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Topic Summary

Posted by: archive
« on: August 19, 2007, 06:29:36 PM »

Hello all. Just wanted to share with you an email exchange between myself and a good friend of mine regarding CLEANSED. I hope you enjoy and, of course, all comments and responses will be much appreciated. [At the beginning of each message, I've put in brackets the name of the person writing the message.]

[Barry] Grace is an undeserved free gift, undeserved favor, and undeserved love. Only through Jesus Christ we are offered grace, a free gift. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. Everything about our relationship with God depends upon us trusting Him in faith, by resting in His grace.

From www.seekgod.org/message/grace.html

[Stephanie]

Isn't it beautiful? (And it is the perfect name for Tinker's woman.)

And its interesting how much Tinker physically manipulates, punishes, and probes the other Grace in his efforts to win her. It reminds me of the flagellants who beat themselves to become closer to god. Tinker beats grace instead. It also reminds me of the men who thought or think they could become closer to god by trying to intellectually understand god.

The message is beautiful. Love and surrender. "Sacrifice" and you will be "saved." Lose yourself and you will be "found". It's all the traditional rhetoric, but it has so much more of a profound effect. It's like she's REALLY telling the story of Christ. Love and total surrender. It's pretty much what Christ was saying and pretty much what he did. Kane shows us how difficult it is and how painful, but also how beautiful. And I also love how it really has nothing to do with religion (as practiced), but everything to do with being human.

I love this play.

[Stephanie again]

And the resurrected Christ in Graham. Christ arisen and all Christians (all who believe in Him) struggle to imitate Him in order to have everlasting life.

Grace imitates Graham. She doesn't think of him as dead, as Christians thinking of Christ living in them. Grace says she feels like Graham inside.

She says to Tinker treat me like a patient. She wants to undergo the struggle of Graham. To feel his pain, as Christians long to feel the pain of Christ. True believers feel the pain of Christ and receive the stigmata, the 5 wounds of Christ.

Carl, like Peter, denies Rod (betrays him though he says he wouldn't, just like Peter). Like you said, I think the signs of love (like the signs of Christ's love in the 5 wounds) on Carl's body prove Carl's love for Rod (as the stigmata on a saints body prove Christ's love for man and the saints true belief). The saint takes the place of Christ and miracles can be worked through the saint as if he were Christ. God communicates through people without words, language, etc. (as Carl's suffering communicates his love even though he cannot otherwise communicate through speech or writing or dance or sex).

This play f*cking rocks.

[Barry]

For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." {16} It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy.

[Stephanie]

The basics are so beautiful it really blows me away. Flannery O'Connor's short stories are all about this, too. About regular people (southern freaks actually) experiencing profound encounters with god. Though "god" in the stories are always just an experience of awakening within themselves. What is popularly called god is merely what you and I have been calling self-knowledge. Flannery O'Connor was all about understanding herself.

[Barry]

So I guess you think I'm onto something, huh?

[Stephanie]

f*ck yeh.

Archive 6-5-2002