4 posts tagged “spirituality”

Some nice family news: my cousin Kevin, the second-youngest of my first cousins in my mega-large family (my father is one of eight), has decided to get baptized, which I think is very positive. I was not too surprised when I got news of this today since we had had a long discussion earlier this year about Christianity.
   It’s not so much whether one supports Christianity or not, it’s more that Kevin has made a decision about his spirituality that he believes will enrich his life.
   I was around Kevin’s age when I made the decision to be baptized. I probably started off stricter than I am now in terms of my beliefs. I still live by the idea that I am against forces that ‘rebel against God’, a commitment I made.
   Our family has had plenty of reasons to put our faith in Jesus Christ: from getting us out of Red China before the peasants revolted on our land, to the recent news that my second cousin Harold survived the NIU shooting.
   As those who watched the video clips of Harold earlier this year know, he puts his survival firmly on his faith in Christ and recently was behind the Bamboo Curtain to spread the Good Word. Being a US citizen, I am sure he was better protected than a local trying to practise Christianity within the occupied part of China.
   Atheists will argue that these are simply events that happen and some luck played a part; they are perfectly free to believe that. I can’t attack them and say that their belief lacks merit. If it works for them and they aren’t harming others by their views, and they aren’t dissing alternative viewpoints, then I can live with that. Personally, I prefer to believe there is some guiding force behind it all, whether it’s the traditional view of God or a more liberal view of co-creation. It would be boring to just have “shit happen” without something grander behind the scenes.
   I can’t fathom not having a spiritual element in my life. I do have a problem with religiosity or those who use the name of any religion to hurt others. It was actually interesting to note that at our reunion, quite a few of us, who went to a church school for the formative years of our lives, are no longer Christians.
   One reason I imagine my fellow classmates turned from Christianity and now consider themselves atheists, or “spiritual” at best (one friend, not a classmate, notes ‘SBNR’—Spiritual But Not Religious) is that religion was promoted too seriously for their liking. I probably had some mild form of ADD as a child (it did not prevent me from coming first in my year each year from 1981 to 1985) coupled with having to deal with English as a second language, so maybe it never seemed to come forth with as great an authority. I had the freedom to search for my own spirituality and included what I knew from Divinity classes at school with traditional Chinese beliefs and what I learned for myself.
   Like Timothy on Vox, I have used the ‘liberal Christian’ term for myself: less Ned Flanders, more someone who has combined elements of different beliefs in line with my personal history but ultimately accepting Jesus Christ as my personal saviour. On my Facebook profile, I list ‘spiritual’ as my belief, principally because my “version” of Christianity jars with some of what is said in the weekly eucharist. While I don’t subscribe to the Da Vinci Code version of events, I do believe the Bible has been modified by people over the centuries, but I do not believe that translation errors and the like weaken its spiritual purpose. I also don’t think God is a guy who talks like Orson Welles and has a beard. Therefore, some Christians might see me as just slightly better than an atheist on some continuum!
   I once attended church weekly and ceased doing so in the 1990s. Part of it was that I came to feel that the energy was not right. My final regular church, which was actually my first church at St Mark’s where I attended school, was fine. But I had attended many over the years to discover the hypocrisy behind some Christians, enough to leave a sour taste in my mouth that they were not willing to live the life they claimed.
   Unlike those schoolmates who turned totally from Christ, I didn’t see any reason to, but I also felt that God could hear me anywhere and it didn’t need to be at a prescribed time at a prescribed place. God didn’t hang up an ‘opening hours’ sign. Religion, in my private definition, implies some level of getting together and supporting an institution, while spirituality is personal. With my evolving view on Christianity it was better to take a personal path to figure out my dharma, and that has been an adventure in itself.
   I prefer to respect that everyone is different and that we all follow different paths.
   Kevin will have his path and I will be interested to see how he follows it. I really admire this personal choice because it’s not a commitment you see every day from someone.
   Kevin: I congratulate you on taking this step and it will be my pleasure to attend your baptism.

Any theories from our British friends on Ashes to Ashes? Last year, I was speculating like crazy on Sam Tyler’s predicament, telling people that if you freeze-framed a scene in series two, episode five where Sam touches Ray and sees different characters that DCI Frank Morgan was among them, and how there must be some spiritual reason beyond ‘He’s in a coma.’
   I have watched Ashes but not with the fervour and speculation of the earlier Life on Mars. I do believe Alex Drake’s situation is different, for starters, and that the opening speech that she is living one second in her life in 2008 is not far off the mark.
   But the idea that she has assimilated Sam’s fantasies doesn’t totally ring true to me.
   Last year, some people believed that Gene Hunt et al were spiritual figures or that the Geneverse is Purgatory, while a more complex theory put forward by one netizen, Soozanne, still “fits” (about two lives, one called Sam Tyler and another called Sam Williams and how their accidents forced the time travel).
   I would not be surprised if there is more than creators Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah are letting on—especially when they said the new series explores a bit more of the Gene Hunt ‘mythology’.
   Mythology? Reading too much into one word, or is this a clue?
   And if Pharoah has written the series finalé for Thursday with a potential second series in mind, will we actually get closure?
   I don’t think we will, though Alex confronts her parents’ death just as Sam confronted the disappearance of his father at the same point in Life on Mars. Sorry, everyone: I don’t think Alex Drake is going home. The calendar she has in her room, which we have been counting down, won’t mark the total number of days she has to stay in 1981.
   She’s likely to stay stuck in 1981 but finds that no matter what she does, she can’t create a time paradox—either because she is back in 1981 or her logical mind won’t allow it.
   That’s my prediction rather than a theory—largely on the premise that there probably will be a second series as the viewer numbers are healthy and not far off what Life on Mars was doing.

