Current mood:	contemplative
Current music:	Modest Mouse, "Good News for People Who Love Bad News"

'Brokeback' Spirituality
Yesterday I got an extraordinary email from a fellow named Matt. It was partly in response to a message I had posted on Dave Cullen’s Brokeback forum, about an unfortunate young Christian I had read about who regarded the film as a lesson in the miseries of homosexuality—and the necessity of asking Jesus to “cure” such tendencies.

Matt has quite a different take on Brokeback:

I’ve been possessed of this thought lately, that Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal performed a very Christly service for me. I experienced such a sense of profound relief and personal validation after my first viewing of BBM. But, deeper than that, this very afternoon during one of my dance/meditation sessions, while looking a BBM photo of Heath and Jake, I was seized by the knowledge of how profoundly they have affected hundreds of thousands of gay people. Many of us carry around a soul burden that comes with the territory of being homoerotic; my mother used to say that all Christians have a cross to carry in this life. Suddenly, I knew something for sure, and that was that Heath as Ennis, and Jake as Jack, took my cross upon their shoulders. I saw them act out my passion and love, the deeply physical, saliva-swapping, body-pressed-to-body, hands-on love I have lived. My agony, my ecstasy, my cross! The thing about my life that has wreathed my head with a crown of thorns, and disturbs my peace; the thing that has weighed so heavily on my shoulders all my gay years. They took it upon themselves in a big way, on the giant screen. So, this afternoon I felt as Christ must have when Simon the Cyrene relieved him of his cross, and these two men by doing this, so validated my life; and though I have heard that they are not gay, somehow came to walk upon my Via Dolorosa.........I feel blessed!

So one viewer sees BBM as an anti-gay polemic, while another finds redemption in it; and the most remarkable thing, to me, is that the movie itself is so silent on the subject of spirituality. The characters don’t seem to have much of a spiritual life; one of the few direct references to the church is Ennis’s comment about “That fire-and-brimstone crowd.” This man who is in so much need of comfort finds none in his local house of worship.

And yet, the intensity and sincerity of emotions in the film do invoke a kind of spirituality, or soulfulness. Certainly those two shirts hanging on Ennis’s closet door, next to the postcard of Brokeback Mountain, constitute a shrine. And when he says “Jack, I swear...,” it is a form of affirmation, perhaps even prayer.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no big fan of Christianity. People who are dumbfounded by murderous Muslims should remember that Christianity has much blood on its hands too. At the same time, I have spent many hours with A Course in Miracles, much to my benefit; our spiritual lives develop in sometimes contradictory ways. Perhaps it’s no surprise that BBM, such a deeply affecting film, could bring about a transformative experience of the spirit. Nothing that this amazing movie does could surprise me.

If anyone would like to write to Matt, he welcomes email at Genzano924@aol.com.