Tanya Pluth: The Tunes

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• MP3 short clip, lo-fi play (modem)

One summer I picked up odd jobs from folks to earn extra cash for grad school. One of the jobs was landscaping a parking strip in industrial NW Portland on a saturday. There was no one around so I had the radio blaring NPR (oh yeah, I'm one of those. . .). Mel Gibson was interviewed by someone about his movie coming out, "The Last Temptation of Christ." When asked about the level of graphic violence in the film, he said something like, "Well, it's through witnessing the sacrifice and suffering of our savoir that people find their way to the holiness of God, so I wanted to show the total cruelty he suffered to open the door to Christ's teachings." *total paraphrase based on bad and biased memory. . .please don't sue me. . .*

The very next story on the radio was about the 10 year marker of the Rawandan genocide. People who survived the massacres told chilling stories of the suffering they witnessed and endured. I wondered why Mel Gibson and others felt they had to create a film version of suffering to introduce people to God, why they felt they had to highlight Jesus's suffering in their movie, when clearly there's so much suffering that takes place every single day, in every city, every country, everywhere, and as far as I can tell, people aren't learning from that suffering to follow the more peaceful ways of Christ. But then again, I'm not really a Christian, so I suppose I don't understand.

I don't believe that witnessing suffering and sacrifice leads people to whatever God may be, given ample historical and personal evidence to the contrary. That line of thinking and belief feels all backwards and wrong to me, "Inside Out."

This is for all the folks who hold on to laughter as celebration, stories as a means of reconciliation, and salvation as being more rooted in telling the truth of our experiences than about considering suffering holy.

You held it together for so long, must be tired
No one ever taught you how to let go
So you put your best coat on
and your shiny shoes
Light those fireworks take all eyes off you

You were turned, Inside out
By everything you saw, by what they did
You were turned, Inside out

From one to a million
you join the largest crowd
Beaten down now by the righteous and proud
So welcome now the answer
welcome now the change

Forget what’s left to lose
stand up and make your claim

A story of salvation, reconciliation
your laughter here a celebration of inside out

Your blood’s on the wrong side of skin
You were betrayed
by the nation you believed in