酷我-北美枫

[ericcoliu]

Faith, a poem dedicated to Ingmar Bergman, director of the Faith Trilogy

Faith can only be faith itself
in the absence of certainty and secuity.
It is like embarking on a journey
through the shadows of the doubting mind
and the wilderness of the wandering soul;
but embracing the possibilities of the imagination.
There lies more faith
in honest doubt than affirmed creeds.

Ingmar Bergman, born July 14, 1918 and died July 30, 2007 , was a stage and film director who rose to international fame with Smiles of s Summer Night (1955); in the late 1950s he became a cult figure in art-house cinemas throughout the world with the intellectually provocative The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries (1957) and he secured his divine seat in the cinematic pantheon with the Faith Trilogy -- -Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1962), and The Silence (1963) -- in which I found bleakness and despair as well as comedy and hope in his indelible explorations of the human condition. Throughout his six decades of image-sculpting, Ingmar Bergman -- the storyteller of the soul -- had always sought "the high mountain, the vast cloud, the silent forest, and the rippled spring" of the human mindscape.

Ingmar Bergman was raised in a devout Lutheran household and grew up surrounded by religious imagery and theological discussions. His father was a Lutheran minister in the national Church of Sweden. Bergman stated that he lost his faith at age eight but came to terms with this fact only when making Winter Light. He wrote in his 1988 autobiography The Magic Lantern,

"While father preached away in the pulpit and the congregation prayed, sang or listened, I devoted my interest to the church’s mysterious world of low arches, thick walls, the smell of eternity, and the coloured sunlight quivering above the strangest vegetation of medieval paintings and carved figures on ceilings and walls. There was everything that one’s imagination could desire — angels, saints, dragons, prophets, devils, humans."
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Faith, a poem dedicated to Ingmar Bergman, director of the Faith Trilogy

Faith can only be faith itself
in the absence of certainty and secuity.
It is like embarking on a journey
through the shadows of the doubting mind
and the wilderness of the wandering soul;
but embracing the possibilities of the imagination.
There lies more faith
in honest doubt than affirmed creeds.

Ingmar Bergman, born July 14, 1918 and died July 30, 2007 , was a stage and film director who rose to international fame with Smiles of s Summer Night (1955); in the late 1950s he became a cult figure in art-house cinemas throughout the world with the intellectually provocative The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries (1957) and he secured his divine seat in the cinematic pantheon with the Faith Trilogy -- -Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1962), and The Silence (1963) -- in which I found bleakness and despair as well as comedy and hope in his indelible explorations of the human condition. Throughout his six decades of image-sculpting, Ingmar Bergman -- the storyteller of the soul -- had always sought "the high mountain, the vast cloud, the silent forest, and the rippled spring" of the human mindscape.

Ingmar Bergman was raised in a devout Lutheran household and grew up surrounded by religious imagery and theological discussions. His father was a Lutheran minister in the national Church of Sweden. Bergman stated that he lost his faith at age eight but came to terms with this fact only when making Winter Light. He wrote in his 1988 autobiography The Magic Lantern,

"While father preached away in the pulpit and the congregation prayed, sang or listened, I devoted my interest to the church’s mysterious world of low arches, thick walls, the smell of eternity, and the coloured sunlight quivering above the strangest vegetation of medieval paintings and carved figures on ceilings and walls. There was everything that one’s imagination could desire — angels, saints, dragons, prophets, devils, humans."
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[ericcoliu]

Conversation with a Priest, I is inspired by and appropriated from a monologue uttered by the anguished Knight in The Seventh Seal:


Priest: Now, do you have your faith in God?
Eric: No, I don't. More correctly speaking, I can't.
Priest: why?
Eric: I want to have more concrete proof about God's existence.
Priest: You want a 100% guarantee?
Eric: Call it whatever you like. Is it so cruelly inconceivable to grasp God with human senses and intelligence? Why should he hide himself in a mist of half-spoken promises and unseen miracles?
Priest doesn't answer, and immerses himself in a state of contemplation.
Eric: How can we have faith in those who believe when we can't have faith in ourselves? What is going to happen to those of us who want to believe but aren't able to? And what is to become of those who neither want to nor are capable of believing?
Eric pauses for a moment and waits for a reply. No response from the priest.
Eric: Why can't I kill God within me? He keeps constantly haunting me. Is He going to become a baffling reality that I can't shake off? Do you hear me, or does he hear me?
Priest: Yes, I hear you and I believe He hears you as well.
Eric: I cry out to Him in the dark, but no one seems to be there.
Priest: He is here now. Have faith in Him.

