Kite Runner

In honor of the Pope gracing our fair shores, I offer the following incredibly old joke which has been previously told using any number of other religious leaders as the main character.

The Pope is visiting New York and is picked up at the airport by a limo. On the way into the city, the Pope says to the driver, "You know, I've always wanted to drive one of these limos but I never get the chance." The driver says, "Hey, you're the Pope. Whatever you want." So they exchange places but the Pope hasn't driven much before and pretty soon gets pulled over by a NYC policeman. The policeman approaches the limo and recognizes the Pope before he gets to the limo. He runs back to his car and radios the station house. He calls the sargent and says, "You'll never guess who I pulled over." The sargent says, "Who?" The police officer says, "I don't know, but he has the Pope for a chauffer."

It was nice of the Pope to express his sadness and shame over the debacle of decades of pedophile perverts. So in honor of his shame, we watched The Kite Runner.

Great book which Linda and I read when it was first published. Good movie, very true to the story. A few things got left out but mostly it stuck to the book. Great casting. The child actors really fit their parts.

The book talked about an issue which did not get covered in the movie. The issue of orphan status in the Afghan culture which makes adoption difficult and almost impossible for an orphan to marry due to the cultural importance of family background. If you can't prove who your father is then no one wants you. In the book, that issue is brought out very sadly.

The movie doesn't hesitate to show the extraordinary difficulty of Taliban rule. Stoning adulterers to death while at the same time using children as sex slaves.

The NY Times ran several articles after we invaded Afghanistan in 2001 about the American soldiers finding the Taliban living in what looked like mud houses from the outside but inside were almost palatial in style and sickening in use. Hundreds of boys and girls were freed by the Americans. They had been taken from villages and used as sex slaves.

I can deal with the fact of contradiction in religion and that without mystery there is no religion but the extent of contradiction in Taliban fundamentalism makes it difficult for me to find much compassion for them.

There is a branch of Islam which does get a lot of compassion from me. Sufism. Wow! Beautiful stuff. Rumi, one of the famous early 13th century Sufi poets gets quoted in the movie. There's another Sufi poet, Hafiz, who lived soon after Rumi. He became very popular in America due to an American, Daniel Ladinsky, who took a 19th century translation and interpreted it (or rendered as the publisher says) in a way that made our two teenagers say, "Wow, he writes like we talk!"

Louise Erdrich, the Minnesota Native American author of some of my favorite books (Love Medicine, Beet Queen and lots more) has a bookstore not far from where we live. She sells so many of Daniel Ladinsky's Hafiz books that she keeps a stack of 20 or more of The Gift on one shelf.

There's a bunch of web sites to find Hafiz and Rumi but I'll leave with just a few:

You Don't Have to Act Crazy AnymoreYou Don't Have to Act Crazy Anymore -
We all know you were good at that.
Now retire, my dear,
From all that hard work you do
Of bringing pain to your sweet eyes and heart.
Look in a clear mountain mirror -
See the Beautiful Ancient Warrior
And the Divine elements
You always carry inside
That infused this Universe with sacred Life
So long ago
And join you Eternally
With all Existence - with God!
From: 'I heard God Laughing - Renderings of Hafiz' by Daniel Ladinsky


What Should We Do about that Moon ?A wine bottle fell from a wagon
And broke open in a field.
That night hundred beetles and all their cousins
Gathered
And did some serious binge drinking.
They even found some seed husks nearby
And began to play them like drums and whirl.
This made God very happy.
Then the 'night candle' rose into the sky
And one drunk creature, laying down his instrument
Said to his friend - for no apparent
Reason,
"What should we do about that moon?"
Seems to Hafiz
Most everyone has laid aside the music
Tackling such profoundly useless
Questions.
From: 'The Gift - Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master'

Last thought on pedophile priests: Why don't they just screw each other??"