Serpent-Handling Christians

Last night I left the internet cafe to shower and watch "The Chronicles of Narnia" on DiDi's laptop. I explained to her the fact that Aslan was the equivalent of Jesus and she immediately saw the parallels. Apparently one of her best friends is Catholic so she knows some things about Jesus Christ. We then talked in her room until 12:30 am when she decided that she would sleep with me because her air conditioner was not working. Jill came into our room in the middle of the night and I guess DiDi had her leg thrown over me. Good thing the apocalypse couldn't wake me.

I woke up at 8:00 and DiDi was already gone. I got dressed and wandered outside to get my egg sandwich and eat breakfast with my iced coffee ladies. The older lady still hadn't seen the pictures of my family and Andy and I showed them to her. I told her the names, ages, and occupations of everybody before she asked the oddest question: "Chim tieng Anh lam gi?" Translated, this is "What's the word for the male genitalia in English?" I pretended I didn't understand her Vietnamese for a while because I was thinking that it couldn't really be happening. I finally gave in and she made me say it and write it down. It was really very entertaining after a while and then I had to go to Vietnamese class.

The class went a lot better today that it ever has in Hanoi. I understood most of what our teacher was rapidly saying in Vietnamese and I was just as surprised as the rest of the people in the class. We all decided it was because I listen to Vietnamese and speak it all the time when I sit around and make friends with my food servers and the people I meet on the street.

I went back to the dorm at 11:00 and went for lunch at our usual spot with DiDi and Monica. Back at the dorm, I visited my friend Brittany who accidentally took a sober spill last night. The back of her dress got caught on the top of the gate that surrounds our dorm complex and she fell about 10 feet onto her face. It's pretty bruised and a bit scratched so I went to go see her and we ended up talking and watching a couple old episodes of the tv show "Friends." At 12:45 I went up to my room and grabbed my backpack and laptop and headed over to the photography classroom. Today Professor Benjamin started the class by showing us CBS News videos from Myanmar because he felt we should be keeping up with the crisis there. It is so interesting to see how much influence religious figures actually hold (sorry, Dad). :)

We then looked at some of the pictures taken by a guy named Shelby Lee Adams. He grew up in the Appalachian area in the back woods of Kentucky and has returned there for 30 years in order to respectfully photograph the people who live there. For a small sampling of his work, go to either http://www.edelmangallery.com/adams.htm or even the photographer's own blog at http://shelby-lee-adams-napier.blogspot.com/ . Most of the pictures are quite disturbing and I can't decide why. I think it's either because the pictures seem to confirm many of the stereotypes I seem to hold concerning "hill-billies" or because Adams trains bright lights on most of his subjects. This gives them a ghostly and washed-out appearance that I am not familiar with when viewing documentary or portrait photography.

Our class then watched a movie about Shelby Lee Adams and his work in Appalachia that is entitled "The True Meaning of Pictures" and it was so interesting. I couldn't understand one word of the dialogue, since most of the people didn't have any teeth and had an insane accent. So many questions surfaced in my head during the viewing of the movie, especially about the serpent-handling as a part of the extreme Pentecostalism that is practiced there in Kentucky. I need to look into the reasons that these people handle deadly snakes and drink poison and venom. Do they think it's because it proves that God favors them or protects them? Is it done in order to show their devotion and faith? What happens to the faith community when a leader is bitten by a snake and they are not protected? A church leader had part of his arm rot off because a snake bit him and he barely had it treated. I sat there in the classroom and wondered what I thought about Christians who take the Bible so literally that they handle deadly animals and purposefully drink poison? Are these intensely dangerous behaviors any different than a Buddhist monk who immolated himself on a busy street in Vietnam? Do I have any right to make judgments at all? How do the people in the back woods of Kentucky view my idea of Christianity?
I guess those questions will provide me (and possibly you!) with a lot to research and ponder for the next week or so.

After watching the video, I asked the professor to look at some of my pictures for the next photo assignment: landscapes. He liked some of my stuff already so that made me happy. I went back to the dorm and heard that the creepy guys down the hall had asked to use my friends' computer and she smartly told him we don't keep them in our rooms. DiDi went down to the desk on the first floor of the dorm to talk to the gate keeper about these men. I'm going to stop being so nice and just tell them I already have a boyfriend and that they should go away. It's hard to be so pretty. :)

I hung out with Leah and Jackie and watched a bit of the newest episode of "The Office" before going out to eat dinner at Bia Hoi with Jackie and Jill. I had the crunchy noodles with beef and greens and it was amazing. I've been at the internet cafe ever since about 6:30 pm. It's time to go back and take a shower.

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