Fierce Light

In late October, 2006, I was working at my church, St. James' Anglican in down town Vancouver, when I received the terrible call. In the heart of the indigenous peoples' unarmed uprising in Oaxaca, Mexico, my friend Chayo, was witnessing a murder.
An American, named Brad Will had been shot. "He's badly hurt!" she screamed. What could I do? I called the American Embassy in Mexico City and got them on the case, but before long we heard: Brad Will was dead.

Later that night Chayo called me again, the headquarters of the indigenous group was surrounded, power had been cut off to the whole neighbourhood. Armed men were circling, shots had been fired at the gate.

"Help," whispered Chayo, a young Mixteco woman from a small village, and a law student, who I had hosted during the World Youth Forum in Vancouver, six months earlier. I imagined her there, in the dark house; hers was the voice of pure terror.
It took me about a week, from Vancouver to Oaxaca, but I got there to that little house, through the army checkpoints and through the massive protest barricades. I was there for the month of November, and witnessed the descent from celebration and resistance into silence as the sometime million-strong movement of school teachers, indigenous leaders and their supporters was crushed in the largest Mexican military action against a civilian protest. It was a time truly horrifying and heart-breaking.

In the middle of it all, I got a message from a Canadian film maker named (oddly) Velcrow Ripper. He was coming with his assistant to Oaxaca to film the uprising, would I be his ground support? Why not? I thought.

But then on further reflection I wondered, here I am trying to protect this indigenous group from the vicious violence of the security forces, and now I have to babysit a couple of artsy Canadians? Oh no, I thought.

And sure enough, the first day with the Canadian film makers was spent in a snarl of traffic, getting them to their hotel, settled-all this with a full on insurrection under way. Well, it turns out that my fellow Canadians were hardly nuisances. They were compassionate, understanding and most helpful.

Over the next few days we witnessed the total destruction of the popular movement, its leaders disappeared, jailed or in hiding. The artsy film makers left when the heavily-armed para-militaries sent out a decree stating that they had a list of 100 foreigners who were to be eliminated.

The leaders of the community I had come to see were among those now living "underground." I was left in the house alone with Pedro, a quiet man who had been selected by the group to stay but keep a low profile during a time like this. I stayed in Oaxaca a few more weeks, looked after my puppy, Dragon Barricada, a rescue from the barricades, and ran money and messages for the underground leaders . . . and then I came home.

On Wednesday, October 1, almost two years since those terrifying days, Velcrow Ripper's film, "Fierce Light, Where Spirit Meets Action" had its world première at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

It starts with Oaxaca, (though most of what he filmed ended up on the cutting room floor), and winds around the world speaking with dozens of people, famous and unknown, wealthy and destitute, of many spiritual traditions.

The question the film poses is, where is the convergence of spirituality and political action? How do these descriptions of who we are and what we do converge for a bettering of the world?

Velcrow visits sites around the world where people are engaged in challenging systems of violence and domination, and at the same time constructing alternative ways of being in the world which encourage the flourishing and maintenance of all life.

It is a grand project and a good film. However, after wiping away a few tears at the screening I was left wondering - and what else? The theme of faith and action is such an enormous question, and Velcrow is looking at it from the widest possible angle, that I was left wanting much more. Beautifully crafted, and expertly edited, "Fierce Light" seems to skim along the surface without reaching quite the depth that I would like to see.

For example, although he interviews numerous Christians, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and others, I don't think that he engages deeply with the violence-shattering story of the God of Life, as told through Jesus Christ.

And I wasn't quite sure whethere we were being invited into a glimpse of Velcrow's own personal struggle with these matters, or if he was trying to survey from the highest possible peak.

"Fierce Light" is, none-the-less, a valuable film. It is useful in as much as it invites us, as Christians, to consider the multiple ways of actively resisting evil and cooperating with the good, and joining in the world-wide convergence of those from many faiths and traditions who stand for peace and justice.

Footnote: Chayo is now in her final months of law school. She is living in the public light again. There has been no resolution to the deep conflict in Oaxaca. But Chayo is there, risking all. She has put her whole life in service of her people. Like her, like others in this film, we are - every one of us --asked to know our own context for life-giving action, then we are sent to "go and do likewise".