who thought I would appreciate its spiritual intimations. To this day I have the video copy he gave me after we watched it together. Scott wrote 30 books as a parapsychologist, his interest in the paranormal initiated by an out-of-body experience in high school.

Scott and I had barely known each other then. He was in band and I was in choir in adjacent classrooms. Our first semester in college, we happened to take the same “Man’s Religions” course, and my Pollyanna spirituality seemed distasteful to his skeptically agnostic view.

A decade later, our mutual concern about the AIDS epidemic led to meeting again “as if for the first time,” learning each other was gay. He was already a published author and I was trying to complete my first book, and our shared interest in very different expressions of spirituality prompted us to meet every couple of weeks for lunch. He once visited the church I served, but felt more comfortable in the familiar surroundings of his home synagogue, though he did not attend regularly.

He was as an early reader of my first book, giving me its title, Uncommon Calling, and encouraging me to write its hopeful epilogue, observing that throughout the book I had followed every “crucifixion” with a “resurrection,” and I should do the same with its conclusion.

I wrote about our unique friendship and his shocking murder at age 4o in my last published book, The Final Deadline: What Death Has Taught Me about Life.

So Man Facing Southeast means a lot to me.

The doctor treating its protagonist comes to question his own science, as he “recognizes his new patient’s special abilities and contagiously humanitarian outlook on life,” in the words of one reviewer.

No wonder people thought Jesus was an “extraterrestrial.”

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