Silence falls.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Conversation with a Priest, I is inspired by and appropriated from a monologue uttered by the anguished Knight in The Seventh Seal:


Priest: Now, do you have your faith in God?
Eric: No, I don't. More correctly speaking, I can't.
Priest: why?
Eric: I want to have more concrete proof about God's existence.
Priest: You want a 100% guarantee?
Eric: Call it whatever you like. Is it so cruelly inconceivable to grasp God with human senses and intelligence? Why should he hide himself in a mist of half-spoken promises and unseen miracles?
Priest doesn't answer, and immerses himself in a state of contemplation.
Eric: How can we have faith in those who believe when we can't have faith in ourselves? What is going to happen to those of us who want to believe but aren't able to? And what is to become of those who neither want to nor are capable of believing?
Eric pauses for a moment and waits for a reply. No response from the priest.
Eric: Why can't I kill God within me? He keeps constantly haunting me. Is He going to become a baffling reality that I can't shake off? Do you hear me, or does he hear me?
Priest: Yes, I hear you and I believe He hears you as well.
Eric: I cry out to Him in the dark, but no one seems to be there.
Priest: He is here now. Have faith in Him.

Silence falls.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[ericcoliu]

Conversation with a Priest, II is inspired by and appropriated from a conversation between a communicant contemplating suicide and a priest suffering a severe crisis of faith in Winter Light:


Eric: The passion of Christ, his suffering is futile.
Priest: What do you mean?
Eric: Just think of Gethsemane, Priest. All of his disciples fell asleep. They hadn't understood the meaning of the last supper, or anything. When the Roman soldiers came to arrest him, they ran away and Peter denied him. Jesus had known his disciples for three years and they had lived and worked together day in and day out, but they never grasped what he meant. In one of most crucial moments of his life, they all abandoned him. That must have been very painful when he realized that no one understood his message and that he was left alone when he desperately needed someone he could rely on. But the worse was yet to come. When Jesus was nailed to the cross and hung there in torment, he cried out as loud as he could, "God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?" His heavenly father had also abandoned him. At the final moment of his life, he believed everything he'd ever preached was a lie. He was seized by doubt. Surely that must have been his greatest hardship. God's silence.
Priest: Yes, …

Some words unrecognizably uttered from Priest’s mouth. Pause for moments.

Priest: We must believe something or someone and we must LIVE.
Eric: WHY must we live?

Priest says nothing and lowers his eyes.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Conversation with a Priest, II is inspired by and appropriated from a conversation between a communicant contemplating suicide and a priest suffering a severe crisis of faith in Winter Light:


Eric: The passion of Christ, his suffering is futile.
Priest: What do you mean?
Eric: Just think of Gethsemane, Priest. All of his disciples fell asleep. They hadn't understood the meaning of the last supper, or anything. When the Roman soldiers came to arrest him, they ran away and Peter denied him. Jesus had known his disciples for three years and they had lived and worked together day in and day out, but they never grasped what he meant. In one of most crucial moments of his life, they all abandoned him. That must have been very painful when he realized that no one understood his message and that he was left alone when he desperately needed someone he could rely on. But the worse was yet to come. When Jesus was nailed to the cross and hung there in torment, he cried out as loud as he could, "God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?" His heavenly father had also abandoned him. At the final moment of his life, he believed everything he'd ever preached was a lie. He was seized by doubt. Surely that must have been his greatest hardship. God's silence.
Priest: Yes, …

Some words unrecognizably uttered from Priest’s mouth. Pause for moments.

Priest: We must believe something or someone and we must LIVE.
Eric: WHY must we live?

Priest says nothing and lowers his eyes.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[星子]

will read it later when I am back.
_________________

[[ANNA]]

will read it later when I am back.
_________________

[ericcoliu]

Thanks.

Safe Trip.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Thanks.

Safe Trip.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul