adventus OKC

Song written and performed by Sherree Chamberlain (myspace.com/sherreechamberlain and twitter.com/Sherreejane) on the early morning of November 14th, 2009 in Oklahoma City, OK after The Watch.  The Watch was an event designed to help artists in Oklahoma City experience a physical representation of what the season of Advent is about and then respond in art.  This was just a part of a larger event called Adventus (adventusokc.com).  You can watch a video about The Watch here:

Video shot, produced, & edited by Mike Jones (http://vimeo.com/4538636 and twitter.com/VoteMikeJones ).

This is an excerpt from Pages 195-196 of ”A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” by Donald Miller:

I recently read the biography of Viktor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist and psychologist who in 1942 was deported to Theresienstadt, a Nazi concentration camp that housed Jews in transit to Auschwitz.  While in the camp, and later in Auschwitz, Frankl studied and journaled about his and others’ conditions of despondency.  He was separated from his wife and lost his parents in the ghetto, yet he still worked to prevent suicide among his fellow prisoners.  Interfering with suicides was prohibited by Nazi guards, but Frankl whispered in people’s ears all same.  The essence of the whispers were that life, even amid the absurdity of human suffering, still had meaning.  Suffering, as absurd as it seemed, pointed to a greater story in which, if one would only construe himself as a character within, he could find fulfillment in his tragic role, knowing the plot was heading towards redemption.  Such an understanding would take immense humility and immeasurable faith, a perspective perhaps achieved only in the context of near hopelessness.

Frankl’s papers, written after surviving the camps, and even after losing his wife to the Nazis, indicated a philosophical conclusion that misery, though seemingly ridiculous, indicates that life itself has the potential of meaning, and therefore pain itself must also have meaning.  Contrary to Freud’s posit that man’s greatest pursuit is of pleasure, Frankl argued life is a pursuit of meaning itself, and that search for meaning provides the basis for a person’s motivation.  Pain then, if one could have faith in something greater than himself, might be a path to experiencing a meaning beyond the false gratification of human comfort.

For the prisoners Frankl helped in the concentration camps, a chance for survival was increased by an ability to dwell in a spiritual domain, a place where SS could not intrude.  In essence, the prisoners whom Frankl influenced were convinced to surrender their tragic experiences to the greater whole of a grander epic, and in that role they found a purpose to continue living.”

Check out http://www.myspace.com/jaimecochran