Tuesday, July 7, 2009

the photographer



The Photographer is an amazing book. I can not do justice to it here (sleepy thoughts, trying to muster my cranial resources for job applications and 'what do I really want to do?' answers).

The NYT review is a good one. The book, in the very story it tells, is as moving and compelling an argument for pacifism as anyone should really need.

This, stolen, once again, from Mr. Dark, sums up some of the effects of The Photographer:
The question of our governing is the question of our liturgy, worship, and witness - the question of what we deem sacred. Does our sense of the sacred include the average Palestinian, the Chinese peasant who builds structures for the Beijing Olympics for slave wages, the Ugandan child soldier? Are some people less sacred than others? Will we stand beside them, look them in the eye and help them? Are people mere numbers, or are they valuable bearers of the image of God? What are we willing to sign off on? What do we underwrite? A determined dwelling on these questions is the way redeeming and revolutionary history is written - this is our liturgy.
The Sacredness of Questioning Everything
, p. 198.

So much sacred human-ness in the story, the photos, the drawings.

The typo in the picture-quote is mine.

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