A Quote by David Plotz
God is erratic, sometimes vindictive, sometimes merciful. The people I was taught were heroes - Jacob or Moses or David - were ambivalent figures, or worse. But that messiness was joyful, and challenging. I loved having a Bible that I could argue with.
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David, Moses, Saul of Tarsus, these were all people who did terrible terrible things? - ?they were murderers. The Bible would be a lot shorter without grace.
I was taken in the Spirit to the burning bush on Mount Horeb, Moses' "first ascension," and allowed to witness the encounter he had with the Lord there. Throughout the visitation, I was enabled to know and feel the thoughts and emotions of Moses' inner being. ... There was a Holy Narrator beside me who helped me understand what I saw and heard, and he made references to relevant passages of Scripture. There were other Biblical figures also present - Joshua, Samuel, David, and even the Lord Jesus were there.
When I grew up in the South, I was taught that segregation was the will of God, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. I was taught that women were by nature in inferior to men, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. I was taught that it was okay to hate other religions, and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it.
My uncle killed by sniper in WW2. We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot u in the back. Snipers aren't heroes. And invaders r worse.
Sometimes string figures were used to illustrate stories, as in the case of an Eskimo example that depicts a man catching a salmon. Sometimes they had magic or religious significance.
I spent three seasons at Benfica looking to be in the first eleven. Sometimes I got in and sometimes I didn't. Sometimes injuries denied me. Sometimes the strikers who were in my position, they were scoring and scoring so it was difficult to play.
My heroes were people like Jim Jarmusch. Scorsese was my god. Spike Lee was exciting, doing exactly what we thought we were going to do: personal movies based in, and about, New York. My heroes were all participating in an economic model that was collapsing as I was finishing film school.
Heroes didn't leap tall buildings or stop bullets with an outstretched hand; they didn't wear boots and capes. They bled, and they bruised, and their superpowers were as simple as listening, or loving. Heroes were ordinary people who knew that even if their own lives were impossibly knotted, they could untangle someone else's. And maybe that one act could lead someone to rescue you right back.
A girl invited me to come out to a Bible study, and I said, 'Why not? I don't have anything to lose.' I went, and to my surprise, I saw people that loved God, but they were not square or rigid. They were just people like me.
Moses Kaldor had always loved mountains; they made him feel nearer to the God whose nonexistence he still sometimes resented.
There were the physical challenges of hitchhiking across Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan as they were quite dangerous areas. I wrote about that in The Journey Home. I loved my family and they loved me, so making a choice so completely different from the life they knew was also a challenge. Not having material possessions or the security of a home and taking vows of celibacy for life were kind of natural for me, although they were also challenging. But I guess the greatest challenge for me was that I loved so many different spiritual paths.
I was brought up by a Victorian Grandmother. We were taught to work jolly hard. We were taught to prove yourself; we were taught self reliance; we were taught to live within our income. You were taught that cleanliness is next to Godliness. You were taught self respect. You were taught always to give a hand to your neighbour. You were taught tremendous pride in your country. All of these things are Victorian values. They are also perennial values. You don't hear so much about these things these days, but they were good values and they led to tremendous improvements in the standard of living.
The people who related to God best--Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah--treated him with startling familiarity. They talked to God as if he were sitting in a chair beside them, as one might talk to a counselor, a boss, a parent, or a lover. They treated him like a person.
The privilege I've had over 15 movies over a very long time has been to make movies that were ambitious or grown-up, complex, that had themes in them that were sometimes political, sometimes challenging, to make these movies on a scale.
There were so many outstanding women in scripture that were leaders. And, you know, the organized church sometimes puts boundaries on us that the Bible doesn't.
Sometimes you have to wonder if there isn't an ejector seat built into having a popular-music career. We were lucky when we started. We were already old when we started - you could have described our first album as "aging Brooklyn guys." We were in our late 20s. We weren't octogenarians, but a lot of bands were already younger than us. Fortunately, we've held on to our manly good looks.
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