A good start to Ashes to Ashes—but not as good as that of Life on Mars. Aside from the self-referential aspect, I miss the Sam–Gene interplay, even though Keeley Hawes’s Alex Drake is excellent. And that was a good première—just not a great one. OK, it was a very, very good première. But was it really, name change aside, a première, or the third series of Life on Mars? You know, is putting in Alex Drake kind of like putting in Charlie Sheen to Spin City? Or James Franciscus into the Planet of the Apes series? Apart from the sex change here.
   The glitches are there for the car geeks to see. The real Audi Quattro has already been discussed by Audi fans out there as being the wrong year with the wrong grille and the steering wheel on the wrong side, as far as 1981 is concerned; but did toy car collectors notice the Quattro on Gene’s desk? One from Matchbox, one from Majorette—the earliest the former was made was 1982. The Cortinas are a bit too fancy for the Met—one’s a Ghia. Bit plush in the back for a collar, innit?
   However, the present-day scenes are interesting and as this is a British TV show, Alex drives a Toyota in 2008. I mean a Lexus. The Japanese automaker is doing quite a lot of product placement these days. The days of goodies driving UK-made cars in UK TV series are long gone.
   Now on to the stuff that normal human beings noticed. The story is good, but as I said in earlier blog posts, we begin Ashes to Ashes knowing what has happened to Alex. With Life on Mars, we did ponder: is Sam mad, in a coma or really back in time?
   This is why Ashes to Ashes needs something extra, and “sexual tension” is not going to do it. I watched the first one not necessarily comparing the two series, but I didn’t have a decent brainf*** trying to figure out time paradoxes and parallel universes. I did for 16 episodes of the earlier Life on Mars. Unless Matthew Graham, Ashley Pharoah and co. decide to inject an additional aspect to the story on just why Gene Hunt and his team appear, I won’t this time around.
   Last year, people floated ideas of Sam being in Purgatory, while another viewer believed there was a bit of Quantum Leaping going on in that Sam Tyler did jump into the body of a DI Sam Williams from Hyde. They both were involved in accidents and their consciousnesses transferred. If we began seeing some sign of that, then there could be a very fun additional element to Ashes to Ashes.
   Matthew Graham was wise in the first episode to not replicate Life on Mars’ techniques: we don’t hear life-support machines, for instance. We do have a spooky clown and I have to say that the clown from Test Card F did freak me out as a child. An evil clown from the David Bowie ‘Ashes to Ashes’ video makes sense.
   Now to the theories, which is part of the British national pastime. If we take the most obvious theory, which is what my friend Doug cottoned on to when he first watched Life on Mars (he is one of the few people who said very early on, ‘I thought it was obvious that Sam was in a coma’), then Alex hasn’t even made it into the hospital ward. She is living all of 1981 within a split-second and if she does wake at the end of the series, it will be exactly where she was shot.
   Notice the similarities between these lines at the beginning and end of the episode which are clues to the fact that this is all in Alex’s head:

Alex Drake: It’s a hard, screwed-up world, but if you trust me, I can try to help you get through. 

and:

Gene Hunt: Listen, Bolly Knickers. You were seconds away from death just now. It’s a nasty, vicious, messed-up world but if you listen to me, you just might get through it.

plus all the references to Arthur Layton about being trapped at the beginning, and being trapped herself. Notice, too, the quote ‘seconds away from death’. Shaz’s comments about between life and death were also spooky.
   Matthew Graham knows we are being very pedantic and I think he has fashioned some great clues for us.
   But I didn’t think the last 95 seconds—which “Lifer” and Manchester journalist Ian Wylie told us to take extra note of as they were the best on telly—were that fab. Gene has mellowed, but that’s the 1980s’ cop show for you. Those shows were more mellow. Out with The Sweeney and The Professionals and in with Dempsey and Makepeace. John Thaw went from Regan to Inspector Morse.
   Great touch with Zippy and George, but they have aged. Come on, admit it: they looked way more colourful in Geoffrey’s set.
   Edmund Butt’s score is spot on with enough period touches, though the strings leading up to a crescendo each time we see a hero shot of Gene Hunt is a bit much.
   The end credits were really the worst bit: they were blimmin’ hard to see.
   Questions to ponder with the story arc: are the Prices (Alex’s parents) really dead? Notice that Arthur Layton never provides an answer to that. What if Alex’s Dad is still around, staying away from his daughter because he feared reprisals? That we might not know till 2009.
   Regardless of the relatively few misgivings, this is still the best show on telly—and I’ll be pre-ordering that DVD set on the strength of this première.

There are a few ways to interpret the story I am about to recount.
   Not long ago, I was flying at night over Germany, heading in to Frankfurt. You know how you look outside the plane window, hoping to spot something? Even going across remote parts of Asia I would spot a light or a tiny village. But I saw nothing, even though I had regularly stared outside the window for the night view.
   I turned away for a second or two, then turned back and saw three cities below me, all with their building lights, streets, etc.—the sort of view you would expect to see in that part of the BRD. Just like on those satellite maps.
   Which comes to my next question: why could I not see these three cities a few seconds before?
   The rational explanations might include: my eyes had not focused or adjusted (though I argue they had); I was not that alert or conscious during the first view due to fatigue (again, I doubt this); or I am nuts. Or, we were flying through really thick cloud at the time. Maybe this is the sort of night-blindness that John Kennedy (Jr) encountered on his final flight?
   The spiritual ones might include: we create our own realities and my mind had not subconsciously decided to at that time. When it was ready, I saw what I expected: three cities.
   Finally, the movie explanation is that someone messed up the Matrix and forgot to program that bit in till a few seconds later. Real Thirteenth Floor stuff.
   Anyone come across anything similar?