Katrina’s ravages afford us the opportunity to attempt understanding what is most important. In these pages you’ve found the praises of men, music, women and other musings about the world as experienced by the columnistas. It’s serious, thoughtful, fun and occasionally angry. There has been considerable effort to encourage the creative processes not only from the subjective but also in the objective.

Whether or not John McBain beds Natalie Vega pales in comparison to what is happening in the real world.

It helps to reflect on the time when the Christian World went careening toward Capitalism and The Holy Crusades during the 12th and 13th centuries. A voice went out and upward to call humanity toward a more humane and simple direction.

Giovanni Bernardone, the son of a merchant and one time soldier/knight experienced metanoia, a change of heart. Many would call it conversion. His message encompassed simplicity as a virtue, working for daily bread, and celebrating nature as a manifestation of the divine. His mother was French, although he was born in Italy and he became known as Francesco. He kissed lepers. He went to speak to Moslems and although he did not convert them, the experience blessed all involved. His original followers were simple brothers who wandered throughout Central Italy celebrating everyday life.

The gods and nature cannot be understood in a positive way when phenomena like Katrina occur. Francis of Assisi had his finger on something. His ideals, however, much like New Orleans and Biloxi in the wake of a huge hurricane were almost immediately overwhelmed by burgeoning Capitalism and a Church not true to its ideals. The news today that something like 30% of Nola’s population lives below the poverty level brought to mind a very important and effective individual like Bernardone in these days of war and turmoil.

People not affected by storms or metanoia will continue to get goofily passionate over whether it’s John and Evangeline or John and Natalie – Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Many will go back to their daily innocuous pleasures like the ones found on these pages.

Many will take at least a moment for reflection. Many will donate to the Red Cross. Some will actually come to appreciate what life holds for them right now.

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From the New York Times:

The Flowers of St. Francis

Released in 1950 as the scandal surrounding Roberto Rossellini's affair with Ingrid Bergman during the filming of "Stromboli" was at its height, "The Flowers of St. Francis" remains a remarkably serene and even blissful film, a sincere attempt to capture the studied innocence of St. Francis of Assisi and his followers as they prepare to go out in the world and preach. Lars von Trier's acerbic satire on cults and cultism, "The Idiots" (1998), is at least in part a parody of Rossellini's film, with its childlike monks who greet every setback as a joyful opportunity to demonstrate their faith.

The figure of St. Francis (played by an authentic monk, Brother Nazario Gerardi, as are all the Franciscans in the film ) is treated with a Sunday school simplicity that the later Rossellini, in his complex historical films made for television ("The Rise of Louis XIV," 1966) would have found reductive. Still, the emotional essence of his philosophy comes through in the breathtakingly beautiful images, which seem to combine the spontaneity of a snapshot with the compositional sense of a Renaissance master.

The only false note is a sequence in which the most naïve of the monks, Genepro (Brother Severino Pisacane) is captured and almost killed by a tyrannical tribesman, played with theatrical bluster by the professional comedian Aldo Fabrizi. This Criterion Collection disk comes with excellent documentation, including an essay by the critic Peter Brunette, and a razor-sharp transfer that seems to capture every blade of grass on the rolling hillsides. $29.95. Not rated.

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