HOLY WEEK UPDATE: MEDIA, MOVIES, etc.

Last Thursday, I heard over the radio the story about two pygmy whales (a female and her calf) who had beached in New Zealand. A sandbar had confused them, and people worked for 1 1/2 hours to save them but they kept swimming back to shore. Just when they were about to give up, a bottlenosed dolphin appeared, communicated with the whales, and led them to the open sea. The dolphin is called Moko and is known to play with swimmers.

I thought this was a heart warming story.

That is until I heard the story about the toddler who was hit by a van. The toddler was with her mom and another brother. The mom was doing the laundry. Apparently the toddler tripped, then ran, and was swiped by a van.

That story sent me into a mild depression. I felt sorry for the child, for the mother, for the man who had accidentally killed her.

Feeling sober, I read (or tried to read) The New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton. I enjoyed his Seven Storey Mountain, but I've been struggling with this one. I found a Thomas Merton site where people talked about what made them read Thomas Merton, and most entries lauded Merton, except for one that went on about Merton abandoning a woman and his out-of-wedlock child, and how he later had a liason with a young nurse. To those who don't know Merton was a Trappist monk and one of the great Christian thinkers.

I'd heard about the woman and child; this is mentioned in the Introduction of the Seven Storey Mountain. The business of the nurse is mentioned briefly in another Merton-related book. When I first learned about this second liason, I did feel disappointed but I do realize he was just a flawed man after all, one of God's broken vessels. Well ... like the rest of us.

Still in a somber mood, I rented Black Orpheus, the 1959 Brazilian film based on the Orpheus-Eurydice myth. I also have Into Great Silence, Philip Groning's documentary about the Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse in the French Alps. The latter is the perfect Holy Week movie - serene, quiet, spiritual, contemplative.

I found these movies, as I found The Last Wave, at Vidiot on Pico Blvd, Santa Monica. I forgot to report on The Last Wave - I enjoyed it more than the first time I had seen it. There were certain aspects of the film which I had missed the first time. For instance, the matter of the mask. I understood that the implication was that people who looked like the Richard Chamberlain character had been in Australia long ago, but that their kind had vanished. The prediction of the wall painting was that the second wave would happen, wiping out the second wave of white people.

And meantime, I've colored 60 eggs - yellow and red only, because those are the only food dyes I have.
~~~
P.S. I found several articles about dolphins including Petitions to Stop Their Slaughter - read below:

Dolphin Saves Man from Shark Attack

Dolphins Save Swimmer from Shark

Dolphin Saves Boy's Life

Dolphin Saves Stranded Whales

YouTube - The Superhero Dophin Who Helps Save Lives

Stop the Dolphin and Whale Killings in Taiji

End Dolphin Slaughter in Japan

MASSACRE OF BUDDHIST MONKS IN BURMA

Very, very disturbing news from Australia's Herald Sun about Burma or Myanmar - here quoted:

"October 02, 2007 12:00am
A SENIOR Burmese intelligence official claims thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle.

After defecting from the military junta and fleeing to the Thai border, Hla Win told a reporter from London's Daily Mail: "Many more people have been killed in recent days than you've heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand."

The horrific details emerged as Burma's top general continued to snub the UN's peace envoy, who is in Rangoon on a mission to convey the world's outrage to the junta.

With protests quashed and many monasteries empty, fears are growing for those who have disappeared into Burma's grim jails.

Observers say many detainees have been taken to the city's notorious Insein prison, the Government Technological Institute, the police battalion number seven compound, the Kyaikkasan racetrack and possibly elsewhere.

Mr Win said he fled when he was ordered to help massacre holy men.

Other exiles along the frontier confirmed that hundreds of monks had simply "disappeared".

Pro-democracy campaigners inside Burma yesterday released a graphic video showing the semi-naked body of a badly bruised monk, floating face down in a Rangoon river.

Mr Win, 42, a former chief of military intelligence in Rangoon's northern region, said: "I decided to desert when I was ordered to raid two monasteries and force several hundred monks on to trucks.

"They were to be killed and their bodies dumped deep inside the jungle. I refused to participate in this," he said.

Dissidents hiding along the Burma border said thousands of monks had been locked up and were being beaten inside blood stained temples."

Above Photo of Dead Monk, courtesy of Democratic Voice of Burma and BBC