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Review
Sarah Masters reviews the film
Questioning Faith: Confessions of a Seminarian
When seminary student Macky Alston’s close friend and fellow minister-in-training dies of AIDS, Macky suffers a crisis of faith. When one of Alston’s seminary professors, Dr. James Cone, questions how the students in his class can develop a theology “that is credible in the face of 16 million dead” from AIDS and challenges the classroom with the question: “What kind of sermon are you going to preach?” Alston does not know. And so he sets out to discover how everyone and anyone, from atheists to Buddhists to Orthodox Jews, find meaning in a life that can seem so senseless.
Alston’s search takes the form of a feature documentary, for Macky Alston is also an award-winning filmmaker. This seminarian, while completing a graduate degree in theology and working as a hospital chaplain, tackles the big questions. Why do some find religion and others lose it? How can anyone believe in a loving and powerful God in the face of so much suffering?
Alston considers the making of documentaries his ministry. In the spring 2004 issue of Cross Currents, he writes: “Making and presenting a documentary is, in my experience, a religious experience. At a screening last week at Harvard Divinity School … a woman in the audience asked if documentary filmmaking is a spiritual practice. I had never called it such, but as I began to reflect on the process of making a documentary film — of tracking down the sacred in everyday life, sifting through hours of footage for truth and meaning, and then holding it up for the world to appreciate — I knew it to be so. In Questioning Faith, I explore how people reconcile faith with suffering and, in the course of the film, as I witness the heroic power of people to choose life in the face of death, I move in my own beliefs from great doubt to deep faith.”
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Completed: 2002
Running time: 84 Minutes
Director: Macky Alston
Producer: Lisa Heller
If you are interested in renting this film, you can do so through Frameline. Just click on http://cart.frameline.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=T561. The price is $125.00 for a DVD rental.
Sarah Masters is the Managing Director of the Hartley Film Foundation, a non-profit foundation dedicated to cultivation, support, production and distribution of the best documentaries and audio meditations on world religions, spirituality, ethics and well-being.
Book
Review
Rev. Dorothy Shelly reviews
Mourning Has Broken
Perhaps everyone has a story that could touch your heart – the many stories that make up Mourning Has Broken deeply touched mine. Page after page, the inspiring stories of grief are full of riches. I affirm the foreword comments of Alan D. Wolfelt, grief specialist, “The stuff of healing is story writing and storytelling. Tell the story of the death and you begin to acknowledge it. Tell it 10 times and you begin to let it enter your heart. Tell it over and over again and you find it becoming a part of who you are.”[1]
Koven, with a background in social services and journalism, and Pearl, with a background in art therapy and psycho geriatric therapy, have put together a marvelous collection of 50 first-person stories of wisdom and insight from various authors about healing after the loss of a loved one. Both editors deeply believe in the creative healing process of writing and have compiled this anthology of hope after they experienced the challenging journey through the pain of grief.
Chapter headings include: "Poetry, Writing & Journaling," "Refreshment Break," "Narrative Essays, Letters, and Mixed Formats." As a poet and critic of that trade, I found the poetry to be soul-awakening. It was a foretaste of what was to come as each writer seemed unafraid to grapple with and honestly confront the raw emotions of grief. Whatever the format, these personal narratives are a blessing to the reader whether presently experiencing grief or journeying with another in the healing process.
Mourning Has Broken is a perfect pick for pastoral care providers and I have a hunch it will be a resource tool that will frequently be taken down from my bookshelf.
[1] p. xiv.
Koven, Mara, Pearl, Liz, eds. Mourning Has Broken:
A Collection of Creative Writing About Grief and Healing. KOPE Associates, Toronto, Canada, 2006, pp 224.
Rev. Dorothy Shelly, BCC, RN, is a long-term care chaplain at Phoebe Richland Health Care Center, Richlandtown, PA. She is Vice President of the United Church of Christ Professional Chaplains and Counselors and is a poet and author of Anybody See My Shoes? Poetic Reflections From A Chaplain.
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