Monday, July 21, 2008

What Does Human Flourishing Look Like: Part II

This is a follow-up to the previous post. The video below is eminently relevant to that post, and I would be interested in your thoughts concerning the video, as they relate to that post. Be sure to watch this all the way through to the end.





5 comments:

Maria said...

The video says it all, but here are my two cents anyway. I have a friend who is an aid in a special ed classroom (high school level). She regularly rants about the ridiculous burdens placed on her kids by "no child left behind," which assumes that everyone should go to college. Instead of letting these kids learn something that they might be able to use in life, they are forced to write learning objectives written in a bureacratese that I'm sure I wouldn't understand. And in this brave new world, where everyone has been pushed into the mold of college attendance, who do we call to fix our cars or our plumbing?

Anonymous said...

Wow, that was a beautiful video. Someone should send Michael Savage a link to this video. I was appalled by his recent comments that autistic children were "brats" who needed to "cut the act out."

Bryan Kibbe said...

A fascinating video. There are a number of different aspects to consider and ponder, but I am struck by how clearly the video subverts notions of normalcy and communication. It reminds me that as Christians we can have a sense of expectancy for the new kingdom and the new earth, but that their must be room within that hope and expectancy for us to be surprised by the way things will actually be. But such is the way that things so often are in the faith. That is, where there are opposites, neither is dismantled or diminished, but rather both are kept furiously strong as G.K. Chesterton put it. In this case, our attitude for the new kingdom and the new earth is one of both eager certainty that things will be made right and be made whole but also waiting surprise as to what rightness and wholeness look like fully.

Unknown said...

Certainly provocative (in a good sense).

Although I could not help but notice that the cinematic language was, by all standards, normal and, by the director's standards, thereby intolerant. As a much more integrated artistic medium film seems to allow, associately, much less deviance.

Virginia Wieringa said...

This is really astonishing. Even before she started communicating in 'our language', I was struck by how much the behavior of this woman was so close to being an art form, or an act of worship, chant or meditation. The repetitive motions and actions are what result in music and painting and dance and prayer. Her 'language' isn't so far from those, it just isn't in the paradigm of our usual cultural definition of acceptable forms of those.