The Insatiable Moon

The Insatiable Moon is a film that needs to be seen twice. First time around you're trying to take in the way things work in this particular world, and how the story all fits together. A second viewing gives you more time to reflect.

Arthur (played by Rawiri Paratene) believes he's the 'second son of God.' He lives in a boarding house with a bunch of other people with mental health issues, and is by far the most outgoing and positive of them all. The story explores whether his ability to discern other people's inner turmoils, his belief that God is benevolent to his children, his prophetic words and other insights, are truly charismatic gifts, or merely part of his brain dysfunctions. It challenges us to believe in miracles, in the need for a true belief in God and not just a religious one, and of course, most of all, it challenges us to see people with mental health issues as people loved by God.

The 'villains' of the piece might be a bit too black and white, but they're mostly minor characters: the really interesting people in this movie are those who have a sense of the spiritual and are willing to follow it even if it causes them pain, or requires them to change long-held attitudes.

The scene towards the end, when the suburb of Ponsonby rallies for and against having a boarding house for people with mental health problems in its midst, is the climax, but the more important scene comes earlier, at the funeral of one of the boarding house residents. This is where Arthur comes into his own as a prophetic voice, a man who speaks the words of (first) Son of God.

The other interesting character is the man - Bob - who runs the boarding house: foul-mouthed and short-fused, he nevertheless cares deeply for the men he feeds and cleans up for (seemingly single-handed). This is a vocation for him, rather than a job, although it's unlikely he regards himself as a spiritual man. The 'spiritual' man in the story, the Anglican priest, is at odds with himself and his spiritual life, and seems rather wet by comparison with Bob. It's not that he's meant to represent institutional religion; that would be too simplistic. Rather he's a man in the wrong job, and wisely, by the end of the movie, he's realised it.

Mike Riddell, the author of the original book and the scriptwriter for the movie, doesn't give us all the answers - although he teases us with possible answers at times. His seven years of effort (along with a host of other supporters, including his wife, who directed the movie after the original director had to pull out) in getting this movie off the ground have borne good fruit.

James Gibb/the vital place of women (!)

A couple of quotes from The Story of the Otago Free Church Settlement 1848 to 1948 by John Collie.  The first relates to James Gibb, a minister who came to First Church, Dunedin around the turn of the 19th-20th century.

He could work strenuously all day in conferneces and committees and then study hard up to three or four in the morning, the intensity of his zeal being the guarantee of concentration.  When ill-health did seriously threaten him in his prime he cured it partly by defying it and partly by ignoring it.  Ordered to diet, he would munch sweets whenever opportunity offered.   pg 292

Gibb lived to be 78. 

No one who has even a cursory acquaintance with the work carried on in our Maori Field will ever doubt the vital place which women missionaries must always hold there.  More men are required, but they cannot do the work of a woman.  Similarly in the foreign field - the whole work would ultimately come to a standstill without the women missionaries.   pg 278

That the statement above is true is testified to by the number of women who served as missionaries throughout the 20th century.  While they couldn't hold leadership roles in their home churches they were 'allowed' to do so almost as a matter of course in the mission fields (both in New Zealand and abroad).   I remember, when our family was in the Assembly of God Church back in the 70s that there was an insistence that the men were the ones who led the churches.   And then a missionary came to speak.  She turned out to be a little, quiet woman with nothing much remarkable about her, yet she'd been working and leading successfully in the mission field for some years.  The irony of this seemed lost on the male leadership!

Photo of James Gibb courtesy of the Presbyterian Church Archives.

More unearthed treasures

'Treasures' might be a bit of an overstatement, but back in the early 80s sometime, I wrote a 'musical' for my church - the Assembly of God in those days. (It's gone through several changes of name since then; seems to be that the Pentecostals no longer want to stick with their original nomenclatures for some reason. Not trendy enough, perhaps. They've been called Southern Hills, and, Nations, at various times over the last couple of decades.)
Anyway, the musical was fairly short; probably twenty minutes at the most. I scripted it and wrote the music. It was just one of those times when everything comes together without huge effort.
I've had the music to hand pretty much ever since then, because I spent some time at one point putting all my church songs in one manuscript book. But the script had gone missing.
Until today, when it turned up in the stuff that had been in my piano stool. Obviously I haven't been through that stuff for a very long time!
The musical had its roots in the Lost Sheep parable, but that was only part of what went on in it. The only words that I set to music that I didn't write were those for William Blake's poem, Little Lamb, Who Made Thee? This is also the only song that's had a life outside the staging of the musical.
The musical was rather curiously staged: we had people playing the parts, but their songs were sung by other people. Perhaps it was because the singers didn't feel confident acting. And there were dancers involved too, particularly in a song called, There is more rejoicing over one lost sheep (than the ninety-nine who never go astray). At that time in the AOG history, banners and long pieces of material were in, and the dancers often used to use these in the services. So we incorporated some of that in the musical.
We even had a tiny orchestra: yours truly on the piano, along with a flute, a violin and some other things which I can no longer recall.
Anyway, it was a great effort and came off pretty well, all things considered.